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The First Great Powers: Babylon and Assyria
 1787382117, 9781787382114

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Maps and Plans
Preface
Introduction
Chronology of Babylon and Assyria
1. Sumer and Akkad
The Sumerian city-states
Akkadian aggression
The third dynasty of Ur
2. The First Babylonian Hegemony
Hammurabi’s accession
The annexations
The end of Babylon’s first dynasty
Kassite Babylon
3. The Rise and Domination of Assyria
The Assyrian revival
The reign of Tiglath-pileser III
Assyrian zenith
The fall of Assyria
4. The Mesopotamian Way of War
Early conflicts
The Assyrian war machine
Advances in weaponry
5. Kingship in Mesopotamia
The first kings
The heroic ruler
Babylonian and Assyrian kings
Alexander’s divinity
6. The Imperial Capitals: Ashur, Nineveh and Babylon
Ashur, the first Assyrian capital
Nineveh, the last Assyrian capital
Babylon, wonder of the world
7. The Religion of Babylon and Assyria
The Sumerian pantheon
The rise of Marduk
The Assyrian gods
8. Babylonian and Assyrian Society
An agricultural revolution
Hammurabi’s Babylon
Assyrian society
9. The Babylonian Revival
The reign of Nebuchadrezzar II
Nebuchadrezzar II’s successors
The Nabonidas enigma
The Persian conquest
10. The Jewish Exile
The northern threat
Nebuchadrezzar II’s advance south
The fall of Jerusalem
The Book of Daniel
Notes and References
List of Illustrations
Index

Citation preview

THE FIRST GREAT POWERS

ARTHUR COTTERELL

The First Great Powers Babylon and Assyria

HURST & COMPANY, LONDON

First published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd., 41 Great Russell Street, London, WC1B 3PL © Arthur Cotterell, 2019 All rights reserved. Printed in the United Kingdom  

Distributed in the United States, Canada and Latin America by Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. The right of Arthur Cotterell to be identified as the author of this publication is asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. A Cataloguing-in-Publication data record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 9781787382114 This book is printed using paper from registered sustainable and managed sources. www.hurstpublishers.com

In affectionate memory of Esmor Jones inspirational sixth form teacher

CONTENTS

List of Maps and Plans ix Preface xi Introduction 1 Chronology of Babylon and Assyria

9

1. Sumer and Akkad 11 The Sumerian city-states 15 Akkadian aggression 23 The third dynasty of Ur 30 2. The First Babylonian Hegemony 37 Hammurabi’s accession 38 The annexations 43 The end of Babylon’s first dynasty 50 Kassite Babylon 53 3. The Rise and Domination of Assyria 63 The Assyrian revival 64 The reign of Tiglath-pileser III 74 Assyrian zenith 79 The fall of Assyria 88 4. The Mesopotamian Way of War 91 Early conflicts 95 The Assyrian war machine 100 Advances in weaponry 106

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CONTENTS

  5. Kingship in Mesopotamia 121   The first kings 122   The heroic ruler 127   Babylonian and Assyrian kings 131   Alexander’s divinity 137   6. The Imperial Capitals: Ashur, Nineveh and Babylon 145   Ashur, the first Assyrian capital 147   Nineveh, the last Assyrian capital 150   Babylon, wonder of the world 163   7. The Religion of Babylon and Assyria 173   The Sumerian pantheon 174   The rise of Marduk 189   The Assyrian gods 195   8. Babylonian and Assyrian Society 201   An agricultural revolution 203   Hammurabi’s Babylon 206   Assyrian society 215   9. The Babylonian Revival 225   The reign of Nebuchadrezzar II 227   Nebuchadrezzar II’s successors 232   The Nabonidas enigma 234   The Persian conquest 242 10. The Jewish Exile 247   The northern threat 248   Nebuchadrezzar II’s advance south 252   The fall of Jerusalem 254   The Book of Daniel 259

Notes and References 267 List of Illustrations 283 Index 295 viii

LIST OF MAPS AND PLANS

Introduction The Ancient Near East.

xiii

Chapter 1

Lower Mesopotamia.

