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Egypt and Mesopotamia: similarities and differences in religion
Ancient mesopotamian religion beliefs
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“Tear down your house, I say, and build a boat… then take up into the boat the seed of all living creatures”(p.146). “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and “Noah and the Flood” are two similar stories about a flood that wiped out all the living creatures on Earth except for a certain group of mankind. These people in the stories communicate with the gods, that going along with their theology if there is one or more gods, and they both survive the flood. Regardless of the differences of communication, theology, and the flood from “The Epic of Gilgamesh” and “Noah and the Flood” they have the same storyline with different twists. Communication is a big feature in these stories, both communicate with their gods. Utnapishtim is the story inside of a story, …show more content…
Make yourself an ark of gopher wood; make it an ark with compartments, and cover it inside and out with pitch. This is how you shall make it; the length of the arc shall be three hundred cubits, its width fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. Make an opening for daylight in the ark, and terminate it within a cubit of the top. Put the entrance to the ark in its side; make it with bottom, second, and third decks.” (pg.171) God told Noah exactly how to build his ark and what to take on to keep life on earth after the flood. Along with communication comes theology, were they polytheists or monotheists? In “The Epic of Gilgamesh” they believed in polytheism, they had many gods, however Ea was the god to warn Utnapishtim. One of the gods, Ishtar, was upset that she let the other gods kill her people. “Then Ishtar the sweet-voiced Queen of Heaven cried out like a woman in travail; ‘Alas the days of old are turned to dust because I commanded evil, why did I command this evil in the council of all the gods? I commanded wars to destroy the people, but are they not my people, I brought them forth? Now like the spawn of fish they float in the ocean” …show more content…
God sent the flood and killed everyone on the earth except for Noah’s arc, he regretted it by vowing to Noah he would never again kill all mankind. “That shall be the sign of the covenant that I established between Me and all flesh that is on earth” (pg. 174). His covenant is that the rainbow will remind him of what he has done and that he will never do it again. God shows besides his covenant, that he regrets what he did to mankind. “Never again will I doom the earth because of man, since the devising of man’s mind are evil from his youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living being as I have done” (pg.174). God promises Noah that a flood will never wipe out all of the living beings on earth ever again, he makes the covenant to show Noah how serious and sorry he is. Tying in with communication and theology is the biggest piece, the flood, that wiped out all of the living
Many authors have employed the religious beliefs of their cultures in literature. The deities contained in Homer’s Odyssey and in the Biblical book of Exodus reflect the nature of the gods in their respective societies. Upon examination of these two works, there are three major areas where the gods of the Greek epic seem to directly contrast the nature of the God of the Israelites: the way problems are solved, the prestige and status that separates the divine from the masses, and the extent of power among the immortal beings.
Perhaps the most popular comparison with Noah's Flood is that of an ancient Babylonian story of a similar flood. A quick look at the text does show some key similarities between them however there are also some pointed differences. I will show you both and let you decide whether there is or is not a connection.
...itional polytheistic creation myths would be how powerful people in the Ancient Near East thought the gods were. The nomads would have greatly depended on rain and weather to be able to keep their sheep and herds alive. By depending on the weather for the survival of their flocks, they would probably believe greatly in the gods. It would be hard to convince a Hebrew nomad to believe in something other than their polytheistic gods if there was a drought or hard time. They would probably still worship the idols and gods of rain and other things that directly affect them. It could be assumed that these nomads would not want to upset the gods who they think control almost every aspect of their lives. It would be hard to abandon gods that you had accepted all your life especially if you believed they had control over the wellbeing of their livestock and families.
The famous walled city or Uruk in ancient Sumer is the oldest polytheistic culture to be documented. Uruk worshiped a pantheon of gods and goddesses such as the warrior goddess Ishtar, patron of the city, Anu, father of the gods and Shamash, god of the sun and of justice. The first and most obvious piece of evidence for the presence of elastic gender roles and female power is the fact there are both gods and goddesses in this Sumerian religion. Rather than a male dominated powerhouse in the heavens, Uruk recognized the goddesses as an equally powerful, and active, force in the cosmos. In the epic of Gilgamesh, goddesses appear to be a more dynamic force than some of the gods in the story. Gilgamesh, the protagonist of the epic, purportedly “two-thirds divine and one-third huma...
