Still, it is understandable that Egyptians might have been a little peeved with Khufu. Most likely, the scale of his pyramid, the Great Pyramid at Giza, must have placed extraordinary demands on the Egyptian farmers and working class who paid the taxes and provided most of the labor force that built the pyramids, which could account for stories like the one that Herodotus told.

Even so, the very existence of these pyramids speaks eloquently to the power of Egyptian religion and an incredibly well ordered society that could have produced such marvels in a time with precious little technology. As Egyptologist Jaromir Malek notes, "For a modern mind, especially one that no longer knows profound religious experience and deep faith, it is not easy to understand the reasons for such huge and seemingly wasteful projects as the building of pyramids. This lack of understanding is reflected in the large number of esoteric theories about their purpose and origin." Those theories, which began in the nineteenth century, inspired the word "pyramidiots," for people who proposed extravagantly fanciful ideas about both the function and construction of the pyramids.

The pyramids we typically associate with Egypt today had evolved from earlier burial sites called "mastaba tombs," simple, rectangular, flat-topped structures built from mud bricks. Observing their profound religious beliefs, the earliest Egyptian kings were buried in these tombs to begin their journey to eternity. Initially, these tombs simply served as a safe place for the remains of the mummified king until he was resurrected to join the other gods.

But others apparently went along for the ride. Recent discoveries suggest that household servants and government officials in Egypt's earliest dynasties were sometimes sacrificed to spend eternity with their kings. In 2004, archaeologists announced finding the remains of human sacrifice in some early Egyptian tombs that predate the pyramids. The practice, while it had been suspected, had never been substantiated until a team from New York University, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania found a series of graves near the tomb of King Aha, believed to be the first king in the First Dynasty. The graves, as reported in the New York Times in March 2004, yielded the remains of court officials, servants, and artisans, all apparently sacrificed to serve the king's needs in the afterlife. Nearby graves held the bones of seven young lions, symbols of kingly power, and one grave also held the bones of donkeys, presumably to help transport the king into the afterlife. "We may think of the ritual slaughter of a large number of retainers as barbaric," one researcher told the New York Times. But the ancient Egyptians "may have come to look upon the sacrifices as passports to eternal life, a guarantee of immortality...."

The mastaba tomb became more elaborate with the first Egyptian pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Third Dynasty King Djoser (also Zoser, 26672648 BCE), which rose like a gigantic stairway, allowing the king to climb to the heavens and join the sun god.

The magnificence of the pyramids took on extraordinary new dimensions, both in size and decoration, with the Fourth Dynasty pyramids at Giza.* Called the Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Khufu contains an estimated 2.5 million stone blocks that average 2.5 tons each, with a base covering about 13 acres. Originally it was 481 feet (147 meters) tall, but some of its upper stones have fallen away, and today it stands about 450 feet (138 meters) high. A dismantled cedar boat, discovered near the southern face of the pyramid, has been restored, and a second boat has also been uncovered nearby. Undoubtedly these boats were intended for the deceased king to make his journey across the sky to join the gods. The king's body and all the trappings within the burial chamber are long gone, victims of grave robbers.

The ruins of the Great Pyramid are one of thirty-five major pyramids still standing in Egypt, each built to protect the body of an Egyptian king. The pyramids of Giza (Al Jizah) stand on the west bank of the Nile River outside Cairo, where there are ten pyramids, including three of the largest and best preserved. These extraordinary monuments to the power of one man have also been the source of wonder, curiosity, and speculation for centuries.

Besides the colossal dimensions they achieved in the Pyramid Age, the pyramid also became more elaborate in its designs and religious functions. The simple burial chamber of early tombs and periods grew to include attached temples where offerings to the dead king were made, multiple chambers, and granite doors and false passageways intended to deter grave robbers (unsuccessfully, for the most part!). The simplest explanation for the Giza pyramids is that the pharaohs had become obsessed with maintaining their status for eternity, an expression of their divinity. But in almost all aspects of its design and construction, the pyramid was symbolically tied to Egyptian mythology. The four smooth, straight ascending sides of the pyramid were meant to imitate the slant of the sun's rays, a physical representation of the centrality of the sun-and the sun god-in Egyptian religion. The building itself represented, or re-created, the primeval mound that had emerged out of the watery chaos at the beginning of time-the benben stone on which the first god stood and brought to life all the other gods in the Egyptian Creation story.

