Mesopotamians Religious Behavior

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Mesopotamians Religious Behavior

Mesopotamia is the most urbanized society known in antiquity, so it is the first society that can be made researches on. They had the first logical, coherent and systematic religious system in history. They had made an entire system adapted to the social life of Mesopotamian people. The religious system has three parts to be constructed. First one is religious sentiment, which includes things like admiration, need, attraction, fear, and retreat that ties people to the divine beings. Religious ideology, which is construction of images, ideas, symbols about the divinity. And last of all, the religious behavior. Religious behavior is the execution of religious ideology and religious sentiment in a civilization. Religious behavior of Mesopotamian people can only be understood with an explanation of their ideas about divinity. Then one can learn their way of service to their gods, their obedience, their sanctions, their ‘sacramental’ cult, their sacrifices, their death concept, and divinations.

The religion of Mesopotamian people was primitive, i.e. their religion was not imposed by a prophet. It was developed by communal reactions to the mysterious things going on in nature “their religion only adapted their native thinking, feeling, and living to the supernatural…”(p.203) The sources for the religious system constructed in Mesopotamia are hymns and prayers, which represent the religious sentiment, Myths, which represent the religious ideology, cults, which represent the religious behavior.

The Mesopotamians were polytheist, i.e. they believed in more than one god, and anthropomorphist, i.e. they believed their gods had the pattern of man. They had a body identical to ours, but they hadn’t got any of our weaknesses. They had families, children. They had daily lives and relationships. The gods had a monarchical system between each other, the supreme power was divided between three gods: A...