THE IDEA OF MAN AND DIVINITY IN ANTIQUITY PART I: The influence of creation and pursuit of immortality on human status in Mesopotamia

The article deals with the issues surrounding the creation of humanity and its aspirations to immortality. The two issues are treated with great piety in mythology, literature and strictly religious works. One can even recognize that they are a kind of leitmotif of local issues related to the human condition. While creation tries to arrange man as a tool in the hands of the gods, so man in his quest for the immortality tries to achieve divine status. This widely recognized theory, especially concerning the creation of man, has a number of exemptions, which the author presents step-by-step in Sumerian and Akkadian literature. In Mesopotamian mythology anthropological threads intermingle with the philosophical, all this in order to find a satisfactory answer to the most important questions about man and his relationship with the divine.