Chapter one - MYTHS of MODERN RELIGION

The biography of ancient Gods begins a very long way back in human prehistory, perhaps many thousands of years before the art of writing was invented. In ancient times there would have been an almost total lack of knowledge of the laws governing the dynamics of nature. The people would wonder what caused the rain to sometimes be excessive and at other times to be absent. Calamities seemed from time to time to descend upon them which brought suffering and misery to the people and their families. Storms, droughts, plagues and many other pests could bring sickness and destroy their crops and livelihood. They would wonder what or who had the power to do such damage and why. Certainly no human had that much power over the elements.

Ancient humans would think that perhaps some unseen force or spirit was angry. Then they imagined supreme spirit controllers of these forces which they called gods. There was the sun god, moon god, storm god, the god of war and very many other gods, even a god of love and reproduction. Fear of those forces would drive them to seek a way of influencing the unseen super beings. So people began to placate those powerful gods or mystery spirit-things, whatever they were. The result was they started making sacrifices to the supposed gods.

Mythology was very useful in filling a void in their understanding. It satisfied a deep need to explain questions which they had no hope of answering in any other way.

The farthest we can go back in reliable history is about the time writing was invented around 3,000 B.C. Human beings had already adopted agriculture and the domestication of animals by nine to ten thousand years B.C. We pick up the story in Mesopotamia 3,000 B.C. People were already living in complex urban societies. They had mud brick and furnace fired brick buildings. They were living in well organised social communities with complex divisions of labour. Irrigation was in use. Farmers tilled the ground to provide grains and vegetables, butchers and fishermen supplied proteins. From trees were gathered nuts and fruit. There was more than enough food for all the people.

Other members of the community were potters, stone masons, weavers, carpenters, traders, and all the other activities which constituted an ancient working society. Mining of copper and the making of bronze had already been achieved. They had a large body of priests and had built huge Ziggurats or temples for people to worship their many gods.

The people of Sumer in eastern Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, had built up a thriving trade with their neighbours. The difficulty was that they had no means of recording trade transactions other than memory. We can assume that something like the following happened. One day a clever man or woman picked up a piece of soft clay and scratched a head of a donkey or the shape of a fish or wheat on the clay tablet then dried it in the sun. We know that something like this happened because many clay memory-aids or pictograms have been dug up by archaeologists. Gradually over many years, the pictograms changed to what is called cuneiform writing. The word cuneiform comes from two Latin words Cuneus, meaning wedge and Forma, meaning shape. The Sumerians adopted a wedge shaped stylus cut from reeds which could be pressed into the soft clay tablets instead of scratching a picture of the trade object (see example 'below). The first pictograms happened in Sumer about three thousand B.C. Sun baked clay tablets were discovered in 1850 by Austen Layard and Hormuzd Rassam. Later Rassam provided the British Museum with tens of thousands of Babylonian tablets written in cuneiform text,
Chapter one - MYTHS of MODERN RELIGION

The biography of ancient Gods begins a very long way back in human prehistory, perhaps many thousands of years before the art of writing was invented. In ancient times there would have been an almost total lack of knowledge of the laws governing the dynamics of nature. The people would wonder what caused the rain to sometimes be excessive and at other times to be absent. Calamities seemed from time to time to descend upon them which brought suffering and misery to the people and their families. Storms, droughts, plagues and many other pests could bring sickness and destroy their crops and livelihood. They would wonder what or who had the power to do such damage and why. Certainly no human had that much power over the elements.

Ancient humans would think that perhaps some unseen force or spirit was angry. Then they imagined supreme spirit controllers of these forces which they called gods. There was the sun god, moon god, storm god, the god of war and very many other gods, even a god of love and reproduction. Fear of those forces would drive them to seek a way of influencing the unseen super beings. So people began to placate those powerful gods or mystery spirit-things, whatever they were. The result was they started making sacrifices to the supposed gods.

Mythology was very useful in filling a void in their understanding. It satisfied a deep need to explain questions which they had no hope of answering in any other way.

The farthest we can go back in reliable history is about the time writing was invented around 3,000 B.C. Human beings had already adopted agriculture and the domestication of animals by nine to ten thousand years B.C. We pick up the story in Mesopotamia 3,000 B.C. People were already living in complex urban societies. They had mud brick and furnace fired brick buildings. They were living in well organised social communities with complex divisions of labour. Irrigation was in use. Farmers tilled the ground to provide grains and vegetables, butchers and fishermen supplied proteins. From trees were gathered nuts and fruit. There was more than enough food for all the people.

Other members of the community were potters, stone masons, weavers, carpenters, traders, and all the other activities which constituted an ancient working society. Mining of copper and the making of bronze had already been achieved. They had a large body of priests and had built huge Ziggurats or temples for people to worship their many gods.