More recent theories about the pyramids and their geographical alignment are related to Egyptian astronomy. The Great Pyramid of Khufu was called "Khufu's Horizon" in ancient Egyptian times, meaning that it was the place where the earth met the sky. Since the word for "horizon" was also closely associated with the word for "inundation," Egyptologists now believe that the pyramid went beyond being a physical memorial to the dead god-king and represented the totality of the belief in regeneration. The concepts of sun, horizon, inundation, the primeval mound, and the king's resurrection were all tied together in these monumental buildings and the complexes of temples and burial grounds surrounding them.

In a modern context, a parallel of sorts might exist in America's increasingly controversial presidential libraries. Why do some American citizens willingly contribute millions of dollars to finance the construction of large, expensive, but little-used-at least by the general public-buildings to house presidential papers? Critics dismiss these expensive monuments to former presidents and their papers as extravagant and wasteful. But admirers and the society wish to honor a former leader, even, in some cases, a disgraced one. Although presidents are not buried in their libraries, these new tributes fill a limited social purpose but are an expression of the society's wealth, social legends, and desire for posterity-they may be as close as Americans might get to creating the pyramids of Egypt.

What's so great about the "Great Pyramid"?

Practically since the time of Herodotus (484425 BCE), there has been considerable disagreement over how the pyramids were built. Based on decades of research, it is now believed that the Egyptians, although lacking machinery or iron tools, cut large limestone blocks with copper chisels and saws. The extremely difficult work of quarrying was done in searing heat by slaves, usually prisoners of war. While most of the stone came from nearby quarries, other blocks were floated down the Nile from distant quarries, during the period of inundation. Not only was the Nile higher at this time, which would make it easier to get the massive stones closer to the pyramid complex sites, but the period of flooding was the time when most Egyptian farmers were unable to work their land and provided a large, available labor force. Unlike the slaves who quarried stones, the laborers on the pyramids were paid, conscripted by the pharaoh to spend three months of the year in service to the state.

The most likely method of construction involved a series of ramps. Without using wheels or pulleys, gangs of men dragged the blocks on sleds or rollers to the pyramid site and pushed the first layer of stones into place. Then they built long ramps of earth and brick, and dragged the stones up the ramps to form the next layer. As each layer was finished, the ramps were lengthened. Finally, they covered the pyramid with an outer layer of white casing stones, laid so precisely that from a distance the pyramid appeared to have been cut out of a single white stone. Most of the casing stones are gone now, but a few are still in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid.

No one knows for sure how long it took to build the Great Pyramid. Herodotus claimed that the work went on in four-month shifts, with one hundred thousand laborers in each shift. Among Egyptologists who have studied the remains of what were practically small towns that housed and fed the workers, the modern consensus is that a workforce of between twenty thousand and thirty thousand, including the "service people," who baked bread and fixed tools for the builders, completed the Great Pyramid in less than twenty-three years. Most of the labor was provided by farmers during the inundations. But there are still unanswered questions about the workers. As historian Charles Freeman notes, "What incentives were needed to keep so many men toiling for so long can only be guessed at."

What is an Egyptian pyramid doing on the U.S. dollar bill?

There is another peculiarly American mystery that pertains to the pyramids, and there is one in your wallet or pocket. The dollar bill, with its strange combination of pyramids, eyes, and Latin text, has inspired considerable speculation and myth-in the sense of something commonly believed but untrue. Many people think that the symbol represents the powerful influence of the semisecret society called the Freemasons. According to this theory, the symbols in question-the pyramid topped by an all-seeing eye-were put there by the "Masonic president," Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to show that the country had been taken over by Masons.

