Two of the most popular myths are Genesis and the Popul Vuh, which explains how the earth was created and how humans were created. Genesis and the Popol Vuh creation myth have a lot of similarities and differences which are very important to mention. In Genesis and Popol Vuh myth there are some important similarities of how the world was created and how it was destroyed. One is that in both myths are gods involved. Other similarity is that Genesis says that God created the man from the dust and in the Popol Vuh myth the four gods created the man out of the flesh.
Daoism is a philosophy that defines proper conduct for people and governments. Buddhism is to worship a man who try’s not to overcome suffering. Egyptian religion was based polytheism, or worship of many gods. The Egyptians had as many as 2000 gods and goddesses. Often gods and goddesses were represented as part human and part animal much like the civilization of the Aztecs whose gods were viewed as having the appearance of an animal or having animal parts on their body.
Sumerians produced The Epic of Gilgamesh describes the wanderings of Gilgamesh in search for eternal life. Egyptians produced The Book of the Dead which describes after death the soul becomes a part of the divine. Religion and authority and Egypt were closely related. In Mesopotamia each city state had different own god while in Egypt everyone followed the same thing. In Mesopotamia, they established patterns for civilization to take place.
They believed that every human being was composed of physical and spiritual parts or aspects. In addition to the body, each person had a shadow, a personality or soul, a life-force, and a name. They worshiped many gods inside of cult temples that were held by priests. These two cultures religions were very alike, but yet very different. The Egyptian pyramids, One of the great wonders of the world, these architectural wonders is one of the many things the Egyptian's are famous for.
In the Enuma Elish, Ea “created mankind from his [Quingu] blood, imposed the toil of the gods (on man) and released the gods from it.” Due to that, Year after year at the New Year Festival the Mesopotamian people recited and performed The Babylonian Creation. This signifies that Ea became an intricate vital part in the culture of the Mesopotamians. By creating humans, Ea demonstrated the close relationship formed with humans. The Atrahasis , very similar to the Enuma Elish, portrays the role of Enki, otherwise known as Ea, and its involvement in the creation of man and how the toil of gods were imposed over them. Although both myths note the importance of Ea and its involvement in human creation, it is more evident in the Atrahasis.
At sunrise he was portrayed as a young boy, at noon the falcon headed man and at sunset, an elderly man. Alongside Ra, there was another important god, Osiris that greatly influenced the ancient Egyptians beliefs on the afterlife. Osiris offered more hope for resurrection than Ra did for rebirth. The great influence of Osiris and his ideals on resurrection is evident throughout the burial practices of the ancient Egyptians. There is an ancient story of Osiris that tells the tale of his death that was at the hands of his evil brother, Seth.
The Ancient Egyptians believed that careful preparation would lead to a better and more fulfilling life in the Underworld than the one they had lived on Earth, leading to the existence of the several particular protocols that had to be carried out for each person upon their death. Archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the boy-king Tutankhamun was discovered on the fourth of November in 1922. The tomb was found to be mostly untouched by grave robbers and thus gives us strong insight into the burial practises and rituals of 18th Dynasty Egypt. One of the more famous funerary rituals of Ancient Egypt was “The Opening of the Mouth” ceremony. In this ceremony, the ba (the personality of the deceased, often depicted as a human-headed bird) and the ka (the life force, that which is said to animate the individual) were united as one in the afterlife.
Ultimately, they were both built with a specific purpose to each society that they were built in. There is some interesting history behind the Ziggurat of Ur. Around 2180 BCE, the Akkadian empire lost control of the Mesopotamian plain to the Guti mountain people. In 2112 BCE the Sumerians take over and run the Guti out of Mesopotamia. The Sumerian king, Urnammu of Ur, reintroduced the Sumerian language and decided to build a famous Ziggurat dedicated to Nanna, believed to be the moon god.
However they also share a number of differences because they developed in different regions with different natural influences. Egypt and Mesopotamia were both governed by god-kings. The idea of a god-king was common in early complex societies. A king established his rule by a divine right bestowed upon him by the gods of his people. Mesopotamia was broken into thirty-five separate city-states and “The ruler of each city-state claimed to rule with the support of the local guardian deity…” (Hansen and Curtis 36).
Religion gave meaning and explained human existence, agriculture, natural biological occurrences, and even the light of day. Religion and the gods surrounded the Aztecs lives in every direction. In order to further understand the reasoning behind why the Aztecs felt they needed to practice sacrifice, one needs to understand the importance religion held within the Aztec race. Sacrifice of any form was considered to be a payment to their gods. According to Michael Graulich (2000), the director of religious studies at a school in Paris, the primary reason for sacrifice was atonement (p. 2).