Introduction
The origins of Western Civilization are tied to the development of the Mesopotamian (Iraq) and Egyptian civilizations of the ancient Near East. These were the earliest human civilizations, each originating about 3,000 B.C., and the civilizations that influenced the Greek and Roman states which founded the first great civilizations of Europe. Greek and Roman civilizations were, in many aspects, inspired by and indebted to the cultural forms created by the peoples of the Tigris-Euphrates and Nile river valleys. For the ancient Mediterranean world, the Near East was the cradle of civilization.
The civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt were primary, archaic, and mythopoeic. Professor Covensky, in his work The Ancient Near Eastern Tradition, uses the term primary to mean that they were not derived or affiliated with other, earlier, high civilizations but proceeded from prehistoric cultures. Archaic means that they regarded all important events as having originally occurred at the beginning of time, creating a norm or standard that thereafter continues to influence the destinies of humans and their societies. Archaic cultures emphasize order and stability. In conducting their lives and confronting problems, these societies looked back to their origins to fashion solutions, and thus were remarkably resistant to change.
The term mythopoeic is more complicated in its meaning. Its derivation is from the Greek words mythos (myth) and poiein (to make or create). To be mythopoeic in patterns of thought means to make myths – traditional stories of ostensibly historical events that serve to
- articulate the world view of a people, or
- explain the practices, beliefs, traditions, and institutions of a people, or
- explain natural phenomena.
Myths, particularly myths of creation, are extremely important to primary, archaic civilizations like those of Mesopotamia and Egypt because there is no higher, historical civilization from which they derive their standards and norms. Myths functioned to narrate a history of events – the story of the origin of the gods, the creation of the universe and of man, the development of social institutions.
Mesopotamian and Egyptian peoples also engaged in logical-mathematical and empirical-technological thought, an evidenced by the mathematical, scientific, and practical arts of their civilizations. But as mythopoeic societies, they placed greater emphasis on trying to understand the will of the Gods and seek divine intervention to solve the problems presented by human affairs and the forces of nature.
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