Religion is defined by Emile Durkheim as a “unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden”. In the ancient world the religion a society believed was unified and worked with their lifestyle and situations. a lot of times gods & goddesses were directly related to the weather and wars. There would be a god of rain who would bring good crops which kept a society functioning. The ritual of religion is an important part of these societies, it gave people a purpose and made sense of the world even if it was really just a functional way to build an prosperous kingdom for the elite rulers. I am going to explain the rituals & religions of five ancient civilizations; Mespotamia, Egypt, …show more content…
Everything we know about the Indus Valley is thanks to archaeology because although they had a written language, we cannot read or understand it. Like all long time successful civilizations the Indus Valley lived and relied on rivers which brought healthy crops and food to the society. In the western world it is believed that animals and humans are completely separate however researchers believe that the Indus Valley people saw it as blended together and possibly equal. There were no structures in the city like Egypt used to show obvious worship rituals, but there is designs on seals and tablets along with certain terra-cota figurines and masks. The images were a mix of bearded humans and animal with large horns. Female designs had different headdresses or hair styles and there were more female figurines than male found. In these designs plants and animals were shown as powerful leading to believe these people saw living beings as equally important unlike the previous cultures who worshipped gods. In the large city Harappa there is evidence of public baths and larger homes with rare silver and gold ornaments, which researchers believe was evidence of a class system or elites with more resources available to them however unlike all previous cultures before there is no evidence of a king. one of the material evidence of how this society lived is the big basin …show more content…
It was common to bury family members underneath their own homes and also in cemeteries. Generally the burial process was simple, with few items with the person, sometimes nothing at all, however if there were expensive items this showed their social class or gender. The Royal Cemetery at Ur is an example of lavish burials of 16 tombs. The tombs contained exotic goods and also signs of human sacrifice. The people in these tombs are lavishly dressed with jewels however there is no evidence of exactly what they were. What is so puzzling even today is that these lavish burials were put in trash dumps, perhaps because it was easier ground to dig up. What makes Old Kingdom Egypt so different from Mesopotamia is they would never bury an elite where trash is also dumped. As everyone knows the Egyptians believed in an afterlife so mummifying the body was very important. If one could afford such a burial their tomb would have everything to continue a rich and successful afterlife such as small charms to keep evil spirits away. Shang China also used tombs to bury their kings, in their tombs can be consorts, weapons, jade artifacts, bronze vessels along with animal & human sacrifices. According to the inscriptions written on oracle bones most of the human sacrifices were war captives. There is little evidence of burial rituals used in the Indus Valley perhaps because of their