Abstract:

Earthquake is one of the natural events that have left people in fear and despair since the earliest times of human history. Ancient societies, who could not find answers to the questions of why-why-how the earthquake happened, associated the power of this natural phenomenon with God and described every tremor they felt as "God's warning". They tried to prevent earthquakes by appeasing God's anger through various rituals such as prayer, fortune telling, magic and divination. In this study, the way the ancient Mesopotamian, Anatolian and Greek civilisations, which are located on the same earthquake zone and interact both religiously and culturally, perceive earthquakes in the light of written documents, their behaviour in the face of earthquakes and what they do to protect themselves from earthquakes are examined. With this study, it is aimed to determine the similar and different aspects of the perception of earthquake according to the written sources such as letters, law texts, classical works etc. of these civilisations and to reveal the change of this perception over time.

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