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My thesis: The Mesopotamian religious views were influenced by the rivers, Tigris and Euphrates, which the Mesopotamians had, trust in which resulted in the Mesopotamians having trust in since it through these rivers they communicated with their gods. This also made them have an optimistic religion, as they had different believes with the rivers and the environment at large. They believed that after the rains from the skies, the rivers which were the source of passionate and through these rivers, they would communicate effectively with their gods.
This thesis will describe and evaluate the various influences of the physical environment on the civilized Mesopotamians basing my facts on theological and cultural views on river Tigris and Euphrates as well look at how people in the past struggled to comprehend the physical world. In early historic Mesopotamia, the natural phenomena like rivers represented the enormous face of god. The deity for this explanation was the presence of various major and extra ordinaries of the skies.
The Mesopotamians called the sky the Anu god. They always prayed and worshipped the Anu god facing the sky so that the blessing of the rain could come upon them. The Mesopotamians also depended on river Tigris and Euphrates to know whether their gods were happy or annoyed by them. For instance, in times of drought, they would tell since the river dropped and they prayed for the rains. In the other hand, when the rains flood in their residence, they used to call for intervention so that they can know what they did to make their gods irritated, as they believed floods were not usual occurrences . This was the same case when rain failed to drop, they believed to have sinned against the Anu god. As a result, they would prepare sacrifices to please him and grant them with rain.
Rivers in Mesopotamia were a source of passionate conviction and belief that along the flowing waters, they would communicate effectively with their god. The waters supported a plentiful harvest as well as the rains. Rivers gave this society a sense of a spiritual realm, and this affected their daily lives. Rivers gave direction to shrines and holy places used for worship of the different gods they had. According to Ziegler (2000), the shrines and caves were holy places that were concatenated with a way to reach god. In these places, people worshipped god who in return offered them protection from their enemies.
Mountains were a path to religious enlightenment to the Mesopotamians. They gave seers and prophets a divine quality that characterized those prophets as prominent people in the society. Prophets climbed high mountains to reach or go closer to god. During those times, they would fast, pray, intervene and ask god for guidance on behalf of Mesopotamians. Thunder, lightning and other natural phenomena were seen as religious way of dialogue responses from a supernatural being to the people of Mesopotamia. The gods would show their wrath or gratitude by demonstrating to them inform of thunder and lightning. When people died, they would refer the cause to as a failure to obey god. Landslides, floods and hunger occurred in the land of Mesopotamia. These aspects were related to spiritual or religious beliefs in which the people had failed to observe a ritual, or had committed certain wrongs.
Mesopotamia is known for its great contribution to the earliest civilization to development in the region due too the great farming which was taking place in the region. The major contributor to this were the rivers Tigris and Euphrates where farming was done and this fa...