Ancient Mesopotamian religion encompasses the religious beliefs (concerning the gods, creation and the cosmos, the origin of humanity, and so forth) and practices of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia between circa 6000 BC and 500 AD. The religious development of Mesopotamia and Mesopotamian culture in general, especially in the south, were not particularly influenced by the movements of the various peoples into and throughout the general area of West Asia. Rather, Mesopotamian religion was a consistent and coherent tradition, which adapted to the internal needs of its adherents over millennia of development.
The earliest undercurrents of Mesopotamian religious thought are believed to have developed in Mesopotamia in the 6th millennium BC, coinciding with when the region began to be permanently settled with urban centres. The earliest evidence of Mesopotamian religion dates to the mid-4th millennium BC, coincides with the invention of writing, and involved the worship of forces of nature as providers of sustenance. Although, Sumerian and Akkadian peoples in ancient Mesopotamia had been worshipping some form of a mother goddess (Ninhursag) starting in the Ubaid Period (c. 5500–3700 BCE) In the 3rd millennium BC, objects of worship were personified and became an expansive cast of divinities with particular functions. The last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism, which developed in the 2nd and 1st millennia BC, introduced greater emphasis on personal religion and structured the gods into a monarchical hierarchy, with the national god of each state being the head of the pantheon. Mesopotamian religion finally declined with the Christianization of Mesopotamia between the 1st and 5th centuries AD. History
The earliest undercurrents of Mesopotamian religious thought are believed to have developed in the first half of the 6th millennium BC, at the time people first began to permanently settle in Mesopotamia owing to improved irrigation. The religious developments of the region are unknown since they preceded the invention of writing. The first evidence for what is recognisably Mesopotamian religion can be seen with the invention in Mesopotamia of writing circa 3500 BC.
The people of Mesopotamia originally consisted of two groups, East Semitic speakers of Akkadian and the people of Sumer, who spoke Sumerian, a language isolate. These peoples were members of various city-states and small kingdoms. The Sumerians left the first records and are believed to have been the founders of the civilization of the Ubaid period (6500 BC to 3800 BC) in Upper Mesopotamia. By historical times they resided mostly in southern Mesopotamia, which was known as Sumer (and much later, Babylonia), and had considerable influence on the Akkadian speakers and their culture. Akkadian speakers are believed to have entered the region at some point between 4000 BC and 3000 BC, with Akkadian names first appearing in the regnal lists of these states c. 29th century BC.
The Sumerians were advanced: as well as inventing writing, they developed early forms of mathematics, early wheeled vehicles/chariots, astronomy, astrology, written code of law, organised medicine, advanced agriculture and architecture, and the calendar. They created the first city-states such as Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Isin, Kish, Umma, Eridu, Adab, Akshak, Sippar, Nippur and Larsa, each of them ruled by an ensí.
The Sumerians remained largely dominant in this synthesised culture until the rise of the Akkadian Empire under Sargon of Akkad circa 2335 BC, which united all of Mesopotamia under one ruler and conquered areas of Anatolia, Levant and Ancient Iran. There was increasing syncretism between the Sumerian and Akkadian cultures and deities, with the Akkadian speakers typically preferring to worship fewer deities but elevating them to greater positions of power.
Effect on political structure Like many nations in Mesopotamian history, Akkadian-speaking Assyria was originally, to a great extent, an oligarchy rather than a monarchy. From the 21st century BC authority was considered to lie with "the city", and the polity had three main centres of power—an assembly of elders, a hereditary ruler, and an eponym. The ruler presided over the assembly and carried out its decisions. He was not referred to with the usual Akkadian term for "king", šarrum; that was instead reserved for the city's patron deity Ashur, of whom the ruler was the high priest. The ruler was only designated as "steward of Assur" (iššiak Assur), where the term for steward is a borrowing from Sumerian ensí. The third centre of power was the eponym (limmum), who gave the year his name, similarly to the eponymous archon and Roman consuls of classical antiquity. He was annually elected by lot and was responsible for the economic administration of the city, which included the power to detain people and confiscate property. The institution of the eponym as well as the formula iššiak Assur lingered on as ceremonial vestiges of this early system throughout the history of the Assyrian monarchy.
Neo-Assyrian Empire The religion of the Neo-Assyrian Empire centered around the Assyrian king as the king of their lands as well. However, kingship at the time was linked very closely with the idea of divine mandate. The Assyrian king, while not a god, was acknowledged as the chief servant of the chief god, Ashur. In this manner, the king's authority was seen as absolute so long as the high priest reassured the peoples that the gods—or in the case of the henotheistic Assyrians, the god—were pleased with the current ruler. For the Assyrians who lived in Assur and the surrounding lands, this system was the norm. For the conquered peoples, however, it was novel, particularly to the people of smaller city-states. In time, Ashur was promoted from being the local deity of Assur to the overlord of the vast Assyrian domain, which spread from the Caucasus and Armenia in the north to Egypt, Nubia and the Arabian Peninsula in the south, and from Cyprus and the eastern Mediterranean Sea in the west to central Iran in the east. Ashur, the patron deity of the city of Assur from the late Bronze Age, was in constant rivalry with the patron deity of the fellow Akkadian speaking state of Babylonia, Marduk. Worship was conducted in his name throughout the lands dominated by the Assyrians. With the worship of Ashur across much of the Fertile Crescent, the Assyrian king could command the loyalty of his fellow servants of Ashur.
