Afterlife

Afterlife

When we think about the afterlife today it is easy to categorize the locations after death: Heaven and Hell. As Christians, we have guidelines in which to receive eternal life and we follow the life as Jesus Christ, and according to the Bible, through Him we are saved. Pretty simple to concept, but in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and India, the afterlife is not so easy to grasp. Polytheism, pharaohs, and Buddha will all be prevalent in this exploration of the afterlife in ancient civilizations.

Mesopotamians also called Sumerians believed that the afterlife was a bleak and dismal existence. It was commonly called the House of Darkness and entitled an eternity in the ground. They were polytheistic and the Gods in which they believed in were said to be just like us. In fact, we were copies of divine models, made in the image of the Gods. They were petty and violent. If the Mesopotamians did not worship correctly the Gods would become angry and punished the people. The punishment often took form of natural catastrophes such as droughts or floods (Adler, 11-12). “To avert punishment, the gods had to be appeased with frequent, costly rituals and ceremonies, which were the responsibly of a hereditary priesthood” (Adler, 17). Worshipping of the Gods meant building huge temples called Ziggurats in their name (Adler, 11). The Tower of Babel in Babylon is the temple which gained the most fame through the Bible(Adler , 11). It was built long after the Sumerian epoch (Adler, 11). The certainty of afterlife was not known, but the best approach was to appease the Gods by making offerings and hope for the best in the afterlife (Adler, 12).

The Assyrian Empire could certainly be compared to the Gods in Mesopotamia. The Assyrians w...

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...rward to after death, just a life in the dirt, complete darkness. Egyptians lived optimistic lives and hoped to eventually live in that circle around the sun with no

worries. Lastly, the Buddhists of India wanted to become masters of

themselves and obtain nirvana; the Hindus hoped to sustain good kharma and survive the dharma to flee from the Wheel of Life and become one

with Brahman. All of these religious beliefs became of a way of life for the ancient civilizations, just as Christianity is the basis of human in most of the Western world.

Bibliography:

Works Cited

Adler, Philip J. World Civilizations. 2 vols. California: Wadsworth, 2000. Vol. 2.

Handout: The Book of Dead

Handout: Enuma Elish

Pritchard. The Ancient Near East, vol. 1, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.

Rawls, Richard. 2001. Class Lectures. January 8- February 14.