 In this video, we're going to look at the mythologies coming out of what's just kind of broadly called the Middle East. Now, just using the term the Middle East to refer to this group of mythologies is like saying, we're going to look at the cultures of North America, kind of pretty wide spectrum there. Now, we're going to start with Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is an area between the Tigris and the Euphrates River. For the south, Mesopotamia is Sumeria. For the north of Sumeria is a city called Babylon. The peoples of Babylon conquered Sumeria, and then that region collectively with Babylon and Sumeria was collectively referred to as Babylonia. And for the north, he had the Assyrians, and the Assyrians conquered Babylonia. Now what we're going to find, so we're going to start with, and then all this is referred to as Mesopotamia. So Mesopotamia have Assyria, Babylonia, Babylon, and then Sumeria. Now these, like I said, these, this is referred to as Mesopotamia, and the mythologies coming out of Mesopotamia really influenced the areas around Mesopotamia, and we're going to see this when we take a look at Persia mythology. Now Persia is not a part of Babylonian mythology, but I think at one time it was conquered by Persia. You know, about Mesopotamia was conquered by Persia. So what happens when you have this conquering is, believe it or not, the, yeah, you might think that when one region conquers another, the culture of the second region, the conquered region, is just wiped out, but that doesn't look like what, that's what happens. Instead the mythology, the cultures are absorbed by the conquering nation. Now even though there's absorption, there's still going to be some tension, some changes, and we're going to see this probably most notably with Sumeria and Babylon. Sumerian mythology is a little different to Babylon, the Babylon mythology, the mythology out of Babylon, and then this in turn makes Babylonian mythology different. So with that in mind, let's take a look at this, you know, at least some of the things that happened in this chapter just broadly called the Middle East. So this difference between Sumerian mythology and Babylonian mythology might be most easily seen with their creation myths. So let's start with Sumerian mythology. So for Sumerian mythology, everything comes from this primordial sea, primordial sea, Namu, and the primordial sea. And from the primordial sea come the earth and the sky, the gods An and the goddess Ki. Now the earth and the sky give earth to Unleil, he's the creator god, he's the god of order, god of the universe, and Unleil, that only creates all things, but he also gives agriculture, he also creates tools, the arts of civilization, vegetation, cattle. You might look at this and say, well, yeah, this guy's responsible for our existence, and that's true. Our Unleil, that only creates all these things, he creates humankind, and humankind is here to serve the gods. So Namu, An, Ki, and Unleil. It's similar to Unleil, and I'm not sure if he's necessarily supposed to be different than Unleil, but here we have this description of another god called Anki. Anki is, he lives in the underground sea, you know, whether they're supposed to be different from the primordial sea, I don't know. Anki lives in the underground sea, and he possesses the me, these laws or imutable divine decrees on how to do everything. And there's lots of these, I think there's something about 100 of these laws, these defined decrees, and they range from anywhere, the text doesn't go too much into the description, they range from defining what it means to be a law, defining what it means to be a god, defining what worship should look like, the different roles that people should take, what it means to be a king, and how to run economies, even down to, you know, rules and description, how to create certain musical instruments. And the me, these immutable divine decrees, tell you how to live and order your life. So this is, this is the Sumerian mythology. Out of the primordial sea comes order, and order organizes, and creates, and gives life to everything. So on the one hand we've got the Sumerian mythology, the Sumerian creation myth, on the other hand we have the Babylonian creation myth, and the Babylonian creation myth is a little bit different. Instead of one sea, one primordial sea, Namu, we've got two Apsu and Tiamat. Apsu is the sweet water ocean, we might maybe also interpret this to be freshwater ocean, I don't know exactly what it's supposed to be, but it's a sweet water ocean. And on the other hand we have the salt water, that's Tiamat. Now Tiamat and Apsu come together to, you know, they come together and through their union they create two more gods, Anu and Ia. And these are very, very powerful gods, Anu and Ia. Anu and Ia give birth to Marduk. Marduk is the king of Babylon. So we've got Apsu, Tiamat, Anu, Ia, and Marduk. Alright, there's a lot of names here. So the book doesn't really go into detail, we may not know, but a conflict arises. And in the midst of this conflict Ia kills Apsu, so child kills a parent. And because Ia kills Apsu, Tiamat, Tiamat, the salt water ocean, the salt water, swears revenge. Now to carry out her revenge, Tiamat creates monsters. And at the head of this army of monsters is her son, Kingu. So Kingu is the kind of head of the monsters, leading the monsters and fighting the other gods. Now this fight is going nowhere. Nobody is apparently winning, and there's just more and more destruction. So to settle the fight, Marduk says that he can kill Tiamat. He can defeat Tiamat, but if he's going to defeat Tiamat, he wants something to return. And namely, he wants to be king of the gods. So the other gods agree, and Marduk goes off and kills Tiamat. And when he kills her, he savors her body in two. And one part of the body makes the sky, and the other part of the body makes the earth. Then he confronts Kingu and takes away from Kingu the tablets of destiny. And the tablets of destiny are pretty much like the me. They are these divine decrees. Everybody wants these divine decrees, because they can now control everything else, or they have absolute power if they have the divine decrees. So Marduk defeats Kingu, or takes away the tablets of destiny for Kingu, and then on top of that he kills Kingu. Now with Kingu's death, Kingu's blood mixes with earth and creates humankind. And once again, we're here to serve the gods. So it's a pretty different version for the Sumerians. So let's compare these two mythologies here briefly. They teach two very different lessons. For the