Moscow State University of Printing Arts. Culture and religion of the peoples of Mesopotamia in the III millennium BC

worldview and religion.

In ancient Mesopotamia, as in ancient Egypt, myths played an important role in the perception and explanation of the surrounding reality, as well as in the preservation and transmission of culture. Sumerian mythology is one of the oldest. Myths about the creation of the world, oh global flood were born Sumerians. The mythology of Mesopotamia mainly reflects the ideas of the peoples who lived in irrigation agriculture, as well as sedentary hunters and cattle breeders (cosmogonic myths).

The most significant phenomenon of Akkado-Babylonian and Mesopotamian mythology in general was the theogonic poem "Enuma Elish" - a myth about the creation of the world, the origin of man, his role on earth.

Religion in ancient Mesopotamia did not constitute a coherent system, but consisted of separate local cults: each large city had its own patron who protected the interests of its inhabitants. Along with this, common cosmic deities were revered throughout Mesopotamia. Therefore, we can talk about a certain continuity in the development of the mythology of the religion of the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians, who inhabited Mesopotamia at that time. The first state The gods appeared in 3000 BC. as different cities: Kish, Uruk, Lagash, Ur, etc. - acted as the unifiers of their region. The conquerors who came to Babylonia - Akkadians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Chaldeans - borrowed the local pantheon, replenishing it with their deities. At the end of the 3rd millennium BC. e. in connection with the strengthening of a single despotic state, local cults merged into a common pantheon for the whole country.

Deities were associated with various aspects of life. In a country whose whole life depended on agriculture, deities - the patrons of fertility, agricultural labor, and a generous harvest - enjoyed special reverence. The supreme deities were the sky god Anu (father of the gods), the god of the earth Enlil (wind, air and at the same time the determinant of fate, the creator of cities, the inventor of agricultural tools), water - Enki (Ea is the world ocean, the keeper of the deities. Wisdom, adviser to the gods), wars Nergal (ruler of the underworld), Adad (storm, thunder, lightning), Ninurta (vegetation, victorious war), the goddess of love and fertility - Ishtar (she was also the patroness of the city of Uruk) was “in charge”. Because agriculture, the time of river floods was closely associated with the observation of the sun and moon, they became objects of worship. The sun became the personification of the god Shamash (justice), Sin - the moon, Ishtar - the planet Venus. Of great importance was the cult of dying and resurrecting deities of vegetation, cattle breeding (Tammuz).

Each of the deities was dedicated to its own temple, which became the center of the city-state. The Sumerians believed that the city-states were owned and ruled by the gods themselves. Therefore, peasants and slaves cultivated special plots of land either to temples or to landowners who paid part of the crop as rent. Few people had the right to own land. Rents, gifts, offerings, as well as crops received from the lands, belonged to the gods, were used for the needs of temples and to help the poorest citizens. In addition to priests and priestesses, each temple had a large staff of officials, scribes, artisans, cooks, and cleaners. The temples had a huge number of slaves, which they got after the division of trophies.

The veneration of the gods was carried out through the performance of magnificent ceremonies, solemn processions, magic spells and actions. The ancient inhabitants perceived their gods not as spiritual entities, but as completely material entities. Like quite a mother. in essence, they fed God, brought gifts, built a house for him - a temple. A pantheon of gods, like a human. society had a hierarchical structure i.e. the main gods and minor deities subordinate to them were distinguished. Each god, depending on his position, was assigned def. quantity of food, gifts, volume of services, size of the temple premises. The essence of cult actions was aimed at consolidating the ruling elite, ruling the country, into a cat. leading role the priestly corporation played, not the state. bureaucracy headed by the king.

The funeral cult did not receive such significant development in Mesopotamia as in Egypt, and there was no idea that the soul of a dead person should return to the sculpted likeness of a living body. Another feature that distinguished the Babylonian religion. system from the Egyptian, was the weak development of the ideology of the deification of royal power. The attempts of some rulers of the 3rd millennium BC, in particular Naram-Suen, Shulgi and others, to deify their personality did not continue. Even Hammurabi didn't dare to do that. (on a pillar with laws, he is depicted as a humble petitioner before the formidable god Shamash.)

