Ancient Mesopotamian beliefs: The Tree of Life

You can watch the associated Suroyo TV broadcast (in Turkish) with journalist Yawsef Beth Turo and Nurgül Çelebi here.

By Nurgül Çelebi

The Tree of Life is a fundamental archetype in many religious, mythological, and philosophical traditions. It is regarded as a connecting point between heaven and the underworld. The Tree of Life connects all forms of creation, and is symbolized in both the world tree and cosmic tree. Various trees of life are recounted in different cultures and in folklore, often relating to immortality or fertility. Their origins undoubtedly lay deep in religious symbolism.

The Tree of Life is one of the most important symbols that people have used for centuries to explain the realms of life and afterlife and imagine the universal cycle. We witness that almost all the ancient civilizations used the symbol of the Tree of Life in different ways. It is ingrained not only in Mesopotamian civilizations, but also in Indian, Japanese, and Chinese traditions, and almost most Eastern beliefs. The main reason why tree forms have an important place among symbols is that they reflect the stages of human life very well and make them understandable.

In the spring, the greening leaves of trees symbolize rebirth, while the yellowish leaves that fade in the autumn literally mean death. In a way, this transformation reflected the change in the skin of an ageing person. The leaves, which wrinkled as they got older, lost their vitality, and the veins on the surface were more visible, literally expressing the human skin. Moreover, like the fertility, birth, and transformation of the trees, that bear fruit during the harvest period, the green leaves of the Tree of Life rising towards the sky represent rebirth and life. Such features have led to the attribution of importance to trees in the context of life and death cycles. Its roots, a reflection of the tree form visible on the earth, literally expressed the balance between life and death. Like the branches rising towards the sky, the roots also have a development process under the ground that we cannot see. The invisibility part here expresses the obscurity after death. In other words, although we do not know the afterlife, people needed to believe that they would continue to exist spiritually or in different forms after death. The roots of the tree fulfilled this need and made it very understandable.

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Tree of Life in Different Civilizations

The Tree of Life, which has an important place in almost most cultures and mythology, has been accepted as a symbol that gives youth and immortality by many ancient civilizations. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a similar quest for immortality. Some researchers state that the grass of immortality that Gilgamesh pursues is the Tree of Life. Similarly, in Mesopotamian mythology, Etana searches for a “plant of birth” to provide him with a son. In ancient Mesopotamia, the Assyrian Tree of Life was represented by a series of nodes and crossing lines. It was an important religious symbol, often attended to in Assyrian palace reliefs by Lamassu (human or eagle-headed winged genies) or the King and blessed or fertilized with bucket and cone. The name “Tree of Life” has been attributed to this symbol by modern scholarship. No textual evidence about this symbol is known to exist. So, we cannot come across its use in the Assyrian sources.

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This symbol, which we can interpret as the Tree of Knowledge in Assyria, is a sign that life already contains information within itself. In Jewish and Christian traditions, it appears as the Tree of Knowledge, which contains good and evil together. Moreover, this symbol, which appears as the inverted Sefirot Tree in Kabbalah, consists of 10 leaves that refer to 10 concepts believed to express the mystery of life.

The Tree of Life symbol, which we see used in the same way in Nordic myths, is called the Yggdrasil tree. In the Nordic myths in question, Yggdrasil is a gigantic ash tree at the center of the cosmos and considered very sacred. It is believed that the gods go to Yggdrasil daily to meet in traditional governing councils called things.

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Reflection in Monotheistic Religions

As I mentioned above, we can see the Tree of Life as the Tree of Knowledge in Jewish and Christian traditions. The reason for this is related to the event that the first created humans, Adam and Eve, ate fruit from a tree that was forbidden to them while they were in the garden of Eden. If we recall the story, Adam and Eve lived in the garden of Eden, free from their mother. God allowed them to eat fruit from any tree except one. But when a snake fools Eve, she persuades Adam to eat this fruit. After Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, their eyes were opened. They are ashamed of each other’s nakedness. This has been interpreted as removing the veil from their eyes and enabling them to see the truth. The opening of the eyes of Adam and Eve, who were punished and expelled from Paradise according to this event, is a kind of indication of duality. Just as the tree of life symbolizes death and life, Adam and Eve also had the knowledge of good and evil.

In the Bible, the tree of knowledge of good and evil symbolizes duality as well as the separation of the earthly and the otherworldly. The fruit of this tree represents forbidden knowledge. This symbol, which appears in Judaism, especially in the form of an inverted tree, is important in Kabbalistic teachings. This tree is in the form of a cosmic tree whose roots receive spiritual support from the celestial paradise and bring it to the earth with its trunk and branches. This tree, called the Sefirot, is depicted as ten fields symbolizing the ten stages of revelation. The Tree of Life symbol, which we see as an element of mysticism in Kabbalah, can be thought of as a key to accessing knowledge. Understanding the Creator means approaching the Creator, as a person who has attained the knowledge of existence and creation.

In general, the tree has been regarded as a symbol of fertility, immortality, luck, abundance, health, and getting rid of diseases in world cultures. Communication with God or the celestial paradise was thought to be made through the tree. Moreover, natural events were ordered through the tree. Trees were conceived as having the power to make or stop the rain, set the sun, eclipse the moon, multiply herds and cattle, and give birth to women easily. But most importantly, the tree of life form is seen as a means of connecting heaven and hell, this world and the heavenly heaven. The Tree of Life is a transition that connects two different realms. As has been the case for thousands of years, people have always sought to establish a connection with God, a transitional space between life and death. The connection point between these two opposite areas creates balance and makes the unknown understandable. For this reason, the Tree of Life has not lost its importance for centuries.

Wishing you access to endless knowledge…

Nurgül Çelebi was born in 1985 in Istanbul. She holds a master’s degree from the Syriac Language and Culture Department at Mardin Artuklu University with her thesis on Sun and Moon Symbolism in Syriac literature. She continues her Ph.D. program in the history of religions at Ankara University with her thesis on “Sin-Shamash Duality and Its Reflection on Religions”. She is currently continuing her second Ph.D. in the Assyrian History doctorate program at ELTE University in Budapest.

Nurgül Çelebi works on Mesopotamian beliefs and mythologies and published papers on these subjects. In addition to academic studies, she has published three novels in Turkish: “Yarına Dokunmak“, “Aşka Dokunmak”, and “Tanrı Dağı”. Her stories have appeared in five anthologies: “Karanlıktaki Kadınlar”, “Hayalet Müzik”, “Eskilerin Şöleni”, “Dark Antoloji Birinci Kitap”, and “Dark Antoloji İkinci Kitap”.