User:Earlducaine/sandbox

--DRAFT--

Wikipedia's entire treatment of ancient Middle East history is currently suffering due to the lack of a coherent treatment of Mesopotamian Religion. Make no mistake Mesopotamian Religion is a highly fraught subject. To name just a few unresolved aspects: - What was the canonical status of the religious literature that survived? Were they scribal exercises? Or did they represent an official world view? - Did that cononicity change over time? E.g. did they start out as scribal entertainments and become canonical, or where they beliefs that were already circulating and with varying degrees of fedelity became written down? - Related -- were they just part of elite culture or were they part of popular beliefs too? - How do the texts that we have, hymns, ritual, mythology, relate to actually practices? - Did cultural changes Summerian --> Akadian --> Assyrian disrupt the the relationship of elite religion vs imperial propaganda vs popular religion. - what to make of the innumerable religious iconographies (cylinder seals, artistic depictions, etc) that seem to have no correspondence to the literary mythology that's come down to us. - How were the theological aspects of religion administered. - what was the intersection of popular every-day life and Mesopotamian religion? E.g. did most people residing in cities know who their patron deity was? How did every-day people venerate gods? Did they keep private shrines? Was there a class of priesthood that common people interacted with? Did they officiate rituals outside of great religious ceremonies that were an essential part of kingly and imperial propaganda?