During the period of the rise of Babylon (beginning of the 1st millennium), Marduk was declared the supreme deity - the patron of this city, the king of the gods, the creator of the existing world: heaven and earth, plants and animals, man himself, combining the functions of the main gods of Babylonia. Along with the supreme deity, 7 main gods were recognized, which served as the basis for the modern seven-day week. They formed the council of elders in the pantheon of the gods. The gods were portrayed as patrons of the king, which contributed to the formation of the ideology of deification of strong royal power.

The spiritual life of the Mesopotamian city-states was distinguished by the fact that each city had its own symbolic image in the form of an animal, its god, the planet that patronized it, the day of the week, especially revered. The number seven was of particular importance. There were seven most important cities, seven planets, gods and seven days of the week.

The religion of the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia illuminated the existing social order: the ruler of the city-state was considered a descendant of the gods, not only royal power was deified, but also the cult of dead kings. However, unlike Egypt in Mesopotamia, the cult of the dead and the idea of ​​deifying the king did not receive such development and scope as in ancient Egypt.

Knowledge.

Scientific knowledge was inscribed in the religious worldview. Specialized knowledge was kept secret by closed priestly castes.

The Sumerian priests made systematic observations of nature. Based on these observations, it was found that the year is 365 days, 6 hours, 15 minutes, 41 seconds. The Sumerians already in 3 thousand BC. found that the morning and evening stars are the same planet. On this basis, appropriate forecasts and predictions were made regarding economic activities and events in the general life of the state, as well as rulers. By the 1st millennium BC the Babylonians already knew five planets. The Sumerians knew how to determine the length of the lunar month, the time of the spring and autumn equinoxes. On this basis, they created a system of zodiac signs - 12 constellations, the basics of their symbols have been preserved to this day. From the 7th century BC. in Babylon there was an official position of court astronomer. His task was to systematically record the most important changes and phenomena in the sky.

Astrology was developed in Mesopotamia. Babylonian astronomers for the first time in the history of mankind calculated the laws of circulation of the Sun, Moon and other planets; repeatability of eclipses; established a seven-day week (each day was patronized by a deity and its symbol - the luminary) and, in general, they were significantly ahead of the Egyptians in astronomical observations.

The Sumerians were the first to develop and record the farmer's calendar, and left the first information about protective plantings. The inhabitants of Ancient Mesopotamia knew how to determine the exact time, orient the walls of cities and towers to 4 cardinal points, connected the Tigris and Euphrates with shipping channels exactly along the 33rd parallel.

The Sumerians and Babylonians were excellent mathematicians. Mathematics of Mesopotamia was at a higher level than Egyptian. Here they knew the decimal count, they also used the hexadecimal basis of the count, from which the division of the circle into 360 degrees arose, the hour into 60 minutes, and the minute into 60 seconds. The Sumerians and Babylonians knew exponentiation, extracted roots, used fractions, and mastered the technique of solving quadratic equations. They solved linear and quadratic equations in two unknowns, and even solved problems that reduced to cubic and biquadratic equations. They introduced into use large numerical values, which were not used in Europe even in the 18th century. The Babylonians knew a theorem known as the Pythagorean theorem. They also knew the laws of geometry very well. In ancient Babylon, they knew how to calculate percentages, measure the area, volume of various geometric shapes.

The medical ideas of the peoples of Mesopotamia were quite developed. Already in those days, they performed surgical operations, knew the healing properties of various herbs, were able to diagnose diseases by external signs and treat them with ointments, powders and tinctures, and the recipe was often quite complex. In the era of King Hammurabi (XVII century BC), there was already a certain specialization, in particular surgery and the treatment of eye diseases.

However, unlike the Egyptians, due to the prohibition of anatomy, knowledge of anatomy was not very deep.

Education.