In fact, these symbols are actually the two sides of the Great Seal of the United States, which dates from the late 1700s. Benjamin Franklin, also a Freemason, is often credited with their use, but even that may be a myth. The "All-Seeing Eye of the Deity" is mentioned in Freemasonry, but the concept behind this image dates back to the Egyptians. The unfinished pyramid symbolized the unfinished work of nation-building. Contrary to much popular myth, the pyramid is not a particularly Masonic symbol. The eye in the pyramid was a common symbol of an omniscient deity that can be seen in Italian Renaissance painting, long before the birth of Masonry, which was not formed until the early 1700s.

The Great Seal of the United States, symbol of the nation's sovereignty, was adopted on June 20, 1782, and the reverse side of the seal is what appears on the back of the dollar bill. A pyramid of thirteen courses of stone represents the Union, and is watched over by the "Eye of Providence" enclosed in a triangle. The upper motto, Annuit coeptis, means "He [God] has favored our undertakings." The lower motto, Novus ordo seclorum, means "the new order of the ages" that began in 1776, the date on the base of the pyramid. Anti-Mason groups and conspiracy theorists have mistranslated this as "New World Order," attempting to fit the seal into the belief that Masons constitute a vast international conspiracy to create such an "order." When the first President Bush used that phrase during his presidency to describe the changing political map of Europe following the fall of Communism in Europe, it was quickly seized as further evidence of the "Masonic plot."*

One of the oldest and largest fraternal organizations in the world, Freemasonry was formed in London in 1717 by a group of intellectuals who took over a medieval craft guild and fostered what they called "enlightened uplift." They were dedicated to the ideals of charity, equality, morality, and service to God, whom Masons describe as the "Great Architect of the Universe." The order spread quickly through Enlightenment Europe and included men as diverse as Voltaire, King Frederick II of Prussia, and the Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. As it developed, Freemasonry was viewed as anticlerical and was later thought to be antireligious by conservative Congregationalists in the United States. An anti-Mason movement took hold in the nineteenth century, and the Antimasonic Party became the first significant third party in American politics. But the fact is that Masonry was a voluntary fraternal order-a kind of eighteenth-century spiritual Rotary Club-and not a sinister cult intent on world domination, as it has often been portrayed.

Was the ruler of Egypt always a pharaoh?

The earliest carvings and written references to kings show that the Egyptians long considered the king as the earthly manifestation of the sky god Horus and the son of Re, the sun god. Yet, while all the kings of Egypt are typically thought of as "pharaohs," the Egyptians did not call the ruler that until around 1550 BCE. The administrative complex around the court at Memphis was known as Per Ao ("the great house"). The word "pharaoh" was attached at first to the royal palace, and only later to the king himself.

In theory, the pharaoh owned all the land and ruled the people and also served as the high priest of Egypt. But in reality, his power was sometimes limited by strong groups, including the priests and nobility, or local provisional ruler of the nomes, called nomarchs. Although remarkable for the relatively few coups or assassinations in its long history-perhaps a tribute to the power of the Egyptian religion as a stabilizing force-Egyptian politics could sometimes be Machiavellian. There are cases of royal wives getting rid of their divine husbands, and there is even unproved suspicion that the young King Tut was murdered. The intrigues of the Egyptian court are best seen in the story of Pharaoh Amenemhet I (19851956 BCE), who was one of the few pharaohs definitely known to have been assassinated. He is famed for a set of instructions supposedly written posthumously, but most likely the work of a scribe, in which he advises his son to be on guard for intrigues: Excelling in thy greatness...Live apart In stern seclusion, for the people heed The man who makes them tremble; mingle not Alone among them; have no bosom friend, Nor intimate, nor favorite in thy train- They serve no goodly purpose.

'Ere to sleep.

Thou liest down, prepare to guard thy life- A man is friendless at the hour of trial...

