Ancient Religious World Views

4/14/2019 Chapter 4: Ancient Religious World Views
CWC Primer Chapter 4: Ancient Religious World Views
Introduction
By 4000 BC patterns of dense human settlement were occurring in large
river basins throughout Eurasia and North Africa. Sedentism was emerging
in the Nile river basin, the Tigris-Euphrates, the Indus, the Yangtze, and the
Huang-gu. By the time that fully developed civilizations emerged in each
of these places (ca. 3000 BC) the earliest records and the earliest recorded
hierarchies in nearly every instance were religious. The development of
sites such as Göbekli Tepe already by 9600 BC indicates that leadership
cadres acquired their elite status based to large degree their claim to
religious authority. Since religious ideology was obviously fundamental to
the formation of these cultures, we need to address the reasons for this as
well as for the tendency of religious authority to become transformed into
political, social, and legal power. Modern readers of ancient texts of all
kinds -- the Old Testament, Demosthenes’ speeches, Plutarch's lives, the Rg
Veda or the Egyptian Book of the Dead -- need to be cognizant of the
inherent organization and logic of ancient religious world views.
Otherwise, much of what they have to relate will seem unintelligible or
illogical.
This chapter will present a reduced, distilled model for ancient polytheistic
world views. Generalizations are necessary yet inevitably unsatisfactory.
The texture of all religious world views is complex and multifaceted,
making it difficult to do justice in broad strokes. Nonetheless, a template
must be furnished for the chapters to follow. We are going to examine first
the cosmology or world view of the polytheistic mindset. How did ancient
societies generally perceive the universe to be organized? We will then
examine the inherent logic to this world view. The fact that this world view
was consistent and coherent demonstrates that its believers gave it
considerable thought. Next we will examine the ways in which inhabitants
of ancient societies communicated with their deities. To ancient worshipers
the ability to communicate with deities meant that they could to some
degree control these and through them the natural environment. Last we
will consider ancient views of afterlife, since the manner in which ancient
societies revered their dead says a great deal about what they cherished in
https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~rauhn/ancrelig.htm 1/24
life. Hopefully what will come from this discussion is an appreciation for
the manner in which the ancient religious world view not only fulfilled the
needs of past societies but also formed part of the essential fabric of their
inhabitants' daily lives. It is difficult to appreciate how ancient peoples
went about organizing their societies, their communities, or their lives
without understanding their spiritual attitudes.
At the outset the profound uniformity of ancient religious beliefs needs to

be confronted. Ancient peoples tended to be highly superstitious. All
around them natural phenomena released destructive energy that they
could not understand. All they knew is that these forces were greater than
human kind. To a considerable degree ancient polytheistic world views
focused on the causation and / or the deterrence of destructive or
frightening natural phenomena. An impulse to make sense of it all and to
attribute transcendent meaning to natural phenomena ultimately led to a
great diversity of belief systems and ritual practices. All early human
cultures subscribed to the belief in divine beings that more or less exerted
control over natural phenomena and human fortune. Lacking scientific
understanding prehistoric peoples presumed that any force more powerful
than humankind -- lightening, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc. -- was
inherently divine or a direct manifestation of the divine. The assignment of
names and personalities to these various manifestations enabled prehistoric
peoples to identify and to classify divinities and to devise means with
which to communicate with them. To some degree the process resembled
the tagging of a crime scene. The more divinities one could identify, the
greater the likelihood that one could communicate with that divinity and
appease it. In addition to identifying forces of nature, ancient polytheistic
religions were also concerned with the process of the life cycle, that is, the
seemingly perpetual cycle of Birth, Death, and Regeneration. Events
such as the birth of infants, the marriage of newlyweds, and the interment
of loved ones represented rites of passage for human kind. They were also
symptomatic of the limits of human mortality and tended to evoke the
most pious, profound emotions. The love that existed between life
partners, the love of parents for their children (and vice versa), the pain at
losing a loved one, and the fear of death were all embodied by belief
systems concerned with the life cycle. In addition, much of ancient worship
concerned animism, that is, the use of magical power to gain control over
one's food supply. Bound up in this concept was the recognition that all
organic life inherently had to consume life to exist. In essence, one is what
one eats. When combined with broader notions of anthropomorphic
divinities that existed and manifested themselves on the earth, the power to
take life assumed profound significance. How did one know, when hunting
down a deer in the forest, for example, that one was not in fact slaying the
favorite deer of the huntress goddess Artemis? This is precisely what
occurred in the legend of Agamemnon, the King of Bronze Age Mycenae,
who was forced to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia in recompense. To
avoid the risk of divine retribution, ancient peoples intrinsically recognized
the sacred character of life by offering to share the fruits of the hunt with
the gods through sacrifice. Despite its complementary tendencies toward
the ecstatic and the macabre, sacrifice implicitly recognized the sacredness
of all life and the fine line that existed between corporeal existence and
nothingness.
Polytheistic Cosmology
Polytheism means the belief in the existence of many gods. This was true
of all ancient cultures. There were anthropomorphic and non-
anthropomorphic deities in most ancient cosmologies. By projecting
human experience onto the transcendent realm, humans tended to perceive
their gods organized as families, with a father deity (usually the sky god)
exerting patriarchal control over his consorts, siblings and offspring.
Simultaneously, divine beings operated in a political dimension, with the
supreme god presiding as king and a retinue of advisor gods (resembling a
king’s council of elders) offering advice. As king he could choose to
accept their counsel or not. Such gods were naturally depicted in human
form (anthropomorphism), although attributes such as wings, multiple
limbs, etc. were often added to emphasize power. Most cosmologies
conformed to a familiar pattern of a sky god father ruling his often
fractious family, whose members not only squabbled among themselves,
but interacted for better or for worse with the lives of humans.
As noted above, most ancient societies displayed a bewildering tendency to

incorporate gods -- new gods, foreign gods -- into their cosmologies as a
means to obtain the benefit of new and potentially untapped divine

