What do the mesopotamian deities required of humanity

With goods and services. Log in. Ancient Religions. Literature Classics. Epic of Gilgamesh. See Answer. Best Answer. Study guides. Write your answer Related questions. What can you learn about Mesopotamian civilization from the Epic of Gilgamesh? Why was Gilgamesh important to Mesopotamian history? What gods did Mesopotamian people believe in? What did the mesopotamian people do for religious things? Who is Erkidu from Gilgamesh?

How did Gilgamesh try to save his people from danger? What are the deities of Buddhism? Who was the Gilgamesh and why was he important? What is the opinion of people about the Epic of Gilgamesh? What did Gilgamesh do? What is zemi? What are the mesopotamian people called? The people who pioneered the Mesopotamian civilization were the? What did Mesopotamian people look like? What was the ancient Mesopotamian entertainment? Did anciaent Mesopotamian people have pets? Did ancient Mesopotamian people have pets?

What mesopotamian people did for recreation? What did mesopotamian people eat? Does The Epic of Gilgamesh teaches us about the barbarism of Mesopotamian society? What makeup did mesopotamian people wear?

How did the ancient Mesopotamian people pay? When did Mesopotamian people create the wheel? What Do Mesopotamian People Eat? Special skills of mesopotamian people? People also asked. What type of writing was found in Mesopotamia? View results. What is the name of the mesopotamians handwriting? Trending Questions. Give me food and I will live give me water and I will die what am I?

What is bigger than an asteroid but smaller than Mercury and farther from the sun than Neptune? Has a human ever been mailed via the United States Postal Service? Still have questions? Find more answers. Previously Viewed. What do the Mesopotamian deities require of the people in The Epic of Gilgamesh?

The sea would not produce all its heavy treasure, no freshwater fish would lay eggs in the reedbeds, no bird of the sky would build nests in the spacious lands; in the sky, the thick clouds would not open their mouths; on the fields, dappled grain would not fill the arable lands, vegetation would not grow lushly on the plain; in the gardens, the spreading trees of the mountain would not yield fruit.

As supreme figures, the gods were transcendent and awesome, but unlike most modern conceptions of the divine, they were distant. Feared and admired rather than loved, the great gods were revered and praised as masters. They could display kindness, but were also fickle and at times, as explained in mythology, poor decision makers, which explains why humans suffer such hardships in life. Generally speaking, gods lived a life of ease and slumber.

While humans were destined to lives of toil, often for a marginal existence, the gods of heaven did no work. Humankind was created to ease their burdens and provide them with daily care and food. Humans, but not animals, thus served the gods.

Cuneiform tablets as early as the third millennium indicate that the gods were associated with cities. The sky god An and his daughter Inanna were worshipped at Uruk; Enlil, the god of earth, at Nippur; and Enki, lord of the subterranean freshwaters, at Eridu.

This association of city with deity was celebrated in both ritual and myth. Babylon , a minor city in the third millennium, had become an important military presence by the Old Babylonian period , and its patron deity, noted in a mid-third millennium text from Abu-Salabikh as ranking near the bottom of the gods, rose to become the head of the pantheon when Babylon ascended to military supremacy in the late second millennium.

Political events influenced the makeup of the pantheon. With the fall of Sumerian hegemony at the end of the third millennium, Babylonian culture and political control spread throughout southern Mesopotamia.

At the end of the third millennium B. With the fall of Sumerian political might and the rise of the Amorite dynasties at the end of the third millennium and beginning of the second millennium, religious traditions began to merge.

Older Sumerian deities were absorbed into the pantheon of Semitic-speaking peoples. Some were reduced to subordinate status while newer gods took on the characteristics of older deities.

As Enlil, the supreme Sumerian god, had no counterpart in the Semitic pantheon, his name remained unchanged. Most of the lesser Sumerian deities now faded from the scene. At the end of the second millennium, the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish refers to only gods of the heavens. He shall provide the procedures for all my offices. He shall take charge of all my commands.

Beginning in the second millennium B. Anu was represented by the number 60, Enlil by 50, Ea by 40, Sin, the moon god, by 30, Shamash by 20, Ishtar by 15, and Adad, the god of storms, by 6. While the great gods of the pantheon were worshipped by priests at rituals in cultic centers, ordinary people had no direct contact with these deities. In their homes, they worshipped personal gods, who were conceived as divine parents and were thought to be deities who could intercede on their behalf to ensure health and protection for their families.

Demons were viewed as being either good or evil. Evil demons were thought to be agents of the gods sent to carry out divine orders, often as punishment for sins. They could attack at any moment by bringing disease, destitution, or death. Demons could include the angry ghosts of the dead or spirits associated with storms. Some gods played a beneficent role to protect against demonic scourges. A deity depicted with the body of a lion and the head and arms of a bearded man was thought to ward off the attacks of lion-demons.

Pazuzu, a demonic-looking god with a canine face and scaly body, possessing talons and wings, could bring evil, but could also act as a protector against evil winds or attacks by lamastu -demons. Rituals and magic were used to ward off both present and future demonic attacks and counter misfortune. Demons were also represented as hybrid human-animal creatures, some with birdlike characteristics. Although the gods were said to be immortal, some slain in divine combat had to reside in the Underworld along with demons.

There the spirits of the dead gidim dwelt in complete darkness with nothing to eat but dust and no water to drink. The Underworld was ruled by Eresh-kigal, its queen, and her husband Nergal, together with their household of laborers and administrators. From about the middle of the third millennium B.