User:Ichthyovenator/Mesopotamian religion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ancient Mesopotamian religion refers to the indigenous religious beliefs and practices of the civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia, particularly Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia. [more intro]
The ancient Mesopotamian religion is believed to have developed in early forms as early as the 6th millennium BC, coinciding with the beginning of permanent settlement in Mesopotamia due to improvements in irrigation and preceding the invention of writing by about two millennia.[1] The earliest surviving recognizable evidence of the religion dates to the 4th millennium BC.[2] Several developments within the religion were the result of geopolitical history, such as changes in political structure and the rise and fall of empires. Though the Mesopotamian pantheon included more than two thousand deities, there were a much smaller number of prominent and important deities; often, the arrangement of deities at the top of the pantheon varied depending on time and location. In some cases there developed near-monotheistic sects, such as the veneration of Ashur in Assyria and the veneration of Marduk in Babylonia. The ancient religion survived long after the fall of the last native Mesopotamian state (the Neo-Babylonian Empire) in the 6th century BC. Despite widespread Christianization from the 1st century AD onwards and Mesopotamia subsequently falling under Christian, Zoroastrian and Muslim rule, it continued to persist throughout the Islamic period in remote areas. Its last known adherents, the sun-worshipping Shamsīyah of Mardin, converted to Syriac Orthodox Christianity in the 18th century to avoid persecution in the Ottoman Empire.
[myths, cosmology, morality]
[cultic practice, scholarly studies]