resources. When coming in contact with foreign cultures it was
commonplace to search for recognizable attributes of one’s own deities in
the newly encountered deities of foreigners. This resulted in syncretism --
the merging of religious beliefs across cultures. Traveling abroad the
Greeks associated Phoenician Melkaart with Hercules (the hero of
civilization), Near Eastern Astarte with Aphrodite (the goddess of love),
and Anatolian Cybele with Rhea (the mother of the gods). The Libyan
Desert oracle consulted by the Macedonian King Alexander the Great at
Siwah and known to the Greek world as the oracle of Zeus Ammon
furnishes a famous example of syncretism. The priests of this oracle were
the first to identify Alexander’s direct descent from Zeus, setting in motion
the Macedonian ruler cults of the Hellenistic era. Even more illustrative is
a passage from the second century AD Northern African author Apuleius,
which lists a litany of ancient goddesses from the Near East, Greece and
Rome, and equates them all with the Egyptian goddess Isis.
Where did all these gods come from? The earliest recorded creation stories
exhibit a discernible cross-cultural pattern: the gods who ruled the universe
were rarely perceived as the earliest of the gods; rather, they represented a
second or third generation of divine beings who had successfully wrested
supreme power from their predecessors. This earlier generation of gods
had acquired power by suppressing an even earlier group of primal forces
that arose from inchoate matter, such as primordial ether or watery abyss.
Each generation of new gods grew increasingly anthropomorphic. In
Mesopotamia the Enuma Elish hymn relates how Tiamat and Apzu
emerged from a watery mass to spawn a new generation of gods. Apzu
ultimately decided to destroy these gods, but the god Enki or Ea killed him
first and thus assumed control of freshwater forever. Enraged by the death
of Apzu, Tiamat sought to exterminate the younger gods. However, a
council of the gods appointed Enlil (the god of air, later known as Marduk
to the Babylonians) to confront the chaotic sea goddess in battle. Enlil
defeated Tiamat, divided her carcass in two, and used half of it to create
the dome of the sky and the other half to create the surface of the earth.
Thus, the sky (An or Anu) and the earth (Ki) became separated by
atmosphere (Enlil), and the earth was perceived as a large rectangular land
mass floating on the body of Apzu or freshwater. Beyond the earth loomed
the primeval ocean of Nammu. The Hittite - Hurrian creation story
Kingship in Heaven, was remarkably similar. In this instance, Alalush, the
original king of heaven, was overthrown by a revolt led by his servant, the
sky god Anush. He in turn was castrated by the god Kumarbi, who
swallowed the sperm and somehow generated the storm god Teshub.
Teshub then overthrew Kumarbi and ruled without a rival for all eternity.
This gruesome motif of castration recurs in the Greek creation myth as
told by Hesiod in his Theogony. According to several world views,
therefore, each generation of gods overthrew its predecessor and grew
more human in form.
The Bronze Age Egyptian tradition surrounding the god Atum of

Heliopolis was only slightly different. According to this tradition, in the
beginning there was nothing but the sea, then a mound of earth (the Atum)
emerged above the water to furnish the origins of life. Much like the Black
Earth rising from the receding waters of the Nile flood, all life ultimately
arose from this mound. In a second tradition two gods of opposite sex
mated to produce the sky and the earth which in turned generated all other
elements of life. A third myth, known as the Memphite theology, explained
that Ptah, the heart and tongue of all the gods, generated the gods Atum,
Re, and Horus (who in turn created all living things), while others
explained that Min, the fertility god of Coptos or Amon, the creator god of
Thebes, were the sources for creation. Despite so many strands of myth,
the Heliopolitan myth of Atum became dominant. High ground whether in
the hills above the Nile Valley or the rising floor plan of Egyptian temples
served as a metaphor for the emergence of the Atum above the waters. The
material world and all life on it allegedly arose from inchoate, fluid
substance.
As the Mesopotamian tradition indicates, the ancient universe was

perceived as existing in three planes – the arc of the heaven above, the flat
land surface of the earth in the middle, and the arc of the underworld
below (typically associated with an underground freshwater sea). The
deities who inhabited the heavens were the Sky Gods, or the Olympic
deities. These deities were typically associated with celestial bodies, the
sun, the moon, stars, etc., though Zeus, the father of the gods in
Mediterranean cosmology was mostly personified as the storm god. The
sky gods controlled the changes of day and night and the seasons; they
could also induce storms, floods, drought, snow, hail, and wind. These
abilities inevitably gave them power over human affairs. Their ability to
peer down on humans from the heavens also enabled them to observe and
thus to witness human behavior, both good and bad. Where the fulfillment
of sacred oaths were concerned, the Olympic deities enjoyed the capacity
to determine equity, that is, the recognition that a mortal could be
prevented from fulfilling a sacred vow by circumstances beyond his or her
control. The sky gods tended to recognize the untoward outcome of an
obligation, not merely its original terms. Generally, sky gods gave good
things to human kind and were beseeched with promises and prayers.
As opposed to the Olympic deities of the heavens, Earth Gods, also

known as Chthonic deities, represented the dark, primordial forces of the
earth. In Mediterranean cultures these included the widespread belief in
the Mother Goddess– epitomized by deities such as Isis, Demeter and
Persephone, and Inanna (Ishtar). The underworld was also perceived as the
realm of the male god Hades or Pluto, the underworld carnation of Zeus.
Hades was sometimes identified as Zeus’ brother, sometimes identified as
Zeus’ own mirror image, Zeus Chthonios. Since earth gods dwelled
below the surface of the earth where everything was dark, they were
perceived as blind and spiteful, having to take their cue from messages
emanating from the Sky Gods. As a result they tended to follow the “letter
of the law.” If a mortal failed to abide by a sacred agreement, for example,
earth gods were obligated to see to the transgressor’s punishment with no
regard for equity. Most of all, Chthonic deities controlled the life cycle.
Since all living things ultimately arose from the earth at birth and returned
to the earth in death, the earth gods were presumed to direct this process.
As the king of the underworld, Hades received the spirits of all deceased
humans and was described by poets as “rich in souls.” Earth gods were
generally feared, therefore. Since their control of the life cycle was
absolute, human dealings with them were unavoidable. The best one could
hope was to placate the Chthonic deities through sacrifice and veneration
and thereby delay the inevitability of one’s own demise or that of a loved
one.
Numina, non-anthropomorphic deities, or spirit forces, were another divine

