Nature wasn’t as kind to the area where early Mesopotamians built their first cities and great temples as it was to ancient Egypt. Deserts on both sides of the Nile insulated Egypt from invaders during its Old Kingdom period and its kings were usually able to dominate its more exposed Nubian south, but Mesopotamians settled on a large open plain in southern Iraq. Unprotected on all sides, they were invaded many times. In addition, the cities they built were independent states rather than one unified kingdom like Egypt during its most politically stable times, so they devoted a lot of energy to fighting each other. These difficulties made some of their perspectives of the world seem modern by today’s standards.
Mesopotamians had already built sophisticated societies in the hills on the sides of the plain. The Hassuna were farming around modern Mosul by 5800 BCE, the Samarra developed sophisticated irrigation techniques in northern Iraq, and the Halaf then farmed a wider variety of grains in the region than ever before and painted pottery in elegant geometric patterns. In the fourth century BCE, people ventured onto the southern part of the plain, settled by the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, and extensively irrigated the land to create cities out of a desolate landscape with barren soils, few minerals, and little timber or stone.
So like Egyptians, Mesopotamians experienced sharp contrasts between the starkness of wastelands and the bounty of civilization with vast palaces, verdant fields of grain, rows of date palms, gleaming temples, storerooms stacked with valuables, and sparkling ribbons of water that flowed by rows of crops. Rather than seeing their own human ingenuity as the creator of this miracle, they projected the powers of creation into the heavens and imagined a pantheon of gods who made all good things, as Egyptians did. But ancient Mesopotamian theology was often edgier.
Early Mesopotamian cities were independent states, and people saw each as ruled by its own god. The deities in different cities often competed with each other, in contrast with the tidier symmetrical theology from Heliopolis, with a succession of pairs of gods culminating in Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys, who represented all of Egypt.
The Sumerian god Enki was the lord of water, and his city was Eridu, which had grown at the edge of the plain before the largest Sumerian cities were built. He had inherited the laws, patterns, institutions, and polite behavioral customs that hold the universe together (which Sumerians called me) from his father, Enlil, the god of air. Enki’s daughter Inanna was the deity of the largest early Sumerian city on the southern plain, Erech, and she planned to snatch the me from Dad. She traveled in her boat to Enki’s temple, where he invited her to a banquet of barley cakes and date wine. He became intoxicated and gave her the me, which she hauled onto her boat. She and her counselor, Ninshubur, swiftly departed for Erech before her father regained his senses. After sobering up he dispatched sea monsters to seven stopping points between Eridu and Erech and instructed them to seize the boat and its precious cargo.
But Inanna and Ninshubur were able to escape them, and they brought the me to her city, which grew into Mesopotamia’s most prosperous and powerful state.
This story might not seem as orderly as Egyptian theology, but it must have captivated Mesopotamians, since it reflected their political fragmentation. Later people that Mesopotamia influenced also often imagined their pantheon as a dysfunctional family, including the Hittites in Turkey and the Greeks. Egyptians, unified by one river and often living within one political state under a luminous king, could more easily assume that all the gods cooperate to maintain a harmonious universe. But Jan Assmann, in Of God and Gods; Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism,noted that the political pluralism in Mesopotamia gave rise to a tradition of international law. Treaties between states became common there and among the Hittites. Both parties called the gods to witness their agreements and punish transgressors, and they swore a solemn oath that placed them under divine supervision. Assmann felt that the common use of treaties encouraged people to think that there is a strong connection between justice and history, and that the Hebrews inherited this assumption and further developed it. Mesopotamian ideas of history as a multitude of states contending with each other seem more modern than Egypt’s Old Kingdom’s more sheltered views of the world.
The Epic of Gilgamesh emerged in Mesopotamia’s more fragmented political world. Gilgamesh was two-thirds god and the king of the great city Erech. Sounds like an excellent deal, but not being a full god meant that he would have to die, and he became obsessed with this. He was also arrogant and abused his subjects. After a long and unsuccessful quest for immortality, he returned to his city, learned to enjoy the common temporary pleasures of companionship, and became more compassionate. Rather than being portrayed as everything glorious, like an Egyptian king, he evolved like a modern self.
Mesopotamians partitioned the world into distinct domains more than ancient Egyptians and Chinese often did. Locations in the world were politically distinct, without a single king’s authority and court rituals. And contrary to teachings in ancient India’s Upanishads, people and divinities had different identities. Mesopotamians institutionalized ways of thinking about and representing reality over a wide geographic area, which many people in the modern West have resonated with.