Chapter One
An Introduction to Mesopotamia and This Essay

History, Geography, and Culture of Mesopotamia

This Division Three project is an examination of the religion of ancient Mesopotamia, focusing on Sumer. Mesopotamia means "the land between the two rivers," and the rivers referred to are the Tigris and Euphrates, which flow into the Persian Gulf. Mesopotamia is basically the area of land that today lies within the boundaries of the country of Iraq (see map). The word Mesopotamia is used as a blanket term for the civilizations of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria.

This land was originally inhabited at some point between 9500 and 6000 BC by Semitic people in the north, and in the south, nearer the mouths of the two rivers, by a group known as the Ubaid culture. The Ubaid culture may have been the ancestors of the Sumerians, or the Sumerians may have been a separate group who came in from further south and east. The Sumerians were, however, already well established in the area by the time they began to found cities around 4000 BC. The building of these cities was followed by the development of writing, which appeared between 3500 and 3000 BC. This was the first writing in the world. It began as a system of pictographs, used for the keeping of bureaucratic and economic records, such as property inventories and sales receipts. These pictographs developed into more complex ideograms, which then came to represent the syllabic sound-values of the original words, thus leading to the ability to phonetically write abstract concepts and compound words, which are difficult to render as ideograms. Soon after 3000 BC the writing system was complex enough to record literary and religious texts, rather than just simple lists of herds and fields owned. The writing was made by pressing reed styluses into wet clay tablets, leaving wedge-shaped indentations. These tablets were then baked so that they could be kept permanently. It is these wedge-shaped impressions that give the writing its modern name of cuneiform.

The Sumerian people, who invented this system of writing, created it to fit their language, which is unrelated to any other known language, either ancient or modern. The people themselves were also of unknown ethnic/racial origin. The Sumerians referred to themselves as the "black-headed ones." Their writing system came to be used as well by their northern neighbors, the Akkadians, who were a Semitic people. The Akkadians eventually came to dominate the region. In fact, the word Sumer is an Akkadian word, and was probably originally pronounced Shumer. The Sumerian word for the area of Akkad was Uri, and their word for their own land was Ki-en-gir. This is a combination of the concepts for 'land, place,' 'noble, ruler, lord,' and 'domestic, civilized, native' (Halloran 2001), and could probably be translated as "Our noble civilized land" in contrast to the other, uncivilized lands, which are not as central to the universe.

The land of Sumer was, and still is, dry desert. There was enough rainfall to water wild grasses and scrub, on which herds of sheep and oxen were grazed. Agriculture, however, had to be sustained through artificial irrigation, and much work went into building and maintaining a network of canals for use in farming. It was this system of canals that allowed for the food production necessary for a city's population, and it was the population of the city that supplied the labor force necessary to create and repair the canals. A major crop in the southern part of Sumer was dates. Hunting and fishing also helped to sustain the economy. Even though all around was dry, there were marshes at the mouths of the rivers. These marshes were full of fish, and also full of the reeds used for writing. There was very little stone in Sumer, and the main material used for building was mud or clay, in the form of bricks.

The cities developed as separate city-states. These cities traded and communicated and fought with each other, but each was an independent entity with its own ruler. At times they seem to have come together in an assembly, and at other times they were more fragmented. The terminology of leadership is complicated, with different words for leaders who were similar to priests, and others who were of a more military nature. These roles evolved over time, as the politics of the region changed. There seems to have been a definite increase in war and violence as cities grew in size and complexity. After a while, certain cities came to dominate over all the others, although none had complete control. Dynasties rose and fell, and power shifted from locale to locale as one king conquered another. The area was not united under a single ruler until Sargon of Akkad, in approximately 2350 BC, who conquered all of Sumer and Akkad. After this, ideas of rulership changed again, as some kings were deified during their reigns. Cities were ruled by governors appointed by the high king, rather than being led by their own kings.

Soon before 2000 BC, the last Sumerian dynasty fell to invaders from neighboring nomadic tribes, marking the end of Sumerian civilization. Soon after this, the Semitic nation of Babylon rose to power in the area. Sumerian continued to be used as a literary and religious language, and all scribes were required to know it. However, it ceased to be a living tongue.

