About Sumerian Religion
These past couple of weeks he had a chance to pick three civilizations. We chose three but in those three we had to put them in order from our favorite one to the least favorite one. We had to wait a day to see if another group didn’t choose the same. Finally the next day we got to know what civilization we got. My group got the Sumerians. We had like a week to research about it the Sumerians. So each person has to research something about the sumerians. For example I got the Sumerians religion. Now let me tell you some more about religion.
What is the Sumerian’s religion? The Sumerians religion is polytheistic. Polytheistic the belief in more than one god. The ancient Greeks, for example, were polytheists; their gods included Apollo, Athena, Dionysus, and Zeus. The Sumerians religion has its roots in the worship of nature, such as the wind and water. The forces of nature were originally worshipped as themselves. However, over time the human form became associated with those forces. Gods in human form were now seen to have taken over nature. Each city of the Sumerians had a temple house, that was a seat of a major god Pantheon: Located here, the gods controlled the powerful forces, which was often said to dictate a humans fate.
Sumerians have a lot of goddesses. The sumerians didn’t have a specific religion, but like the egyptians had many gods and goddesses. There were gods and goddesses of elements, such as the god of water, there were gods and goddesses of objects, and patron gods and goddesses of a certain city. Each city-state had a god or goddess. They worshipped mainly that one, but also other gods of important things. One thing that shows definitely how important religion was in the ranking of people-the high priest was, along with the ruler, the highest ranking man in the city. The sumerians believe in so many gods that they even believe in the sun, moon, and stars. They also believed that the crops grew because of a male god mating with his goddess wife.
One of their goddess names was Nammu. Nammu was a sea and the sumerians thought it was a god too. They believed that Nammu created the fish they saw and the birds, wild pigs and other creatures that appeared on the wetlands. Sumerians also believed that Nammu created heaven and earth, heaven splitting from earth as the male god An, and the earth was the goddess they called Ki. They believed that An and Ki created a son called Enlil, who was atmosphere, wind and storm. The sumerians believed that Enlil separated the day from night and that he had opened an invisible shell and let waters fall from the sky. They also thought that Ki created plants, humans and other creatures.
I’ve talked about their gods and goddesses what they believe in. Now lets talk about what happens if they displeased their gods. They believed if the displeased their gods, these gods let demons punish the offender with sickness, disease or environmental disaster. The sumerians experienced infrequent rain that it made disastrous floods, and they thought it was a punishment created by a demon god. When one suffers it was the best not to curse the gods but to glorify them, to appeal to them.
Finally you know a little about Sumerians religion. To me all this religion is kind of weird and interesting. It’s weird because they have a lot of goddesses and they called goddesses to the moon, sun, stars, and even creatures. Sumerians also had demon gods, that is scary. You could not disobey your gods or goddesses because you had a punishment. It was interesting because they had so many gods and it it different compared to us. Almost everything is their god, to us there's only one god. We aren’t really that religious.
Here is a picture showing some of the very old Sumerian Gods.
Citations:
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Sumer/Sumerian_Religion.htm
http://www.sarissa.org/sumer/sumer_rel.php
http://realhistoryww.com/world_history/ancient/Misc/Sumer/Sumerian_Religion.htm
http://www.sarissa.org/sumer/sumer_rel.php