element that had to be placated. In Greco-Roman society Hestia or Vesta,
the essence of fire, was goddess of the hearth. In fact, human mastery of
fire dated back some 350,000 years and represented the first natural energy
to come under human control. The maintenance of the eternal flame of an
ancient community such as Rome was viewed as a sacred responsibility,
not to mention a communal necessity. The Romans appointed a high
ranking college of priestesses, the Vestal Virgins, to watch over the fire.
Other Roman numina included the Lares and the Penates, friendly spirit
forces who warded over the doorsill, the pantry of the household, and the
crossroads of farming communities. Many of these spirit forces or energies
appear, in fact, to have been closely linked to agricultural environments
(molds and fungi that could damage crops, for example) and possibly
originated there. Their presence at the surface plain of the earth seemed
certain. Most Classical cultures populated their world with lesser spirit
forces such as these: demons, angels, ghosts; demigods and woodland
spirits like nymphs and satyrs, and powerful spirits of the dead, whether in
Greece or in China. The number and variety of such spirits surpasses
summary description, but the phenomenon needs to be emphasized in
o r d e r to demonstrate the degree to which the „real’ world was perceived
as inhabited by a variety of spirit forces.
In general one could define polytheistic deities of antiquity as superhuman

entities that displayed both the best and worst attributes of human nature.
Everything that humans did the gods seemingly did to an extreme. Just as
humans became angry, the gods became violently angry; if humans felt
passion, a god’s passion was uncontrollable. Consider the example of Zeus
and Hera, the former of which would disguise himself in animal form to
have sex with beautiful nymphs and maidens. He would then boast about
his conquests in the presence of his jealous wife Hera, who would
invariably wreak her vengeance on the unwitting victim. It is difficult to
conceive of Zeus, the fornicating, inebriated, mercurially angry sky god as
the discriminating judge of all human actions and the guardian of sacred
oaths. Nonetheless, ancient Greco-Roman societies perceived of him in just
such a manner. Partly this is a consequence of the relatively open character
of Greek religious practices; there was no church, no hierarchy of priests,
no ‘bible’ of revealed sacred truths. The works of Homer and Hesiod were
fundamental to the shaping of Greek views about the gods, but these were
poets and storytellers, not religious thinkers, and the gods they described
amounted to little more than literary portrayals. The difference between the
characters portrayed in these works and true religious sensibility can be
perceived in the figure of Hera. As we have noted, the myths surrounding
Hera cast her in the role of the jealous and vindictive wife of Zeus;
however, the material evidence of her cults and rituals present a far more
positive impression. As the patron of marriage and childbirth, Hera
presided over two essential areas of life, especially for women. Hera’s
range of divine patronage, allowing for contradiction, provides one of the
defining distinctions between polytheistic and monotheistic world views.
Even in Egypt, where public religion was tightly controlled by the religious
hierarchy, authorities tolerated and even promoted a very fluid and
paradoxical set of deities whose roles and identities overlapped in ways
unthinkable in monotheistic terms. Polytheistic world views, with multiple
gods often in direct competition with each other, suitably explained the
apparently random character of natural phenomena. Floods, earthquakes,
famines - even the outcomes of human disasters such as wars - were not
random instances of meaningless chaos, but elements of a cosmic order
that was subject, at least on one level, to the whims of gods and goddesses
with essentially human motivations. There was righteous anger to be sure
(justice was dear to the gods), but also irrational jealousies, favoritism,
animosity, what have you. At the mercy of such forces, humans could at
best try to cover their bets by offering prayers and sacrifices and by
performing proper rituals to maintain what the Romans referred to as the
pax deorum, or the peace of the gods. Permeating most ancient cultures
was a notion that the balance of the universe was constantly off kilter and
required the direct attention of human kind. This concept, the need to
maintain the order and harmony of the universe, was known as Me in
Sumer, Ma’at in Egypt, Karma in India, and the Mandate of Heaven in
China. Even the gods could not escape the consequences of cosmic
disorder.
Polytheism vs. Monotheism

It is common to view polytheism, the belief in many gods, as the opposite
of monotheism, the belief in one god only, and equally commonplace for
monotheists to regard polytheism as primitive. However, it may be more
beneficial to view polytheism through a kind of theological prism. Just as
white light refracted through a prism stone emits a spectrum of diverse
colors, one could argue the varied pantheons of ancient gods and goddesses
functioned as manifestations or even approximations of a genuine but
remote divine reality. Benefit arguably obtained from a multitude of gods.
For example, the sheer number of female deities in ancient polytheistic
world views served to elevate the importance of that gender on a cosmic
scale, particularly when compared with the all too commonly masculine
character of monotheistic divinities. Neither belief system was ever truly
devoid of ambiguity. Most polytheistic world views tended to recognize
one god who was supreme and superior to all the others (e.g., Greek Zeus,
Egyptian Amon Re, Babylonian Marduk, Hindu Brahman); conversely,
several monotheistic world views recognize multiple sources of godhead.
For example, Roman Catholicism recognizes three divine entities
combined in one god (father, son, and holy spirit), Zoroastrianism posits a
nearly equal but evil god, Ahriman (Aingra Mainyu), to oppose the good
god, Ahura Mazda, just as the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam) recognize a Satan who opposes their God. In addition numerous
devout monotheists ascribe to the belief in a wide array of spiritual beings
apart from God: saints who possess formally recognized abilities to assist
the living as well as angels and demons. These beliefs would easily have
found a place in ancient polytheistic communities.
Polytheism does tend to articulate the randomness of causality. Put simply,

