Premium Essay

Values of the Ancient Sumarians

In:

Submitted By piamia89
Words 923
Pages 4
The Values and World Views of the Ancient Sumerians The Ancient Sumerians were highly authoritative and interesting people. Their system of beliefs and values set them apart from many other ancient civilizations. Each god had a different persona and function. Strict laws were set for their people and harsh punishments were believed in for those who did not follow the religion’s strict code of conduct. The beliefs of the ancient Sumerians were the precedent for developing civilizations to follow. God and goddesses in the Sumerian’s belief system had very diverse personalities. The women were particularly portrayed as deceitful, moody, upset, disturbed, protective, and sometimes even creators of evil. The males, on the other hand, were written as wise, fearless, bold, god of gods, majestic, victorious, perfect, and radiant. In many stories, the male god has to either save the world and humans from something that a woman initiated, or save the women because she herself is helpless. Inanna, the beloved goddess of Sumerian culture, does not help the belief. Throughout the hymns that were written for her and published in a collection by Diane Wolkstein, Inanna must turn to the men of her life for help. In the hymn The Hulupu Tree, Inanna runs to her brother Gilgamesh for help ridding her beloved tree from pests. “I wept! How I wept! Yet they would not leave me tree.” She weeps to both her brothers yet does nothing to try and rid the tree of the pests herself before turning to them. She then requires a throne to rule on and a chair to sit on. Gilgamesh must carve these things for her as well. The roles of gods and goddesses were quite different for the ancient Sumerians. Another example of the vastly different personas of the ancient Sumerian gods and goddesses is the story of Tiamat and Marduk. Tiamat was the sea, personified as a goddess. She was also the

Similar Documents

Free Essay

Read the People - the Period of Antiquity Understood Through Literature

...Read the People: Understanding the Period of Antiquity through Literature The Epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Sumarian text, along with two ancient Chinese poems: To be A Woman, written by Fu Xuan and Substance, Shadow, and Spirit written by T’ao Ch’ien, are all pieces of literature from the period of antiquity (the time prior to the Middle Ages). Reading each of them not simply for pleasure, but rather for the message injected into all parts of these works, allows a reader to learn a great many things other than the plot of the story they have written. The Epic of Gilgamesh takes us through the life of the King of Uruk, Gilgamesh, as he quests for the meaning of living life and for the comfort needed to accept his mortality. To Be a Woman presents to the reader the perspective of a young woman about the way that her society relates to women with an attitude even less than one of indifference. T’ao Ch’ien, author of “Substance, Shadow, and Spirit,” introduces us to the reality of the commoners of another society during that period who were without the power to control their circumstances. All of these pieces of literature delve into the painful realities of life and the embracing of death; however, they are from the perspectives of those who occupy very different stations in life, and thus have very different problems and experiences which gives the reader vastly different understandings of life during this period of time. The attributes of the characters in The Epic of...

Words: 1496 - Pages: 6

Free Essay

Ancient Near Eastern

...ANCIENT NEAR EASTERN THOUGHT AND THE OLD TESTAMENT BOOK SUMMARY by JOE VALENTI Old Testament Introduction OBST 590 B06 Dr. Randy Haney March 1, 2013   TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 1 CHAPTER 2 2 CHAPTER 3 3 CHAPTER 4 5 CHAPTER 5 7 CHAPTER 6 9 CHAPTER 7 11 CHAPTER 8 12 CHAPTER 9 14 CHAPTER 10 15 CHAPTER 11 17 CHAPTER 12 19 CHAPTER 13 20 CHAPTER 14 22 POSTSCRIPT 23 WORKS CITED i CHAPTER 1 The opening chapter begins by orienting the reader to the idea of "comparative study," or the area of study that strives to understand things within their broader cultural context. In the case of this book, the goal is to understand the Old Testament within the context of the Ancient Near Eastern milieu. Walton explains that over the years there has been much debate on the issue of comparative study and the way in which it is to be exercised. Scholars, always biased by their presuppositions, tend to enter the argument negating the importance of the Old Testament on the one side, or defending the inerrancy of Scripture so vehemently that the cultural context is lost. Walton poses a better way, namely, accepting the study of the Ancient Near Eastern cultures as important and academic in their own right while attempting to comprehend the Old Testament in light of what modern scholarship is learning about the ancient world...

Words: 7625 - Pages: 31

Premium Essay

Negotiation

...The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture Michele J. Gelfand Jeanne M. Brett Editors STANFORD BUSINESS BOOKS The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture The Handbook of Negotiation and Culture Edited by miche le j. ge lfand and jeanne m. brett Stanford Business Books An imprint of Stanford University Press Stanford, California 2004 C Stanford University Press Stanford, California C 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford, Jr., University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The handbook of negotiation and culture / edited by Michele J. Gelfand and Jeanne M. Brett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8047-4586-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Negotiation. 2. Conflict management. 3. Negotiation—Cross-cultural studies. 4. Conflict management—Cross-cultural studies. I. Gelfand, Michele J. II. Brett, Jeanne M. bf637.n4 h365 2004 302.3—dc22 2003025169 Typeset by TechBooks in 10.5/12 Bembo Original printing 2004 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 Contents List of Tables and Figures Foreword Preface xi xv ix ...

Words: 186303 - Pages: 746