In the cities there were schools for scribes and schools for the children of the rich. On clay tablets, a description of the system of education and punishment in the Sumerian school was preserved, which was used approximately four thousand years ago. At school, children were taught cuneiform writing, fluent reading of cuneiform signs, counting and arithmetic rules. Some especially gifted students had knowledge in algebra and geometry.

Libraries and archives were created at schools, large temples and palaces - one of the greatest achievements of Babylonian and Assyrian culture. Even in the ancient cities of Sumer, scribes (the first educated people and the first officials) collected literary, religious, scientific texts and created repositories, private libraries.

One of the largest libraries of that time was the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal (7th century BC), which contained all the most important works of Babylonian and Assyrian literature. The library contained about 30 thousand clay tablets recording the most important historical events, laws, literary and scientific texts. Ashurbanipal's collection was not only the largest for its time: it was hardly the first real, systematically selected and arranged library in the world. The books were placed in a certain order, the pages were numbered. There were even original catalog cards, which outlined the contents of the book, indicating the series and number of tablets in each series of texts. The library was found in 1849-1854. on the site of Nineveh during excavations of the Ku-yunjik hill on the left bank of the Tigris.

In the history of world culture, the Mesopotamian civilization is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in the world. It was in Sumer at the end of the 4th millennium BC. e. humanity for the first time left the stage of primitiveness and entered the era of antiquity, here begins true story humanity The transition from primitive to antiquity, "from barbarism to civilization" means the emergence of a fundamentally new type of culture and the birth of a new type of consciousness.

The spirit of Mesopotamian culture reflected the crushing power of nature. The man was not inclined to overestimate his strength, observing such powerful natural phenomena like a thunderstorm or an annual flood. The Tigris and Euphrates often flooded violently and unpredictably, destroying dams and flooding crops. Heavy rains turned the solid surface of the earth into a sea of ​​mud and deprived a person of freedom of movement. The nature of Mesopotamia crushed and trampled on the will of man, constantly made him feel how powerless and insignificant he was. In such an environment, a person was fully aware of his weakness and understood that he was involved in the game of monstrous irrational forces.

Interaction with natural forces gave rise to tragic moods, which found expression in people's ideas about the world in which they lived. Man saw order in it, cosmos, not chaos. But this order did not ensure his safety, as it was established through the interaction of many powerful forces, potentially diverging from each other, periodically entering into mutual conflicts. Therefore, all present and future events arose and were controlled by a single will of natural forces united together, the hierarchy and relationships of which resembled a state. With such a view of the world, there was no division into animate or inanimate, living and dead. In such a universe, any objects and phenomena had their own will and character.

In a culture that viewed the entire universe as a state, obedience had to be the first virtue, because the state is built on obedience, on the unconditional acceptance of power. Therefore, in Mesopotamia, the "good life" was also the "obedient life." The individual stood at the center of expanding circles of power that limited his freedom of action. The circle of power closest to him included his own family: father, mother, older brothers and sisters, and disobeying the older members of the family was only the beginning, a pretext for more serious offenses, because outside the family there are other circles of power: the state, society, gods.

This well-established system of obedience was the rule of life in ancient Mesopotamia, because man was created from clay, mixed with the blood of the gods and created for the slave service of the gods, to work instead of the gods and for the gods. Accordingly, a diligent and obedient slave could count on signs of mercy and rewards from his master. And on the contrary, a careless, disobedient slave, of course, could not even dream about it.

Euphrates, i.e. in Mesopotamia. Or, say, comparing the biblical description of the creation of the world in the Book of Genesis with the Babylonian poem "Enuma Elish" ("When above"), we can be convinced that cosmogony, the creation of man from clay and the rest of the creator after hard work coincide in many details.

The Mesopotamian spiritual culture had a huge impact on the culture of many ancient Eastern peoples, mainly in Asia Minor. And in subsequent eras, the spiritual heritage of the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia was not forgotten and firmly entered the treasury of world culture.

The most ancient peoples of Mesopotamia created a high culture, which formed the basis of the later - Babylonian. As the diverse ties between peoples strengthened, the achievements of the Sumerians and Akkadians became the property of other countries and peoples. These achievements had a huge impact on the future cultural development of all mankind.

