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Worship and Suffering in Ancient Mesopotamian Religion
A Division III Project in the School of Humanities, Arts,
& Cultural Studies
By Catharine Bell Wetteroth
Chair: Robert Meagher
Member: Alan Hodder
February 2002
Hampshire College
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Acknowledgements
My deepest thanks go out to Bob and Alan, for continuing
to be a good committee even when I was a bad student. I have
heard negative stories from some of my friends about their
committees, yet I have nothing but praise and positive thoughts
about my own.
Thanks also to Professor Tadanori Yamashita, at Mt. Holyoke
College, with whom I took a class, for aiding me in my research
and writing.
Thanks to Nick Moen, even though absent at the end, for being
there at the beginning. Thanks as well to all my other friends,
for helping to keep me sane-ish.
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Table of Contents
Map of Sumer
Preface: From a letter by Edward Chiera to his wife
Chapter One: An Introduction to Mesopotamia and This Essay
History, Geography, and Culture of Mesopotamia
Methodology and Sources of Information
Religion
The Scope of This Inquiry and a Few Personal Impressions
Chapter Two: Creation and Meaning
The Creation of Humans
The Divine Plan
The Flood
Chapter Three: War
Justice and Abundance
War and Suffering
War and the Gods
Chapter Four: Death and the Underworld
Descriptions of Death
The Meaning of Death
Chapter Five: The Nature of the Gods
The Beginning of the Gods
Gods and Demons
Enheduanna: One Woman's Relation to the Goddess
Perfection and Divinity
Conclusion
Bibliography
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map
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From a letter by Edward Chiera to his wife, written during
an excavation at Kish in the first part of the 20th century
AD:
This evening I made my usual pilgrimage to the mound covering
the ancient temple tower. It is only a few hundred yards from
our camp, and it is pleasant to ascend to the summit of that
tower, which dominates the landscape. This I generally do
in the evening, after supper, in the bright moonlight. Today
I have come with the ambition of jotting down my impressions,
for the spectacle moves me deeply.
Seen from below, it does not look so high as might be
expected of a Babylonian temple tower. Did not that of Babylon
pretend to reach to heaven? One gets the answer after ascending
it. Though rather low (it can hardly be more than five hundred
feet), still from the top the eye sweeps over an enormous
distance on the boundless, flat plain. Nothing breaks the
view, and the plain finally melts into the horizon. About
twenty miles away rises the high mound of Cutha. This city
was sacred to Nergal, the god of pestilence and of the underworld.
The ruins of Babylon are nearer. All around the tower small
heaps of dirt represent all that remains of Kish, one of the
oldest cites of Mesopotamia.
On all sides is desert. The yellowish soil is arid and
thirsty, and no plant can survive the parching heat of the
summer; sheep and camels must feed on whatever remains of
the grass that has managed to sprout in the few weeks after
the rains. The large network of canals, which in ancient times
distributed the waters of the Euphrates over all this land,
is now represented by a series of small mounds of dirt, running
in all directions. Even the Euphrates has abandoned this land
by changing its course. In ancient times it came very near
to the city, giving water in abundance and affording an easy
means of communication.
Immediately before me, and all around the tower, are the
deep trenches made during last year's excavation. It is getting
darker, and they are not well defined. But at night, with
a full moon, they appear pitch black and bottomless- a line
of defense around the sacred mountain, ready to swallow whoever
should attempt to approach it. The sun has just now disappeared,
and a purple sky smiles, unmindful of this scene of desolation.
The cool evening breeze attempts to tear away from my hand
the sheet of paper on which I write these notes.
A dead city! I have visited Pompeii and Ostia, and I have
taken walks along the empty corridors of the Palatine. But
those cities are not dead: they are only temporarily abandoned.
The hum of life is still heard, and life blooms all around.
They are but a step in the progress of that civilization to
which they have contributed their full share and which marches
on, under their very eyes.
Here only is real death. Not a column or an arch still
stands to demonstrate the permanency of human work. Everything
has crumbled into dust. The very temple tower, the most imposing
of all these ancient constructions, has entirely lost its
original shape. Where are now its seven stages? Where the
large stairway that led to the top? Where the shrine that
crowned it? We see nothing but a mound of earth- all that
remains of the millions of its bricks. On the very top some
traces of walls. But these are shapeless: time and neglect
have completed their work.
It is now quite dark. Caution would advise descending
immediately to avoid the danger of falling into one of the
many trenches. But a certain fascination holds me here. I
should like to find a reason for all this desolation. Why
should a flourishing city, the seat of an empire, have completely
disappeared? Is it the fulfillment of a prophetic curse that
changed a superb temple into a den of jackals? Did the actions
of the people who lived here have anything to do with this,
or is it the fatal destiny of mankind that all its civilizations
must crumble when they reach their peak? And what are we doing
here, trying to wrest from the past its secrets, when probably
we ourselves and our own achievements may become an object
of search for peoples to come?
I have to descend now. The moon has not yet risen, and
had not my frequent visits taught me the right path to follow,
the descent would be really dangerous. Still absorbed in my
thoughts I feel no desire to break up their course by joining
my friends. In the semiobscurity I walk toward the open country
and the ruins, still untouched, of the ancient city. The ground
is soft, being made up entirely of the debris of centuries,
and at times my foot sinks in it up to the ankle. Here the
ancient habitations, with their mysteries and their tombs,
have been sleeping quietly for millenniums. In a few months,
perhaps in a few days, here also the ground will be broken
by trenches as in a battlefield. And the repose of the poor
dead will be disturbed by the frantic search for records and
data.....
(Chiera 1934, xi-xv)
link to Chapter One
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