Ancient Middle Eastern Religions

I

Introduction

Ancient Middle Eastern Religions, religions of ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq), Asia Minor (now Turkey), and Syria-Palestine (now Syria, Israel, Lebanon, and Jordan; see Palestine). The ancient Middle East also included Persia (now Iran) and Egypt. However, these countries were separated from other parts of the Middle East by natural barriers and had cultures and religions that were fundamentally different from those of the rest of the ancient Middle East (see Zoroastrianism; Egyptian mythology).

Ancient Middle Eastern religions were the product of a long historical development among many different peoples, and as a consequence the relationships among these religions are often complex. For example, the cultures of southern Asia Minor and northern Syria and Mesopotamia in many cases shared a common way of life and religious tradition as a result of the Euphrates river, which rises in Asia Minor, flows through northern Syria and to Mesopotamia. An important commercial route, the Euphrates also served as a channel for ideas. The culture and religion of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, were different from those of northern Mesopotamia, but were eventually adopted with modifications in the north. Peoples from northern Mesopotamia in turn emigrated to Sumer after the third millennium bc, causing transformations in the population and culture of the south.

II

Common Elements

Certain aspects of Middle Eastern religion can be associated with prehistoric environments and subsistence strategies. Among farmers of the ancient Middle East, the gods were invoked for fertility of the soil, availability of water, and favorable weather. Religious festivals were associated with seeding, spring growth, harvest, and the transformation of grain in food preparation. The gods of shepherds and herders were concerned with the fertility and safety of sheep, goats, and cattle. Many herders were nomads who venerated the sun, moon, stars, and the planet Venus. In the marshlands of southern Babylonia, people saw their gods as fish and other creatures of the fertile and mysterious depths of the rivers. Among keepers of orchards, gods were identified with the productivity of the date palm and its clusters of life-giving fruit. Some gods were associated with striking features of the landscape: Ashur, the national god of the Assyrians, had his origins in a promontory beside the Tigris river.

With the growth of complex and stratified societies, beliefs derived from local environments and ways of life were brought together in each region to form unified pantheons, or hierarchies, of all the gods worshiped in that land. These pantheons could include thousands of gods, some of whom were seen as local forms of gods worshiped elsewhere. With the growth of cities, some gods became the patrons of particular communities and were worshiped in large temples. Over time, some gods became conquering warriors and kings, even as they maintained their age-old concern with water, weather, and fertility. By the end of the 4th millennium bc, ancient Middle Eastern gods were generally thought of as having human form but superhuman powers (see Anthropomorphism). Each deity governed a certain part of the universe, such as the sky or earth; an aspect of nature, such as reproduction or rainfall; or a facet of human society, such as warfare or metalworking.

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Throughout the ancient Middle East, human beings turned to their gods in prayer, either addressing a god directly or turning to a lesser god who acted as intermediary. The gods were honored with rites carried out by professional priests and priestesses and with public festivals in which the entire population could participate. Since the phenomena of nature were attributed to divine will, the gods were believed to speak to their subjects through natural events. Gods could communicate more directly to people through dreams, which were considered messages from the gods, or through prophets—people whose speech, often uttered in a trancelike state, was considered speech of a god (see Prophecy). People also could read the intentions of the gods through divination, the practice of using supernatural means to acquire hidden knowledge of events.

III

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamian religion includes the beliefs and practices of the peoples of Babylonia and Assyria from the earliest times to the late fourth century bc. The earliest Mesopotamian religious practices must be reconstructed from remains such as temples, burials, and artistic imagery, examples of which date from as far back as the 7th millennium bc. Written sources appeared in Sumerian beginning at the end of the 4th millennium bc that indicate religious practices, and there are sources in Akkadian and other Semitic languages beginning about 2500 bc.

Mesopotamian religion represents a continuous development from the religion of the Sumerians (see Sumerian Religion). Various Semitic peoples (for example, Akkadians, Amorites, Assyrians, and Arameans) who were influenced by Sumerian culture or who settled in southern Mesopotamia adapted the structures of Sumerian religion to their own beliefs and practices. Later immigrant populations tended to adopt the Mesopotamian culture they found on their arrival. Mesopotamian civilization eventually spread throughout the ancient Middle East, diffusing its religious ideas to Syria-Palestine, Asia Minor, and the Mediterranean world.

In addition to the elaborate rituals of official state cult common to all ancient Middle Eastern religions, personal religion affected many aspects of daily life in ancient Mesopotamia. The great gods, like mortal kings and queens, seemed increasingly remote, powerful, and inaccessible to the individual, who therefore turned to a personal deity. Usually known simply as “my god” or “my goddess,” the personal deity was supposed to protect a person from harm and ensure good fortune. People employed rituals for promoting good fortune and for protecting themselves from witchcraft and from the harm signified by such events as eclipses or strange behavior of animals. Demons could be exorcised by specialists or warded off by spells, rituals, and a vigilant personal deity. Divination was the most prestigious Babylonian science, and was used especially for predicting the future. One particular form of divination was astrology, for which the Babylonians became famous among the Greeks and Romans.

A

Religion Before Written Sources

Toward the end of the 4th millennium bc, when urban civilization first developed on the Mesopotamian flood plain, monumental temple complexes dominated the cities (see Mesopotamian Art and Architecture). These complexes were raised on huge platforms so as to be visible at a great distance, and they were decorated with architectural ornament, paintings, clay mosaics, and statuary. Planted with gardens, the sanctuaries towered like mountains on the flat plain.

Rulers are depicted in the art of this period, sometimes in a ritual function—for example, presenting gifts of fruit and animals to a goddess—sometimes killing enemies in warfare. This suggests that religious leadership and political and economic control may have been in the hands of a priest-king. Later burials in Ur (now Tall al Muqayyar, Iraq) show that hundreds of servants, soldiers, and entertainers were sacrificed to accompany a dead ruler in his tomb, although this custom disappeared soon after in favor of simple burials without sacrifices. Religion appears to have been an important factor in the creation, expansion, and control of this beginning phase of Mesopotamian civilization.

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