Religion In Ancient Mesopotamia Jean Bottero Pdf Download

As Bottro explains, the Mesopotamians believed that the gods controlled the physical world and they were responsible for changing it. They directed the destiny of the gods and humans, and they determined the general course of events. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that the gods were as interested in human affairs as they were in their own, and the gods interfered in the lives of humans. They were represented as angry or pleased, or as threatening or comforting, depending on the outcome of important events. Bottro shows that the gods possessed the ability to punish and reward the people, as well as to protect them from evil. They could change the weather, they could change the course of rivers, they controlled fertility and the birth of children, and they controlled the fate of cities. The gods of Mesopotamia were much more powerful than the gods of other religions. The gods of ancient Mesopotamia are believed to have been, in Bottro's words, 'big gods.'

Bottro explains that the Babylonian city-states of the second millennium BCE were ruled by kings who were divinely descended from the gods. Mesopotamian kings and their priests organized religious rituals, built temples and created religious texts. They also supervised the system of justice and administered the cult of the city's patron deity. Bottro shows that all cities had a patron deity, that kings, like their subjects, worshiped, often with ritual, the gods and goddesses who were at the center of society. They were responsible for the safety of the state, they mediated between the gods and humans, and they protected the city and its people. Because the city was their god, their patron, and they, their families, and their priests all demanded protection from the gods, Bottro shows that the gods themselves were concerned with the state, its politics and economics. Many of the gods had both male and female aspects. Mesopotamian religions were complex, Bottro suggests, because they were fluid, changing, and different in each city. Unlike other religions, where the gods were considered immutable, the Mesopotamians believed that their gods were active and could change.

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