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The Role Of Myths And Legends In Establishing Political Structures, Religious Institutions, And Cultural Identity?

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Analyze the role of myths and legends in establishing political structures, religious institutions, and cultural identity using examples from ancient Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Indian, and Chinese mythology. Myths and legends from ancient civilizations such as Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India, and China played a primary role in providing an overview of political structure, religious institutions, and cultural identity. These stories and legends of celestial beings, heroes and creatures create the illusion of a connection between people and their belief systems and how their belief in divine authority has influenced their culture, as well as how these rituals and norms establish their political governance. In this essay we will see how myths and legends from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, India and China played a key role in the development of political structure, religious institutions and cultural identity as they justified monarchs/rulers and established a strong belief system that shaped societies …show more content…

The political structure varied from places and the cultures, also their administration and beliefs had a big impact on it too. If we look through ancient civilization like Mesopotamia and its myth “The epic of Gilgamesh '', we get a clearer insight of their political structure. Ancient Mesopotamia believed in higher authority, they believed in higher priests and the power to connect people with divine authority. Gilgamesh is introduced to us as a person who lived in the heroic dimension and exists in spiritual isolation. Gilgamesh was a part human and part god, he was portrayed as the mediator between Gods and humans (Abusch, 2001). In the epic they believed that kings or rulers needed to have the guidance of the Gods to rule a country. The king's duties were to maintain military leadership as well as being the priest of the city state (Dalley,

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The Epic of Gilgamesh also explains to be a hero king, the king must do something worthy of being remembered, to have a statue built after they die. In the epic it is told that everyone dies and they all go to the same place with all people being equal. So, it is important for a king to be remembered on Earth, so their legacy is not forgotten. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh is the hero king and many

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