Tag Archives: Mesopotamia

Adam and Eve and White Racism

When white Evangelicals and fundamentalists show picture books to their children depicting Adam and Eve and all the early humans (such as Noah) as white, it is no different from Afrocentrists teaching their kids that all great Egyptians were black, and … Continue reading

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The Two Trees: Darwin’s and that Mesopotamian One

Visually echoing Charles Darwin’s famous description of life as a great interconnected tree, below is the image of a trunk and branches in which an artist has carved animals. And beside it is a more traditional depiction of the Tree of Life, … Continue reading

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A Curious Parallel Between Genesis and the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish

Biblical scholars see parallels between the creation story of Genesis chapter 1 and the Mesopotamian Enuma Elish. Here’s an example: Parallels like the one above suggest that Genesis 1 was written by a Jew living in Babylonian exile, and that the story … Continue reading

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Marble Greece, Limestone Egypt, and Muddy Mesopotamia: Why the Great Building Projects of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar Have Not Endured

Mesopotamia once had ancient cities as architecturally grand and magnificently adorned as Egypt and Greece. So how come the region’s great cities, like ancient Babylon, are in such poor archaeological condition? Answer: Just like Leonardo da Vinci made his Last Supper … Continue reading

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To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before: Gilgamesh’s Inner Call to Create and Move

Toward the beginning of Part 2 of the Gilgamesh Epic, Gilgamesh desires to go away from his Mesopotamian city of Uruk, to the far-off forested “Land of Cedars,” guarded by the fierce dragon Humbaba. This going out to the Land of Cedars … Continue reading

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Gilgamesh: A literary Pompeii

When we talk about reading the Epic of Gilgamesh today, we are talking about a version of the story discovered in 1872 at Nineveh, the city perhaps best known for its prominence in the Biblical book of Jonah, in the … Continue reading

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