Later Mesopotamian history In 539 BC, Mesopotamia was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BC), then ruled by Cyrus the Great. This brought to an end over 3,000 years of Mesopotamian dominance of the Near East. The Persians maintained and did not interfere in the native culture and religion and Assyria and Babylon continued to exist as entities (although Chaldea and the Chaldeans disappeared), and Assyria was strong enough to launch major rebellions against the Achaemenids in 522 and 482 BC. During this period the Syriac language and Syriac alphabet evolved in Assyria among the Assyrian people, and were centuries later to be the vehicle for the spread of Syriac Christianity throughout the near east.
Then, two centuries later in 330 BC, the Macedonian emperor Alexander the Great overthrew the Persians and took control of Mesopotamia. After Alexander's death, increased Hellenistic influence was brought to the region by the Seleucid Empire. Assyria and Babylonia later became provinces under the Parthian Empire (Achaemenid Assyria and province of Babylonia), Rome (province of Assyria) and Sasanian Empire (province of Asoristan). Babylonia was dissolved as an entity during the Parthian Empire, though Assyria endured as a geopolitical entity until the Muslim conquest of Persia in the 7th century AD, while the Assyrian people are still present today.
During the Parthian Empire there was a major revival in Assyria between the 2nd century BC and 4th century AD,^ Crone & Cook 1977, p. 55 with temples once more being dedicated to gods such as Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Hadad, Bel and Ishtar in various Assyrian vassal states in Mesopotamia, while Christianity was introduced from the 2nd century AD and Assyria became the centre of the Assyrian founded Church of the East and a major centre of the Syriac Orthodox Church.Curtis, John (November 2003). "The Achaemenid Period in Northern Iraq" (PDF). L’archéologie de l’empire achéménide (Paris, France)Crone & Cook 1977, p. 55
In the third century AD, Manichaeism developed, which incorporated elements of Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and local Mesopotamian religion.
Mythology
Cosmology
With the exception of the Enuma Elish, there are no surviving records that systematically explain Mesopotamian cosmology. Nonetheless, modern scholars have reconstructed a roughly accurate depiction from the surviving evidence, including Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform and the Hebrew Bible. In the Enuma Elish (c. 12th century BCE), the god Marduk kills Tiamat, the mother of the gods, and from the two halves of her carcass, he constructs the heavens and the earth to shape the modern observable cosmos. A document from a similar period stated that the heavens and the earth can each be divided into three layers. The gods dwell in the higher levels of heaven, with the stars being fixed into the lowermost heavenly layer.
Deities
Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic, thereby accepting the existence of many different deities, both male and female, though it was also henotheistic, with certain gods being viewed as superior to others by their specific devotees. These devotees were often from a particular city or city-state that held that deity as its tutelary deity; for instance, Enki was often associated with the city of Eridu in Sumer, Assur with Assur and Assyria, Enlil with the Sumerian city of Nippur, Ishtar with the Assyrian city of Arbela, and the god Marduk with Babylon. Though the full number of gods and goddesses found in Mesopotamia is not known, K. Tallqvist in his (1938) counted around 2,400 that scholars know, most of which had Sumerian names. In the Sumerian language, the gods were referred to as dingir, while in the Akkadian language they were known as ilu and it seems that there was syncretism between the gods worshipped by the two groups, adopting one another's deities.
The Mesopotamian gods bore many similarities with humans. They were anthropomorphic, having humanoid form and often acting like humans, requiring food and drink, as well as drinking alcohol and subsequently suffering the effects of drunkenness, but were thought to have a higher degree of perfection than common people. They were thought to be more powerful, all-seeing and all-knowing, unfathomable, and, above all, immortal. One of their prominent features was a terrifying brightness (melammu) which surrounded them, producing an immediate reaction of awe and reverence among humanity. In many cases, the various deities were family relations of one another, a trait found in many other polytheistic religions. Historian J. Bottéro was of the opinion that the gods were not viewed mystically but were instead seen as high-up masters who had to be obeyed and feared, as opposed to loved and adored. Nonetheless, many Mesopotamians of all classes often had names that were devoted to a certain deity; this practice appeared to have begun in the 3rd millennium BCE among the Sumerians and was later adopted by the Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians.
Initially, the pantheon was not ordered, but later Mesopotamian theologians came up with the concept of ranking the deities in order of importance. A Sumerian list of around 560 deities that did this was uncovered at Farm and Tell Abû Ṣalābīkh and dated to c. 2600 BCE, ranking five primary deities as being of particular importance.