Ancient Mesopotamian Religion: Did you mean...?

An Arab folio on which is depicted a pharmacist preparing an elixir. From the manuscript of the De Materia Medica by Dioscorides, 1st century CE. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Local trade in ancient Mesopotamia began in the Ubaid Period (c. 5000-4100 BCE), had developed into long-distance trade by the Uruk Period (c. 4100-2900 BCE), and was flourishing by the time of the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE). Developments...

Ishtar (Inanna in Sumerian sources) is a primary Mesopotamian goddess closely associated with love and war. This powerful Mesopotamian goddess is the first known deity for which we have written evidence. While largely unknown in the modern...

The Near East is a modern-age term for the region formerly known as the Middle East comprising Armenia, Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, and part of Turkey, corresponding to ancient Urartu, Mesopotamia...

Two boxers are fighting while two musicians are playing the drum and are beating clappers together. Old Babylonian Period, 2000-1600 BCE. From Larsa, Southern Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. (The British Museum, London).

Daily life in ancient Mesopotamia cannot be described in the same way one would describe life in ancient Rome or Greece. Mesopotamia was never a single, unified civilization, not even under the Akkadian Empire of Sargon of Akkad (the Great...

Syria is a country located in the Middle East on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea and bordered, from the north down to the west, by Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, and Lebanon. It is one of the oldest inhabited regions in the world with archaeological...

Festivals in ancient Mesopotamia honored the patron deity of a city-state or the primary god of the city that controlled a region or empire. The earliest, the Akitu festival, was first observed in Sumer in the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334...

Chogha Zanbil (literally “basket mound”) is an ancient Elamite temple complex located in the modern-day province of Khuzestan, Iran. It is also known as Dur-Untash (Fortress/City/Town of Untash), Tchogha Zanbil, and Al Untash Napirisha (“Place...

Elam was a region in the Near East corresponding to the modern-day provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan in southern Iran (though it also included part of modern-day southern Iraq) whose civilization spanned thousands of years from c. 3200 - c...