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The Bible’s Ancient Roots: Discovering the Timeless Influences of Sumerian Mythology
During the time when southern Mesopotamia was under the rule of the Sumerians, beliefs were shaped in those lands that later inspired representatives of other civilizations. Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians — motifs from Sumerian myths appear in each of these ancient cultures, and it should be noted that certain similarities also exist in the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis. What were the beliefs underlying Sumerian mythology? Below, we provide answers to this question.
The Sumerians, who inhabited the Euphrates and Tigris river basin in the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE, created one of the first, and perhaps even the first, developed civilization. In every organized society, there exists a system of beliefs. The Sumerians were no different. The problem is that ancient religion still holds many questions, to which answers may never be found.
To this day, no systematized written source has survived (and perhaps such a source never existed) that would allow for creating a precise picture of the Sumerian religious system. The current state of knowledge is based on prayers, lists of gods, and myths contained in poems from the peak of Sumerian cultural development, although certain information is also provided by inscriptions.
