14 The Sociomorphic Structure of the Polytheistic Pantheon in Mesopotamia and Its Meaning for Divine Agency and Mentalization
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Abstract
It is well established that the polytheistic pantheon in Mesopotamia was sociomorphic by nature. What is not yet clear, however, is how such a conceptualization of the divine world affected the allocation of agency to otherworldly beings or accorded with human experience, be it physical or mental. The following investigation begins by analyzing the ways in which people in the ancient Near East mentalized the divine and assigned it agency, and how they believed that the divine materialized and presenced itself. It then goes on to explore the use of myth as a conceptual metaphor and god lists as a system for constructing and interpreting the human experience. Myth here is regarded not as an irrational and archaic state of the mind, but as an analytical tool that provides explanatory, legitimizing, and orienting frameworks. In addition to myths, the ancients relied on lists of gods when systematizing and classifying the divine world as well as synchronizing it with their empirical observations of the natural world and the institutional models of human society. Rather than viewing myth and god lists as the product of the random deification of natural phenomena and objects, this paper presents both as epistemic systems of knowledge that reflect the polytheistic system of an interdependent network destined to maintain cosmic stability and order. In sum, it reexamines the way in which the ancients conceived of the nature of the divine and will pay particular attention to the notion of agency, thus casting the divine world in sociomorphic terms.