Methodology and Sources of Information

The culture of Babylon, while related to those of Sumer and Akkad, represents a break that marks the end of the period examined in this paper. The main reason for this is the Semitic nature of Babylon. Sumerian religion, brought with the Sumerian people from their earlier (unknown) location, was influenced by Semitic concepts from the very beginning, as well as by the beliefs and practices of the Ubaidians who lived in Mesopotamia before them. Thus, the religion was a fusion of elements all along. However, when Babylon came to power, their religion was a Semitic one, with only a few Sumerian influences left. It is not appropriate to include material from this period in a paper focused on Sumerian religion.

This paper, then, ends with the end of Sumerian civilization. It begins with the invention of writing. While Sumerian culture was based on earlier, pre-literate cultures, this paper is focused on written evidence. Religion has many aspects, and the written is only a small portion of the total, which also includes architecture, art, ritual behavior, and oral tradition. There are non-linguistic pieces of evidence available to tell us of the Sumerians, such as ruins, graves, and artifacts. However, writing is the place where meaning is made most explicit, and examined and recorded in a way that speaks for itself and can tell us more of ancient beliefs than other material. This explication is most often given in literary sources, as well, rather than in descriptions of ritual, and so this paper focuses on what is generally referred to as myth or legend, as well as prayers, hymns, and some historical texts.

After a while, all knowledge of Sumer was lost. What we know today has been recovered by archaeologists only during the past two centuries. Thus, the material is often fragmentary. Clay tablets, although preserved by baking, have not come through the millennia unworn. They have been recovered in shattered pieces, and slowly put back together. There are still many texts with missing sections. This introduces a certain element of error into any study of them. Another element of error is introduced by the language. The language of Sumer has been deciphered by modern scholars, but knowledge of it is incomplete. Much of what is known today of this language comes from bilingual dictionaries, made for teaching Sumerian to Akkadian and Babylonian scribes in their schools. Knowledge of these languages was gained in modern times, in turn, by bilingual inscriptions relating them to more recent and well-known tongues. Thus, our current knowledge of ancient Sumer consists wholly of the reconstructions of archaeologists, philologists, and other scholars and historians. While this knowledge continues to be refined and expanded, it is by no means complete.

This particular essay, as well, is based only on material in translation. The author of this study cannot read the material in the original languages and scripts, having no knowledge of Sumerian or cuneiform. This means that this inquiry is of necessity a broad and shallow one, being able only to sketch in vague outlines, and not being able to debate fine points in the original terminology. It is only an introduction to the religion of Sumer, both for the author and for any readers. There is a great wealth of information that is beyond the scope of this paper, which is by no means definitive.

Religion

In any study of religion, it is probably proper to begin with what one means by the word religion. This word is normally defined in relation to other terms such as sacred or numinous, which then need to be defined themselves. Thorkild Jacobsen, a prominent Assyriologist, describes religion thus:

Basic to all religion- and so also to ancient Mesopotamian religion- is, we believe, a unique experience of confrontation with power not of this world. Rudolph Otto called this confrontation "Numinous" and analyzed it as the experience of a mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, a confrontation with a "Wholly Other" outside of normal experience and indescribable in its terms; terrifying, ranging from sheer demonic dread through awe to sublime majesty; and fascinating, with irresistible attraction, demanding unconditional allegiance. It is the positive human response to this experience in thought (myth and theology) and action (cult and worship) that constitutes religion.

Since the Numinous is not of this world it cannot in any real sense of the word be "described"; for all available descriptive terms are grounded in worldly experience and so fall short. At most, as Otto points out, it may be possible to evoke the human psychological reaction to the experience by means of analogy, calling upon the suggestive power of ordinary worldly experiences, the response to which in some sense resembles or leads toward the response to the Numinous, and which thus may serve as ideograms or metaphors for it. (Jacobsen 1976, 3)

