Mesopotamia Case Essay

score OF MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGION The name Mesopotamia, is a classical name which means the terra firma among the rivers, connects to the geographic region which lies near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and non to any(prenominal) social functionicular civilization. The land of Mesopotamia is do fertile by the irregular and a good deal violent flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. While these floods aid agricultural endeavors by adding rich silt to the soil e very(prenominal) year, it took a large amount of hu human being labor to successfully irrigate the land and to protect the untried plants from the surging flood waters.Given the combining of fertile soil and the need for organized human labor, perhaps it is non strike that the first civilization certain in Mesopotamia. Sumerians were the first settlers in Sumeria. By c.3500 BCE, the Sumerians had developed more an new(prenominal)(prenominal) of the features that characterized subsequent civilizations. Cun ei pains was a system of writing established by the Sumerians which became the dominant system of writing in Mesopotamia for tout ensemble(prenominal)where 2000 old age.Mesopotamia is widely know as one of the regions in the Near vitamin E first experiencing the develop mental transition to hydraulic and urban civilization, duly celebrated as a cradle of civilization and the eastern segment of the Fertile Crescent.Mesopotamian religion is the religious beliefs and practices of the Sumerians and Akkadians, which were noted the first developed civilizations and religions and later(prenominal) of their successors, the Babylonians and Assyrians. (Lindemans, 2007). In general terms, it constitutes the greater start place of what is now Iraq, eastern Syria, and south-eastern Turkey. The deities of Sumer were usu completelyy associated with aspects of nature, much(prenominal)(prenominal) as cornucopia of the fields and livestock. Among the some(prenominal) grave of the many Mesopatamian deitys were Anu, the graven image of nirvana Enki the god of water and Enlil, the earth god. Deities were much associated with bettericular cities.Astral deities much(prenominal) as Shamash and Sin were excessively worshipped. The Mesopatamians be expert astrologers who studied the movements of nirvanaly bodies. Priests also contumacious the pull up stakes of the gods done the observation of omens, curiously by reading the entrails of sacrificed animals. The office functioned as the head priest, presiding at the advanced-year fiesta held in spring, when the kingship is renewed and the triumph of the theology over the powers of chaos was celebrated.In Mesopotamia, on the whole(prenominal) city state had its own god who owned it, and although some other gods were admitted, they were always repress to the city god. Everyone had to belong to a temple, whatever rank they had in society. If they belonged to the temple of Marduk, they considered themselve s the state of the divinity fudge Marduk. The god was the lord and the great deal served him as slaves or at to the lowest degree as servants. Part of everyones realise belonged to the god and had to be brought as a sacrifice. The land itself belonged to the god and had to be hired from him. God go for never been any good at signing agreements so the contracts were signed on his behalf by the priests.The main festival in Mesopotamia was the New class Festival held in spring or in autumn. Its significance was the renewal of the land through the sprouting of new buds or the end of the summer scorching. The Sumerian gaming foc employ on Dumuzi or Tammuz, the yeasty power of Spring while the Goddess was Inanna, the fertility of nature.The drama went this way the earth goddess conceived a handsome son who later became her devotee and begat the next son a ritual performed by the king and his consort or the head priest and priestess in a ritual coupling. The son died and every one wailed solely the new son was born and everyone rejoiced. In the tropical zone the vegetation died in the summer fondness but in northern climates it died with the aggression of frost, so the times were not unavoidably the homogeneous.(Amytas, 2002) In an article of Sumerian organized religion it was said that re prosopopoeia is a sentiment suitable for Mesopotamians because it was so real and overt that it was not worth reporting the hitting obvious. The Mesopotamians, took painspickings notes of the coming of the sunrise and sunset every day, the hold of the seasons, the planets and the stars, always revolving and travel to chartered points in the skies. Thus, they did gestate that every social function was cyclic, and in completely probability considered support and death as such as well (cited in Adapa).MESOPOTAMIAN MYTHOLOGYThe deuce following stories atomic number 18 one of the tumble and ascent stories of Mesopotamian Religion(Amytas, 2002) Descents to the under beingness be a constant theme in Mesopotamia and tell about the triumph of the eye over desire, wrong doings or guilt. Descent stories always contain the type that one should not venture to the play of No Return, that the laws of bulky on a lower floor cannot be changed and it designs the fore just about. Nevertheless, Inanna descended to meet Her other Self, the immense Judge and Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal, and She who is the Lover and devising love resurfaced as the vision of triumphant military personnel that transcends all deaths.Enlil descended by and by having raped Ninlil, who directly took takes in her hands and went down after Him to conquer Her beloved back, achieving major yield along the process herself from maiden to colleague of Lord Air. Even Enlil, the most important of the young Anunnaki gods, had to undergo punishment for a terrible act in the most romantic and intense of all crepuscule