Gods And Sumenians: The Myth Of Sumerian Civilization

Jean Bottero the author of Ancient Religion in Mesopotamia, mentions how the Sumerians had practiced the religious belief along with the very first writing system. Bottero believes the Sumerians seem to had a strong relationship with supernatural personalities that formed their own nature and culture. The Sumerians created the Gods because of the documents found were all written in Sumerian languages according to the canonical lists of gods. Therefore, Bottero proved that these numerous number of gods were all established by the Sumerians. However, the Sumerians’ gods were absorbed by more powerful individuals and certainly the powerful gods created myths for the people to put into records.

Ancient Egyptians referred to their king as pharaoh. Document 3 explains that they believed that pharaoh is a god that controls everything and has an absolute power that nobody can came close to. According to document 6 the Sumerians and Akkadians practice polytheism, the worship of many gods. They believed that keeping the gods happy will be the key of their own happiness and prosperity but, if the gods were angry, they might bring suffering and disaster.the sumerians built temples that called ziggurats, they believed that the temples linked earth with the heavens and linked people with gods.

The Sumerian civilization existed an estimated three thousand years prior to the Greeks (Powell p. 60). Although very little is actually known about the Sumerian culture, archaeologists have unearthed ancient artifacts and clay tablets containing cuneiform writing that have given historians bits and pieces of the stories that were told during that time (Powell pg. 63 Figure 7.3). While the Sumerian empire ended thousands of years before the Greek civilization began, there are striking similarities between the Sumerian gods and the Greek pantheon, as well as a few differences.

Another example of how the Sumerians felt about their gods came from The Epic of Gilgamesh. The gods brutally punished Enkidu, causing him death, because he aided Gilgamesh in killing the Bull of Heaven and Humbaba. This is portrayed in a quote by Anu, a Sumerian god, “Because they have killed the Bull of Heaven, and because they have killed Humbaba who guarded the cedar mountain one of the two must die”. Since Gilgamesh was part god, the gods chose to kill Enkidu, the full human. This demonstrates how merciless the Sumerians portrayed their gods.

The polytheistic religion of the Sumerian contrasted with the monotheistic religion of the Hebrews. The people of Sumeria worshipped thousands of gods, and each city-state adopted a god as their protector (Hunt, Martin, Rosenwein & Smith, 2013, p.10). Moreover, the Sumerian built ziggurats, a temple tower, to please their gods (Hunt,

The Sumerians received a different kind of treatment from their gods while they were alive. The Sumerians were very

Sumerians believed that these rituals and practices would please the gods and, therefore, would maintain the safety of each city-state. Sumerians also believed in an afterlife, but their version of an afterlife was rather dark and gloomy. Sumerians believed the afterlife consisted of a murky netherworld with no escape. Humans existed as ghosts called gidims. Sumerians also had to follow certain rules when entering the netherworld.

Religions played an important role in both Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations. It allowed people to worship Gods who they believed to ensure good lives. However, both civilizations did not use judge morality. Sumerians believed that Gods give them good living condition rather than judge it. Sumerian religion was created from myths and ritual prayers. Sumerians were “literal servants” and obey to the Gods. They offered prayers, gifts to the gods and Gods blessed people with good condition. Gods of Sumerians were Heaven creating of day and night, The Great Above making up of the space between the sky and the earth, and The Great Below where people go after death. Like Sumerian, Egypt religion was also created from myths along with traditions.

In the heart of the mesopotamian desert there was a civilization called the Sumerians. The civilization were a prime and firm civilization. They had built Big strong cities. The sumerians were an intelligent race. From the mud homes the civilization built they built huge mountains. These mountains were seen from miles away. These mountains were the homes to the gods. These huge mud brick mountains were called the Ziggurat. The ziggurat was a temple the sumerians used to worship the gods for hundreds of years.

In Sumer, their religion was polytheistic. It was animistic, believing gods were present in life in various forms of nature. Each Sumerian city-states had powerful priestly groups that were responsible for continuing the religious traditions of their city-states and were the linkage between gods and humans. The gods of Sumer were seen in human forms and having human traits even though they were immortal.

The Samarra culture developed into the Sumerians, from 4800 to 1750BC, with 19 dynasties and 103 kings that developed into one of the earliest civilizations on earth. Their existence as a civilization was not even discovered until the middle of 1800AD. As a result of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians who wrote about the Babylonians most people did not realize that the Sumerians preceded the Babylonians. Furthermore, it was the Sumerians that developed writing, a religion and numerous agricultural methods, which continued on with the following civilizations. 4 A combination of British, German and French archeologists, in early 1800AD, began to dig out the earthen mounds of the remains of cities that once existed and flourished for thousands

The Sumerians believed that this world was made into the world it is today through the power of these gods. It is said in their texts that the world was very inhospitable and violent. The gods would make the earth more hospitable. This could be taken to mean that the Sumerians had a pretty low opinion of their environment. Also the use of gods reveals that of course they were polytheistic. It also tells us a little about Mesopotamians and how they seemingly saw themselves as a very small part of this larger plan. To continue he gods did not like doing the labor of making earth hospitable. So in their place they made humans to do work for them.

Describe the ancient Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations in terms of political structure, religion, society, and culture. Account for the similarities and differences between them.

The Sumerian culture portrays the importance of animals as compared to human beings. This was evident when the gods failed to inform people of the impending floods (Pinsent, 21). The Inupiat culture inculcates good human conduct among humans to ensure peace and sustainability.

The Mesopotamian religion has not a large amount of information uncovered. There are both archaeological and textual data that has been found on religious beliefs of the early Sumerian civilization survive. The typical temples were constructed of mud bricks and adorned with buttresses and many small cones of different colors. On the inside there was a niche for the image of the deity right in front of an offering table. The early sanctuaries were simple in their style but the later new temples contained spacious courts, which were rooms for attendant priests and a ziggurat. There were three types of textual materials that have been discovered: prayers, descriptions of the rituals conducted by priests, and mythological literature. Prayers were always associated with specific rites to be performed by the person offering the prayers or by a priest attached to the sanctuary. The prayers would consist of invocations to the gods, requests for assistance, and expressions of gratitude for past favors or for dangers averted. There was a rule, that the worshipers did not emphasize such spiritual or moral topics as death, survival, and contact with the divine. The discovered mythological literature is difficult for present day readers to understand and the extent to which such myths reflect early religious beliefs is unknown. In its beginning, Mesopotamian religion expressed harmony between humanity and the natural powers on which it depended on survival. The Sumerians have