Under the influence of the new conditions, the status and function of spirits that, until then, reflected the limits of the world in which humans lived, change. These changes are found on several levels.
To begin with, the discovery of paternity transformed men into creators: their seeds determine the features of the child that the woman carries and nourishes. This new role, combined with the major economic function that they have acquired, heightens their status and self-image. Having become primordial, inescapable, they place themselves at the summit of the creation, banishing women to a secondary, superfluous role.
Adding further to their creator's status, the domestication of plants and animals has reinforced the idea that they dominate nature: nature, just like women, has been created for their purpose. These views led them to think that they occupy a controlling position in the universe, a position outside nature.
In the same way, the spirits are going to be detached from the material support that nature provided until then. Freed from the limitations that originally were their raisons d’être, they will become divinities, and be allocated a world of their own, a world beyond nature, clearly mirroring the new image that men have forged for themselves. Further reflecting this new vision, the divinities will be endowed with “supernatural” powers.
With the introduction of the divine, the stable conception of the (pre)Neolithic world, in which humans and spirits were integrated in a holistic vision of nature, acquires a new dimension. Having stepped out of nature, humans and divinities are no longer frozen in an eternal and unalterable universal balance, as was the case in the ancient world. The new world is not cyclical but linear, a world in movement driven by men’s new aspirations. This transformation will introduce a revolutionary idea that will serve as foundation to the new society, the idea of progress, a notion totally incompatible with that of the unalterable cyclicality that humans, nature and spirits shared in the ancestral holistic vision.
At the heart of all transformations that take place, man will use the divinities to strengthen his authority and power, and just like the world of spirits sustained his influence and power in the (pre)Neolithic world, the world of divinities will provide the ideological armature he needs to justify the new social organization.
Freed from the manifestations of nature that defined them, the divinities acquire a new independence, giving them the possibility to be conceptualized without the support of any representation:
They can be in different places simultaneously
Contrary to the spirit that couldn’t exist outside its natural manifestation, the divinity, relieved from all physical representations, can find its residence wherever it is needed. The temple will become the standard structure that shelters it. Middle-eastern monotheism will push this process of liberation to new extremes by declaring the divinity omnipresent, freeing it, if only partially, from the cult place.
They can be represented in various manners
Not limited by a physical support, the divinity can take all possible forms. It opens the door to a figurative representation of the divine that will take the shape of animals, of monsters, of geniuses, and, more notably, of human beings. Anthropomorphism appears during the fourth millennium and represents a pinnacle in the history of human thought: to grant their features to the divinities allows humans to characterize the divine, and simultaneously makes the divinization of humans possible. Ultimately, to fight the excesses of the polytheistic pantheons, monotheism will abolish all representations of the divinity, bringing it back to the state of a pure spirit.
They possess multiple functions
Finally, detached from all supports, from all particularities, divinities are not limited to a specific function but accumulate them. This will give birth, down the road, to the almighty divinities that reign at the summit of the polytheistic pantheons. It will also give its main attribute to the monotheistic divinity: omnipotence.
Parallel to the features defining the divine, the world of divinities will use the very elements that characterize the new human society:
Genealogy
Just like ancestor cults imprint the patrilineal genealogy in the social fabric, divinities acquire a name, a sex and a genealogy that will form the basis of the pantheons.
Localization
Divinities reign over a specific region, like the monarch whose authority is limited to the geographical area under its rule.
Socialization
The pantheons form a society reproducing the same interactions as those found in human society.
Politicization
Similarly to human society, the divine world is organized around hierarchies, classes and specialties.
Anthropomorphism
Gods and goddesses are frequently endowed with human features.
These facets show that the world of divinities is shaped on the very elements that structure human society. Yet, numerous aspects of the archaic world of spirits have been preserved, for example, in the way divinities share the world with humans and take part in the same reality, prolonging the vision that dominated a few millennia earlier. Thus, the Sumerian Anu is not the god of the heavens, but represents the heavens. As Karen Armstrong notes, “[t]he pagan vision was holistic. The gods were not shut off from the human race in a separate, ontological sphere: divinity was not essentially different from humanity.” [Armstrong, 1993]
“Gigantic, alien, and magically endowed, the gods were nonetheless all too human in their sadism, whimsy, and churlishness.” [Ackerman, 1994]
Just like the cities and kingdoms at the time, the pantheons underwent a vigorous demographic growth: while the Sumerian pantheon had a few hundred divinities, the Egyptian pantheon counted two thousand gods and goddesses, and imperial Rome had more than 30,000 divinities, according to the Roman historian Varro.
Inside the pantheons, the roles were distributed as to ensure the good working of a divine world that was organized in the same way as the city-states. The Syrian-Palestinian pantheon, for example, had a monarchy composed of El and his feminine counterpart, Asherah, that both reigned at its summit. Directly below them were leading deities that had to manage the affairs of the world. Each of them ruled over a specific domain and possessed immense powers, often exercising them in a particularly aggressive manner. At a third level was the executive branch of the pantheon, composed of specialized divinities that had to carry out the orders emanating from their superiors. Finally, at the bottom of the scale were the divinities transmitting information, the messengers – who later will become “angels” – executing the orders received without any personal will. All in all, the pantheons formed a perfect mirror of human society, with its royalty, its ruling class, its castes of specialists, and its slaves.