I to the needy gave, the orphan nourished, Esteemed alike the lowly and the great; But he who ate my bread made insurrection.

From Egyptian Myth and Legend, Gresham Publishing, 1907; cited in Jon E. Lewis, ed., The Mammoth Book of Eyewitness Ancient Egypt, New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004.

MYTHIC VOICES.

Splendid you rise in heaven's lightland, O living Aten, creator of life!

When you set in western lightland, Earth is in darkness as if in death.

How many are your deeds, Though hidden from sight, O sole God beside whom there is none!

You made the earth as you wished, you alone.

-The Great Hymn to Aten (c. 1350 BCE) Did a pharaoh inspire Moses to worship one god?

Even as Egypt became the world's greatest power, it fell into disarray over religious politics, an intriguing moment in history that might provide a valuable lesson about the volatile combination of belief and government. During his reign, the pharaoh Amenhotep IV (13521336 BCE) made a remarkable and radical-if somewhat mysterious and unexplained-decision. Amenhotep severed all links with the traditional religious capital of Egypt in Memphis and its god Amun-Re, chose Aten as the only god of Egypt, and set out to build an entirely new city devoted to this god. Located about two hundred miles north of Thebes, the city is known today by the name "Amarna," and this period is called the "Amarna Revolution." It affected Egypt in its time as profoundly as the Protestant Reformation affected Europe.

Aten had previously been a little-known god worshipped in Thebes. Unlike Re and other gods, Aten, whose name meant "disc of the Sun," had no human characteristics. Aten was depicted only as a sun from which rays emanated, ending in hands that held the ankh, Egyptian symbol of life. Amenhotep was so devoted to the worship of Aten that he changed his name to Akhenaten. Akhenaten's wife Nefertiti was his supporter in this transformation, taking on the role of priestess and assisting Akhenaten in the new religious ceremonies. Supposedly one of the most beautiful women in Egyptian history, Nefertiti is the subject of several sculptured portraits that have survived from ancient times. She and Akhenaten began a full-scale attempt to wipe out references to all other gods. Throughout Egypt, statues to Amun-Re were smashed, and the god's name was literally chiseled out of monuments. State temples were torn down, and the traditional religious festivals and public holidays were no longer celebrated. The reasons for this radical reformation-the equivalent of a modern American president trying to wipe out any reference to Christianity in America and banning Christmas, Easter, and other religious holidays-are uncertain. There may have been political reasons behind Akhenaten's purge of the other gods.

Within a short time, the vast state mechanism of religion had been reduced to worship of a single god led by one man, the pharaoh. Only he and Nefertiti could communicate with this god. As popes and other religious leaders have well understood over the centuries, the professed ability to communicate exclusively with the gods is a great way to consolidate power.

After Akhenaten's death, the Egyptians stopped worshipping Aten. The new pharoah, Tutankhamun, began the restoration of the old gods, and traditional worship was completely restored under Horemheb, a general in Tut's service, who managed to secure the throne for himself after the death of Tut's successor, and then leveled Amarna.

But for years, many scholars have argued that the worship of this one divinity lingered among the people of Israel, who, according to biblical accounts, had lived in Egypt for hundreds of years. And that creates another interesting collision of myth and faith. The concept of one god became an important part of the religion that was developed by the Israelite leader Moses. The history of the cult of Aten has led to the suggestion that the Jewish and Christian belief in one God may have been derived from Egyptian worship. Among the proponents of this idea was Sigmund Freud, who laid out his theory in his final book, Moses and Monotheism. Or perhaps it was the other way around. As Bruce Feiler writes in his bestseller Walking the Bible, "Might the Israelites have learned to worship one god following the lead of some maverick pharaoh? Or might the Egyptians have learned the same thing by taking an idea from the patriarchs?"