“stuff happens.” Natural phenomena were inherently violent, destructive,
and unpredictable, but they were not intentional. Accordingly, they were
neither moral nor immoral, but amoral. When there is no rhyme or reason
to why things happen, there is only chaos, and as modern chaos theory has
demonstrated even chaos is randomly predictable. Polytheistic traditions

that explain the seasons and natural phenomena as the work of gods thus
furnish religious rationale for what is random without denying its implicit
randomness. By contrast, monotheistic systems typically insist on a
causality emanating from the will of a single god, a just god who controls
every aspect of reality. Everything that happens does so for a reason in
accordance with God’s will. Accordingly, monotheists tend to see inherent
logic to the universe. Gradually identified universal truths, such as
mathematical theorems and the predictable motion of the stars,
demonstrated to ancient thinkers that the universe contained irrefutable
particles of order. Where there was order, there had to be law or a set of
guiding universal principles. Law, in turn, implied that there was a right
way and a wrong way to do things, just as order implied the existence of a
reasoning intellect responsible for the architecture of the universe. In other
words, there had to be a god, one god, and a just god at that, who
controlled every aspect of reality. However, monotheistic world views
inevitably stumbled over the issue of theodicy, or the belief in divine
justice, particularly when they attempted to reconcile a belief in god’s will
with the actual course of events, where all too often “bad things happened
to good people.” The book of Job in the Hebrew bible furnishes a
profound examination of divine justice, where the just and pious Job was
subjected to a devastating series of disasters to see if his faith could
withstand the test. His friends saw his demise as punishment for some
fault or sin, yet, Job resolutely insisted that he was innocent, and he refused
to abandon his belief in god’s essential goodness; he would not take his
wife’s advice to “curse god and die.” Ultimately he was granted an
interview with god (as a voice from the whirlwind), whose transcendent
greatness (“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?”) reduced
Job to humble submission. In short, however great the likelihood that a
monotheistic god attended to divine justice, the problem exceeded human
understanding.
Given these philosophical conundrums, a third option was atheism or

agnosticism. To contemplate the possibility that the universe lacked
controlling deities or to assume, if they did exist, that they ceased to
concern themselves with human activity ages ago was to commit the crime
of hubris. Hubris was a loaded term that entailed a range of meanings.

Principally it referred to human arrogance, the act of putting oneself at the
level of the gods, to deny their existence, or to say that they had no power
over oneself. To engage in hubris was to invite divine retribution, and
since the gods were immortal they did not need to punish mortals in any
predictable manner. The gods enjoyed a different sense of time and place;
simply killing a transgressor would teach him nothing. For greater effect
they might choose to punish the guilty party's loved ones, his descendants,
for example, his c o m m u n i t y , or his entire society through the
introduction of plague and pestilence. As the Athenian lawgiver Solon
noted in his poem, such is the vengeance of Zeus…one man pays
immediately, another later; but to those who manage to escape punishment
themselves…it relentlessly follows and the innocent pay for the crimes,
either in the form of their children or the next generation thereafter (1.25-
32). In essence, the act of hubris put one’s entire society at risk and was
therefore punishable by death. Accused in 399 BC of corrupting the youth
and of denying the existence of the gods, Socrates ultimately ran afoul this
logic and paid for it with his life. A sensible person feared the gods and
scrupulously followed their prescriptions. Careful attention to the wishes
of the gods ensured the maintenance of order (the Me, the Ma’at, the pax
deorum), the fecundity of nature, and the maintenance of life. The fear of
the unknown was a fundamental tool used by religious authorities not only
to control their societies but also to impose religious conformity on their
inhabitants.
Principle Means of Communication with Ancient Deities: Ritual,

Sacrifice, and Divination
Given the omnipotence of the gods, what was the purpose of human kind?
Given that the gods were remote; how did one approach them? Since they
were mysterious; how could one understand them? And since they were
so obviously powerful, how could one negotiate with them? The apparent
gap between the transcendent and the mundane was vast, and it is not
surprising that most cultures recognized a special status for intermediary
figures who claimed to bridge the divide between humans and the divine.
The earliest such figure was the shaman, a man usually believed to have
powers to communicate with the spiritual world. When true civilizations
developed, the shamanic role tended to devolve to a class of priests, who

often exercised temporal as well as spiritual powers. The duty of the
priestly class was to communicate with the divine on behalf of the
community, to ensure proper rainfall, a bountiful harvest, success in battle,
and so on.
Most ancient cultures distilled the practice of communicating with

divinities into three principal parts: Ritual, Sacrifice, and Divination.
Ritual was the invocation of the gods through magical prayers and chants.
If properly invoked a god could be compelled against his or her will to
attend to human requests. Ritual consisted of various forms of prayers,
chants, oaths, and curses (essentially black magic). The success of a given
ritual gave it timeless legitimacy, not to be deviated from. Ritual was
accordingly highly formulaic, entrusted with divine importance, and all but
frozen in time. Ritual inherently imposed inalterable norms on worshipers.
Ritual reinforced social solidarity and was believed to be undermined
when performed poorly or not at all. In the Roman view, the pax deorum
was jeopardized by such errors, and since the priests were politicians,
ample care was taken to appease not only the gods, but the restless
populace as well. Equally pragmatic was Confucius, whose dedication to li
(the rites) is legendary. For him, ritual provided a social lubricant to ensure
that all things were arranged in their proper place and that due respect was
shown for the traditions of the ancestors. Egyptian and Brahman priests
were equally renowned for the intricacy and elaborateness of their rituals.
The ritualistic component to ancient religion rendered it one of the most
conservative attributes of any human culture, accordingly.
Sacrifice was the gift or offering made to a god in exchange for which
humans could ask a favor. Sacrifice implied that humans potentially
exerted power over the gods. The ancient Sumerians asserted that the gods
had molded humans out of clay, mixed with god’s blood, and in their own
image in order to feed and to serve them. The gods did not necessarily
need to eat, in other words, but they longed for the sensations that arose
from the pleasure of eating. In much the same manner the gods desired the
vicarious experience of all corporeal pleasures– eating, drinking, sexual
relations, and sleep. These were the only genuine proofs of physical
existence, and since mortality was fleeting they possessed value to humans
and gods alike. The sharing of corporeal pleasures thus gave humans
leverage over the gods. The logic of this is explained in the Gilgamesh
Epic, where Utnapushtim (the Sumerian Noah) conducted his sacrifice
following the flood, (lines 150-165). As the text notes, the gods smelled
the sweet savor, the gods crowded like flies around the sacrifice.
Human dealings with the gods were viewed very much in terms of
contractual agreements. The Latin vow, do ut des (I give to you so that you
might give me in return), expressed this succinctly. Humans venerated the
gods by offering them gifts on a daily basis. Since the purpose of mortal
existence was to serve the gods, social hierarchies regarded the
construction and maintenance of religious shrines (alters, temples,
sanctuaries) as a primary duty. Likewise, it was customary for citizens
confronting life-threatening enterprises such as hazardous journeys,
military engagements, illness, old age, or childbirth, to beseech the aid of
the gods through votive offerings. Successful fulfillment of a prayer would
then result in another round of votives, typically in the form of altars,
statues, shrines, captured weaponry, or tithes of profits. The development
of built environments at sanctuaries such as Delphi and Olympia in
Greece, where the erection of thousands of small monuments testified to
the god’s repeated response to prayers, offered visual proof of the power of
the god and his or her willingness to come to the aid his worshipers.
Permanent monuments were expensive, however, and therefore occasional
gifts; the typical offerings on a daily basis were largely made as sacrifice.
Sacrifice was divided into two types, blood and non- blood sacrifices.
Although non blood sacrifices such as the dedication of votive objects and
libations into the ground were probably more commonplace, blood
sacrifices of animals such as chicken, sheep, goats, cows, and bulls
naturally arrest our attention. The animals to be sacrificed had to be perfect
specimens with no blemishes. They were frequently adorned with wreaths
and, at least in Greece and Rome, were believed to show no hesitation as
they were led to the altar. After the sacrifice, the edible parts of the animal
were usually distributed to the participants or to the public. The grand
sacrifice of the Greeks, the hecatomb (literally „one hundred cattle’) was as
much a barbecue as it was a religious event. Occasionally, the entire animal
would be burned as a special offering known as a holocaust (that is, ‘burnt

