Mesopotamian Religion: Daily Life as a Form of Worship
Mesopotamian religion was central to the people's lives. Humans were created as co-laborers with their gods to hold off the forces of chaos and to keep the world running smoothly. As in ancient Egypt, the gods were honored daily for providing humanity with life and sustenance, and people were expected to give back through works that honored the gods.
It was understood that, in the beginning, the world was undifferentiated chaos and that order was established by the gods. The gods had separated the sky from the earth, the land from the water, saltwater from freshwater, plants from animals, and this order needed to be maintained. As the gods had many different responsibilities, humans were created to help them in the operation of the world. The meaning of life, therefore, was to live in accordance with this understanding, and so one's daily life would be a form of worship.
Every city had a temple complex clearly visible from afar for its ziggurat, the monumental architecture most closely associated with Mesopotamia, which was usually topped by a temple or shrine, elevating the officiant closer to the gods. The gods were understood as inhabiting their own realm but also living in the temple, in the statues created in their images in every city. This belief was already firmly in place by the time of the Uruk period (circa 4100-3100 BCE) and developed fully during the Early Dynastic period (circa 2900-2350/2334 BCE).
Although Mesopotamian religion changed in focus and the names of the deities over the centuries, the central understanding of the relation between humanity and the gods did not. As late as circa 650, the people of Mesopotamia still adhered to the belief that they were the gods' co-workers who assisted in the maintenance of order. This paradigm only changed after 651 with the invasion of the Muslim Arabs and the new monotheistic religious model of Islam.
Mesopotamian Creation Myth
According to the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish (meaning "When on High"), life began after an epic struggle between the elder gods and the younger. In the beginning, there was only water swirling in chaos and undifferentiated between fresh and bitter. These waters separated into two distinct principles: the male principle, Apsu, which was freshwater, and the female principle, Tiamat, saltwater. From the union of these two principles, all the other gods came into being.
These younger gods were so loud in their daily concourse with each other that they came to annoy the elders, especially Apsu, and, on the advice of his vizier, he decided to kill them. Tiamat, however, was shocked at Apsu's plot and warned one of her sons, Ea, the god of wisdom and intelligence. With the help of his brothers and sisters, Ea put Apsu to sleep and then killed him. Out of the corpse of Apsu, Ea created the earth and built his home; though, in later myths, "the Apsu" came to mean the watery home of the gods or the realm of the god Enki.
Tiamat, upset now over Apsu's death, raised the forces of chaos to destroy her children herself. Ea and his siblings fought against Tiamat and her allies, her champion, Quingu, the forces of chaos, and Tiamat's creatures, without success until, from among them, rose the great storm god Marduk. Marduk swore he would defeat Tiamat if the gods would proclaim him their king. This agreed to, he entered into battle with Tiamat, killed her, and from her body, he created the sky. He then continued on with the act of creation to make human beings from the remains of Quingu as helpmates to the gods.
According to scholar D. Brendan Nagle:
Despite the gods' apparent victory, there was no guarantee that the forces of chaos might not recover their strength and overturn the orderly creation of the gods. Gods and humans alike were involved in the perpetual struggle to restrain the powers of chaos, and they each had their own role to play in this dramatic battle. The responsibility of the dwellers of Mesopotamian cities was to provide the gods with everything they needed to run the world.
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