In the traces of the political institution, polytheism is first characterized by its territorial specificity, since the divinity is attached to the place over which the monarch who represents the divinity reigns. The temple symbolizes a still more specific localization phenomenon, since it was not considered as a center of cult, but as the home of the divinity. Comparable to the palace, only the privileged could enter its premises. The rest of the population had to leave messages or pray outside the building where a representation of the divinity was sometimes put at its disposal.
The growth of urban populations, the development of communication and exchanges, but more especially the territorial expansion that characterizes this period favored the creation of pantheons bringing together cults and divinities. Divinities fulfilling an identical function merged. Others, which were too vague, too weak, or too dysfunctional, disappeared. Others still, too powerful to be set aside, were attached to the existing core of divinities. Taking a new name in each context, these major divinities were found in all the pantheons of the Middle East.
This phenomenon of integration reveals another characteristic of the polytheistic pantheons, namely the flexibility with which their structures could be adapted and modeled, not only integrating new divinities when deemed necessary, but also adapting their functions attributed according to the needs of society. This flexibility represents one of the strengths of this religious system, forming unique schemes around the kingdoms and empires that succeed one another, giving shape to the first cultural empire of our history.
In Mesopotamia, every city is associated with a god or a goddess. The king is its only representative and has mandate to organize the city according to the will of the divinity. Eridu, for example, is the only city of the antediluvian period mentioned on the Sumerian Royal List (fig. 10). The first archaeological levels reveal the existence of a village around 5,000 that will become one of the first Sumerian cities, covering about ten hectares and sheltering a temple and a ziggurat.
This structure, in the shape of a pyramid erected within the temple grounds and surmounted by an altar, possessed a double function: it brought humans closer to the divinities, and at the same time it allowed divinities to come down on earth and to mingle with humans [25].
Eridu was founded by Enki, a divinity with multiple functions: god of waters, of artisans, of wisdom, and of the creation, he is also the god who carried the mysterious me, key to divine and human powers. Enki will be one of the most important and influential gods of the polytheistic pantheons, his cult still being celebrated today.
When Enki offered the me to Inanna, the divine authority left Eridu for Uruk of which Inanna became the official goddess. Her cult was also celebrated in several other cities of Mesopotamia [26].
Enlil, son of An and eldest brother of Enki, will reign over the city of Nippur where the gods will gather to take decisions about the future of humanity. A center such as Nippur sheltered many temples where other gods besides Enlil were venerated. Its pantheon signals a beginning of religious unification, following the traces of the political unity that takes place under Lugal-Zage-Si and Sargon.
Concentrating temporal and spiritual powers, the king – only one queen is cited in the Sumerian Royal List – represented the divinity that founded the city. The king had to marry the goddess Inanna to exercise his function and consecrate his authority. This concentration of power is also ascertained by the fact that the temple sheltered the granaries of the city, playing a decisive role in the economy [27]. Furthermore, writing, in its beginnings, will be confined to the temple, placing the means of communication in the hands of the priests. As a matter of fact, the temple seems to have exercised a monopoly on all vital domains of the newborn society.
Fig. 10: The Sumerian Royal List gives the name of the kings of Sumer since the time that precedes the Deluge until Sîn-Magir, king of Isin (1,827-1,817). More than ten copies are known, coming from Babylonia, Susa and from the Assyrian royal library of Nineveh (650). The original has probably been composed around 2,100, at the beginning of the third dynasty of Ur. The goal of the Royal List was to show that, since the moment “kingship descended from heaven,” the hegemonic power on Sumer had always been in the hands of one city at a time. Around 1,740, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
By descending from the heavens, the authority justifies a monolithic exercise of power from top downwards, while eliminating all doubts about its legitimacy since the monarch is chosen by the divinity itself and is subservient to its power. The rise of a monopolistic authority concentrating spiritual and temporal powers in the hands of one individual characterizes the formation of the first nation-states. This phenomenon has been observed well beyond the borders of Mesopotamia, from the king-priests of Ur and Uruk to the Thracian and Scythian, whose kings possessed political and religious power, to the Egyptian Pharaohs and the first emperors of China and Japan who created the divine to their image. European kings of the feudal period will also be enthroned with divine power, some of them even possessing the power to heal, a faculty directly inherited from the shamans of our prehistory. The divinization of the supreme authority will act as basis for the pyramidal structure on which most States will be developed, and will only be (partially) dismantled with the advent of the democratic State.
A question arises then: at what moment was religion born?
Defining religion as a system of commonly shared beliefs ritualized and regularized by an institution [28], it will be necessary to wait until the world of divinities is sufficiently developed before one can speak of religion. As the political institution established the laws that regularized the relationships inside society, the religious institution will fix the rituals that regularize the relations between community and divinity. The birth of divinities will therefore not be sufficient for religion to appear: the function of shaman and its rituals will have to be institutionalized before religion emerges.
As the function of chief had to change with the renewed demographic and economic conditions, the function of shaman had also to be adapted to the new social context. The vacuum left by the disappearance of Neolithic values made this adaptation all the more necessary. In the tribal structure, the authority of the shaman, as that of the chief, was determined by the egalitarian structure and by his individual achievements.