Sumerians, the universe is order. The universe was brought about through order. Creation was brought about through order. The gods are ordered. Your place in the universe. I mean, you're here to serve true, but you're here to serve through order. You're here to fill your place in the universe. And you were brought about as you were created as an extension of that order. For the Babylonians, creation comes about through conflict. The conflict in the beginning with the gods, and through that conflict, that death, and destruction, we exist. And you were brought into existence by one who ascended to the throne by defeating an enemy. And for the Sumerians, life is mysterious. Sure, there's mysterious forces out there, but at least it's orderly for the Babylonians. Life is mysterious because whatever happens happens because of some whatever whim of the gods, whatever whim of the one who conquers. And for the Sumerians, you were here as part of the order of the universe. For the Babylonians, you were here because you brought into existence by the one who conquers and made you assert. And Sumerian mythology, what do we have? We have this idea that the universe is ordered. We have some notion that the immutable divine decrees, even though they can be captured by one god or the other, still determine what the universe is supposed to be like. For the Babylonians, the universe is kind of a capricious place. It's own wild whims because the gods that are controlled us are a little bit on the wild side. And one epic, one legend kind of exemplifies this, and that's alleged in Gilgamesh. Gilgamesh is an important epic in Babylonian mythology, true. But Gilgamesh is also kind of a mess. You might just call him Gilgamesh. If Gilgamesh were to run today, he'd be at once a WWMA star. He's a wrestling sensation, but at the same time he also leads a rock and roll band. And president of the country. That's what Gilgamesh would be. So he's grandiose. He's larger than life. He's two-thirds god and one-third man. Not even half and half, but two-thirds god and one-third man. Presumably the one-third man part is his own mortality. He could be killed. So he's this huge, large-in-life person. He's a king and he's pretty much, we would say he's oppressing the people. He'd probably say, I'm just being a king! He's doing what he wants and he's living life and he's being large and in charge. So to kind of put Gilgamesh in his place, the gods sent a kidnu. A kidnu is kind of this wild, savage man. And a kidnu is supposed to go and defeat and kill Gilgamesh. So what happens is the two fight and then they become friends. Gilgamesh makes him his buddy. And then they start going off and have all kinds of wild adventures together. They offend the gods even more, including at one point, right? This goddess wants to have Gilgamesh as her consort. And he says, no, thank you. I don't need you. He spurns this goddess. How large a person can he be? The love of a goddess. What is that? So Gilgamesh and a kidnu are even having these larger, even more grand adventures than Gilgamesh all by himself. So now since Gilgamesh spurned the love of a goddess, the result is that a kidnu dies. A kidnu is killed by the goddess. And this sends Gilgamesh into kind of a depression. He misses his friend. So he tries very hard to get immortality for his friend a kidnu. And in a way, he kind of succeeds. He finally acquires the secret to this immortal life, or at least to bring back his friend a kidnu. And then he loses it. And in the midst of all this, the lesson we're supposed to learn in all this is that it doesn't matter how larger than life a person you are, it doesn't matter how powerful you are, or how big you are, or to the extent that what you have and can spurn the gods, because this is what Gilgamesh does. He never suffers death, what his friend does. No matter how grand and outrageous your life is, even if immortality is in vain, you're never going to see it. You're always going to die. Death is inevitable. That's kind of sad, right? You can rise to the top. Nobody can be bigger, no human can be bigger than Gilgamesh, but you're still going to die. Your life is not in your control. So we looked at the Sumerian mythology and Babylonian mythology that's drift on over to Persian mythology. And the Persians are even somewhat different than the Sumerians and the Babylonians. They might even say it's kind of a synthesis of the two. So you have Sumerians on the one hand to think the universe isn't in order, right? There's a reason for existence. There's something important and a meaning to your life. It's from this defined decree, the immutable me. That's Sumerian. On the other hand, you have Babylonian mythology that says, look, there ain't a whole lot that's in your control. What happens in life is up to the whims of the gods. And it's not like they're really nice guys. They're killing each other and having all kinds of fights of their own. And then you have Persian mythology. Persian mythology abuse creation. At least we don't have a creation story here. They just borrow from the previous ones. But there's two supreme gods involved. One is Hurra Mazda. And this is the wise lord. This is the supreme god. And Hurra Mazda, yeah, he's basically a good person. He's responsible for life. He brings about life in the universe. He brings about order again to the universe. That sounds a little bit, you know, like in Leo or Anki. And kind of in opposition to Hurra Mazda is Angra Manu. Angra Manu. And this means the lord of darkness and sterility. Darkness and sterility. That's awful, right? Not only you're in the dark, you're sterile. And Angra Manu is continually fighting against a Hurra Mazda. And it's pretty much an even match. It's not as if a Hurra Mazda could just snap its fingers and get rid of Angra Manu. There always seems like Angra Manu has some resources to call upon to continue this fight. But this is what existence is. It's this battle between good and evil. And while good will win, right? So the perjury mythology says good will win. It's not going to be an easy fight. It's not going to be an easy fight. So one way to think about this, what the Persians might be doing here, is that they're saying, look, yes, there's order and wonder and beauty and life to the universe. But there's also this horrible disorder. There's also this daft and sterility going on. And these two are fighting each other. We're kind of caught in the middle. We're kind of caught in the middle. So you can kind of see how Sumerian mythology influenced Babylonian mythology and those two in turn influenced Persian mythology.