whole’). Sacrifices, thus, represented social interaction at a number of
levels. First and foremost they functioned as a feast (adding protein to one’s
diet) typically shared among a collective since by necessity the victim
needed to be consumed all at once. By cooking the inedible portions over a
fire to create a sooty smoke column visible in the heavens, they
represented the sharing of life with a deity (communion). In addition, the
macabre experience of witnessing the shedding of blood convinced
participants of the divine power of the sacrificial experience, that is, the
human capacity to take life. And by focusing on the otherworldly aspect of
the moment, frequently enhanced through consumption of wine or other
stimulants, sacrifice exposed the participants to an ecstatic experience
shared in a collective. Humans could rarely witness the taking of life
without undergoing feelings of unnatural, heightened sensations of
transcendence, thus, affirming the otherworldly character of the experience.
By its spectacle and the awe that it inspired sacrifice tended to command
center stage. Inevitably, the question of human sacrifice arises. In archaic
Bronze Age civilizations such as Ur (Sumer), Old Kingdom Egypt, or
Shang Dynasty China, human sacrifice on a significant scale occurred in
the form of „retainer’ sacrifice, where individuals are killed and buried with
the sovereign to serve him in the next life. These sacrifices were ultimately
modified through the substitution of icons and figurines in place of live
humans. In later Classical era civilizations human sacrifice did occur on
occasion, but it was typically viewed as distasteful and as a last resort to
summon the attention of the gods.
Divination was the belief that the gods sent signs predicting the future and
that these signs could be interpreted by skilled professionals. This is
typically what the priest or devotee requested, and what the god returned,
invoked or uninvoked. Invoked signs implied that the gods could be
summoned magically or even compelled to give answers to human prayers
and requests. Uninvoked signs were natural phenomena sent by the gods
uninvited, such as storms with damaging hail and lightening or births of
unnaturally deformed animals. These indicated disruptions to the pax
deorum that required immediate attention. The chief purpose of invoking
the gods through ritual and sacrifice was to summon the attention of a
deity momentarily in order to place before it a proposed course of action.

All official “state sponsored” activities required due consultation of the
gods. Divination took many forms: astrology (observing the sky for natural
phenomena), hepatoscopy (the examination of the livers of sacrificial
victims), and even the trance-like utterances of inspired priests and
priestesses. Typically it would occur in a precinct referred to in Latin as a
templum, a ritually purified area for purposes of divination. In Rome
before a public voting assembly could be convened, the priestly college of
the augurs would monitor a given quadrant of the night sky for the “flight
of the birds.” Depending on the omens that were observed (positive vs.
negative types of birds) an assembly either would or would not occur.
Military commanders typically consulted the shape of the livers of
sacrificial victims before committing their forces to battle. With his navy
arrayed in battle formation, a Roman admiral had to await the outcome of
the feeding of sacred chickens, kept in a cage on the deck of his flagship.
If they ate with gusto, that was a positive sign and a naval battle would
ensue. If they hesitated and looked to the heavens this was a bad sign and
the admiral was religiously obligated to refrain from committing his
warships to a divinely unsanctioned action. In one instance, the Battle of
Drepanum in 249 BC, the Roman admiral P. Claudius Pulcher was ready to
engage the war fleet of his Carthaginian adversaries, but his sacred
chickens, kept in a cage on the deck of his flagship, refused to eat.
Becoming exasperated Pulcher seized the cage of frightened birds and
threw them into the sea. As this example demonstrates, no public activity
could occur without due invocation of the gods and noth i n g was done
without their consent. Religious authority, in other words, was directly
translatable into legal, military, political, or judicial power. Neither kings
nor subjects could escape the will of the gods. In China at the end of the
Bronze Age (1122 BC), the Zhou dynasty overthrew the ruling Shang by
proclaiming that the Shang had lost the confidence of the sky god T’ien
and that they could no longer guarantee the divine safety of the Chinese
people. By arguing this principle the Zhou introduced the concept of the
Mandate of Heaven. Diviners educated in the required rituals guided the
Zhou and later kings through their sacrifices at the Altar of Heaven and
monitored the resulting omens. A clustering of bad omens might very well
indicate that a given king’s mandate had expired. This development not
only placed inordinate emphasis on ritual procedures as these pertained to

the monarch, but it also introduced the concept of royal accountability to a
higher moral authority. Throughout Classical Chinese history once a
dynasty was believed to have lost its moral ascendancy (in part through
negative prognostication), its authority was jeopardized.
It is important to recognize that today’s worst superstitious phobias

represented officially sanctioned policy in the past. Days were viewed as
Fas or Nefas (divinely sanctioned or unsanctioned). Any untoward
occurrence could be interpreted as an omen. Stepping on a crack in the
sidewalk, breaking mirrors, walking under ladders, avoiding the path of a
black cat all pale in comparison to the texture of superstitious lore that was
sustained during antiquity. What equally needs to be stressed is the
inseparable character of religious and secular life in most ancient
civilizations. On any given day, sacrifices of family cults would occur in
each and every household, sacrifices would occur in civic centers before
they could be opened for business, and no army would commit to battle
short of an appropriate sign from the gods. Religious activity assumed a
regularized, permanent component to the fabric of everyday life. Its
activities were so commonplace that they passed without comment by
ancient writers and their audiences. Ancient writers in essence took it for
granted that their readers were fully cognizant of this fact, thus, offering
little explanation.
Ancient Views of Afterlife

