Book Reviews and Summary: Man And His Gods

Book Reviews and Summary: Man And His Gods

Book Reviews and Summary: Man And His Gods. Many of us only receive information from one side, and only know what is happening and believe in the present.

Our knowledge of history is often very minimal, so we only believe what is taught without knowing the real facts.

The emergence of fiction books such as the Da Vinci Code which provides little historical information, is good enough to spread knowledge to the public, but can confuse readers, because the boundary between fiction and fact is not clear.

Book Reviews and Summary: Man And His Gods, You Can Read

The book Man and His Gods, on the other hand, is history, whose data comes from ancient writings obtained by archaeologists from excavations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Babylon, Jerusalem and beyond.

This book describes the background and development of human belief from 10,000 thousand years BC to the early 20th century, and shows that today's religions are still heavily influenced by these ancient beliefs. I will explain the beliefs and mythologies that underlie only three ancient cultures.

Egypt

The ancient civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Babylon developed in part because of their beliefs, which were based on mythology.

Book Reviews and Summary: Man And His Gods

At that time religion played a central role, so the position of temples and priests was very important.

In Egypt, shamans performed rituals in temples, led people, made offerings, interpreted God's will based on the movements of the sacred ox Apis found in temples, determined the planting season by counting the coming of the Nile flood season by observing the movement of rivers, stars, and from this activity a calendar emerged. first in the world.

At first the Egyptians believed in the god Pthah as the Cause and Creator of all things: the earth, animals, humans and other gods, who were created just by thinking about him.

Pthat consists of Horus (heart, mind) and Thoth (word), as the ruler of the universe, the source of wisdom and knowledge, and the giver of spells for magicians to rule over nature and the unseen world.

But this belief was too abstract for the common people, so that later other, more popular gods emerged.

The gods are four brothers, namely Osiris and his wife Isis (goddess of love, birth and fertility of the land), Set (god of killers, hunters), Horus (god of the sky, consisting of Ra (sun) and Thoth (moon) respectively. into right and left eyes) and Nephty.

Osiris and Isis have a son, the son Horus, who is the reincarnation of Osiris. The other gods were Hathor (goddess of the sky), Apis (reincarnation of Osiris), Anubis, guardian of death and guide to the palace of Osiris, and Atum.

Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia, located on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Iraq, was once a fertile area with irrigation canals, so here was a garden that came to be known as the Garden of Eden.

This area became a desert after the flood damaged the artificial canals, so the soil was not irrigated, crops were lost and the soil dried up. The basis of worship here is the giving of sacrifices.

All gave their own sacrifices, in the form of slaves, agricultural produce, livestock, cloth, spices, gold; slaves, among other things, were to be employed in the temple's gardens, farms, and industries, while agricultural products were lent by priests at high interest rates.

In addition to regulating the economy, scholars also regulate the law of marriage, slavery, property, and others. From Babylonian and Semitic knowledge it is known that a great flood occurred around 4200 BC which covered a plain 20 feet high, then in 2500 BC the Sumerians and Semites united under the leadership of Sargon to form a kingdom.

Sargon was born in secrecy, dissolved in a basket on the Euphrates river, saved and raised by Akki the breeder, then Goddess Ishtar fell in love, Sargon's origins were revealed, and he was crowned king. Then this kingdom became great under Hammurabi.

Based on 30,000 thousand clay dating to 2,000 BC. found in the ruins of the library of king Ashurbanipal in 1845, gained knowledge of the Sumerian beliefs, known as the Seven Tablets of Creation, as follows:

In the beginning there was Tiamat, which is the primordial substance, and Apsu, or thing which is the mother of all things. From these two arises Mummu or chaos, which mingles in one formless mass, and gives birth to gods.

But the presence of the gods disturbs the peace of Tiamat and Apsu, so Mummu offers to destroy them for Tiamat's sake.

Before this happened, the gods including Ea and Marduk already knew about it, so Ea immediately did a trick by putting Apsu to sleep and then killing him, as well as Mummu, then cutting off a vital part of his body and losing his light.

Meanwhile Marduk kills Tiamat, and locks Kingu, Apsu's second husband in a dark place and sacrifices him. Kingu's blood formed humans who were made to serve the gods and free the gods.

Now the gods were bored, because they had no devotees, so Marduk, as the leader of the gods said, "I will create humans". His blood was from the gods while his bones were from the ground, and his fate was decided by Marduk.

Men, feeling grateful to Marduk as their hero and creator, built a temple for him, namely the temple of Babylon, or the Gate of God.

These people also believe in the Moon God, Sin, and the seventh day is the holy day of this god, where they do not dare to cook meat, change clothes or start an activity because it will bring bad luck.

There are also beliefs in Aralu, a place for the dead, who is under the rule of the Goddess Allat, who is prone to violence, and Nergal, the god of fever and plague; both live in the western world which is surrounded by 7 walls.