Yet, despite this internal hierarchization, the equality that reigned between divinities belonging to different localities is striking: the god venerated here was equal to the god venerated by the neighbor. This can be explained by the fact that the divinities of the Middle East were assigned a jurisdiction, and everyone had to submit to the local cults. Besides, every god and goddess was assigned specific functions that gave the follower the possibility to choose the divinity that would most adequately grant its request. In fact, this functionality served as basis for the relationship between divinities and humans during the whole polytheistic era, and is also found during the first contacts between Yahweh and the Israelites.
Finally, besides demographic growth, the development of pantheons was supported by the increased contacts that took place between the different urban centers, motivated by commercial purpose or by territorial conquests. The integration by fusion or by absorption of divinities of various origins formed the composite identity of the gods and goddesses of the big pantheons that dominated our Antiquity. This faculty to integrate diverse divinities into an existing pantheon has been, in fact, one of the most important assets of the polytheistic culture, ensuring its expansion and its supremacy during 4,000 to 5,000 years. It has also been the cause of its demise in the Middle East.
The ancestral conception of the world in which everything that belongs to nature was eternally recycled implied that nature had no beginning, while its end was inconceivable. This cyclical and all-encompassing vision of the universe did not allow anything to exist outside the natural world: nature preceded everything and generated all sources of life.
With humans taking control of nature, the first step was made toward rejecting the cyclical vision world. Placing himself and the divinities outside nature led to finding an origin to it.
However, it was the introduction of ancestor cults that irremediably made the cyclical vision of the world obsolete. Ancestor cults provided every individual with a genealogy. Identically, divinities were endowed with an ancestry. Anchoring one’s descent into the past brought with it a linear perception of time, implying that somewhere in a very distant past, history had begun. This historical approach will give birth to the various creation myths that abound at the onset of civilization.
Yet, most creation myths took their source in nature, revealing how present the holistic vision still was: with almost no exception until the double creation myth related in Genesis [see Appendices Genesis ‘E’ and Genesis ‘J’], nature preexisted and served as the cradle to all life.
In most creation myths, earth and water are the elements that are at the origin of life. The sky is more rarely used. At Sumer, it is the “primordial sea” that precedes all things. For the Egyptians, it is the Noun, the primordial sea in which some see a metaphor of the Nile, that gives birth to the different cosmogonies. From its waters, a mound emerges that acts as a starting point to the creation myth of the Ogdoad in which the god Ra is born from an egg or, according to other versions, of a blue lotus. In the Ennead, the cosmogony of Heliopolis, Atum emerges from the primordial waters and masturbates to alleviate his solitude. Of his semen, Tefnut and Shu are born: they will generate the sky and the earth. A third important Egyptian cosmogony comes from Memphis and sees the god Ptah emerging from the primordial waters and creating the first human being.
In other creation myths, the “primal chaos” precedes all things. In his Theogony, Hesiod places chaos at the origin of the creation. In Japan, an unlimited chaos without any definite shape reigns before the sky and the earth appear. Similarly in China, the Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu) recounts that a formless but complete mass preceded the creation of the sky and the earth.
In most mythologies, divinities are placed in an already existing nature on which they are dependent, and it will be their task to give form to human life. The Sumerian mythology, remarkably, recounts that gods and goddesses experienced difficulties to secure their subsistence. They solved their problem by creating humans to work nature for them. The goddess-mother Ninmah created them in the image of the gods. Both divinities and humans were, therefore, subservient to nature, their survival depending on it. [For more accounts of creation myths, see Appendix Creation Myths]
Whereas in the world of spirits, the laws of nature were eternal and unchangeable, the divinities of the polytheistic pantheons organize the chaos and model nature to their will, introducing the creative principle. Nonexistent until then, this principle will justify the introduction of a new sort of law, the divine law that will ultimately supplant the laws of nature.
Besides, the introduction of divinities as a creative force within nature led to the creation of a hierarchy inside nature. The fact that humans were created to work in place of divinities establishes a hierarchy in which humans are an instrument used by divinities but, at the same time, are bestowed with the power to work and control nature. This vision conveys the values of the new society, justifying divine law and the conquest of nature by humans.
Finally, the growing role of the masculine creative principle will not diminish the importance of feminine fertility in the mentalities of the new era in any way. In Egypt, the power of Isis, sometimes represented nursing, will surpass that of all other divinities, and she will be worshiped as the “universal mother.” For the Thracian, the great goddess-mother was the most important figure of their pantheon. First represented as a pregnant woman or as a mother, she will later appear with a cup in her hands, a symbol of the fertility she offers. In Greece, the goddess-mother will be venerated under the names of Gaia and Rhea, which means “flow” and refers to menstruations, with innumerable altars and sanctuaries devoted to her. In Rome where all spiritual movements of the East gather, she goes by the name of Terra Mater, Tellus or Magna Mater. She has a seat beside the Egyptian Isis and Cybele, a goddess coming from Anatolia, also called Great Mother or Mother of the Gods. During the first century of our era, Seneca still deplores the impact that the devotions to these two divinities have on the mores of his contemporaries.