God promises He will never destroy the earth in a flood again and creates the rainbow as a sign of this covenant (Genesis 9:9,13). Shortly after Noah and his family left the ark, Noah became a farmer and planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk one day, this is where his son Ham found him naked; consequently, Noah cursed his grandson Cannan (Genesis 9:18-27). This is likely added to the end of the story of Noah to show that without the blood of Jesus, the human race is subject to sin. That every person needs the blood of Jesus in order to be redeemed from their sinful nature.
The Sumero-Babylonian version of the epic of Gilgamesh, after two and a half millennia of dormancy, was resurrected by British archaeologists in the nineteenth century. Amid the rubble of an Assyrian palace, the twelve clay tablets inscribed the adventures of the first hero of world literature – King Gilgamesh, whose oral folk tales go back to at least 3000 years before Christ (Harris 1). Tablet XI contains the story of the Flood. In this essay let us compare this flood account to the more recent Noah’s Flood account in Genesis of the Old Testament.
N.K. Sandars in the Introduction to his book, The Epic of Gilgamesh, sums up the involvement by the pagan gods in the Sumero-Babylonian Flood narrative:
The Epic of Gilgamesh records a story of a world-wide flood and pre-dates Genesis. So some claim that this invalidates the Genesis record. But P.J. Wiseman presents an interesting theory in this regard in his book Ancient Records and the Structure of Genesis (New York: Thomas Nelson, 1985).
The two stories closely parallel each other, though Gilgamesh was written down before 2000 BCE and the version in Genesis was compiled ca. 400 BCE. Biblical writers probably knew of the much older myth but revised it so that it fit with their own history and worldview. They intended it to fit with their own mythology. Despite the many similarities between the two stories, this difference in intention is revealed in a number of motifs that distinguish the biblical story from the ancient myth:
4. Consider the story of Utnapishtim. What do the various actions of the gods and goddesses allow us to infer about how the Mesopotamians viewed their deities?
The flood story that is told in The Epic of Gilgamesh has the same principle as the story of Noah told in the book of Genesis in the Bible, but there are some major differences. In the epic, Utnapishtim is immortal and, although Noah was extremely old when he died, he wasn’t immortal. Utnapishtim was a human, but because he saved mankind, Enlil said, “Hitherto Utnapishtim has been a human, now Utnapishtim and his wife shall become like us gods.” (Gilgamesh 11.206-207) In the Biblical story, God told Noah that he was going to send a flood and asked him specifically to make the ark in order to save mankind. In Genesis 6:13-22, God tells Noah why he’s flooding the earth and exact instructions to build the ark. “13 So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. 14 So make yourself an ark of cypress[a] wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. 15 This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide and thirty cubits high.[b] 16 Make a roof for it, leaving below the roof an opening one cubit[c] high all arou...
In both versions of the flood story something angers God (in Genesis) and the gods (in Gilgamesh). "The uproar of mankind is intolerable and sleep is no longer possible by reasons of the babel" (Gilgamesh 12). The Gilgamesh reason seems very illogical. The Gods decide to destroy mankind because they are making too much noise. It seems that the gods didn't think over their decision wisely. They are gods, wouldn't they have the power to block out the sound? One would think so, but obviously that was not the case. This is the first major difference between the two stories.
...e Gods at them: The Bull of Heaven. Her rash behavior caused the bull to descend to the Earth and cause hundreds of deaths and years of famine; all because Gilgamesh told her the truth of her philandering. She even caused the death of Enkidu, since the two friends slew the Bull as it attacked. These deaths were the result of her own vain actions and lust.
People of the ancient world often had questions about their existence and how life and people came to be on earth. Most ancient people answered these questions through religion. The Sumerians were the first important group of people to inhabit Mesopotamia and they were known to practice a form of worship called polytheism, which is the worship of several gods. Mesopotamians associated different gods with natural events, emotions, and other occurrences. Their main deities included An (the god of the heavens), Enlil (Lord Storm), Enki (god of wisdom), and Nihursaga (the mother of all living things)(p.22). The Mesopotamians believed that the gods controlled all of the events and occurrences in life. An ancient text called “Creation of Man by the Mother Goddess” (p.34) helps us understand how the M...
The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey both are held in high respect by literature analysts and historians alike for the characterization of the hero and his companion, the imagery brought to mind when one of them is read, and the impressive length in relation to the time period it was written in. The similarities that these two epics share do not end with only those three; in fact, the comparability of these works extend to even the information on the author and the archetypes used. However, The Odyssey and The Epic of Gilgamesh contrast from one another in their writing styles, character details, and main ideas. Both epics weave together a story of a lost man who must find his way, but the path of their stories contrast from one another.