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of Christianity were readily understandable to the Egyptians in terms of their own ancient myths and beliefs…. [The] fact that the Egyptians, since ancient times, had viewed their king as an incarnation of a god meant that the Christian concept of Jesus as the incarnate son of God was far more readily embraced in Egypt than elsewhere in the Roman world…. [Even] major Christian motifs may have Egyptian origins. The sacred mother and child of Christianity are certainly foreshadowed in the countless images of Isis—whom the Egyptians called the ‘mother of god’—and her infant son Horus, as is even the symbol of the cross which is first attested in Egypt as the ‘Egyptian’ or tau cross—a form of the ankh sign.”

But is there something else? Does Egypt’s extraordinary history speak to any deeper spiritual or cosmic significance? Setting aside theories of ancient astronauts, cursed mummies, the psychic power of pyramids, and dozens of other “New Age” obsessions with things Egyptian, does the “gift of the Nile” matter? For those with a Jewish or Christian background—as well as those people whose exposure to Egypt was limited to the annual airing of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses—there has always been a cultural hangover of animosity toward ancient Egypt. Through this Judeo-Christian framework, Egypt existed only as the home of the ruthless pharaohs, a place of servitude and inhumanity. It was an image that carried through to the American Civil Rights era, when the Deep South was symbolically associated with Egypt and American blacks saw themselves as the Hebrews trying to escape the pharaoh’s cruelty.

Lost in this somewhat narrow view of the Egyptians as the “bad guys” is a different view of Egypt—a society where the values of truth, justice, charity, and other virtues played a critical role in shaping a civilization that produced extraordinary beauty and a spiritual view of the universe, which, at its best, believed that a just life was justly rewarded.

CHAPTER THREE

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON

The Myths of Mesopotamia

It is an old story

But one that can still be told

About a man who loved

And lost a friend to death.

And learned he lacked the power

To bring him back to life.

—Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative (translated by Herbert Mason)

When on high the heaven had not been named

Firm ground below had not been called by name…

…When sweet and bitter

mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes

muddied the water.

The gods were nameless, natureless, futureless.

—from Enuma Elish, The Babylonian Creation

By the rivers of Babylon,

there we sat down,

yea, we wept,

when we remembered Zion.

—Psalm 137:1

“Like other people in the ancient world, the Babylonians attributed their cultural achievements to the gods, who had revealed their own lifestyle to their mythical ancestors. Thus Babylon itself was supposed to be an image of heaven, with each of its temples a replica of a celestial palace.”

—KAREN ARMSTRONG, A History of God (1993)

What role did myths play in ancient Mesopotamia?

Where did Mesopotamia’s gods live?

What’s so special about the “cradle of civilization”?

How did a swamp inspire Mesopotamia’s myths?

How do we know what the Mesopotamians believed?

When Sumer disappeared, where did its myths go?

What is the Enuma Elish?

Was Marduk just another macho man oppressing gentle goddesses?

Who was Hammurabi?

Who’s Who of Mesopotamian Myths

How did an angry goddess make the seasons?

Was Inanna’s city the first “Sin City”?

Who was mythology’s first superhero?

Was the Gilgamesh a work of “faction”?

Who came first, Gilgamesh or Noah?

Was the Tower of Babel in Babylon?

Was the Bible’s Abraham a man—or another Mesopotamian myth?

Who were El and Baal?

What’s a Canaanite demoness doing at a rock concert?

What are three Persian magicians doing in Bethlehem on Christmas?

MYTHIC MILESTONES

Mesopotamia

(All dates are Before the Common Era—BCE)

c. 9000 Early cultivation of wheat and barley; domestication