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Mesopotamian Afterlife Beliefs

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How do Mesopotamians view Immortality in their Culture?
“The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”- "Bruce Lee Quotes." BrainyQuote.com. Xplore Inc, 2018. 19 Mrach 2018 https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/bruce_lee_413510. Mesopotamians did believe in a afterlife. Mesopotamians viewed the afterlife as something they have to have. They knew that they could live on after they died and everyone wanted that. If the person could not live on then they needed to be remembered in some way. They believed that when a person died that it was not their ultimate end of life. They said that the person would still live on in spirit or in the netherworld. The Mesopotamian afterlife beliefs are burials, grave inscriptions, economic texts recording disbursements for funerals or cults of the dead, references to death in royal inscriptions and edicts, chronicles, royal and private letters, lexical texts, cultic commentaries, magico-medical texts, omens, and curse formulas. They also believed that a person could live by being remembered by a legacy they had left.
The Mesopotamian culture valued immortality. Their beliefs of the afterlife show that they care about having immortality and them living on in the …show more content…

Immortality is being able to live on forever. Gilgamesh wanted immortality because he was afraid to die. It wasn’t uncommon for Mesopotamians to want immortality. It also wasn’t uncommon for kings such as Gilgamesh to also want immortality. To get immortality a person can be granted by the gods to get it or go on a journey to find something that will give them eternal life. Gilgamesh didn’t get immortality but he still lived on by leaving a legacy behind. Leaving a legacy such as Gilgamesh did is one of the views that Mesopotamians had. Mark, Joshua J. “The Eternal Life of Gilgamesh.” Ancient History Encyclopedia, 13 Oct. 2010,

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