In the traditional Jewish and Christian view, such questions are heresy. But they point to the reason why mythology matters. Cultures collide. Myths are absorbed in the aftermath of that collision. The ideas of one civilization are borrowed and remolded by another. There is no question that the Egyptians profoundly influenced the Greeks in their beliefs and practices. Is it reasonable to ask if they had done the same to the ancient Hebrews? Aten's monotheistic revolution raises a beguiling set of questions. Where do the Hebrews, the twelve tribes of Israel, fit into Egyptian history? And did these Egyptian ideas influence the man who brought the Israelites out of Egypt and delivered God's biblical law on a set of tablets received on Mount Sinai?

This is where myth and history collide-and it is one of the fundamental reasons to understand mythology. Where is one faith or religion-or mythology-born? Whose divinely revealed truth is the one and only truth?

Other intriguing questions surface, the foremost of which involve Moses. In spite of his exalted status in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-Moses is referred to fifty times in the Koran, which credits him with negotiating God down to Islam's five prayers a day-Moses is a mystery man. There is no evidence of his existence in any historical documents outside the Bible or Koran. Extensive Egyptian records contain no reference to a Moses-an Egyptian name; it is Moshe in Hebrew-raised in the house of a pharaoh, as the biblical account and the Hollywood version of The Ten Commandments have it. There is also no reference in Egypt's ancient monuments of bureaucratic records to "the children of Israel" working as slaves and then escaping en masse. There is a single reference to a battle with the Hebrews in a victory column-or stela-erected by Pharaoh Merneptah.

This lack of historical records has led many scholars over centuries to doubt the existence of Moses. That is, of course, a radical idea to many believers, since the story of Moses leading the captive Hebrews out of Egypt, miraculously crossing the "Red Sea"-a mistranslation of the Hebrew words for "Sea of Reeds"-and entering the wilderness, where they spent forty years before entering the Promised Land, is the essence of Judaism. It also provides important symbolic connections to the life of Jesus.

The biblical account of the sojourn of the Hebrews in Egypt goes back to the story of Joseph, one of twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob (son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham). The favorite son, Joseph was famed for his "coat of many colors," but was envied by his brothers, who sold him into slavery and told their father that Joseph was killed while tending sheep. Taken to Egypt, Joseph eventually rose to become a counselor to the Egyptian throne because of his uncanny ability to interpret dreams. One biblical account tells the story of how the wife of Potiphar, Joseph's Egyptian master, accused Joseph of attempting to rape her after he had actually rejected the woman's advances. This story, told in Genesis, echoes an old Egyptian folktale called "The Tale of Two Brothers," which contains all of the details that were presumably "sampled," in modern terms, by the authors of Genesis.

The Joseph story continues as, years later, his brothers come to Egypt in the midst of a drought in their land and are brought before Joseph, now a highly placed adviser to the pharaoh. The brothers do not realize who Joseph is, but he recognizes them, and in an act of forgiveness, Joseph is reconciled with the brothers who had sold him. Joseph's father, Jacob-or Israel, as he is called-and all his descendants make the trip to Egypt, where they are welcomed by Joseph.

After hundreds of years in Egypt, in the biblical version, the Hebrews are eventually viewed as a threat by a new pharaoh-unidentified in the Bible-and they are enslaved, put to work building cities and fortifications. Eventually the pharaoh is so worried about these Israelites that he orders the killing of their firstborn. A Jewish woman places her child in a basket of reeds to save his life. Found floating in the Nile by the daughter of the pharaoh, the child-Moses-is raised as a prince in the royal house. Moses later sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew worker and he kills the Egyptian. Frightened, Moses leaves Egypt, has a divine encounter with God in the form of a burning bush, and returns to Egypt to set his people free. After the ten plagues are visited upon the Egyptians, the pharaoh-usually identified as Ramses II, but there is considerable disagreement over that-consents to let Moses leave with his people, who cross into the Sinai Desert and receive the Ten Commandments; then, after more tribulations, they eventually enter Canaan, the Promised Land. Moses, however, does not go with them. He dies before entering the Promised Land, his final resting place a complete mystery.*

Does Egyptian myth matter?