The people of Sumer in eastern Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, had built up a thriving trade with their neighbours. The difficulty was that they had no means of recording trade transactions other than memory. We can assume that something like the following happened. One day a clever man or woman picked up a piece of soft clay and scratched a head of a donkey or the shape of a fish or wheat on the clay tablet then dried it in the sun. We know that something like this happened because many clay memory-aids or pictograms have been dug up by archaeologists. Gradually over many years, the pictograms changed to what is called cuneiform writing. The word cuneiform comes from two Latin words Cuneus, meaning wedge and Forma, meaning shape. The Sumerians adopted a wedge shaped stylus cut from reeds which could be pressed into the soft clay tablets instead of scratching a picture of the trade object (see example 'below). The first pictograms happened in Sumer about three thousand B.C. Sun baked clay tablets were discovered in 1850 by Austen Layard and Hormuzd Rassam. Later Rassam provided the British Museum with tens of thousands of Babylonian tablets written in cuneiform text,

The idea of recording on clay tablets was taken up by other nations including the Akkadians who lived north of the Sumerians. They had a written vocabulary of several hundred words. China still uses thousands of modified piciograms or logographic written language. Writing as we know it today, did not arrive complete and ready to use but from very small beginnings. R developed painfully slowly over hundreds of

years. Tens of thousands of rectangular clay tablets, written on both sides, have been recovered from the ruins of the ancient cities and royal libraries of Mesopotamia.

Various forms of writing developed worldwide. The simplest method was invented by the Incas. They used bundles of knotted string to somehow convey a meaning. Perhaps the most isolated society to attempt writing was the Polynesians on Easter Island in the South Pacific. They scratched their symbols on pieces of wood about 200 mm by 100 mm. One copy, which I have examined, is on display in the Easter Island museum. A few other copies in existence are scattered around several museums but have never been interpreted.

The earliest forms of writing are non-phonological. Pictographic writing slowly developed into ideographic symbols or concept writing. Modern Japanese symbols correspond to the syllables of words. Telling us of fourth century A.D. Bible manuscripts, Christie Innes had this to say, "The writing was in rounded capitals with words un-spaced and practically no punctuation."

In 1928 on the northern Syrian coast at a place called Ras Shamra a farmer plowing a field disturbed a large stone which led to an ancient tomb. What he had found was part of the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit. This resulted in a French archaeological team, under the leadership of Dr. Claude Shaeffer, excavating a huge royal palace dating from 1400-1200 B.C. They discovered two libraries of cuneiform texts in several languages. Perhaps the most exciting discovery was that of a script, which for the first time, used an alphabet of thirty characters based on phonics. It was most likely worked out by the Phoenicians or Greeks somewhere between 2,000 and 1,500 B.C. This made reading and writing very much simpler and indeed it has become the generally used medium of writing ever since.

The invention of writing was one of the greatest steps to the development of science and the enjoyment of life for mankind. Before that time the people were wholly dependent on word of mouth folk tales, myths and legends for history. Of course myths and legends must be expected to have changed over the many years due to constant repetition. Each person would tell a slightly different story.

During the thousands of years of early civilisation, nobody could read or write. Written language enables us to examine the wisdom or folly of past generations so that nothing is lost. Through our eyes we can read, understand and enjoy the wisdom of Plato who wrote about 2,400 years ago. We can learn engineering, astronomy or anything else we choose by reading books for knowledge or amusement. The art of writing was the first and perhaps the greatest step leading to the advancement of human knowledge.

Archaeologists' discoveries of artifacts from graves and ruins of ancient buildings have also provided us with reliable knowledge of ancient human activity. Buried ceramics have a history which can give information, so have metal objects, glass products, instruments of war and clothing.

Writing made possible a much more accurate recording of human history. Indeed we can say that history and science blossomed as a result of the invention of writing. Pictograms were simple memory-aids representing trade products but very little more than that. Cuneiform writing became the first method of expressing ideas. The Sumerians and Akkadians established schools teaching the art of writing.

The work of reconstructing the often broken Sumerian and Akkadian tablets began before the Second World War. Dr. Samuel Kramer of the University Museum of Philadelphia, was one of the pioneers joining and reading thousands of pieces of clay tablets. The British Museum and many universities have also done a great deal of work piecing together and reading cuneiform tablets. The royal libraries of Nineveh were the first great find of tablets.

The famous laws of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, Mesopotamia, 1792 to 1750 B.C. are inscribed on a stone stela over two metres tall, now in the Louvre in Paris. They are written in cuneiform. It is a remarkable framework of social order and dealt with the administration of justice in matters of murder, adultery, false witness and offences against the person and property,

The first purposefully written recording of history had to wait until the Greek writer Herodotus wrote the story of the war between the Greeks and the Persians in the fourth century B.C. Herodotus is therefore regarded as the father of written history. I do not know of any literature apart from cuneiform writing that goes further back than the seventh or eighth century B.C. The writings of Homer are considered an early text. According to my Oxford Encyclopedia, Herodotus believed the writings of Homer to have been written about 830 B.C. Josephus says that Homer left nothing in writing. The poems were collected afterwards from various memories and from different places.