There are some problems with this definition, stressing as it does an otherworldly quality to numinousity. To say that the divine is not part of this world implies a transcendence and distance, a material/spiritual dichotomy that is not present in all religions. Mesopotamian religion, and especially the Sumerian rather than Semitic elements of it, stresses an immanence of the divine, its presence here in this world, and its intrinsic relation to all that is. The god of storms is present in each and every storm that rages across the land. The sun god is the sun; his name, Utu, means "sun," and there is no word for sun that is not also the god's name. Thus, the sun is at all times divine. It is not, however, necessarily experienced as divine at all times by specific individuals. The consciousness of divinity comes and goes; it does not pour down on someone with every ray of the sun falling on them as they work outside in the fields. It is this forceful experience, this consciousness of divinity, that may be called numinous. And it is when the numinous is present that something is religious. Thus, myth and ritual, as well as sacred art, are inspired by, or seek to inspire, the numinous. It is the specific details that the numinous conjures, or which conjure the numinous, that give each religious tradition its character and distinguish it from all other religions. What is a powerful symbol in one religion is meaningless in another. Each symbol within a religion is embedded in the context of all the other symbols, and within the physical and social environment of the culture.

Immanence was thus one of the major concepts in Sumerian religion. This immanence expresses itself not only in natural objects and forces, but also in human-made cultic objects. The gods' temples were called their houses, and in each temple-house dwelled a god or goddess, with family, household, and retinue. The gods dwelled in their houses in the form of statues. The statue was seen as the body of the god. The statues were clothed, and fed, and waited upon hand and foot by the humans who worked at the temple, the priests. This was the source of much ritual in Mesopotamia. There are many tablets bearing descriptions of the food to be served to the gods at different meals, and how it must be presented, and other such details of their household. The gods' meals were more lavish even than the kings' meals.

Another important Mesopotamian religious metaphor was government. The universe was seen as a state, and the gods were its rulers. Each god had jurisdiction over certain areas. Some gods were more powerful, and were leaders and rulers. Many decisions and judgments were made in assembly, and taken to vote of the gods. This pattern, of assembly and king, was the same that was used to rule each city-state. It was thought that the gods had given the institution of kingship to humans in order to establish human society. Each city, in fact, was owned and ruled by the god or goddess whose home it was. In this way, the entire universe was organized politically and bureaucratically.

A few other basic points about Sumerian religion should be made at this juncture. As should be clear from the above description, it was a polytheistic religion. There were many gods and goddesses. The gods were anthropomorphic. They were mainly thought of in human form. They sometimes had nonhuman aspects, however. They are occasionally shown in art with animal body parts, but this is not as widespread as in, for instance, Egypt. They are also pictured in ways that relate them to their natural domain; the water god will have rivers flowing from his shoulders, or the grain goddess will be sprouting stalks of grain. But for the most part, they look like humans, although more glorious and impressive. Linguistically, there were two classes for verb conjugation: one that included humans and gods, and one that was for plants, animals, and objects. In this way, humans and gods were both set apart from the rest of the universe, and classed together (Edzard 1995).

Another important fact is that Sumerian religion was traditional, rather than a historic, revealed religion. It did not trace itself back to a specific founder-figure, such as Jesus or the Buddha. Instead, it was a part of culture as a whole, and was believed to have been basically the same since the beginning of human life. The rituals were based on what had always been done. This has important implications for the texts examined in this essay. They were not scriptures, in the sense of sacred writings on which the religion was founded. They did not contain the words that had started the beliefs, and they did not have to be passed on word for word, as there was no sacrality in the exact wording. They tended to be passed down through generations remaining basically the same, as the rituals did, but they slowly shifted with time. Rather than scripture, the texts were tradition. There was also an oral tradition, which is probably what many of the texts were part of originally. Some of them may have been composed for writing, especially later on, but the earliest ones are almost surely transcriptions of recited stories.

