Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [59]
Over thousands of years, Mesopotamia was occupied and ruled by a succession of small kingdoms—some fairly belligerent—that grew to include some of the world’s first empires: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites, Assyrians, Chaldeans, and Persians. As these empires rose and fell, power shifted and civilizations grew. Each time power changed hands, the myths of this very old land changed, too. Each new empire borrowed traditions from the one before, and Mesopotamia’s myths evolved and were rewritten and reshaped to reflect new political realities. But always, there was one constant. From the earliest times, the worship of Mesopotamia’s many gods—who ruled sun, wind, and water, the weather, earth’s fertility, and every aspect of the natural world—played a crucial role in dictating life and society in the world “between the rivers.”
What role did myths play in ancient Mesopotamia?
Think of Mesopotamia as the Rodney Dangerfield of the ancient Near East—it has never gotten the respect or star billing accorded to Egypt and Greece. Maybe it was because the people there were considered the villains of the Bible, having sacked Jerusalem, carted thousands of Jews off to captivity or oblivion, and introduced so many of the Bible’s pernicious “false gods.” Or maybe it was because their ancient attractions were not viewed with the same awe as those that sent worshipful tourists flocking to Egypt and Greece. (One historian describes the achievements in Mesopotamia as “less spectacular art and crumbling mudbrick ruins.”) Keats didn’t write an “Ode on a Mesopotamian Urn.” And New Age trendsetters have not adopted the Mesopotamian ziggurat as a totem of mysterious psychic powers. Also, during much of the twentieth century, what was once Mesopotamia has largely been shut off to the Western world, due to culture, history, and politics. In case you hadn’t noticed, Iraq hasn’t been topping anybody’s list of ten best tourist destinations for most of the past fifty years.*
Whatever the reasons, Mesopotamia took a back seat to Egypt and Greece, an oversight worth correcting, because the oversimplified—or overlooked—past of this ancient land, which has become so significant in modern times, is a fascinating piece in the jigsaw puzzle of ancient civilization. Religion, history, and myth all mingled together there, and the story of Mesopotamia’s city-states and the empires that grew from them offers another vivid example of that fascinating crossroads where legend and ancient life intersect.
Like Egypt, the successive empires of Mesopotamia were theocracies—societies in which government and religion were inseparably fused. The gods of Mesopotamia didn’t just make the rain fall or crops grow. These gods chose the earthly kings—or, at least, that’s what the kings and temple priests told their subjects. The people existed to serve the gods—through their earthly representatives, the kings and priests. In each city-state, the local god became the symbol of the city’s strength and source of its prestige, wealth, and power. To put it simply—” My god is bigger than your god.”
As Mesopotamia’s cities eventually expanded to become small empires, the power of their gods increased as well, and the most powerful empire, obviously, had the most powerful god. Marduk, the central deity of Babylon, took charge when Babylon became the region’s preeminent city-state. Local myths were revised so that his status as a Zeus-like king of the gods was celebrated and made sacred in Mesopotamia’s central Creation story. Just as Re became