Thorkild Jacobsen 1976 Treasures
Jacobsen 1976 Treasures
The Treasures of Darkness. A History of Mesopotamian Religion,
New Haven-London: Yale University Press
[About this author, cf. also the section History of the Discipline]
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ToC of Jacobsen 1976 Treasures
| Table of Contents |
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| General topic(s) of the book |
The book focuses on the very definition of "Ancient Mesopotamian Religion", by determining the specific meaning of the three words componing the expression ("Ancient", "Mesopotamian", and "Religion"). The author then discusses the historical development of religion in ancient Mesopotamia from the fourth to the first millennium BC, stressing the peculiarities and the paradigm (with constants and innovations) of this religious systems, seeing gods as providers, rulers, and parents. The analysis is developed by mean of an insight on the Mesopotamian pantheon (and the attributes given to each god/goddesses) and through a structural investigation of the emblematic Poem of Creation (Enūma ēliš) and the Epic of Gilgamesh (mirrors of Mesopotamian society). |
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Extended summary of Jacobsen 1976 Treasures
This volume retraces the paths in the development of the concept of religion in ancient Mesopotamia, from the 4th to the 2nd millennium BC. It is divided into 7 chapters:
- chapter 1 (pp. 1-22) explains the basic terminology, defining the terms religion (considered as a response of the human beings to a specific need), Mesopotamian (sketching the geographical framework), and ancient (about the basic chronological development of the discussion);
- chapter 2 (pp. 23-74) defines the fourth-millennium metaphor of gods as providers of fertility, presenting the cult of Dumuzi/Tammuz as representative of the provider god in contexts of courtship, weddings, funerary rituals, and in the concepts of search and return;
- chapter 3 (pp. 75-92) presents the third-millennium metaphor of gods as rulers able to provide human beings with a cosmic order reflected in the constitution of polity (under this respect, the Assembly of gods has the ultimate power on the human world);
- chapter 4 (pp. 93-144) insists on the aforementioned metaphor of gods as rulers, presenting individual divine figures, paired to specific issues: An = authority; Enlil = force; Ninḫursaga = productivity; Enki = cunning; divine interplay = The Story of Atraḫasīs; Nanna/Suen = princeliness; Ninurta = warlike prowess; Utu = righteousness; Ishkur = rainstorm; Inanna = infinite variety (of issues);
- chapter 5 (pp. 145-164) explains the second-millennium metaphor of gods as parents, describing the increase of personal religion and of personal gods (vs. the typical fourth and third-millennium polyad gods);
- chapter 6 (pp. 165-192) investigates the second-millennium metaphor of gods as creators, the primordial force behind the origin of the world; the most important creation epics, i.e. the Enūma elish;
- chapter 7 (pp. 193-220) presents the second-millennium metaphor of gods/semi-gods as heroes, discussing the figure of Gilgamesh in the many versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh. An Epilogue (pp. 221-240) offers an overview on the second-millennium main religious achievements and provides the reader with some glimpses on later first-millennium religious developments.
Note that some positions taken by the author, specifically in defining the concept of ‘religion’, are different from G. Buccellati’s ones (in Buccellati 2024 When).
Notes to specific chapters discuss these different views.
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Excerpts from Jacobsen 1976 Treasures
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“Ancient”
| "Ancient" | p. 17 | The word ancient raises the question of distance in time, absolutely, in terms of the thousands of years that separate us from the things we deal with here, and relatively, in terms of the long span of time that may separate one group or aspect of our data from another. |
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Assembly of gods
| Assembly of gods | p. 86 | The highest authority in the Mesopotamian universe was the assembly of the gods. It met, when occasion arose, in Nippur in a corner of the forecourt of Ekur (Enlil's temple there) [...]; and before getting to business the gods would usually fortify themselves with food and drink. Presiding over the assembly was the god of heaven, An. The gods would bind themselves by oath to abide by the decisions the assembly might make; proposals were then placed before them and voted upon, each god indicating assent by saying: heam, "so be it!" The decisions of the assembly were cast in their final form by a group of seven "gods of the decrees" and the execution of the decisions usually fell to Enlil. |
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Name and form (= attributes)
| Name and form (= attributes) | p. 6 | Because of this characteristic manner of experiencing the Numinous both the name and the external form given to encountered numinous power tended in earliest Mesopotamia to be simply the name and the form of the phenomenon in which the power seemed to reveal itself. |
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Death of god
| Death of god | p. 47-48 | The precise manner of the god's death varies from one text to another: he is set upon by highwaymen in his fold or elsewhere or by a posse of evil deputies from Hades; he is killed, taken captive, or perishes in his attempt to flee. [...] The larger reasons behind the god's death are mostly left vague. Sometimes it seems to be due simply to the innate blood thirst and lust for booty in the attackers, but there are occasionally references to orders given them by the dread powers they serve, orders, however, which are never explained further. |
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Gods as legion
| Gods as legion | p. 95 | The gods who formed the assembly of the gods were legion. It is not possible to characterize more than a few prominent ones. We shall base our discussion mainly on materials from Sumerian literary compositions that, while preserved in Old Babylonian copies, reflect views and beliefs of the outgoing third millennium, to which many of them date back. We have not hesitated, however, to cite earlier and later materials to round out our sketches of the individual gods. |
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History
