ACS 200 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Personal God, Skull, Mesopotamia
27 Feb 2017
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Document Summary
Deities lived in a temple as if a home. Divine agencies act on a variety of planes cosmic, mythic and ritual: can be distributed into a variety of modes astral body, statute, emblem, standard, names. Towards 3rd millennium, ziggurats dedicated to patron deities were created in each city, and the people of that city would mostly worship them. The ziggurat of marduk showed us the concept of how cosmic stability is gained through warfare. The uruk vase shows how humans and animals were sacrificed to inanna. Notion of divine is fluid in nature. Roles of gods could fluctuate between deities and so could their emblems. Divine body parts, names, auras, voices could operate as independent centres of activity. Gods could be killed but they wouldn"t be annihilated. Gods actions were defined by roles based on mesopotamian social organization: religion reinforced the structure of mesopotamian society. Every city had its own patron deity who presided over the local pantheon.
