Epic of gilgamesh: Did you mean...?

Mesopotamian religion was central to the people's lives. Humans were created as co-laborers with their gods to hold off the forces of chaos and to keep the world running smoothly. As in ancient Egypt, the gods were honored daily for providing...

Anu (also known as An) is an early Mesopotamian sky god who was later viewed as the Father of the Gods and ruler of the heavens, a position which then passed to his son Enlil. He is the son of the couple Anshar and Kishar (heaven and earth...

The Matter of Aratta is the modern-day title for a collection of four poems – Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana, Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave, and Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird – concerning the rivalry between...

The Bhagavad Gita (“Song of God” or “Song of the Lord”) is among the most important religious texts of Hinduism and easily the best known. It has been quoted by writers, poets, scientists, theologians, and philosophers – among others – for...

The Ramayana is an ancient Indian epic, composed some time in the 5th century BCE, about the exile and then return of Rama, prince of Ayodhya. It was composed in Sanskrit by the sage Valmiki, who taught it to Rama's sons, the twins Lava and...

Hanuman is one of several zoomorphic characters in Indian mythology, but is the only wholly animal figure who is revered as a god today. The mythic texts speak of him as a monkey child of the Wind God, as possessing enormous strength, keen...

The mythology of ancient Persia originally developed in the region known as Greater Iran (the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and West Asia). The Persians were initially part of a migratory people who referred to themselves as Aryan...

Ghosts in ancient Mesopotamia were understood as a reality of life just as they were in other civilizations of antiquity. Although the cultures of the various Mesopotamian civilizations differed between c. 5000 BCE-651 CE, the belief in ghosts...

Mount Ararat (Armenian: Masis; Turkish: Ağrı Dağı; Kurdish: Çiyaye Agiri; Azeri: Ağrıdağ; Persian: Kūh-e Nūḥ) is a dormant, compound volcanic mountain, consisting of two ancient volcanic peaks, located in present-day eastern Turkey very close...

The Fertile Crescent, often called the "Cradle of Civilization", is the region in the Middle East which curves, like a quarter-moon shape, from the Persian Gulf, through modern-day southern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and northern...