I have an English translation of Homer's "The Odyssey" and "The Illiad". Both are full of mythical stories of their gods who had tremendous power over the people. It is amazing the power of mythology, people devoted their lives to serving their mythological gods.

The idea of recording on clay tablets was taken up by other nations including the Akkadians who lived north of the Sumerians. They had a written vocabulary of several hundred words. China still uses thousands of modified piciograms or logographic written language. Writing as we know it today, did not arrive complete and ready to use but from very small beginnings. R developed painfully slowly over hundreds of

years. Tens of thousands of rectangular clay tablets, written on both sides, have been recovered from the ruins of the ancient cities and royal libraries of Mesopotamia.

Various forms of writing developed worldwide. The simplest method was invented by the Incas. They used bundles of knotted string to somehow convey a meaning. Perhaps the most isolated society to attempt writing was the Polynesians on Easter Island in the South Pacific. They scratched their symbols on pieces of wood about 200 mm by 100 mm. One copy, which I have examined, is on display in the Easter Island museum. A few other copies in existence are scattered around several museums but have never been interpreted.

The earliest forms of writing are non-phonological. Pictographic writing slowly developed into ideographic symbols or concept writing. Modern Japanese symbols correspond to the syllables of words. Telling us of fourth century A.D. Bible manuscripts, Christie Innes had this to say, "The writing was in rounded capitals with words un-spaced and practically no punctuation."

In 1928 on the northern Syrian coast at a place called Ras Shamra a farmer plowing a field disturbed a large stone which led to an ancient tomb. What he had found was part of the ruins of the ancient city of Ugarit. This resulted in a French archaeological team, under the leadership of Dr. Claude Shaeffer, excavating a huge royal palace dating from 1400-1200 B.C. They discovered two libraries of cuneiform texts in several languages. Perhaps the most exciting discovery was that of a script, which for the first time, used an alphabet of thirty characters based on phonics. It was most likely worked out by the Phoenicians or Greeks somewhere between 2,000 and 1,500 B.C. This made reading and writing very much simpler and indeed it has become the generally used medium of writing ever since.

The invention of writing was one of the greatest steps to the development of science and the enjoyment of life for mankind. Before that time the people were wholly dependent on word of mouth folk tales, myths and legends for history. Of course myths and legends must be expected to have changed over the many years due to constant repetition. Each person would tell a slightly different story.

During the thousands of years of early civilisation, nobody could read or write. Written language enables us to examine the wisdom or folly of past generations so that nothing is lost. Through our eyes we can read, understand and enjoy the wisdom of Plato who wrote about 2,400 years ago. We can learn engineering, astronomy or anything else we choose by reading books for knowledge or amusement. The art of writing was the first and perhaps the greatest step leading to the advancement of human knowledge.

Archaeologists' discoveries of artifacts from graves and ruins of ancient buildings have also provided us with reliable knowledge of ancient human activity. Buried ceramics have a history which can give information, so have metal objects, glass products, instruments of war and clothing.

Writing made possible a much more accurate recording of human history. Indeed we can say that history and science blossomed as a result of the invention of writing. Pictograms were simple memory-aids representing trade products but very little more than that. Cuneiform writing became the first method of expressing ideas. The Sumerians and Akkadians established schools teaching the art of writing.

The work of reconstructing the often broken Sumerian and Akkadian tablets began before the Second World War. Dr. Samuel Kramer of the University Museum of Philadelphia, was one of the pioneers joining and reading thousands of pieces of clay tablets. The British Museum and many universities have also done a great deal of work piecing together and reading cuneiform tablets. The royal libraries of Nineveh were the first great find of tablets.

The famous laws of Hammurabi, king of Babylon, Mesopotamia, 1792 to 1750 B.C. are inscribed on a stone stela over two metres tall, now in the Louvre in Paris. They are written in cuneiform. It is a remarkable framework of social order and dealt with the administration of justice in matters of murder, adultery, false witness and offences against the person and property,

The first purposefully written recording of history had to wait until the Greek writer Herodotus wrote the story of the war between the Greeks and the Persians in the fourth century B.C. Herodotus is therefore regarded as the father of written history. I do not know of any literature apart from cuneiform writing that goes further back than the seventh or eighth century B.C. The writings of Homer are considered an early text. According to my Oxford Encyclopedia, Herodotus believed the writings of Homer to have been written about 830 B.C. Josephus says that Homer left nothing in writing. The poems were collected afterwards from various memories and from different places.

I have an English translation of Homer's "The Odyssey" and "The Illiad". Both are full of mythical stories of their gods who had tremendous power over the people. It is amazing the power of mythology, people devoted their lives to serving their mythological gods.