ABSTRACT
In about 7000 bce ancient peoples began to engage in agriculture, domesticate animals and establish urban communities, their dwellings have been traced to the hills of western Iran and Anatolia, to the shores of the Caspian Sea and Palestine. During the third millennium, a Semitic people, the Akkadians, settled amidst the Sumerians and adopted their writing and culture. In Sumerian and Akkadian mythology, life was under the control of the gods. Among the new arrivals in Mesopotamia were the Amorites who dwelt in Mesopotamian cities such as Mari and Babylon; there they integrated into Sumero-Akkadian civilization. The earliest stories in the Torah contain centuries-old legends, composed in the light of Mesopotamian myths. Jewish civilization thus did not emerge in a vacuum. Rather it was forged out of the essential elements of an extensive Mesopotamian cultural heritage. For the ancient Babylonians, the Creation Myth provided a religious framework for the understanding of the cosmos.
