Mesopotamian Quotes & Sayings

A major premise of my fictional novel Noah Primeval is that the gods of the ancient world were real spiritual beings with supernatural powers. Thus, the mythical literature and artistic engravings of the gods that have been uncovered by Mesopotamian archeology reflect a certain amount of factual reality. The twist is that these gods are actually fallen divine angelic beings called "Sons of God" (Bene Elohim) in the Bible. — Brian Godawa

Finally, at two minutes to three, in the sweltering heat of a Mesopotamian summer afternoon, I crossed the no-man's land into Syria. — William Dalrymple

The Egyptian tomb was the outcome of the Mesopotamian influence and followed from the religious crisis the country had undergone. — Stephen Gardiner

We are so accustomed to thinking of European civilization as the vanguard of the world that we forget that for much of human history, the European peninsula was at the receiving end of the miracles of the East. Over the millennia, innovations such as Mesopotamian agriculture, the Phoenician alphabet, Greek philosophy, and Arab bookkeeping all flowed from east to west. Both Christianity and Islam followed the same route. So did wheat, olives, sugar, and spices. — Michael Krondl

Every Jew was the last Jew; Tevye the Terminal, every single one. Yet, Kugel couldn't help but observe, in all that time - no last Jew. There had been a last Assyrian. There had been a last Ammonite. There had been a last Babylonian, a last Mesopotamian, a last of the Mohicans. But no last Jew. — Shalom Auslander

Saddam Hussein was fascinated by ancient Babylon and Assyria. He made money available to protect and develop the great archaeological sites. The great achievements of Mesopotamian civilisation were pressed into the service of the Ba'athist regime. — Neil MacGregor

The engineered built environments or domesticated landscapes of certain Amazonian peoples were as impressive as any Egyptian pyramid, Mesopotamian city, or Chinese terrace-irrigiation system. In the Amazon, the transformation was driven by social demands: social group formation, domestic routines, territoriality, local environmental knowledge, gifting, and competitive feasting. — Clark L. Erickson

We were still in the boundless void, striped here and there by a streak or two of hydrogen around the vortexes of the first constellations. I admit it required very complicated deductions to foresee the Mesopotamian plains black with men and horses and arrows and trumpets, but, since I had nothing else to do, I could bring it off. — Italo Calvino

Mesopotamian literature is concerned about the jurisdiction of the various gods in the cosmos with humankind at the bottom of the heap, the Genesis account is interested in the jurisdiction of humankind over the rest of creation as a result of the image of God in which people were created. — John H. Walton

The Watchers were Sons of God, members of Elohim's divine council, or heavenly host. Two hundred of them rebelled and fell to earth during the ancient days of Jared. Led by the mightiest of the Watchers, Semjaza and Azazel, they had taken on new identities as gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon. They were referred to as gods, Watchers, or even Watcher gods. Semjaza had become Anu, the most high father god of the pantheon. Azazel had become his consort Inanna. Ishtar snorted in disgust at that memory. — Brian Godawa

this interpretation of certain Mesopotamian cultic functionaries has been vigorously criticized as a scholarly construct, overly reliant on nineteenth-century assumptions about "fertility cult" in the ancient Near East. While the vast textual evidence from cuneiform tablets reveals a bewilderingly large variety of female cultic personnel, some of whom are regularly mentioned alongside prostitutes or in contexts that hint of sexuality, they offer no clear-cut example of a "cultic prostitute," and it is likely that this conceptual category simply does not correspond to the more nuanced and complex roles of Mesopotamian women in relation to their goddesses.20 — Jennifer Larson

Among the clay tablets brought back by Rassam from Ashurbanipal's library, were fragments of the Babylonian story of the Deluge. These, as translated by George Smith, aroused immense interest, which led to the desire that search be made for the missing fragments. The explorers of the Heroic Period had uncovered palaces, bas-reliefs, and statues, but had given the insignificant tablets secondary consideration. From the library chamber of Ashurbanipal's palace Rassam had extracted only those tablets which could be conveniently reached. With the power to read attained meanwhile, the tablets had become fully as important as the sculptures, if not more so. George Smith's expedition indicated, therefore, that the Modern Scientific Period of excavation had begun. Its end is not yet in sight, since its goal is the investigation of all feasible localities in the Mesopotamian valley, with the purpose of throwing all available light upon the history and life of these ancient peoples. — George Stephen Goodspeed