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In ancient Mesopotamian mythology, the Bull of Heaven is a mythical beast fought by the hero Gilgamesh. The story of the Bull of Heaven is known from two different versions: one recorded in an earlier Sumerian poem and a later episode in the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh. In the Sumerian poem, the Bull is sent to attack Gilgamesh by the goddess Inanna for reasons that are unclear.
Stephanie Mary Dalley FSA is a British Assyriologist and scholar of the Ancient Near East. Prior to her retirement, she was a teaching Fellow at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. She is known for her publications of cuneiform texts and her investigation into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and her proposal that it was situated in Nineveh, and constructed during Sennacherib's rule.
Mesopotamian mythology refers to the myths, religious texts, and other literature that comes from the region of ancient Mesopotamia which is a historical region of Western Asia, situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system that occupies the area of present-day Iraq. In particular the societies of Sumer, Akkad, and Assyria, all of which existed shortly after 3000 BCE and were mostly gone by 400 CE. These works were primarily preserved on stone or clay tablets and were written in cuneiform by scribes. Several lengthy pieces have survived erosion and time, some of which are considered the oldest stories in the world, and have given historians insight into Mesopotamian ideology and cosmology.
The ancient Mesopotamian underworld, was the lowermost part of the ancient near eastern cosmos, roughly parallel to the region known as Tartarus from early Greek cosmology. It was described as a dark, dreary cavern located deep below the ground, where inhabitants were believed to continue "a transpositional version of life on earth". The only food or drink was dry dust, but family members of the deceased would pour sacred mineral libations from the earth for them to drink. In the Sumerian underworld, it was initially believed that there was no final judgement of the deceased and the dead were neither punished nor rewarded for their deeds in life.
References
- ↑ Dalley, Stephanie (2000) Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, revised edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 4
- ↑ Mark, Joshua. "The Atrahasis Epic: The Great Flood & the Meaning of Suffering". World History Encyclopedia .
- ↑ Dalley, Stephanie (2000) Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, revised edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 15–16
- Michael Jordan, Encyclopedia of Gods, Kyle Cathie Limited, 2002