Being the religion of one of the earliest civilizations in the world the ancient Mesopotamia faith lasted in some form for thousands of years before finally fading into irrelevance around the 4th century BCE. Your challenge is to have Mesopotamia polytheism survive and thrive past this point and ideally be able to coexist with Christianity and Islam similarly to how Hinduism was able to.
AHC: have Mesopotamia polytheism survive
- Thread starter Billy the Goat
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I don't understand much about the subject, but I think it's difficult, sooner or later they will be persecuted by Christians and later by Muslims, maybe it can survive as a religious minority that They in the Interior and in endogamous or In remote communities? (such as the Zoroastrians in post-Arab conquest Iran)
fair enough but I was more thinking along the lines of it actively thriving and having some notable influence in some areas (Hinduism is the best example for what I mean by this) though its likely that such a change would have some major butterfly effects. if not impacting Christianity then definitely affecting Islam and its rise and spread (assuming it even exists ITTL).
Mesopotamia is flat, fertile lands that numerous people pass and occupy so its very hard.
I think enlarging "Mesopotamia" definition might help. Mitanni and Assyrian lands is adjacent to Mesopotamia. Also polytheism need to be defined, did subordinate god that follow creator god acceptable ? What about worshipping one god in pantheon ?
Harran (in Turkey) still have paganism in 10th century. Rexognition as Sabeans by Prophet / Caliphs might allow it to last longer. Yezidis / Yazdanism variant is also very, very old.
I think enlarging "Mesopotamia" definition might help. Mitanni and Assyrian lands is adjacent to Mesopotamia. Also polytheism need to be defined, did subordinate god that follow creator god acceptable ? What about worshipping one god in pantheon ?
Harran (in Turkey) still have paganism in 10th century. Rexognition as Sabeans by Prophet / Caliphs might allow it to last longer. Yezidis / Yazdanism variant is also very, very old.
Only way to keep them even somehow relevant in Mesopotamia is avoid Christianity and Islam. They just can't tolerate other religions at least not very strong ones. But even then not sure how Zoroastrianism would affect to the religion. Probably you have find way keep Assyrian/Babylonian empires to survive but not sure if it is even possible.
Were they still around at the beginning of the Persian empire? If so, maybe Cyrus takes an interest in their polytheism instead of Judaism
I believe we had a similar discussion about the role of Babylon, more specifically.
The gist of it is, Mesopotamian relgions were on the whole heavily dependent on political sponsorship to stay afloat, state-run, top-bottom affairs that would quickly be substituted by others' belief systems when patronage ran dry. That Mesopotamia was heavily desirable as a conquest area doesn't help either.
The gist of it is, Mesopotamian relgions were on the whole heavily dependent on political sponsorship to stay afloat, state-run, top-bottom affairs that would quickly be substituted by others' belief systems when patronage ran dry. That Mesopotamia was heavily desirable as a conquest area doesn't help either.
Akkadian polytheism was the state religion of the Neo-Babylonian Empire Cyrus conquered, so yes, they were still around.
This is a stereotype of pagan religion that doesn't really hold true. Yes, the state was heavily involved in organising festivals, constructing temples and offering sacrifices - but the same holds true for the Abrahamic religions. And these state-sponsored events were not by any means the only expression of Akkadian polytheism. Worship was tied to the household and the individual as much as it was to temples and governments.
The idea that the pagan religions could only exist because they were upheld by the state is a bit of 19th century bigotry carried over into modern pop-science. It basically assumes that nobody actually believed in these religions and everyone was just in it because they had to.
I mean, that's precisely how the Esagila was abandoned - when state support ran dry, the place gradually fell into obscurity.
It's not that the religions could not exist without state support, rather that they had surprisingly little staying power - like every other religion devoid of a larger organisation and in low-literacy periods - and of course, the discussion about whether 'people really believed' is equally shallow, a rebuke that is itself steeped in a superficially bad understanding of ancient religion.
In a polytheistic, pre-modern world, gods exist and only a few select people would dispute that fact. Nobody needs to 'believe' in them, not in a sense that our modern understanding, heavily shaped by Abrahamic religions, defines it. People by and large assumed gods existed and instead 'believed' in a lore of rituals and oaths, meant to bind and coerce the otherwise inscrutable and superior creatures into doing the invoker's bidding; hence you see people boasting about their chosen god's efficacy and belittling the others'. This dimension extends to mysteric cults, too - their rituals being so precious and special, only a few select ones are deemed worthy of partaking in.
So in this world, once the priesthood - which is by necessity tied to state power - is beaten, they also have been empyrically proven wrong, and once the residual sense of community fades, nothing is left to ensure the religion's survival.
Interestingly, Wikipedia states that the Esagila was abandoned because Babylon itself lost its premier status in Mesopotamia and was gradually abandoned.
