Aspects of Common Beliefs and Practices of Mesopotamia and Ancient African Peoples

 Qusay Mansur Al Turki – Iraqi writer

 

Even if we do not consider literary texts in and of themselves important as a record of incidents and disasters that have affected almost all mankind, these texts are still worth studying because they contain a general question that anthropologists are addressing.

 

The question is, how can we explain the many similarities between people’s various beliefs and customs when they exist in different, scattered and remote parts of the world?

 

Is this resemblance due to the transmission of beliefs and customs from one human race to another, through direct or indirect contact among them? Or perhaps these similar beliefs originated independently in many races, because of similar intellectual conditions.

 

Many aspects of similarity can be explained by the common human experience across different eras, or these similarities can be interpreted as being independent due to the similarity the human collective mind.

 

Even though ancient nations were segregated by deserts and seas, the depth of interdependence and cultural dialogue among them must have served to minimize perception of distance and replace conflict and rivalry with harmony and unity through the sharing of thoughts and stories.

 

Today, we pressingly need such cohesion across cultures. We tried to describe it in this paper; it is still appealing and its fragrance is still present and engraved in the memory of generations.