Writing and science.

The greatest achievement of the culture of the peoples of Mesopotamia was the creation of writing, the beginnings of which appeared among the Sumerians as early as the middle of the 4th millennium BC. e. With the birth of the state, which needed more or less orderly correspondence for administration, these rudiments turned into a genuine letter.

The beginning of Sumerian writing goes back to pictorial writing. Written signs attested ancient monuments, can be easily restored to their original pictorial image. These signs depicted a person and parts of his body, tools, weapons, boats, animals, birds, fish, plants, fields, waters, mountains, stars, etc.

The further development of writing consisted in the fact that pictograms (drawing signs) turned into ideograms, that is, such written signs, the content of which no longer coincided with their pictorial image. So, for example, the drawing of a foot began to mean as an ideogram all the actions associated with the legs - “walk”, “stand”, even “wear”, etc. Sumerian writing began to develop in another direction. Along with ideograms from pictograms, phonograms began to develop. Thus, the pictogram of a milk pot received the sound value "ga", because the syllable "ga" corresponded to the Sumerian word for milk. The abundance of monosyllabic words in the Sumerian language gave rise to several hundred characters denoting syllables and several alphabetic characters corresponding to vowels. Syllabic and alphabetic signs were used mainly to convey grammatical indicators, function words and particles.

With the development of writing, the pictorial character of the Sumerian written characters gradually disappeared. The main writing material in Mesopotamia from the very beginning was clay tiles, or tablets. When writing on clay, the drawings were simplified, turning into combinations of straight lines. Since at the same time they pressed the clay surface with the corner of a rectangular stick, as a result, these lines acquired the characteristic form of wedge-shaped depressions; a written sign in cursive was turned into a combination of "wedges". The Sumerian cuneiform script thus created was adopted by the Akkadian Semites, who adapted it to their language. Subsequently, the Sumerian-Akkadian cuneiform writing spread to many Asian countries of the ancient East.

The needs of temple accounting and the development of the Sumerian building art required the expansion of mathematical knowledge. The fact that mathematical thought in Sumer experienced a flourishing period is evidenced by the perfection of the reporting documents of the scribes of the III dynasty of Ur. Only the achievements of mathematics of that time can explain the subsequent development of mathematical knowledge in the scribe schools of Mesopotamia during the time of the 1st Babylonian dynasty (the first half of the 2nd millennium BC).

Sumerian scientific terms are found in abundance in texts devoted not only to mathematics, but also to other scientific disciplines, studied in the scribal schools of Babylon, such as astronomy, chemistry, etc. Therefore, we have the right to assert that the scribes of Sumer, like those of Egypt, laid the foundation for the development of scientific thought in antiquity.

Religion.

Each Sumerian territorial community revered its own local patron god, who was, as it were, the universal personification of all those higher powers who rule over people's lives. Such a deity was usually considered the patron of agriculture.

In irrigated agriculture, the luminaries and observations of them played an important role, and therefore in ancient Sumer they began early to associate the gods with individual stars and constellations. In Sumer's letter, the pictogram of a star served as a designation for the concept of "god".

An important role in Sumerian religion the mother goddess played, the patroness of agriculture, fertility and childbearing, whose cult basically dates back to the time of the domination of the maternal family. There were several such local goddesses, such as Inanna, the goddess of the city of Uruk. Together with Inanna, the parent of all that exists, the god Dumuzi, the “true child”, was revered in the Semitic transmission - Tammuz. It was a dying and resurrecting god who personified the fate of the grain. The cult of the dying and resurrecting gods of vegetation dates back to the time of the established predominance of agriculture.

In the worldview of the Sumerians, and then the Akkadian Semites, an important role was played by the deification of those forces of nature, the importance of which was especially great for agriculture - sky, earth, water. These basic forces of nature in religion were personified in the fantastic images of the three main gods. These were the sky god An, the earth god Enlil and the water god Enki or Ea.