The standard view of life after death was fairly grim: the souls of departed
humans traveled to the underworld kingdom of Hades where they existed
for eternity as shades. In Mesopotamia the Sumerians believed that the
dead – kings and slaves alike -- all went to a bleak place known as The
Land of No Return. To reach this land the spirits of the dead had to be
ferried across a fearsome underground river (Apzu) by a boatman who
expected to be paid. Family members buried their dead with offerings of
food and drink to maintain them until they reached their destination,
including personal objects to be used in the underworld and tokens of
precious metal to pay the boatman and other waiting demons and deities.
Belief in this one-way journey prevailed in most ancient cultures, and while
some traditions, such as that of the Egyptians, insisted that the sun
illuminated the underworld during evenings, most, like the Epic of
Gilgamesh, presumed that underworld was a place of utter darkness where
the inhabitants spent eternity eating dust and clay.
Even cultures that viewed the afterlife as a blissful abode recognized that
the voyage there was perilous. Bronze Age Chinese aristocrats believed,
for example, that the spirits of deceased relatives embarked on a long and
tortuous journey into the heavens with little guarantee of success. Those
who arrived at the ultimate destination were allowed to sit at the court of
T’ien or Shang Ti, “The Supreme Ancestor.” It was the duty of Chinese
descendants, particularly the eldest male of a given family, to assist these
spirits in their journey by feeding them through ritual sacrifices so that
they could attain their place in the heavens and assist their descendants on
earth. Not only the canonical ritual vessels but even the pictographic forms
of early Chinese characters are believed to have been fashioned to
accommodate this process. As with most aspects of Egyptian religion, the
Egyptian voyage to heaven entailed a complex series of recombination.
According to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a person’s spirit (Ka)
depended on the physical remains of his body to survive and would return
to earth periodically to visit them; it also needed food and drink for
nourishment. After death and with the aid of the proper rituals, an
Egyptian’s Ka would combine with his Ba, or his unique individual soul,
to form the Akh (a spirit of light) and ascend to heaven. This was
accomplished through carefully administered burial rites, but before the
Akh could ascend into heaven, it had to endure a final judgment of the
gods. A council of gods, presided over by Osiris, the god of the dead,
would judge each person’s deeds. Those who failed to live righteously
would neither endure this trial nor survive their corporeal existence. Those
who did joined the gods on their daily round into the underworld and back
again into the heavens. Anyone who could afford the costs of
mummification, a tomb, the sustained practice of the necessary rites, and,
of course, the conviction of a blameless life could expect to become a god
in the after world. As these examples demonstrate, therefore, even world
views that offered optimistic places of afterlife tended to insist that the
voyage there was fraught with peril.
Another extremely influential worldview for the development of afterlife

beliefs was Zoroastrianism, which originated among the Iranian peoples of
Central Asia near the end of the Bronze Age (1200-1000 BC). According
to the Avesta, based on the compiled hymns of prophets beginning with
Zoroaster, the human soul had to endure various ordeals on its way to
reward or punishment. To reach paradise, for example, the soul had to
traverse the Chinvat Bridge, the breadth of which shifted according to the
morality of the soul, broadening for the virtuous but sharpening to a
razor’s edge for the wicked. Such ordeals set the stage for a universal final
judgment (frash-kreti, a cyclical process worked out over three millennia)
to be initiated by a savior figure (saoshyant). According to the Avesta, the
entire universe was locked in a cosmic battle between Ahura Mazda („Wise
Lord’), the all- knowing and all-good deity, and Ahriman, the malign
power that was always and everywhere hostile to good. The conflict was
most frequently expressed in terms of Truth versus Lie, and it was a
human responsibility to choose the side of Truth. In the end, following
three millennia of conflict, the souls of all those who had served the cause
of Ahura Mazda would be resurrected into heaven. There was divine
judgment, in other words, but that judgment would occur at the end of
time. As the religion of the Persian empire, Zoroastrianism was well
positioned to influence religious thinking both in Greece and in Israel, and
it is quite possible that views of the afterlife as a place of reward and
punishment on moral grounds, as well as the idea of an end time brought
on by the coming of a messiah figure (a term actually used by the prophet
Isaiah to describe the Persian King Cyrus the Great) can be traced as much
to Zoroastrian roots as to those Egyptian.
Still another unique and influential perception of afterlife emerged nearby

in the Indus river valley. Among the civilizations of this environment arose
the concept of transmigration of the soul and dharma or karma (literally
“action”), the spiritual process that projected the soul forward and
backward through life. Although this world view may have existed earlier,
the first recorded texts were the Hindu scriptures known as the Upanishads
(ca. the 8th century BC). The belief system was so universally recognized
among the tribal communities of the Indian subcontinent that it was readily
accepted by all the mainstream schools of philosophy, Hinduism, Jainism

and Buddhism. According to the construct of dharma, all morally charged
activity had consequences that inevitably redounded against the one who
performed them. As a spiritual process dharma represented a long-term
process that worked itself out over innumerable lifetimes. An individual
soul would move upward (to higher human or semi-divine status in a sort
of heaven) or downward (to lower animal or demon status in a sort of hell)
depending on its accumulated quotient of positive or negative karma. This
in turn was determined by one’s performance of good works and pursuit
righteous behavior during earthly existence. The ultimate goal was to
escape this cycle of rebirths (called samsara) and to achieve liberation
(moksha) and ultimate union with the infinite (nirvana). Rigorous moral
strictures and meditative practices directed by a spiritual leader (guru)
furnished a clearly defined path to achieve this goal. Despite variations on
divine judgment (the Ma’at, the end time, dharma) and equally significant
variations on the essence of spiritual existence, the notion that the process
of afterlife entailed a long arduous journey runs like a thread through most
conceptualizations of afterlife.
Regardless of whether one’s conception of afterlife was dark and gloomy,