Goddess Allat judges the dead, whose fate is determined by the offerings and sacrifices made during life.

Those who are less qualified will be affected by leprosy forever, while those who are sufficiently capable will experience a miserable condition: eating dust from the ground, thirst and hunger, shivering with cold, and being harassed by demons of darkness. So death is an unpleasant state.

Babylon

Another myth is the story of Gilgamesh, which comes from 12 tablets in the royal library at Nineveh and was also found in Ashur and Asia Minor, from before 2500 BC.

The story of Gilgamesh deals with the search for the Tree of Life, the great flood, ships and the destruction of humans, as well as a man who is saved by the gods (Uta Napishtim) and thus gains immortality.

In this story the central character is Ishtar, the main goddess of the Mesopotamian nation who was worshiped not much different from the god Marduk. Scholars estimate that the origin of Ishtar is the Semitic (Jewish) goddess Ashtar or Astarte, because this nation was originally a matriarchal society.

The worship of Ishtar or the goddess can be seen from the discovery of objects forming pregnant women in a wide area, from Italian peninsula, Nile River, Tigris River and Euphrates River, and in Persian Gulf.

In Gilgamesh, it is said that Gilgamesh was a strong and handsome young man who defeated everyone in the city of Erech.

This disturbed the townspeople, so they prayed to the gods. The goddess Ishtar then ordered the goddess Aruru to make a competitor to Gilgamesh.

From clay, with his hands Aruru formed a male creature named Engidu, and lived in the forest. Engidu was a strong man, so he could actually defeat Gilgamesh, but the god Shamash wanted to turn the two warriors into friends.

To persuade Engidu, Shamash sent a hunter to the temple of Ishtar to get a beautiful priest. This priest succeeded in persuading Engidu to go to Erech, and after fighting over the priest, the two became friends.

Then Ishtar fell in love with Gilgamesh, having been rescued from the captivity of Humbaba, but Gilgamesh rejected her, because Ishtar had previously loved the eagle, the lion, the stallion, the shepherd, the gardener, but then suffered all of them.

This angered Ishtar, and complained to her father and made her father make a special ox to destroy Gilgamesh. However Gilgamesh and Engidu were able to kill the ox, cut it and threw the pallus at Ishtar.

The next story is that Gilgamesh accompanies Engidu for days in a dying state. To save his best friend, Gilgamesh then goes in search of the Tree of Life, which can prevent his friend's death.

After an arduous journey, obtaining the Tree of Life which was later lost due to being stolen by the snakes, Gilgamesh finally reaches the land of his ancestor, Uta Napistim, who has become immortal, and tells of the great flood, the ship, and the transport of everyone including the beasts.

An important story about the Goddess Ishtar is as follows: In her youth Goddess Ishtar had a lover named Tammuz, then Tammuz was seriously injured and brought to the kingdom of Allat. He could be saved if his wounds were cleaned with water from the fountain of youth, which flows in the land of the dead.

Goddess Ishtar then went to the area sadly, but goddess Allat was not happy. Meanwhile the world mourns the death of Goddess Ishtar.

Then the god Ea finally decided on an exception to the law of death, so he sent messengers to Allat ordering the release of Goddess Ishtar and Tammuz. The two of them returned to earth.

Then every year Goddess Ishtar must bathe Tammuz in holy water, dress him in mourning clothes and play a mourning song. In this story there is a resurrection from the dead.

It states in the book, “In Babylon, the temple of the goddess Ishtar was administered by women, eunuchs and men dressed as women, and men who met her priesthood experienced fellowship with the Goddess of Blessing, the Divine Mother.

Then the men considered worshiping her a bad thing, but they continued with fasting, self mortification, dancing, singing, blood sacrifices and other forms of fellowship with the gods."

Goddess Ishtar is a goddess who has contradictory traits, she can be kind, trustworthy, cold, but also cruel, traitorous, angry, but still worshiped as the Mother of All Life.

Book Reviews and Summary: Man And His Gods

Thus, since time immemorial man has become accustomed to the contradictory nature of the gods; loving, kind, but also cruel, short-tempered and inflicting misery.

Closing

That's what I wrote about Book Reviews and Summary: Man And His Gods, The next section of this book examines the influence of the above mythologies on Judaism, which is the basis of Christianity and Islam; the development of christianity, the origin of the concept of satan and its problems, and the current state of human belief.

The point of this book is, everything we believe in today has existed long, far away, starting with the mythologies created by the ancient peoples above, perhaps as far back as 5,000 BC. or before.

Are we going to review, or are we going to continue to modify these ancient myths without looking at history, without thinking?

This book is very good, because it provides knowledge from the other side that is not easy for us to get. Maybe because in terms of belief the definition of goodness is: "believe, and don't hesitate or investigate something".

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