Polytheism in Neo-Babylonia

Chapter 7 of Francis Joannes’s The Age of Empires is titled “Relgion and culture in Babylonia in the first millennium BC.” This chapter strikes me as a highly fascinating chapter, comprising many details about the gods and goddesses of Babylonia, along with the temple organization and the hierarchical structures of the temple administration. The polytheistic religion of Neo-Babylonia was indeed highly interesting, especially when this was close to the classical era and especially to the period of the Bible. There were various gods (or goddesses) for each natural entity, such as Shamash (Sun), Sin (Moon), and Adad (Storm). These well paralleled with those of the stories of the ancient Greek mythology, and the similarities really emphasize to me that these gods and goddesses originated from pretty much the same culture (back to Hammurabi’s Babylon and Gilgamesh’s Uruk.)

Many positions in the temple also resembled those of the Biblical references. For instance, the erib biti were the people who could enter the most sacred part of the temple. This was similar to the parts in the Bible when only the “most righteous” one could enter the tabernacle.

The various stories of the gods and goddesses in this period were also intriguing. This was in fact quite amusing to read. For instance, for the New Year, the people would move the statues of main gods and goddesses from other cities to Babylon to “help” the main god Marduk at the ceremony. Another interesting fact is the process in becoming scribes, whether normal scribes or specialized scribes. In the modern world, among of the most “intellectual” occupations that require years and years of academic preparation are doctors and researchers. Back in the Neo-Babylonian period, it appeared that their equivalent of these jobs was the scribes. The details about how young people, in order to become scribes, needed to pass through rigorous tests. The growing significance of scribes also indicates the increasing interests of the people of the period towards a more “intellectual” world–putting emphasis on collecting and preserving more literary and historical texts.