| History | p. 25 | It would have been most satisfactory if we could have based our account of the oldest form of Mesopotamian religion solely on evidence from the fourth millennium B.C. However, that is not possible. It is not only that contemporary evidence is scanty – some temple plans, a few representations of deities and rites on seals and on reliefs – or that it is spotty, coming from a few sites only and telling little about the country as a whole, it is rather that it fails in what one had most hoped for, it fails to be self-evident. The contemporary evidence is, unfortunately, only understandable and recognizable as religious evidence, through what we know from later limes. At most it can attest to the early roots oflater traditional forms. For uny general impression of what powers were worshiped in the country as a whole, and for any attempt to visualize the form of such worship in detail, we must turn to the more fully documented survivals and try to discern what is old and original in them. Our main criteria and our combined typological and historical approach we outlined in the preceding chapter. |
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Intransitiveness
| Intransitiveness | p. 9 | As the tendency to see numinous power as immanent led the ancient Mesopotamian to name that power and attribute form to it in terms of the phenomenon, so it also determined and narrowed his ideas of that power's function. The numinous power appeared fulfilled in the specific situation or phenomenon and did not reach out beyond it. |
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“Mesopotamian”
| "Mesopotamian" | pp. 5-6 | Moving from a general consideration of the term religion to the qualfication Mesopotamian and asking what in ancient Mesopotamian religion seems specifically Mesopotamian, one cannot but note a tendency to experience the Numinous as immanent in some specific feature of the confrontation, rather than as all transcendent. The ancient Mesopotamian, it would seem, saw numinous power as a revelation of indwelling spirit, as power at the center of something that caused it to be and thrive and flourish. |
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Nature
| Nature | p. 73 | The fourth millennium, then, as far as we can grasp it from contemporary sources and later survivals, informed ancient Mesopotamian religion with its basic character: the worship of forces in nature. These forces were intuited as the life principle in observed phenomena, their will to be in this particular form. As the most characteristic trend of the millennium we may posit the selection and cultivation for worship of those powers which were important for human survival – powers central to the early economies – and their progressive humanization arising out of a human need for a meaningful relationship with them. This led to a growing preference for the human form over the older nonhuman forms as the only one truly proper to the gods, and to a prefe rence for organizing the gods within human patterns of family and occupation. The dominant figure is the son and provider, whose life from wooing to wedding to early death expresses the annual cycle of fertility and yield. |
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Numinous = Absolute
| Numinous = Absolute | p. 3 | Basic to all religion – and so also to ancient Mesopotamian religion –, we believe, a unique experience of confrontation with power not of this world. Rudolph Otto called this confrontation "Numinous" and analyzed it as the experience of a mysterium tremendum et fascinosum, a confrontation with a "Wholly Other" outside of normal experience and indescribable in its terms; terrifying, ranging from sheer demonic dread through awe to sublime majesty; and fascinating, with irresistible attraction, demanding unconditional allegiance. It is the positive human response to this experience in thought (myth and theology) and action (cult andd worship) that constitutes religion. |
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Personal god
| Personal god | p. 155 | We may begin by noting the luck aspect of the personal god. The personal god was, ab ovo, intimately connected and concerned with one individual's fortunes. So much so that one might almost say that the god was a personification of the power for personal success in that individual. It is not uncommon – most people have experienced something similar at times – that sudden, unexpected luck and good fortune is felt as "uncanny," as if a su pernatural power had suddenly taken a hand in one's affairs. It is a very simple and unsophisticated reaction, perfectly expressed in the title of an autobiography some years ago by a man who thought life had been kind to him: Somebody Up There Likes Me. The ancient Mesopotamian felt very much that way, and both in Sumerian and in Akkadian there is only one term to describe luck and good fortune: "to acquire a god". |
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Personal religion
| Personal religion | p. 147 | Terms that are rich in emotional content, terms for things that go deep in us, are rarely clear-cut – nor can they well be, for what they seek to express is subjective and will differ subtly from person to person. Personal religion in the title of this chapter is just such a term: it will almost necessarily mean different things to different people and one can only try to explain what it is intended to mean here. We use it to designate a particular, easily recognized, religious attitude in which the religious individual sees himself as standing in close personal relationship to the divine, expecting help and guidance in his personal life and personal affairs, expecting divine anger and punishment if he sins, but also profoundly trusting to divine compassion, forgiveness, and love for him if he sincerely repents. In sum: the individual matters to God, God cares about him personally and deeply. |
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Plurality (= polytheism)
| Plurality (= polytheism) | p. 11 | The characteristic Mesopotamian boundness to the externals of situations in which the Numinous was encountered not only tended to circumscribe it and give it intransitive character, it also led to differentiation. The Numinous was the indwelling spirit and power of many phenomena and situations and it differed with each of them. Thus ancient Mesopotamian religion was conditioned to a pluralistic view, to polytheism, and to the multitude of gods and divine aspects that it recognized. |
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