Collected Courses of the Xiamen Academy of International Law 2009 Book

A brief review of ancient religions and its impact on culture

This book was first published in 1888 and it is republished now as an eBook by Amazon Kindle. This is a series book with 11 volumes, and this book focuses on ancient religions of Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, Rome, China, Japan and other Middle Eastern religions before Christianism was born. This is an introductory book and it tries to cover much material. A lot of research has been done since this book was last published and our understanding of ancient religions have grown significantly. Nevertheless, reviewing this book, I find that the author has done a reasonably good job in researching the literature.

A brief summary is as follows: The ancient religions of India (ancient Hinduism), Egypt, Greece, Persia, Rome and Israel worshiped the powers of nature; the sun, the moon, the planets, the air, the storm, light, fire, the clouds, the rivers, the lightning, all of which were supposed to exercise a mysterious influence over human destiny. There was a sense of almighty over all that could be seen or known. Ancient Indians, Egyptians and Greeks made them divinities.

The Egyptian polytheism was complex and even contradictory. There were seventy-three principal divinities, and hundreds of lesser gods, discharging peculiar functions and presiding over different localities. Every town had its guardian deity to whom prayers or sacrifices were offered by the priests. Embracing the worship of animals was like knowing the powers of nature. They believed in the transmigration of souls, and a sacerdotalism which carried ritualistic ceremonies with the exaltation of the priesthood. Egypt did not have sacred books. Our knowledge is mostly confined to monuments, on which the names of their deities are inscribed, the animals which they worshipped, symbolic of the powers of nature, and the kings and priests who officiated in religious ceremonies. The Assyrian, Babylonian, and Phoenician religions were also polytheistic. The settlers of Canaan (current Palestine) were the pre-Israelite inhabitants called themselves Phoenicians. The descendants of them gave people of Israel, returning from Egypt, the early thoughts of god, religion and spirituality. For Phoenicians, the chief deity was called Bel, or Baal, meaning "Lord," the epithet of the one divine being who rules the world, or the Lord of heaven. In recent years these deities are in much news since the ancient temples of these gods in ancient Palmyra region of Syria was destroyed by Islamic terror group, ISIS.

The most distinguishing feature in the worship of all the gods of antiquity, whether among Egyptians, or Indians, or Assyrians, or Babylonians, or Phoenicians, or Greeks, or Romans is that of oblations and sacrifices. These oblations and sacrifices were sometimes offered to the deity, whatever his form or name, as an expiation for sin; sometimes to obtain divine favor, as in military expeditions, or to secure any object dearest to the heart, such as health, prosperity, or peace; sometimes to propitiate the deity in order to avert natural catastrophe. Fire, heat and light were Anima mundi (The world soul), an intrinsic connection between all living things on the planet, which relates to our world in much the same way as the soul is connected to the human body. In Egypt, Osiris, the principal deity, was a form of Ra, the sun-god. In Assyria, Asshur, the substitute for Ra, was the supreme deity. In ancient India, Mitra, in Persia Mithra, the sun-god was the prominent deity, as Helios was among the Greeks, and Phoebus Apollo among the Romans. The sun was held one of the highest places in ancient religions.

It is probable that the religion of the common progenitors of the Hindus, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Persians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Phoenicians were the same. The Indus civilization flourished for half a millennium from about 2600 BCE to 1900 BCE. Then it mysteriously declined and vanished from view. Unlike ancient Egyptians, ancient Indians did not keep a historical record of their community, culture and their government. Much of it came from Vedic scriptures such as Ṛgveda, but it said very little about the civilization in the cities of Harappa and Mohenjo Daro of Indus Valley. The origins of Vedic population of India, Persians and Europeans is linked by the genetic archeology, paleo-biological studies and the science of Indo-European languages. Linguistics, phonetics, morphology, semantics and syntax of diverse languages such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, German, English, French, and Russian is traced to one parent language called “Indo-European language.” This originated with the inhabitants called “Yamnaya” of the grasslands north of the Black and Caspian Seas in Central Asia, according to the “Steppe hypothesis.” At about 5,500 years ago, this region was occupied by the Yamnaya culture who were farmers and cattle herders. A section of the population migrated east towards Persia and Indus valley of India and they had their own language, Sanskrit and Persian respectively. Later, around 4,500 years ago, the rest of Yamnaya nomads blazed a trail westwards into Europe from their pastoral homes in central Asia. The European languages thus originated from them.

Recently, archaeologists have unearthed a 6,000-year-old temple in the city of Nebelivka in Ukraine that shows the existence of an ancient religion with complex sacrificial practices. This prehistoric place of worship was found to contain raised clay altars with burnt lamb bones in the temple. The temple also had human-like figurines shedding light on practices within a huge prehistoric settlement. It was at the heart of a village with 1,200 buildings and 50 streets which gives a credence that nature worship and sacrificial practices were widely prevalent in the Yamnaya culture. And they took these beliefs and the language when they migrated to Persia, India, Greece, Rome and other parts of Middle East and Europe. These practices reflect on the belief system of ancient pastoralists. One possible explanation is that they were looking into spiritual side of life, and perhaps trying to find a connection between humans and the nature (and its creative force and energy.) This book is recommended to readers interested in the history of ancient religions.