The religion was not only traditional, but also formed of a host of local traditions that interacted with each other, coming together, drifting apart, blending. The result is a process of organic growth that leads to a very complex system, with much variance temporally and locally. Thus, separate stories will portray details such as the gods' family relations differently, and will have slightly differing concepts of such things as the method of creation of the universe. Individual gods themselves take on different aspects, sometimes due to variation in focus depending on the local climate and economy, and sometimes due to a process whereby separate gods will be associated and come over time to be viewed as the same being, or alternately, where an epithet of a god will slowly split off and become a unique deity. This variation is another factor that leads to errors in a generalized overview such as this one. The statements made in this paper seem to the author to be accurate for the over-all picture, but are not necessarily accurate for each and every location and time period; were a Sumerian to somehow read this paper, they would surely disagree with it in some particulars (of course, the same can also be said for anything written about them today). There was also as in all religions social variation; priests do not feel the same toward religion as common people do. The texts used for a reconstruction of Sumerian religion are more likely to reflect the beliefs and knowledge and actions of priests, scholars, and nobles, as those were the groups writing and utilizing them. Folk knowledge and oral tradition have not been preserved and are lost to us.

A brief listing of the major figures in the pantheon finishes this overview. The four gods generally listed as the most powerful are An, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag. An, the oldest and the original ruler of the gods, is the god of the sky and heaven. Enlil, considered to be the current ruler of the gods, is god of the air and lord of the earth. Enki controls the abzu, the watery deep that surrounds the world, and is the god of wisdom and cunning. Ninhursag is the power in the ground, and a goddess of birth, a mother goddess. She has the most names of all the deities, and two of her other common names are Nintur and Ninmah.

Other gods include Inanna, the goddess of fertility, love, and sex, as well as war. She has a great many aspects, and is very complex. She is also associated with the morning and evening stars. Her husband is Dumuzi, a god of fertility in plants and animals. His aspects vary widely as well. Also prominent are Nanna, god of the moon, Ninurta, the warrior storm god, and Utu, god of the sun and justice. Ereshkigal is the queen of the Underworld, where people go when they die. One of her main servants is Namtar, the fate of death. There are also groups of gods without individual personalities, such as the Anunnaki (or Anunna), a group of gods who are judges and decision makers in the world and the Underworld, and the Igigi, a group of younger sky gods.

The Scope of This Inquiry and a Few Personal Impressions

When I first began to examine Mesopotamian religion, I found it to be pessimistic-seeming and dark. I think that this is probably a fairly common first impression for modern Western people. I was struck by the descriptions of death, which seemed hopeless and depressing. I was also struck by the amount of material focused on illness and war. Then, I read some of the beautiful and moving hymns of praise to the gods, and the depth of worship included. This fascinated me. There seemed to be a contradiction here between a bleak view of the world and human destiny, and a positive view of the gods who created this world and this human destiny. My original plan for this Division Three project was to examine this contradiction and attempt to reconcile it, thus the title "Suffering and Worship." I wanted to measure the balance between the dark and the light, to see how people could love and worship these beings who created a universe with such sorrow in it. I have heard many descriptions of "religion" that focus on it being a hopeful thing, a consoling belief, both from religious scholars and people who are anti-religion. This common idea makes it hard, I think, for us to understand a religion that seems to us to be something that would inspire despair rather than hope, as Mesopotamian religion first seemed to me.

I have been reading these texts for months now, trying to find their emotional depths and project myself into the minds that created and believed them, the minds that learned from birth that they were true. I no longer see them as so pessimistic, although they still have their dark parts. I have found what I believe to be a layer of certainty in goodness that is more intrinsic than the perceived bleakness. I see in this religion a positive and meaningful way of dealing with the inescapable facts of suffering and death, while never attempting to state that they are not negative things. There is a sense of trust in the gods, even though to my eyes at least these gods still often appear petty and flawed. What this paper is now is an attempt to convey this positivity to others, while examining the negative aspects of life, death, and the gods.

Chapter Two, "Creation and Meaning," examines the creation of humanity. The point of this chapter is to describe the purpose of human life, and to show that life does indeed have meaning. What this meaning is has many implications for the nature of suffering. Chapter Three, "War," examines one aspect of human suffering in greater detail, and attempts to find the reasons for it. Chapter Four, "Death and the Underworld," is a closer look at the end of life and what happens after it. This chapter examines how people react to the knowledge that they will someday die. Chapter Five, "The Nature of the Gods," examines the gods, and how people relate to them, in greater depth.

link to Chapter Two