What difference do all these stories of thousands of gods with animal heads really make? Was Egypt simply one more great civilization that fell into history's dustbin? After the Ramessid Period, Egypt began a long decline, starting with the Twentieth Dynasty (11861069 BCE), as struggles for royal power among priests and nobles divided the country. Egypt lost its territories abroad, and its weakness attracted foreign invaders. The decline accelerated rapidly after about 1070 BCE, and during the next seven hundred years, more than ten dynasties ruled Egypt, but many of them were formed by foreign rulers, including Nubians, Assyrians, and the Persians, whose king Cambyses conquered Egypt in 525 BCE. According to Egyptian accounts, the Persian king respected Egyptian religion and assumed the forms of traditional Egyptian kingship.

After declining for centuries, the glories of the pharaohs finally ended in 332 BCE, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and added it to his empire. When Alexander died in 323 BCE, his generals divided his empire, and one of them, Ptolemy, gained control of Egypt. In about 305 BCE, he founded a dynasty known as the Ptolemies, which spread Greek culture in Egypt, with Alexandria becoming Egypt's capital and central city. Famed for its magnificent library and museum, Alexandria emerged as one of the greatest cultural centers of the ancient world. The dynasty of the Ptolemies (30530 BCE) claimed the title of pharaoh and treated the Egyptian gods respectfully, but the ancient connection between the ruler of Egypt and the gods had finally ended.

In 30 BCE, Egypt's ability to produce vast surpluses of grain made it a great prize in the intrigues that created the Roman Empire. The period included one of the most extraordinary chapters of history, the brief reign of Cleopatra-the last of the Ptolemies-and her involvement with two of Rome's most powerful men, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. As Caesar's lover, Cleopatra went to Rome and was there when he was assassinated in 44 BCE. She returned to Egypt, had her brother killed, and placed her son-fathered by Caesar, she claimed-on the Egyptian throne. She then became involved with Mark Antony, coruler of Rome. Antony and Cleopatra hoped that their combined armies could win control of Rome against Octavian, Julius Caesar's nephew and heir and another coruler of Rome. In the sea Battle of Actium in 31 BCE, the navy of Antony and Cleopatra lost to Octavian's fleet. The famed lovers later separately committed suicide, and Octavian, who would be renamed Augustus and complete the transformation of Rome from republic to empire, made Egypt a province of Rome, which ruled it for the next four centuries. Rome's control of Egypt gradually weakened after 395 CE, when the Roman Empire split into Eastern and Western parts. By 642 CE, Muslims from Arabia had conquered Egypt.

Having faded from its glory and majesty, the three-thousand-year empire saw its lights dim. Did its history and beliefs matter? Did the great civilization make a difference? Unquestionably, the answer is "Yes."

Aside from its obvious artistic, cultural, and technical achievements, Egypt had great impact on its neighbors and later conquerors, including Greece and Rome, which both assimilated aspects of Egyptian religion, art, and architecture.

There is also considerable evidence that Egyptian writings may have influenced the Bible, aside from the stories of Joseph and Moses. A series of Egyptian moral precepts called the Wisdom of Amenenope (c. 1400 BCE), one of the most famous instructional texts in ancient Egypt, has very close parallels to the biblical Book of Proverbs.

Perhaps most significant for world history is the overlooked role of Egypt in the history of Christianity, which took root in Egypt at a very early date. By the end of the second century, Christianity was already well established in the Nile Valley, and soon came to replace the old religion of the gods.

In The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Richard H. Wilkinson concludes: "The spread of the religion was aided by the fact that many aspects of Christianity were readily understandable to the Egyptians in terms of their own ancient myths and beliefs.... [The] fact that the Egyptians, since ancient times, had viewed their king as an incarnation of a god meant that the Christian concept of Jesus as the incarnate son of God was far more readily embraced in Egypt than elsewhere in the Roman world.... [Even] major Christian motifs may have Egyptian origins. The sacred mother and child of Christianity are certainly foreshadowed in the countless images of Isis-whom the Egyptians called the 'mother of god'-and her infant son Horus, as is even the symbol of the cross which is first attested in Egypt as the 'Egyptian' or tau cross-a form of the ankh sign."