In the next part, we will see that the divinity of fertility will be the most prominent adversary of Yahweh, since it is to its cult that the Israelites repeatedly return. And when the monotheistic doctrine will dominate, forbidding all other cults and banishing all representations of the divine, the Fathers of the church will still feel obliged to include this pagan element to the church paraphernalia by integrating into its beliefs the cult to the Virgin Mary, whose main attribute is to be God's Mother, thus showing the importance of fertility cults at the beginning of our era [23].
Fig. 7: Feminine figurine seated. Period of Halaf, 5th millennium (Mesopotamia) © the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Fig. 8: Idol of fertility. Chalcolithic, Cyprus, around 3,000 © Louvre Museum / HAS. Reppas
Fig. 9: Decorated vase with naked goddess or “Vase of Ishtar." Detail. Mesopotamia, beginning of the 2nd millennium
However, with time, the representation of fertility in the polytheistic universe changes: man appears more and more frequently as the instigator of fertility, gradually taking over the last domain controlled by women. In one of the oldest recorded myths, Dumuzi, the shepherd, marries Inanna, the goddess of fertility, and becomes a semi-divinity. Their mating fertilizes the soil as well as all female living creatures. The presence of Dumuzi does not symbolize sexual power, as the bull has done in earlier times, but represents one of the first accounts of masculine contribution to the fertility process.
The legend further says that Ereshkigal, Inanna’s sister who reigns over the underworld, has made Inanna prisoner. Inanna decides that Dumuzi must take her place. The sister of Dumuzi intervenes and is allowed to take her brother's place six months every year. At every equinox, the reunion of Inanna and Dumuzi brings fertility back to nature [24].
Throughout Antiquity, this myth was integrated into many rituals, the keys of fertility being deposited in the hands of the monarch who represented the divinity. Every year, the king had to take the place of Dumuzi and to mate with the great priestess representing Inanna. The king's role was in this regard very important, since his grip on power depended on the result from this union: he would undergo a ritual death if he was not able to prove his capacity to ensure fertility of the land and of the women under his authority.
This ritual, found in Uruk during the third millennium, was also practiced with Osiris in Egypt, with Adonis in Syria and with Attis in Phrygia: every year, the masculine divinity had to die so that nature could be born again. However, whereas the female element was at first deemed necessary for all fertility rituals, whether as a divinity like Inanna or as a woman like the great priestess, the Canaanite god Baal will not need any female assistance to grant fertility to nature and to his followers. His powers will make him the chief competitor of Yahweh who will have to convince his people that he is also capable of giving them the fertility they need.
A similar shift from the feminine to the masculine is also found at the summit of the pantheons. Characteristically, most if not all proto-historical pantheons had set a mother-goddess as their most important divinity. Nonetheless, towards the end of Antiquity, the supreme authority was in the hands of male divinities: El for the Canaanites, Ahura Mazda in Iran, Zeus for the Greeks, Jupiter for the Romans, Brahma in India, etc.
The description that Bruce Rosenstock gives of the Greek religious system can be applied to many of the polytheistic systems at the time for this region: “This polytheistic theology is put into the service of legitimizing male power, whether vested in a king or in an aristocratic elite, over a society’s reproductive resources, both material and cultural. In a highly stratified urban culture, polytheism and the veneration of phallic power are inextricably linked.” [Rosenstock, 2006] The determination to withdraw all powers from women’s hands in their relationship with the divine will reach its climax with Levantine monotheistic religions that will ban women from the places of cult.
As for the world of spirits, the world of divinities begins where the world of humans ends. But unlike the spirits, the divinities interact much more with humans, allowing individuals like Dumuzi to become semi-divine. Jesus Christ will serve as one of the highest expressions of this fusion. This will in turn allow humans’ field of vision to stretch beyond the limits of their own world, to reach a universe beyond the borders formed by their understanding: by introducing the supra-natural world of divinities, humans have liberated themselves from the limits imposed on them by nature.
Emancipation from nature will not happen overnight: nature remains an important reference of the polytheistic culture, and it will only be with the ideological current of the Axial Age that this emancipation will be finalized.
With the passing of time, the polytheistic pantheons became more complex, reproducing a faithful image of human society that preceded them in their development. When recorded history began, the pantheons were already in place, and we can only guess what has been their origin, their past. Having started in simplified structures like the structures of the communities in which they were born, their parameters developed as those of the surrounding society became clearer. In the cities, various divinities lived side-by-side, forming a multi-faceted world, constantly changing. Only the intervention of the authority could impose a unifying norm, whose first traces appeared at the end of the third millennium, more precisely at Eridu in Mesopotamia where, according to the Sumerian Royal List (fig. 10), “kingship descended from heaven.”