How did religious outlooks of Egyptians and people in

Mesopotamian differ? How can we explain the differences?

In the ancient world, religion was a major part of civilisations. It was very crucial for
lives and always had an important relationship with people, especially in agriculture. Lives in
earlier civilisation were inseparable from religion. Despite of the rise and fall of many
civilisations, religion was one of the things that never faded away from peoples lives.
Nowadays, there are many religions respected and followed by people. So, there is no
doubt why there were various ways that people can worship, respect, or believe in a
supernatural power in the ancient world. Mesopotamia and Egypt are a great example of
powerful civilisations which had different viewpoints toward religions ; in which different
cultures influenced different religious beliefs.
Although these two civilisations had many differences, they also shared some
similarities. First, they both believed that the gods created and controlled everything. As a
result, the religious leaders were given a very high status and highly respected by people. In
addition, they were both polytheistic ; worshipping or believing in more than one god.
In Mesopotamia, people believed that the priest-kings were representatives of gods.
They worshipped the priest-kings because they believed that priest-kings were able to
communicate with the god and control the weather , and therefore, could provide them with a
good weather. In addition, people believed in different gods in each city-state. And there were
also a ziggurat, an ancient temple, at the centre of the city.
However, Egyptians considered the Pharaoh as a living god who had all the power
and authority, and animals were used to represent the characteristic of each god. In addition,
Egyptian also believed in the afterlife ; a life after death. They mainly focused on the afterlife,
in which death would be the beginning of their new journey, and they needed to pass a
judgement. Therefore, many things like pyramid, mastabas, tomb, mummification and book
of the death, were created to reflect the belief of the afterlife. When the Pharaoh entered the
afterlife, he became one with the god Osiris, which is considered as a dead king ,and
continued to control the city.
To sum up, Mesopotamian and Egyptian both worshipped different gods, for example
Anu, Enki, Isis and Anubis. However, Mesopotamians believed that the priest-kings were the
intermediary between the god and people. But Egyptians rather believed that the Pharaohs
were the gods, and they also believed in an afterlife. Similarly, the temples were built in both
Mesopotamia and Egypt, such as the Tower of Babel(ziggurat) and Temple of Khana
respectively.