Table of Contents
What role did the gods play in Sumerian life?
Sumerians practiced polytheism, the worship of many gods. They believed that their gods had enormous powers. Gods could bring a good harvest or a disastrous flood. The gods could bring illness or they could bring good health and wealth.
What impact did Sumerians believed their gods have on everyday life?
The ancient Sumerians believed that everything that happened to them – good and bad – was the result of a god’s pleasure or displeasure. The daily life of every person was spent seeking ways to please and appease their many (many!) gods.
What role did gods and priests play in Sumer?
In Mesopotamian society, priests and priestesses were equals to the king in power and honor. They were mediators between the gods and the people. His or her job was to please the gods, to divine their will and communicate it to the ruler and the people.
What role did Sumerian sculpture play in religious worship?
What role did Sumerian sculpture play in religious worship? The Sumerians placed statues, such as the Statuettes of two worshipers in their temples. The statuettes represent mortals with their hands folded in prayer and holding small beakers for libations in honor of the gods.
What was the role of the Sumerian gods?
These were followed by the 50 “great gods” or Annunaki, the children of An. Sumerians believed that their role in the universe was to serve the gods. To this end the ancient Sumerians devoted much of their time to ensuring their favor with the gods with worship, prayer, and sacrifice.
How did the Akkadians change the Sumerian religion?
The Akkadians syncretized their own gods with the Sumerian ones, causing Sumerian religion to take on a Semitic coloration. Male deities became dominant and the gods completely lost their original associations with natural phenomena. People began to view the gods as living in a feudal society with class structure.
What was the afterlife like for the Sumerians?
Devotional scene, with Temple. The Sumerian afterlife was a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue “a shadowy version of life on earth”. This bleak domain was known as Kur, and was believed to be ruled by the goddess Ereshkigal.
How did the Sumerians pass down their myths?
Sumerian myths were passed down through the oral tradition until the invention of writing (the earliest myth discovered so far, the Epic of Gilgamesh, is Sumerian and is written on a series of fractured clay tablets).