Yes, you are quite right, which is why I stated that this idea is based on outdated orientalist attitudes.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "beating the priesthood"? If I understand you correctly, you assume that a defeat of the Babylonian state translates directly to a defeat of Babylonian religion. This is a curious idea, seeing as Babylon was conquered, sacked and ruled by foreign powers for vast chunks of its history. Yet the Babylonians didn't stop worshipping Marduk when the Hittites burned their city to the ground, or when Shutruk Nahhunte carried away the city's wealth to Susa, or when the Assyrians wrecked their city. That is because the god was never at fault - obviously these calamities had in fact been sent by the gods to punish the Babylonians for their impiety!
The decline of Akkadian polytheism is heavily linked to the decline of the Akkadian language in favor of Aramaic during the second half of the first millennium BCE. But as far as I know, the remaining cuneiform sources never abandoned their ancient gods, and presumably the Akkadians worshipped these deities right until the last native speakers died off.
Yeah, there definitely is an intermixture of culture and religion at play, I just consider it tied to actual state power because while rulers who were culturally kin (the Kassites adn to a degree, the Elamites who long intermarried with them) definitely had similar outlooks, the Assyrians that came after and then everybody else had growingly different religious attitudes that could no longer be kept consistent with the old ways.
The Assyrians were very similar to the Babylonians in culture. They both spoke the language of Akkad, although the Babylonian dialect was so prestigous that it, not Assyrian, was the literary language of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. At the height of its influence, the cultural draw of Babylon was so enormous that essentially all of western Eurasia deferred to it. The Great Kings of Persia, and even Alexander, knelt before the Babylonian gods not because of the power of the Babylonian state, but because of the great prestige of its civilization. At this point, the Greeks and Persians had been literate for barely 500 years. Compare that to three millennia of Akkadian cultural continuity, going back to the very start of written human history. No civilization, except that of Egypt, could claim anything similar.
This was the true power of the Babylonians - so long as the city persisted, none of its neighbours could even compare to the sheer antiquity and sophistication of its civilization. It was only when that civilization began to slowly die off, that the glory and prestige of Babylon waned with it.
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Beatriz said:
Both Beatriz and kholieken are right about Mesopotamian polytheism co-existing for centuries with Christianity and later Islam as well.kholieken said:
Awhile back I was reading about the Battle of Carrhae in Wikipedia’s article on Harran, which is Carrhae’s romanized Arabic name. The Harranian moon cult of Sin survived at least 400 years after the Islamic conquest right up to the time of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066.
Wikipedia said:
Yes, it was. There's a reason everyone brags about being king of Babylon for 1500 years. Western historiography tends to ignore the Babylonians in favor of Greek and Egyptian sources, but Babylon, not Athens, was the cultural heart of western Eurasia in this period.
Because it was regarded as the capital of Mesopotamia, one of the wealthiest regions of the world, and some level of partaking in its culture was necessary for rulers to hold power there. But the rulers post-Babylonian Empire did not patronize the Mesopotamian gods to the extant of those who came before, ergo the religion faded and the area became fertile ground for Judaism, Christianity, gnostic religions, and eventually Islam.
It's plenty logical. The Babylonians for instance believed their strength lay in Marduk's blessing, and as their power rose, Marduk's corresponding status among the gods rose to justify it. As Marduk's temple fell into ruin and rulers rarely/never partook in his rituals, then the draw of his cult faded because it was clear he didn't have as much power as was thought. The same would be true of every Mesopotamian god as their temples were ruined and rulers ceased their worship. Therefore the best way to preserve Mesopotamian religion as anything but minor lingering superstitions is to keep the rulers of Mesopotamia invested in that faith, which is difficult as the region becomes just another cog in multiethnic empires like the Persians or Greeks.
It's possible to keep Assyrian polytheism alive imo as they were largely left alone under the Achaemenid Empire, and only from the 3rd century CE, with Sassanid conquests, did Asoristan as a country fall, and its religion faded a few centuries later, its members converting to Christianity and later Islam
So to preserve their religion, probably you would need to butterfly away Alexander or Christianity or at the very least make sure the Achaemenids last longer and/or some other similarly enlightened and tolerant successor dominates the Middle East.
(Or they somehow establish a stable empire and ASSYRIA RULES AGAIN)
PS: saving babylonia and akkad is way harder and probably needs a pre -AD PoD.
So to preserve their religion, probably you would need to butterfly away Alexander or Christianity or at the very least make sure the Achaemenids last longer and/or some other similarly enlightened and tolerant successor dominates the Middle East.
(Or they somehow establish a stable empire and ASSYRIA RULES AGAIN)
PS: saving babylonia and akkad is way harder and probably needs a pre -AD PoD.
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