light and heavenly, enduringly repetitive, or pregnant with waiting, most
ancient worshipers believed that like other spirit forces deceased humans
emitted an energy force that could be cultivated by the living through
libations. Libations of wine and oil poured into the earth were believed to
infuse the remains of the departed with substances resembling blood to
remind the spirits, however briefly, of the ineffable qualities of life. By
revering the dead, therefore, one gained the potential assistance of their
spiritual energy, which like other energies could be channeled toward
negative as well as positive ends. Reverence of the dead helped to maintain
the link between the living and the deceased in the wider cycle of life.
With so many ways to go about this, our understanding of ancient afterlife
beliefs, specifically, the character of afterlife for humans as individuals
requires further distillation. Beneath these broader constructs of afterlife
belief that were more likely to be discussed by educated priests, prophets,
and philosophers, everyday people tended to organize their burial affairs
according to an array of exclusive religious groupings most appropriately
identified as cults. Despite the modern tendency to associate this term

negatively with unorthodox, antisocial religious communities, its
application to the exclusive religious associations that existed antiquity --
as opposed to officially practiced state religions -- renders it an appropriate
term. With the exception of public officials such as kings, queens, and
other heads of state, the preparation of last rites for the dead invariably
remained a private matter, conducted among related members of families
then as now. However, since significantly large elements within ancient
urban communities lacked families or the necessary means to inter the
dead, unrelated individuals frequently joined in collectives to insure the
necessary requirements of interment. The identification of a cult, as
opposed to a religious sect, rests with the closed character of its
membership and its tendency to focus attention on a particular afterlife
divinity. At least three types of cults existed in the ancient world: ancestor
cults, mystery cults, and hero cults.
From the perspective of social status, ancestor cults were the most notable
of the three. Extended families of respectable, property holding citizens in
ancient communities tended to claim and / or to recognize descent from a
common ancestor, usually a hero descended from the gods. Land-holding
families could point to the cemetery plots on their estates as proof of the
duration of their lineage. The collective energy of so many ancestors, when
properly revered, offered enormous potential of assistance in the spirit
world. Each family had its own unique cultic rituals and observances that
were handed down from father to son as the head of each presiding
generation in the household. The chief duty of the eldest male in such a
context was to produce a male heir who would maintain the cult of the
dead after he himself had passed into the afterworld. Otherwise, the cult
observances would come to a close, and he would be held responsible for
having irreparably disrupted the continuum connecting the living and the
dead. In ancestor cults the focus was always on male lineage because adult
females would marry into the households of unrelated families, thus
abandoning their own cults in favor of those of their husbands. Ancestor
cults tended to focus on the continuum of life, that is, the fact that all
humans descended from ancestors who had managed to avoid extinction
and who were available to assist the living through proper maintenance of
the family cult and its principle assets, the remains of the ancestors
themselves. In many ancient societies the presence of family burial plots
rendered land inalienable because of the associated religious taboo.
Proof of one’s descent from heroic lineage typically identified someone as

an aristocrat. It did not hurt, of course, that aristocrats also claimed
possession of the largest and most productive portions of a community’s
arable land, and it was always a good question which came first,
aristocratic descent or large landholdings. The very least an aristocrat could
claim was that his family had occupied a particular estate for as long as the
community itself could remember. The very notion of aristocratic descent
distinguishes itself from modern concepts of class identification because it
was intrinsically based on non-economic criteria such as “blue
bloodedness.” Since descent from the gods furnished the basis for nobility,
aristocratic elders tended to stand as the chief priests of the gods in
question. Even at times when family cults were incorporated by state
authorities into the emerging urban landscape, it was usually conditioned
on the requirement that the priests of the newly established state cult be
selected from members of the original cultic lineages. The distinction of
divine descent carried with it a presumption that aristocrats as humans were
more capable of communicating with the gods. Why rely on someone
whose connection was remote? This notion conferred on aristocrats
intrinsic leadership responsibilities. As we have seen, the religious
authority of aristocratic leaders was directly transferable into law.
Ancestor cults and descent from the gods, thus, furnished the basis for
aristocratic control of state religion. Participation in the public cults of a
state or community typically required aristocratic status. The remainder of
the community assumed the more passive role of being allowed to observe
aristocrats as they conducted the rites associated with preserving the safety
of the collective. Lesser people could, of course, approach the gods on their
own, but it was tacitly understood that the gods would listen to the prayers
of those who were more directly related to them (aristocrats) and could
afford the most elaborate sacrifices (the wealthy). Those seeking a more
personal experience with the divine, particularly those who by force of
circumstance (enslavement, migration, or flight) had become separated
from their places of origin, tended to turn to other forms of cultic

experience such as mystery and hero cults.
Mystery cults focused on a more intimate personal experience with deity