These deities were revered throughout Mesopotamia, although the center of Enlil's veneration was Nippur, which became a common Sumerian sanctuary, the center of Enki's cult - the city of Eridu. Outside their cities, the main god of the city of Sippara, the sun god Shamash (Sumerian Utu), the main god of the city Ura-Sin, identified with the Moon, and others were also revered.

Initially, Sumerian society did not know the priesthood as a special class. The tops of the priesthood, who were in charge of the economy of the temples and performed the main rites of the cult, were representatives of the nobility, and technical performers cult, the lower temple staff, most often came out of the people. Great importance acquired by temple scribes who kept and developed writing.

Religion sanctified the existing social order; the ruler of the city-state was considered a descendant of the gods and the representative of the city god in the state. But the religion of the Sumerians did not yet know the desire to reconcile the oppressed masses with their hard lot on earth with the promise of rewards in the “other world”. Faith in heaven, in a heavenly reward for earthly suffering, apparently never developed in the ancient Mesopotamia. A number of myths depict the futility of man's attempts to achieve immortality.

Some myths of the ancient Sumerians (about the creation of the world, about the Flood, etc.) "had a great influence on the mythology of other peoples, in particular on the mythology of the ancient Jews, and are preserved in a slightly modified form in religious beliefs modern Christians.

The Akkadian Semites, apparently, did not have their own clearly defined hierarchy of gods. Like other Semitic tribes, they called the god of their tribe the lord (bel), and the goddess of the tribe - simply the goddess (ashtar). Having settled in Mesopotamia, they adopted all the main features of the Sumerian religion. The gods of sky and water continued to be called by their Sumerian names: Anu and Ea; Enlil, along with his Sumerian name, began to bear the name Bel.

Literature.

It has come to us big number monuments of Sumerian literature, mainly in copies copied after the fall of the III dynasty of Ur and kept in the temple library in the city of Nippur. Unfortunately, partly due to the difficulty of the Sumerian literary language, partly due to the poor condition of the texts (some tablets were found broken into dozens of pieces, now stored in museums in various countries), these works have only recently been read.

Most of them are religious myths and legends. Of particular interest are several small poems containing legends about the origin of agriculture and civilization, the creation of which is attributed to the gods. These poems also raise the question of the comparative value for man of agriculture and pastoralism, which probably reflects the fact of the relatively recent transition of the Sumerian tribes to an predominantly agricultural way of life.

The myth of the goddess Inanna, imprisoned in the underworld kingdom of death and freed from there, is distinguished by extremely archaic features; along with her return to earth, life that was frozen returns. This myth reflected the change of the growing season and the "dead" period in the life of nature.

There were also hymns addressed to various deities, historical poems (for example, a poem about the victory of the Uruk king over the Guteis). The largest work of Sumerian religious literature is a poem written in deliberately intricate language about the construction of the temple of the god Ningirsu by the ruler of Lagash, Gudea. This poem was written on two clay cylinders, each about a meter high. A number of poems of a moral and instructive nature have been preserved.

Few literary monuments of folk art have come down to us. Those died for us folk art like fairy tales. Only a few fables and proverbs survive.

The most important monument of Sumerian literature is the cycle of epic tales about the hero Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu. The most complete text of the great epic poem about Gilgamesh has been preserved written down in the Akkadian language. But the records of primary individual epics about Gilgamesh that have come down to us irrefutably testify to the Sumerian origin of the epic.

Gilgamesh in the epic appears as the king of the city of Uruk, the son of a mortal and the goddess Ninsun. King Gilgamesh, a representative of the first royal dynasty of the city of Uruk, is mentioned in the royal lists of the 3rd dynasty of Ur. Subsequent tradition, thus, preserved the memory of him as a historical person.

