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What did the Ayleids worship? Are there sources in game that point to their religion? Apart from the contentious angels.... Where did angels comes from? I've never seen one in Nirn.

In terms of fascinating, dissapearing race, I think Dwemer have the trump.

http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/shezzardivines.shtml, which discusses the advent of religion the Divines, describes the Eight Divines as a synthesis of the Aldmer religion the Cyrodilic slaves already followed and the Nordic religion for the appeasemant of their allies.

This slavery lasts for generations. The isolated humans eventually begin to venerate the pantheon of their masters, or at least assimilate so much of High Elven religious practices into their native traditions that the two become indistinguishable.

As for angels, it's been a while since I played Oblivion, but I don't really remember anything like that. The one discussed in http://www.imperial-library.info/fsg/prowelerarticle3.shtml is a (sun?)bird standing on a man. An angel wouldn't surprise me. They aren't peculiar to Judeo-Christian tradition, even if it's recognisably Christian symbolism. Winged humans are all about ascent and freedom of movement between heaven and earth, which could apply to any higher being, from a god to a saint.

Yeah, as the above article mentions those statues aren't really of angels, but of Auri-El, the elven version of Akatosh. The Ayleids seemed to mostly worship aedra like Akatosh, Mara, and Stendarr, but as I recall there was some daedra worship as well (Umaril is half daedra, after all).

Are the saints in Morrowind supposed to be higher beings? In our world except for Catholicism, Saint and Christian are synonyms essentially, Christian started out as an insult though and was adopted later by the Saints.

As for winged people, I think it was the Greeks that came up with them. Seraphims were the only kind of being similar to what the Greeks talked about, and they are rare customers in literature.

Angels came from Persia I believe, and were synthesized into Jewish thought through various years interaction, and diaspora into the east. Ethereal afterlives, tripartite existence and the soul where the ideas that came from Greece.

On the tribunal temple doctrine Saints are real people that done notable things that helped and enhanced the dumner people, like Saint veloth who lead people to vvandervell, or saint Juib who eliminated all cliff racers.

A bit of a political mix up. really. Alessia took some elven gods for her religion. Bear in mind that in elven religions existance is a curse, so the gods don't like it. Beings like Akatosh were elven, but he was given some of Shezzar/Lorkhan's qualities, like the whole Kynareth thing.

2,000 years ago, maybe. The meaning of the word saint changed over the years to mean a sort of influential spiritual paragon, allowing us apply it to cultures don't have the same language but have http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_saint. Saints have the same meaning they have in the modern era in Morrowind, as sacred persons and models of behaviour. They're very much like the Catholic saints too, in that they can represent both qualities and occupations.


I'm thinking more http://www.dkimages.com/discover/previews/832/35062844.JPG. Isis was also sometimes depicted with wings. Cultural exchange is not out of the question, though. The Egyptians even adopted some Sumerian gods, like Ishtar/Innana.

I suspect that different city-states worshipped different entities. Some may have worshipped the Aedra, those at White-Gold Tower and the surrounding city seemed to have worshipped Meridia, and others were have likely to have worshipped other daedra. Mankar Camoran seems to think that some of them worshipped Dagon.

I'd differentiate between worship and business.

Yes, the Aylied's didn't worship the Daedra, they just used them for their purposes:

"Where the Altmer sought to focus on dracochrysalis, or keeping elder magic bound before it could change into something lesser (and act which ironically required aetherial surplus), the Ayleids harvested castaway creatia from Oblivion by entering a pact with the masters of the Void, the Princes of Misrule."http://www.imperial-library.info/obscure_text/nu-hatta_nu-mantia.shtml

Sideways cave did have a statue of Meridia though. And given Umaril's hatred for the Aedra, I think that he didn't worship them.

Perhaps, but had Umaril worshiped Daedra that doesn't mean Aylieds in general did. Besides, given that the Prophet calls Meridia Umaril's 'mistress' and that Umaril was of near divine nature himself I doubt that their relationship was one of a god and it's worshiper...

'Angels' are compatible with ancestor worship, since they'd be ascended spirits who've got it good in the afterworld.

But given that the Nine empowered Pelinal's armor to withstand Umaril specifically, and given his hatred of them, we can safely assume that he wasn't on good terms with them. And being a king, he probably didn't sanction worship of them either. It's possible that those of his city-state worshipped him.

It's not just Meridia. In that Ayleid city what held the Razor, they may have worshipped Mehrunes Dagon.

And only Catholicism in that light. But then, you can't consider the religion presented in the game Morrowind without the parallels of the religion they modeled it on.

Mesopotamia? What year? I was thinking Zoroaster with the greek influence (winged messangers, whatnot) in the fifth century on the other side of the calendar.

We could wipe that all away with the ?atal H?y?k angle, but those would be guesses based on what we think they would be.

I've never heard of a culture that takes this view on things. Which is it?

Aside from what Albides pointed out, there's also this line from http://www.imperial-library.info/obbooks/adabala.shtml (emphasis mine):

Perrif's original tribe is unknown, but she grew up in Sard, anon Sardarvar Leed, where the Ayleids herded in men from across all the Niben: kothri, nede, al-gemha, men-of-'kreath (though these were later known to be imported from the North), keptu, men-of-ge (who were eventually destroyed when the Flower King Nilichi made great sacrifice to an insect god named [lost])

Of course, one sacrifice by one king doesn't necessarily indicate widespread worship, but there you go.

Greeks came up with winged beings, but you were thinking Zoroaster? Er.

I was thinking specifically of the figures that appear in Assyrian art and who are called "winged genies" or aladlammu in Akkadian, a term also used for a being with the head of a lion or bull. I can't give a date range specifically, because I don't think anyone's ever mapped their appearances, but the picture in my book dates back to the 9th century BC. The entry says some types were minor deities and often appear to take part in rituals, since they held the ritual "bucket and cone".

The winged disk so familiar to Zoroastrianism, though, is something my http://www.amazon.com/Gods-Demons-Symbols-Ancient-Mesopotamia/dp/0714117056/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211352579&sr=8-1says probably came to Mesopotamia from Egypt and "was taken over by the Achaemenid Persians" (your Zoroastrians) from the Assyrians. I'd guess they did the same with the winged people. If you've got an interest in Mesopotamia, I'd really recommend the book. It's informative and packed full of very clear illustrations.

He was a puller, not a pusher. Plato and Aristotle were into his ideas and developing upon them, but through the angle that Z derived a series of thought from the earlier Greeks. The world wasn't that big back then.

I wasn't aware people thought the stuff came from Egypt. Interesting.

Ahh, maybe later. I've got too many books I've been meaning to read already, I'm working on Napoleonic battle tactics at the moment.

The more I think about it, the more this seems wrong. Are you sure it was 9th century?

Why wrong? It's the commonly returned date in a google search for http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=winged+genie+century&btnG=Search&meta=. A specific example http://www.clevelandart.org/educef/arts21/html/2476752pu.html, for Winged Genie Pollinating Date Palm Iraq, Nimrud, Assyrian, reign of Ashurnasirpal II, 9th Century BC.


Now this seems wrong to me. I've never heard of Greek influence on Zoroastrianism. It's not really important though, as I think we've derailed the topic enough. PM me if you have more information on this.