The religious system that is being developed inherits some of the shamanistic rituals, more especially using the shaman’s “faculty” to communicate with the spirits. However, the aspects that make the institutionalization of his function impossible – his personal implication, the extreme individualization of his activities, and the role his charisma played – will be discarded.
Another factor that played a determining role in the creation of the religious structure is the size of the population. While the smaller chiefdoms kept the shamanistic structures as they were at the time of the tribes, the large chiefdoms needed several shamans to provide for the necessities of a sizeable population. The shaman had therefore to allow others to exercise a function that had been, until then, his monopoly. This fragmentation will have two major consequences: it will entail the introduction of a hierarchy, and will require a slow but inexorable formalization of the rituals.
Ultimately, the individualized function of the shaman will give way to a hierarchized and centralized organization in the hand of the priests under the command of a high priest, function very often assumed by the chief himself. But contrary to the shaman who had to prove his capacities, the function of priest is much less personalized, anchored in a hierarchical structure and in formalized rituals.
The formalization of rituals will have a profound influence on the relationship with the divinity and the functions it will play. The shaman exercised his task in a definite context: he had to deal with precise problems, requiring the involvement of specific spirits and demanding a particular ritual.
In the world of divinities, this contextual relationship partially disappears. The priest has now to do with divinities that are bestowed with multiple functions and various powers, whose will, flexible and unpredictable, is on all points comparable to that of humans. It is their will that the priest must convert in a merely psychological context. However, contrary to the shaman whose science helped influence causes and events, the priest does not possess the power to bend the will of the divinities: he only knows how to communicate with them and acts as a mediator, indicating to the individual (or to the group) the procedure to follow without guaranteeing any success. Nevertheless, with divinities possessing multiple functions and powers, the follower can always bring the same request to another divinity. In the end, the proliferation of gods and goddesses will create such a complex and chaotic structure that it will collapse under its own weight.
To illustrate how the relationship to the divine has been transformed, let us take the example of Sargon who assigns his accession to the throne to the goddess Inanna, admitting that the will of the divinity has been decisive. If Sargon had not become king, this failure would have been imputed to the goddess's will. And while no one doubts that it is in the power of the goddess to grant Sargon’s request, nothing guarantees that she will.
The will of the divinity is therefore always expressed in the way facts are brought to a close, in the events that follow, whether the request is granted or not. This will become one of the characteristics of the monotheist divinity.
The personalized role that the shaman played and the results on which he depended have been replaced by the depersonalized service of the priest. The manner with which the priests intercede with the divinity does not involve them personally, and their know-how does not play any significant role in the relation between the public and the divinity they serve. It is precisely this depersonalization that will allow the institutionalization of their function: whoever has learned the rituals in use in a temple can take office as a priest.
Similarly, rituals undergo an identical process: they lose their secretive aspect and their initiatory content, acquiring the possibility of being shared by the community.
Finally, the relationship to the divinity will also be institutionalized. Abandoning the keys to solve all problems in the particularism of magic or shamanic relationships, communicating with the divinities will slowly be detached from its contextual aspect to be defined by a global and generic approach: problems and answers will not refer to the exception, but to the rule. The community having partially taken the place of the individual, rituals having given up their secretive character, the religious discourse will rest on a common logic, eliminating from its gear all the specificities that characterized exchanges with the spirits. It will offer a group’s dialectic that can be commonly shared by the whole community.
When the union of the king with the high priestess is requested to ensure the fertility of the land, it does not address a case in particular, but takes a global approach: the fertility of all the land and of all the women depends on it.
Nevertheless, some of the Neolithic heritage will still impregnate the relationship with the divinities, notably, the contextual approach, so ingrained in the public. In fact, the rapport with the divinity will be defined by its functionality, the divinities being consulted for very specific purposes. And if a divinity cannot achieve what one asks, the request will be submitted to another one in the hope that it will be brought to satisfaction.
Despite their multiple powers, the relationship to the divinities remains functional and pragmatic during the polytheistic era. We will have to wait for the prophets of the Axial Age to see a new relationship with the divine emerge.
Territorial expansion and the edification of new empires will require a constant adaptation of the political structures, as well as of the religious organization, every conquest integrating new faces in the existing pantheons while others, becoming redundant, disappear. Mythologies will merge and form the hearth in which the great empires of our Antiquity will draw their sources and their values.
The faculty to integrate new divinities will be one of polytheism’s strengths, altars and sanctuaries being sometimes shared by several divinities, associated here by circumstances or necessity, there by will or by logic [30].
With the passing of time, the world of divinities will become more and more intricate, reflecting the complexity of the human society it mirrors. Except for the gods and goddesses that dominate the pantheons, it will become increasingly difficult for the public to find its way in the labyrinth formed by several thousand divinities. We can imagine the number of gods and goddesses a merchant had to approach if he wanted to make sure to have all odds on his side, without crumpling the ego of any of these divinities!
In the Middle East, this entanglement will lead polytheism to its demise. At the same time, the ideological impetus carried on the wings of the Axial Age will offer an alternative to polytheism in asphyxia, establishing a less functional but more abstract and more individual relationship to the divine.
Stele featuring Egyptian and foreign gods:
Qetesh (Syria), Min (Egypt), Resheph (Canaan), detail
Painting on limestone.© Projet Rosette, Musée du Louvre (C 86)