Cultic Practice
"Enlil! his authority is far-reaching; his word is sublime and holy. His decisions are unalterable; he decides fate forever! His eyes scrutinize the entire world!"
A prayer to the god Enlil.The Mesopotamians venerated images of their gods, which it was believed actually held the essence or personality of the deity that they represented; this is evident from the poem How Erra Wrecked the World, in which Erra deceived the god Marduk into leaving his cult statue. A number of written prayers have survived from ancient Mesopotamia, each of which typically exalt the god that they are describing above all others. The historian J. Bottéro stated that these poems display "extreme reverence, profound devotion, the unarguable emotion that the supernatural evoked in the hearts of those ancient believers" but that they showed a people who were scared of their gods rather than openly celebrating them.
Read more about this topic: Mesopotamian Deities
Famous quotes containing the word practice:
“As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea’s foot and marveling at a midge’s humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)