Mesopotamian Religion

Pure Success
The first cities arose approximately five thousand years ago, producing a wide variety of inventions, institutions and ideas. In the article, “Cities and Civilization, 1989,” Kevin Reilly argues that religion is the foundation that society is built upon. Furthermore, he implies that religion was used to enforce order between the divided social classes by giving the pharaoh or king absolute power. Within the topic of religion, the societal preference for purity emerges throughout many of the primary sources in different forms such as laws, stories, and funerary texts. At first, purity may seem to ostracize those who are impure which may result in conflict in society. However a closer investigation reveals that the idea of purity
Those who were considered impure in Mesopotamian society were also of use to maintaining social order. Enkidu, a wild human being, was perceived as a threat to their society, so Gilgamesh, the ancient king of Uruk, ordered a harlot, which would be considered an unclean or impure woman, to seduce Enkidu. A harlot is essentially a prostitute. The fact that she is a prostitute and has a leading role in the “protecting” of Mesopotamia demonstrates that even those who were the most “impure” were useful to society. Furthermore, Enkidu is basically the purest and cleanest being that the Mesopotamians have ever laid eyes on, in terms of his experience with sexual intercouse. The Mesopotamians take note of this fact and use it to their advantage. The harlots lack of purity comes in handy because she would be able to “dirty” Enkidu’s pureness. For example, this can be seen when the trapper says to the harlot, “... uncover yourself and lie with him; teach him, the savage man, your woman’s art, for when he murmurs love to you the wild beasts that share his life in the hills will reject him.” In other words, the trapper is saying that when Enkidu pronounces his love for an impure women, even the wild beasts that were essentially Enkidu’s family, would abandon him. This “love” that he has for the harlot is actually lust, which reveals that Enkidu is being driven by sexual desire, which would be considered impure. Sexual desire would be seen as impure because it is superficial. It is superficial in the sense that Enkidu only likes the harlot for her body and would not be considered a righteous act. Furthermore, this was the reason for why the animals abandoned him, leaving him with no one to turn to except for the Mesopotamians. This demonstrates that Enkidu lacked the knowledge that purity was prefered, even by the animals, and the fact that the Mesopotamians knew this, gave them