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Anthropology Part 4

Submitted by mpetracchi on Tue, 10/15/2019 - 21:05

One important difference between Egyptian and Sumerian religions is the use of animals in godly figures. Sumerian gods took the forms of human beings entirely without much reference to the animal world. In ancient Sumer the gods of people were people, thus many lessons could be learned from the hierarchy of the gods by the people. If the gods had inequality, the people should too. In ancient Egypt, the gods took the bodies of humans with the heads of animals found in Egypt. Each animal god was an interpretation of the animal in real life and had its characteristics. A falcon man was the god of the sky, the god of wisdom was a baboon man, and the god of ‘the returning land after a flood’ was a crocodile man. However different these religions may have been, they both used human figures as their gods. The Egyptians added animals, yet they kept most of the god human. I believe this was done to keep the gods familiar and relatable while still holding immense power.

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