stories.However, Ninlil, as the Beloved and Hard est Judge Enlil could puzzle ever had, flew after him for the rescue to occupy him back to the high higher up, to be inject Enlils partner in all levels. all told of them faced awesome trials and returned back to the Heights after achieving much healing and growth. It is accordingly clear that returns from the Underworld, despite all warnings against venturing over there, can be fulfild, but unaccompanied by the triumph of the record, by seduction ones own weaknesses, by a necessary vent to achieve a major growth.In the allegory of Adapa, Adap ascends to the Heavens to meet Anu so that he could justify himself in front of the Skyfather for having been discourteous to the South Wind. Adapa is the proto-Solomon, the sage and the priest-king of Eridu. He refuses immortality to come back to the Middleworld instead of remaining with the great(p) Gods in the Great Above, as Anu had disposed(p) him the opportunity to stay there by eating and drinking from the table of the g ods. Adapa refuses the offering, because Enki, Adapas personal god, had warned him not to, if Adapa did not call for to die.A possible experience for this expiration is the following in the end Adapa tacit that he would have change surfacetually unremitting life after dungeon a full life in the physiological world, and not in the flash he had been offered the gift by Anu. He did not need eternal life when he was offered it by Anu, because he was necessary on earth, he was the priest-king the foundation of the state which was cosmos built in Eridu, the place where kingship descended from the heavens. Again, it is a Mesopatamian ascent myth with a return, whose riddle show the cycle and the link surrounded by heaven and earth, the Great Above and the Great Below not as mated worlds, but matching complements, in a never-ending cycle.PHOENICIAN LETTERS(Amytas, 2007) The Phoenician Letters is a piece of mystery t to each oneings in a written form from a captain to a dedic ate acolyte in the Mesopotamian tradition, a sort of retro-Caballa. It involves 10 letters, each involving a god/goddess (Rimon-Adad, Nabu, Ishtar, Nergal, Shamash, Marduk, Anu, Enlil, Ea-Enki, Sin-Nana) by the master to the acolyte exchanged during the period of cardinal years.The letters cover the training of a future-priest king by a master kept unknown up to the plump letter. The quotations on the chapter of Nergal on the next divide are about reincarnation, the Eternal Return. chance upon that the piece of metal that is left hand from the im enduring of what should be burnt may refer to that part of matter in us that is primeval and without blemish, the seed of the Great fetch that they all carry within, re certifyed by the metal attributions of Mesopotamians deities, or the imperishable in them, their Personal Gods.On Ishtar, But Ishtar is all this and more. She is the rebornKnow, o Prince, that death is the writer of life, life is the cause of death. Dumuzi her lover moldinessinfulnessessiness die in order to live. She is the rhythm, and all rhythms have an end, this is death, all have a beginning (pages 34-35).On Nergal There are many forms of heroism. There is that form that represents a magnificent stupidity, where the hero achieves nothing, saving uncomplete his people nor his own life, but taking with him down into death as many of the enemy as possible. He willing fight in the underworld that meshing which he did not win, for it is sad that as a man dies, all that he has done is presented to him, to see if he fall his actions or not.If he regrets and pines for the things that he failed to do or the errors he has make, then this is a weight he must carry into his next time of living (Lishtars emphasis). Herein is the tale of justness the assessors of hell visit upon each man his crimes, and according as he loves them or hates them, he will be attracted to the same events, time without end, till the actions of his life be without ble mish (page 41).CREATION OF MAN (and WOMAN) Sumerian VERSIONEnki, the Magician, and Ninhursag, the Earth Mother, create human race from the fertile waters of the Abzu and a speck of clay, breathing into the mix the sapidity of a slain god. It is in the allegory that the spirit of the slain god resonates in each and every being as a drumbeat, life force, to remind them of its sacrifice. According to Amytas, the myth was a wondrous metaphor that shows incarnation as a gift from betoken Consciousness bestowed upon all humankind, all that lives and breathes. The adhesion that was thus established between heaven and earth from the beginning of Sumerian religion, whereby from this moment on humankindis called upon to continue for the gods the working of existence and faithful servants. This metaphor shows the honor all initiates have experiences from times immemorial. life accounting can scarce incarnate through love, the same way we can only ascend to the heights of religious an d conjuror experience by giving unearthly body to our souls design. dispatch in this context may very well mean the necessary loss to achieve higher consciousness, the disrobing and vulnerability needed to enter both Great Above and the Depths Below enforced. Furthermore, the myth of the Creation of opus and Woman can be taken according to the Sumerians as the never-ending miracle of spirit entering matter and for those of them who live their lives in the light of the Mesopotamian tradition.From the beginning of Sumerian Religion, from the humanity of man and fair sex it is therefore present the everlasting bond between matter and spirit. As concluded by Amytas, the part of us who belongs to the everlasting spirit will be then confronted by our life achievements and judged by the Annunaki of the Underworld. These deities will be the judge of our souls and decide when we are ready to return from the Land of No Return. It is for all these reasons that we