Sumerian epics about Gilgamesh indisputably prove folk character this epic. So, in the primary Sumerian epics, not only the hero Enkidu, but also representatives of the people act as associates of Gilgamesh during his exploits: 50 people from among the “children of the city”, that is, the people of the city of Uruk, help Gilgamesh and Enkidu in the campaign against the country of the cedar forest (Lebanon), guarded by the monster Huwawa. In the epic about the struggle of Gilgamesh with the king of Kish Akka, it is said that Gilgamesh rejected the demand of the king of Kish to perform irrigation work for him, and in this regard he was supported by the assembly of the people of the city of Uruk. As for the nobility, they gathered in a council of elders and cowardly advised Gilgamesh to submit to the king of Kish.

At the heart of this epic lies, apparently, historical fact the struggle of Uruk for its independence with the powerful city-state of Kish in the north.

The cycle of tales about Gilgamesh had a great influence on the surrounding peoples. It was adopted by the Akkadian Semites, and from them it spread to Northern Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. There were also cycles of epic songs dedicated to various other heroes.

An important place in the literature and worldview of the Sumerians was occupied by the legends of the flood, by which the gods allegedly destroyed all life, and only the pious hero Ziusudra was saved in the ship built on the advice of the god Enki. The legends about the flood, which served as the basis for the corresponding biblical legend, took shape under the undoubted influence of memories of catastrophic floods, which in the 4th millennium BC. e. many Sumerian settlements were destroyed more than once.

Architecture and art.

The wealth of the ruling class was reflected in the powerful and widespread building activity of the kings. Intensive construction, which covered the country with temples and palaces, was possible due to the presence of numerous slave prisoners of war, as well as the use of the labor of the free population. However, in Mesopotamia, unlike Egypt, due to local natural conditions, stone construction did not exist, and all buildings were built from raw brick.

Unlike Egypt, the funeral cult did not develop here to such an extent and nothing like the stone masses of the pyramids or the burial structures of the Egyptian nobility was built. But, having huge sums, the architects of Sumer and Akkad erected grandiose stepped temple-towers (ziggurats). In the architecture of Mesopotamia, columns have been found since ancient times, which, however, did not play big role, as well as vaults. Quite early, the technique of dismembering walls by ledges and niches, as well as ornamenting walls with friezes made in mosaic technique, appears.

Sumerian sculptors created statues of gods and representatives of the nobility, as well as reliefs (for example, the “Kite Stele”). However, if even during the period of the Jemdet-Nasr culture, Sumerian artists managed to achieve certain successes in conveying the image of a person, then during the existence of the early city-states, rough schematization dominates - a person is depicted either unnaturally squat, or in unnaturally elongated proportions, with exaggerated eyes, nose etc. Also in the art of stone-cutting, the image is subject to geometric patterns. The sculptors of the Akkadian dynasty far surpassed the early Sumerian sculptors, being able, in particular, to depict living beings in motion. The reliefs of the time of Sargon and especially the time of his grandson Naramsin amaze with their artistic skill. One of the most remarkable artistic monuments is the Naramsin stele, dedicated to the victory over the mountain tribes. The relief depicts the drama of the battle in the mountainous terrain where this battle took place.

The applied art of Akkad also stood at a high altitude. Particularly noteworthy are the artistically executed images of plots from myths and epics, carved on cylinder seals from colored stone. Obviously, the artists of this period did not lose touch with the folk art of Mesopotamia.

The art of Lagash during the time of Gudea (as, for example, in the portrait statues of Gudea himself made of hard stone - diorite) and the time of the III dynasty of Ur, undoubtedly used the best examples of Akkadian art. However, since the III Dynasty of Ur, dead, canonical schemes of images have been established in art, monotonous religious plots have prevailed.

The peoples of Mesopotamia created a number of instruments - a pipe, a flute, a tambourine, a harp, etc. According to the monuments that have come down to us, these instruments were used in the temple cult. They were played by special priests who also acted as singers.

For many centuries, in the culture of Mesopotamia, there was a process of eliminating some deities and cults and exalting others, processing and merging mythological plots, changing the character and appearance of those gods who were to rise and become universal (as a rule, they were credited with the deeds and merits of those who remained in the shadows or dying in the memory of generations).

The result of this process was the addition religious system in its form, as it has survived to this day according to the surviving texts and data from archaeological excavations.