who according to tradition died and was reborn. These included Dionysus,
Isis and Osiris, Demeter and Persephone, and Attis / Adonis. Members of
mystery cults did not necessarily deny the existence of other gods; rather,
by entering into the cult they vowed to commit their energies to the
veneration of a particular god above all others. All mystery cults tended to
exhibit the same attributes, including exclusivity (there was a clear
distinction between members of a cult and those without), rites of initiation
(to enter a cult all members had to undergo secret rites that revealed the
true essence of the deity), ecstatic experience (various means - wine,
macabre sacrifices, orgies - were used to heightened the consciousness of
cult members and to convince them of the immortal power of the god),
communion with a deity (in this instance, belief in a one-to-one
relationship with the god as its devotee), democratic recruitment
(membership was frequently status-blind with slaves and freedmen
welcome to membership; women were frequently listed as chief
priestesses, though some cults were gender specific), and the possibility of
afterlife. Since the belief systems of mystery cults remained secret, the
precise nature of a member’s afterlife expectations remain hidden. At the
very least it was believed that the power of the venerated deity would
make the member’s experience of the afterlife somehow more tolerable that
otherwise. The widespread popularity of mystery cults during the Roman
Empire, including those of Dionysus, Isis and Serapis, Mithras, or the
Magna Mater (Cybele), testify to the void they filled in the lives of people
seeking a greater sense of meaning to their otherwise mundane existence.
As opposed to the cold, detached character of the official state religions,
these cults offered a more intimate and meaningful religious experience to
its members. Members of cults typically formed closed communities
usually with a central religious focus, and habitual meetings enabled
members to develop closer personal bonds. Together they celebrated the
pivotal rites of passage of the human experience, births (and birthdays),
weddings, and funerals. Elderly members could take comfort in the notion
that their remains would receive proper rites after their departure. In fact,
the main purpose of most local cults was to function as burial associations.
Members had to pay dues to insure their proper attention in the afterlife.
The chief purpose of a cult ultimately appears to have been to enable those
without family networks (isolated slaves, freed persons, orphans, and
widows) to forge surrogate families to ensure their status in the afterworld.
Hero cults are slightly different from mystery cults in that the object of
devotion was essentially a mortal who performed such superhuman
achievements on earth that he was awarded divine status on his demise.
The best example of this was the hero-god Herakles (Hercules). Destined
by Zeus to be his greatest progeny he was cheated of his rightful place in
Olympic pantheon by jealous Hera and was required to complete a series of
superhuman labors in order to earn it. Each of his labors in some way
concerned his conquest and overcoming of death. In the process he rid the
world of primordial monsters, taught humans the science of agriculture,
and showed them the proper manner to worship his divine father Zeus.
Dying tragically, Herakles attained his rightful place in the heavens and
demonstrated to everyday mortals that it was possible to defeat one’s
allotted fate and obtain a better outcome in life. One simply had to believe
in the power of Herakles and faithfully tithe a portion of one’s earnings to
his cult. The tradition of the tithe and other aspects of the cult point to the
syncretic origin of this hero cult with the Phoenician cult of Melkaart of
Tyre. In any event, Herakles became a patron deity to all those embarking
on life-threatening missions, including merchants, sailors, warriors, and
women in childbirth. He offered the hope of overcoming one’s allotted fate
in life to all those who believed that they stood in a disadvantaged state
through no fault of their own and desired more.
To attain the divine status of a hero demanded superhuman

accomplishments. The two most notable examples in this regard were the
above-mentioned King of Macedonia, Alexander the Great, (357-323 BC)
and the Roman dictator, Julius Caesar (101-44 BC). Alexander conquered
vast tracts of territory from Greece all the way to India without ever losing
a battle. Julius Caesar conquered ancient Gaul and then defeated all his
rivals in a protracted civil war only to be assassinated by his remaining
political rivals on the Ides of March. On the night of his funeral a comet
appeared in the sky removing any doubt among the devout that his soul
had ascended into heaven. An altar was erected on the site of his cremation
t h a t was widely used by ordinary Romans for oath-swearing ceremonies.
It is worth noting that both heroes were high born, both claimed descent
from the gods, and both enjoyed optimum positions and every possible
advantage with which to attempt superhuman accomplishments in the first
place. Be that as it may, each was believed to have attained divine status,
laying the foundation for the ruler cults of their successors and reassuring
the devout of the genuine possibility of obtaining divine status in the after
world.
In our attempt to distill the wide range of ancient religious world views to a
manageable set, we have hastily covered a lot of ground. Each of these
world views will be discussed in greater detail in the chapters that follow,
alongside discussion of philosophical developments that typically emerged
in response to world views as recursive institutions of civilization took
hold. In conclusion, we recommend that the student bear in mind the
inherent organization and fundamental logic of ancient religious systems as
we proceed. Otherwise, much of what they have to relate about their
civilizations tends to get ignored. The importance of ancient religious
activity is arguably the single greatest facet of ancient civilizations.
Ancient religious world views furnished foundational touchstones to the
structural boxes (structuration) from which cultures ultimately arose. All
intellectual disciplines including writing, architecture, science, and
philosophy ultimately evolved from them. Given the centrality of religious
activity to ancient social life, this textbook devotes considerable attention
to the matter and relies on it as a signpost for the values and aspirations of
the various civilizations to be discussed.

Ancient Religious World Views

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ancient Religious World Views

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ancient Religious World Views

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

4/14/2019 Chapter 4: Ancient Religious World Views

CWC Primer Chapter 4: Ancient Religious World Views

At the outset the profound uniformity of ancient religious beliefs needs to

As noted above, most ancient societies displayed a bewildering tendency to

means to obtain the benefit of new and potentially untapped divine

The Bronze Age Egyptian tradition surrounding the god Atum of

As the Mesopotamian tradition indicates, the ancient universe was

As opposed to the Olympic deities of the heavens, Earth Gods, also

Numina, non-anthropomorphic deities, or spirit forces, were another divine

In general one could define polytheistic deities of antiquity as superhuman

Polytheism vs. Monotheism

Polytheism does tend to articulate the randomness of causality. Put simply,

demonstrated even chaos is randomly predictable. Polytheistic traditions

Given these philosophical conundrums, a third option was atheism or

of hubris. Hubris was a loaded term that entailed a range of meanings.

Principle Means of Communication with Ancient Deities: Ritual,

developed, the shamanic role tended to devolve to a class of priests, who

Most ancient cultures distilled the practice of communicating with

would be burned as a special offering known as a holocaust (that is, ‘burnt

deity momentarily in order to place before it a proposed course of action.

only placed inordinate emphasis on ritual procedures as these pertained to

It is important to recognize that today’s worst superstitious phobias

Ancient Views of Afterlife

Another extremely influential worldview for the development of afterlife

Still another unique and influential perception of afterlife emerged nearby

accepted by all the mainstream schools of philosophy, Hinduism, Jainism

Regardless of whether one’s conception of afterlife was dark and gloomy,

identified as cults. Despite the modern tendency to associate this term

Proof of one’s descent from heroic lineage typically identified someone as

from their places of origin, tended to turn to other forms of cultic

Mystery cults focused on a more intimate personal experience with deity

To attain the divine status of a hero demanded superhuman

You might also like