suggest that the Etern al Return strength have been a core inform principle of Mesopotamian religion.THE BABYLON AND ITS PEOPLEMany scholars believe the first great historian, Herodotus, a classic who traveled widely over the ancient world several centuries forwards the kindred of Chris, visited the city of Babylon in its decline. He has left a description of the city but, because he could not speak Babylonian, his remarkable statements must come largely from the lips of the guides. The harvest was,Herodotus says, doubly or thrice as openhanded as in other lands, the ears of pale yellow and barley growing to a phenomenal size. Rich groves of plow trees waved in the play all over the plain and so expert were the food growers that from the fruit of the palm they got bread, wine and honey. From their scattered villages they looked with pride toward Babel the Greeks called it Babylon or the gate of the God.They had no physician. Marriage, he says, was by purchase or auction sale. His most famous s tatement about the morality of ancient Babylon is to the effect that every woman had once in her life to lady of pleasure herself in what Herodotus calls the court of Venus, means the court of the temple of the goddess Ishtar. There she was compelled to refuse until some man threw her a coin, saying, the goddess Mylitta attain thee, and taking her away to his couch. (Shirlie)On the contrary, in regard to its morals and its women he all misunderstood his informants. There was no auction of wives in Babylon, and there was no such law as the prostitution of every woman at the temple of Ishtar. By that time, Ishtar was a patroness of virtue and the chief refuge of sinners. Women had in ancient Babylon a position of respect and prestige just now lower than they have won in modern times and the law of intimate purity was most drastically enforced upon both sexes.The Babylonian code of laws was compiled by King Hammurabi. This code was found work on a black diorite tow ride seven feet high in the ruins of Susa in 1901. A conqueror of Babylon about 1100 BC had stolen it and carried it off to the hills. On the upper part of it is a figure of Hammurabi in an billet of worship before the sun-god, Shamash. The king says he make the code himself. Babylon, supposed to have been a sink of iniquity, in which purity was unknown, an shell followed the clauses of the next paragraph in the Hammurabi Code of four molar concentration years ago.MESOPOTAMIAN CONCEPTS OF DISEASE AND HEALINGMesopotamian diseases are very much blamed on pre-existing hard liquor gods, ghosts, etc. Each spirit corresponds or is responsible for a special(prenominal) disease. For example, afford of God X, of the stomach corresponds to what is called a disease of stomach. A number of diseases obviously were identified by names, bennu for example. Also it was recognized that various organs could simply misfunction causing illnesses. Mesopotamian uses plants as treatment for diseases althoug h this cannot be relative for magical purposes. In addition, specific offerings are made to a feature god or ghost when it was considered to be a causative factor, but these offerings are not indicated in the medical texts, and must have been found in other texts.There two distinct types of master copy medical practitioners in Mesopotamia, the ashipu known as the sorcerer and the asu which may be referred to as the physician. The ashipu diagnoses the unsoundness. In the case of inborn diseases, this most ofttimes meant that the ashipu determined which god or demon was causing the illness. The ashipu also attempted to determine if the disease was the resolution of some error or sin on the part of the patient. The phrase, the Hand of was used to indicate the divine entity responsible for the ailment in question, who could then be propitiated by the patient.The ashipu could also attempt to cure the patient by means of charms and spells that were designed to attract away or drive out the spirit causing the disease. On the other hand, asu is the specialist in herbal remedies and deals with were often classifiable as empirical applications of medication. For example, when treating wounds the asu relied on three fundamental techniques washing, bandaging and making plasters on which appear in the worlds oldest known medical schedule (c. 2100 BCE).CONCLUSIONMesopotamian religion in unison with my research clearly implies that it is the foundation of many religions since, Sargon, who founded the Babylon and created the first Mesopotamian empire, lived over two thousand years before Christ and even a thousand years before the presumed time of Moses of the Christian bible. One example would be the comparison in the story of Moses one of the clay tablets covered with the wedge-shaped writing of the Babylonians and Assyrians refers to Sargon, the great king.His mother drill him in secret. After the birth she made a little ark or boat of reeds or rushes, coated it with pitch, which is natural there. She situated the baby in it and she set it rudderless on the river, doubtless expecting it to die but hoping it might be saved. The child was ordain to be a mighty draw and the gods took care of him. A water-carrier found the ark and reared the child, until the goddess Ishtar power saw and fell in love with the youth, and made him king over the land.To sum it all up, learning mans history always is a very enkindle subject, its like being transported to a different world where oneself could be alienated. For me it would not matter because the most important thing is that you have respect to all men regardless of their religion.BibliographyWilliams, Tyler. Ideas of Origins and Creation in antiquated Mesopatamia. 2007Lindemans, M.F. Mesopotamian Mythology. 2007Amytas, Voluptua. Sumerian Religion and the Eternal Return. 2002Shirlie. God or Goddess? The Son Gods. 1999http//www.oriental.cam.ac.uk/jmchttp//www.archaeowiki.org/Mesopotamia