The religious system bore a noticeable imprint of the socio-political structure that really existed in this region. In Mesopotamia, with its many successive state formations (Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia), there was no strong stable state power. Therefore, although at times certain successful rulers (Sargon of Akkad, Hammurabi) achieved considerable power and recognized power, there were, as a rule, no centralized despotism in this region. Apparently, this also affected the status of the Mesopotamian rulers fixed by the religious system. Usually they did not call themselves (and others did not call them) the sons of the gods, and their sacralization was practically limited to granting them the prerogatives of the high priest or the right recognized for them to have direct contact with God (there is an obelisk depicting the sun god Shamash, handing Hammurabi a scroll with laws that entered history as the laws of Hammurabi).

This relatively low degree of centralization political power and, accordingly, the deification of the ruler contributed to the fact that in Mesopotamia quite easily, without fierce rivalry (which took place in Egypt), many gods got along with each other with temples dedicated to them and priests serving them. Mythology has preserved information about the Sumerian pantheon, which already existed at the early stages of civilization and statehood in Mesopotamia. The main ones were the sky god An and the earth goddess Ki, who gave birth to the powerful air god Enlil, the water god Ea (Enki), often depicted as a fish-man and who created the first people. All these and many other gods and goddesses entered into complex relationships with each other, the interpretation of which changed over time and depending on the change of dynasties and ethnic groups (the Semitic Akkadian tribes, mixed with the ancient Sumerians, brought with them new gods, new mythological subjects).

Most of the Sumerian-Akkadian-Babylonian gods had an anthropomorphic appearance, and only a few, like Ea or Nergal, bore zoomorphic features, a kind of recollection of totemic ideas of the distant past. The sacred animals of the Mesopotamians included the bull and the snake: in myths, the gods were often called "powerful bulls", and the snake was revered as the personification of the feminine.

It already follows from the ancient Sumerian myths that Enlil was considered the first among the gods. However, his power in the pantheon was far from absolute: seven pairs of great gods, his relatives, at times challenged his power and even removed him from office, overthrowing him into the underworld for wrongdoings. The underworld is realm of the dead, where the cruel and vengeful goddess Ereshkigal ruled omnipotently, who could only be pacified by the god of war, Nergal, who became her husband. Enlil and other gods and goddesses were immortal, so they, even if they fell into the underworld, returned from there after a series of adventures. But people, unlike them, are mortal, so their destiny after death is an eternal stay in the gloomy realm of the dead. The border of this kingdom was considered a river, through which the souls of the buried were transported to the kingdom of the dead by a special carrier (the souls of the unburied remained on earth and could cause a lot of trouble to people).

Life and death, the kingdom of heaven and earth and the underworld of the dead - these two principles were clearly opposed in the religious system of Mesopotamia. And not only opposed. The real existence of farmers with their cult of fertility and the regular change of seasons, awakening and dying nature could not but lead to the idea of ​​a close and interdependent relationship between life and death, dying and resurrection. May people die and never return from underworld. But nature is immortal! She gives birth every year new life, as if resurrecting her after a dead winter hibernation. It was this regularity of nature that the immortal gods had to reflect. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the central places in Mesopotamian mythology was occupied by the story of the death and resurrection of Dumuzi (Tammuz).

The goddess of love and fertility in Mesopotamia was the beautiful Inanna (Ishtar), the patron goddess of the city of Uruk, where a temple was built in her honor (something like a temple of love) with priestesses and temple servants who gave their caresses to anyone (temple prostitution). Like them, the loving goddess bestowed her caresses on many - both gods and people, but the story of her love for Dumuzi was most famous. This story has developed. In the beginning (the Sumerian version of the myth), Inanna, having married the shepherd Dumuzi, sacrificed him to the goddess Ereshkigal as a payment for her liberation from the underworld. Later (Babylonian version) things began to look different.