But is there something else? Does Egypt's extraordinary history speak to any deeper spiritual or cosmic significance? Setting aside theories of ancient astronauts, cursed mummies, the psychic power of pyramids, and dozens of other "New Age" obsessions with things Egyptian, does the "gift of the Nile" matter? For those with a Jewish or Christian background-as well as those people whose exposure to Egypt was limited to the annual airing of The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston as Moses-there has always been a cultural hangover of animosity toward ancient Egypt. Through this Judeo-Christian framework, Egypt existed only as the home of the ruthless pharaohs, a place of servitude and inhumanity. It was an image that carried through to the American Civil Rights era, when the Deep South was symbolically associated with Egypt and American blacks saw themselves as the Hebrews trying to escape the pharaoh's cruelty.

Lost in this somewhat narrow view of the Egyptians as the "bad guys" is a different view of Egypt-a society where the values of truth, justice, charity, and other virtues played a critical role in shaping a civilization that produced extraordinary beauty and a spiritual view of the universe, which, at its best, believed that a just life was justly rewarded.

CHAPTER THREE.

BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON.

The Myths of Mesopotamia.

It is an old story But one that can still be told About a man who loved And lost a friend to death.

And learned he lacked the power To bring him back to life.

-Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative (translated by Herbert Mason) When on high the heaven had not been named Firm ground below had not been called by name...

...When sweet and bitter mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes muddied the water.

The gods were nameless, natureless, futureless.

-from Enuma Elish, The Babylonian Creation By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

-Psalm 137:1 "Like other people in the ancient world, the Babylonians attributed their cultural achievements to the gods, who had revealed their own lifestyle to their mythical ancestors. Thus Babylon itself was supposed to be an image of heaven, with each of its temples a replica of a celestial palace."

-KAREN ARMSTRONG, A History of God (1993) What role did myths play in ancient Mesopotamia?

Where did Mesopotamia's gods live?

What's so special about the "cradle of civilization"?

How did a swamp inspire Mesopotamia's myths?

How do we know what the Mesopotamians believed?

When Sumer disappeared, where did its myths go?

What is the Enuma Elish?

Was Marduk just another macho man oppressing gentle goddesses?

Who was Hammurabi?

Who's Who of Mesopotamian Myths How did an angry goddess make the seasons?

Was Inanna's city the first "Sin City"?

Who was mythology's first superhero?

Was the Gilgamesh a work of "faction"?

Who came first, Gilgamesh or Noah?

Was the Tower of Babel in Babylon?

Was the Bible's Abraham a man-or another Mesopotamian myth?

Who were El and Baal?

What's a Canaanite demoness doing at a rock concert?

What are three Persian magicians doing in Bethlehem on Christmas?

MYTHIC MILESTONES.

Mesopotamia.

(All dates are Before the Common Era-BCE).

c. 9000 Early cultivation of wheat and barley; domestication of dogs and sheep in the foothills of the Zagros Mountains.

c. 7000 One of the world's oldest known permanent settlements at Jarmo in northern Iraq; crude mud houses; goats, sheep, and pigs herded; wheat grown from seed.

6000 Farmers from northern areas migrate south to settle in the region between Babylon and Persian Gulf.

c. 5500 World's first irrigation systems used. Fine pottery is invented. Trading begins from Persian Gulf to Mediterranean.

c. 5000 First religious shrines in Eridu-called the "first city."

c. 4500 First use of sail.

40003500 Sumerians settle on the banks of the Euphrates. First use of the plow.

3500 Emergence of the first city-states.

3400 Clay counting tokens and first written symbols in use.