Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia
February 16 & 23, 2025
Class Description
February 16: Official Religion: Mesopotamian Style
February 23: Noah, Meet Atrahasis: Mesopotamian Flood Myths
The first talk addresses the role of official religion in Mesopotamian life during the third and second millennium B.C. The second lecture concerns the various flood myths from Mesopotamia and how they related to the stories in Genesis.
About Jeanne Nijhowne
Jeanne Nijhowne earned a PhD in Anthropology with an emphasis on the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia in the second millennium BC. She has taught classes at the college level off and on for the last few decades most recently at CU Boulder. She has done archaeological fieldwork in Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Jordan, and Syria. Her most recent work was at Tell Mozan, a Hurrian site in northeastern Syria in 2009 and 2010. Excavation had to be suspended due to the Arab Spring.