Dumuzi, who turned out to be not only the husband, but also the brother of Ishtar, died on a hunt. The goddess went to the underworld for him. The evil Ereshkigal left Ishtar with her. As a result, life on earth ceased: animals and people ceased to reproduce. The alarmed gods demanded from Ereshkigal the return of Ishtar, who came to earth with a vessel of living water, which allowed her to resurrect the dead Dumuzi.

The story speaks for itself: Dumuzi, personifying the fertility of nature, dies and is resurrected with the help of the goddess of fertility, who conquers death. The symbolism is quite obvious, although it did not appear immediately, but only as a result of the gradual transformation of the original mythological plot.

The mythology of Mesopotamia is rich and very diverse. It also contains cosmogonic plots, stories about the creation of the earth and its inhabitants, including people molded from clay, and legends about the exploits of great heroes, primarily Gilgamesh, and, finally, the story of the great flood. The famous legend of the great flood, which subsequently spread so widely among different peoples, entered the Bible and was accepted Christian teaching, not an idle invention. The inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who especially singled out among other gods the god of the south wind, who drove the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates against the current and threatened catastrophic floods, could not perceive such floods (especially the most destructive of them) as a great flood. In the same that this kind of catastrophic flood really was real fact, convince the excavations of the English archaeologist L. Woolley in Ur (in the 20-30s), during which a multi-meter layer of silt was discovered, separating the most ancient cultural layers of the settlement from the later ones. It is interesting that the Sumerian story about the flood preserved in fragments in some details (the message of the gods to the virtuous king about the intention to arrange a flood and save him) resembles biblical legend about Noah.

The religious system of Mesopotamia, changed and improved by the efforts of different peoples over many centuries, in the II millennium BC. e. was already well developed. Of the great many small local deities, often duplicating the functions of each other (note that in addition to Ishtar there were two more goddesses of fertility), several main, universally known and most revered ones stood out. A certain hierarchy of them also developed: Marduk, the patron god of the city of Babylon, moved to the place of the supreme god, whose influential priests put him at the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon. With the rise of Marduk, the sacralization of the ruler was also associated, whose status acquired more and more holiness over time. In the II millennium BC. e. The mythological interpretation of the deeds, merits and spheres of influence of all the forces of the other world of all gods, heroes and spirits, including the rulers of the underworld and numerous demons of evil, illness and misfortune, in the fight against which the Mesopotamian priests developed a whole system of spells and amulets, was also somewhat revised. In particular, each person turned out to be the owner of his own divine patron-patron, sometimes several, which contributed to the formation of personal ties "man-deity". A complex cosmological system was developed from several heavens, covering the earth as a hemisphere, floating in the world's oceans. Heaven was the residence of the highest gods, and the sun god Shamash daily made his way from the eastern mountain towards the western mountain, and at night he retired to the “inside of heaven”.

At the service of the gods, magic and mantles, which had achieved considerable success, were put. Finally, through the efforts of the priests, much was done in the field of astronomy and the calendar, mathematics and writing. At the same time, it should be noted that, although all this pre-scientific knowledge had a completely independent cultural value, their connection with religion (and the connection is not only genetic, but also functional) is undeniable. And not so much because priests stood at their source, but because all this knowledge was connected with religious ideas and even mediated by them.

In fairness, it should be noted that by no means all aspects of life, not the entire system of ideas and institutions of the ancient Mesopotamia, were determined by religious ideas. For example, the texts of the laws of Hammurabi convince us that the rules of law were practically free from them. This very significant point indicates that the religious system of Mesopotamia, in the image and likeness of which similar systems of other Middle Eastern states were later formed, was not total, i.e., did not monopolize the entire sphere of spiritual life. It left room for views, actions and practices that were not directly related to religion, and it was this practice that could influence the nature of the religious ideas of the peoples of the eastern Mediterranean, from the Semitic tribes of Syria and Phoenicia to the Cretan-Mycenaean predecessors of the ancient Greeks. It is possible that she played a certain role in the emergence of freethinking in antiquity. This is worth paying attention to because the second version of the most ancient religious system of the world, the ancient Egyptian, almost simultaneously with the Mesopotamian, led in this sense to other results.