What are the activities of offering sacrifices to the gods in Babylon?

Babylonians believed that man must rely on God. To win the favor of God, the main means is to ensure that God has superior living conditions, build temples for them, and serve them regularly and on time in terms of food, clothing, housing and transportation. Sacrificial ceremonies are mainly divided into national sacrifices and individual sacrifices. The national sacrificial ceremonies are presided over by priests, and they are mainly performed on major festivals.

Statue of uruk

Unearthed bull statues, holes in eyes and horns may be caused by the loss of inlays. There are two tunnels from the bull's head to the arm and back to the abdomen, so it may be an irrigation tool in the sacrificial ceremony. Sacrifice can be divided into two types: one is daily, and the other is weekly, monthly or yearly. In the former case, the king paid tribute to God with in the name of people, but he should also add personal tribute from the king. In the latter case, festivals are mainly held, and on special and important occasions, sacrifices are also held for the happiness and prosperity of the country-these two kinds of sacrifices can often be seen in the seal of the clay cylinder. The tributes God received were mainly food, drinks, livestock and oil. During the Third Dynasty of Ur, Gudiya, the ruler of lagache, spent a lot of money to build and repair temples. Two large clay cylinder seals recorded his pious activities in detail. Although Hammurabi and later Nebuchadnezzar did not offer as many offerings to Marduk as lagache, in the late Babylonian period, the daily offerings of Anu Temple in uruk were quite large. In the grand festival, the religious sacrificial scene of livestock paying tribute to the temple in Akkadian period (about 2270 BC) was portrayed on the cylindrical seal. The numbers are even more amazing. For example, there are as many as 3,569 livestock in the list of tributes found in the Cyrillic Temple in Nipur. King Nebuchadnezzar II of the new Babylonian order once boasted that on Akitu Festival, "I brought gold, silver, precious stones, gorgeous clothes, treasures from mountains and seas, mature fat cows, clean livestock, lambs, goats, fish in clear water, birds in the air, poultry, cocks, Malatu birds, pigeons, onions, musk, rich plants and decorations of golden beds.

Sacrifice is performed on a specific altar at the top of the temple. Sacrifice or slaughter is the earliest Gomel Pharmacopoeia in the world, with a history of 4000 years. Burn to death, at the same time, drink libation and burn incense. Incense burner is the most common equipment in temple ceremonies. People think that burning incense trees can be used not only to purify evil, but also as a sacrifice to God, because God likes fragrant smells. Every city in Mesopotamia has its own festivals and calendars for holding religious sacrificial activities, and every month is named after the religious festivals celebrated locally. By 2000 BC, Nipur's almanac was generally accepted. The religious festivals set by the calendar are generally the cyclical seasons of agricultural production, such as: celebrating the ceremony of plowing, plowing and harvesting. On religious festivals, the queen sometimes visits her own territory and presents agricultural products such as barley and malt to gods and dead administrative officials who are considered to have divine power. In essence, a series of sacrifices in spring is a ceremony to pray for a bumper harvest, and the Harvest Festival is a ceremony to give thanks. In ceremonies, it is often the king and the high priestess who play the roles of two gods. Through their combination, they symbolically expressed their desire for a bumper harvest, and at the same time ensured that the king would live forever because of his match with the goddess.

Religious festivals are generally 1 1 day, sometimes reaching 15 days. The most important festival is the grand New Year celebration held in spring. This festival is intended to emphasize rebuilding the order of the universe, reviving life and determining the fate of the coming year. The most important thing between festivals.

Devout believers (the first 3000)

These wide-eyed believers are praying to show their reverence and awe for the gods, that is, the "holy wedding" held on New Year's Day: the king plays Dumuzi, and the high priestess plays Inanna, the goddess of love, and repeats the legendary sacred wedding ceremony of Dumuzi and Inanna.

On the fifth day of the Babylonian New Year, in addition to routine prayers and sacrifices, there is also a cleansing ceremony. People sprinkled holy water in the temple, covered themselves with holy oil, beheaded a pair of sheep, that is, pressed the bleeding sheep on the temple wall to show that they had sucked up the residue, then threw the atonement sheep into the river and put up a golden "canopy" to wait for Marduk's son to arrive. At this time, the king made his first appearance at the festival, entered the temple and attended the sweeping ceremony. The purpose of the ceremony is to make the king understand that even the king is still a servant of the gods, and the king's duty is only to manage the world instead of God. The ritual process includes: first, the high priest took the king's scepter, sword and other things symbolizing the throne and put them all in front of the Marduk statue; Then, the high priest grabbed the king by the ear, forced him to worship God, and explained to God that he had done nothing wrong to the people of Babylon. Finally, the high priest returned the symbol of the throne to the king and slapped him twice. At this time, the king had to shed tears to show that Marduk had fallen in love with him. On the eighth day, the "son of Marduk" king, led by Marduk, set out from Marduk Temple in a luxurious carriage inlaid with jewels, along the holy road decorated with tents, left the city from Istar Gate and went to Akitu Temple on the Euphrates River. After staying here for three days, I returned to Sakkila, Marduk Temple in Babylon, and held a ceremony to predict the fate of the king and his country within one year.

In this series of religious activities, no matter how grand the ceremony is and how complicated the procedure is, the purpose is to pray for God's blessing and benefit mankind.