18

Chapter 2

Upper Mesopotamia. Plan of the Mari palace.

41 49

Chapter 3

The Assyrian empire at its greatest extent.

71

Chapter 6

Plan of Ashur. Map of the partially excavated Kuyunjik mound. Map of Nineveh and its main gates. Plan of the Ishtar temple. Plan of Babylon.

151 155 156 158 167

Chapter 8

Plan of Sulmu-sarri’s mansion.

219

Chapter 9

The Babylonian empire at its greatest extent.

239

Chapter 10

The location of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

262

All maps and plans drawn by Ray Dunning.



ix

PREFACE

When I was writing The Near East: A Cultural History, it struck me that there was no history of Babylon and Assyria currently available for the general reader. That these two Mesopotamian kingdoms were the first great powers to appear on the planet made this even more surprising. There are of course specialist studies, many of which are mentioned in the Notes and References, but I was baffled by the absence of an overall treatment of Babylon and Assyria because they were instrumental in shaping our world.   Even though in the fourth millennium BC the Sumerians inaugurated civilization itself, the task of realising its potential fell first to the Babylonians and then the Assyrians. Their early experiments in state formation deserve attention as they were confronted with all the factors involved in the maintenance and renewal of urban society. For over a millennium Babylon and Assyria explored its possibilities such that their successes and failures in organising central government, administering distant territories, and legislating for social harmony represent a singular historical experience.   Human beings have gradually and progressively, although not always irreversibly, created an environment which has increasingly mediated between themselves and the world of nature. During the period that encompasses Babylonian and Assyrian rule this division was never as pronounced as in later times, which explains an urgent desire to understand the gods and goddesses who were believed to determine everything that happened in the world. Religion was therefore a fundamental feature of Near Eastern society; eventually a similar outlook would pass to Europe through the agency of Christianity.

xi

PREFACE

The First Great Powers endeavours to illuminate the religious outlook of Babylon and Assyria, as well as their interaction with Judaism. It was, after all, the Babylonian king Nebuchadrezzar II who in 587 BC took a large number of Jews into captivity. Once the Babylonian exile was over, Jewish history was rewritten to take account of this catastrophe, so that today biblical scholars are still trying to evaluate its influence on traditional Jewish beliefs.   In publishing this book I must acknowledge the invaluable contributions made by several people. First of all my wife Yong Yap through her assistance with translation; second Ray Dunning, the creator of the illustrations spread throughout the book; and, last but not least, my publisher Michael Dwyer, who recognised the need for an illustrated survey of Babylon and Assyria.

xii

The Ancient Near East

xiii

INTRODUCTION

At the start of his reign in 704 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib abandoned the newly completed capital of Dur Sharruken, moving the seat of imperial government to Nineveh, the ancient cult centre of the goddess Ishtar, where it remained until the city was overwhelmed by the Medes and the Babylonians in 612 BC. One reason for Sennacherib’s abrupt change of capital was the violent death of his father Sargon II in the land of Tabal, situated along the northern frontier of the Assyrian empire. Even worse, his father’s body had been left unburied on the battlefield.   Completely unaccustomed to such disastrous defeats, the Assyrians wondered what wrong the late king had done to deserve such “a divine punishment,” because it was believed that the outcome of battle was always determined by the gods. Just as baffled was Sennacherib who not only removed the court from his father’s city, but never mentioned him in any of his own inscriptions. Although the sack of Babylon in 689 BC was held to be a trigger for Sennacherib’s assassination at the hands of two of his sons, there seemed to be a curse laid upon his family as a result of Sargon II’s seizure of the Assyrian throne. That Esarhaddon, the youngest son and successor of Sennacherib, had no doubt about the family’s ill fortune is evident in his odd behaviour. He never felt at ease, and for days at a time he would withdraw into the inner palace, rejecting food, drink and human company.   Because his subjects were more than likely to regard these disappearances as a sign of divine displeasure, Esarhaddon’s condition had  



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to be kept a state secret. And so on four occasions substitute kings wore his clothes, ate his meals and slept in his bed. The execution of each substitute king after one hundred days did not lesson Esarhaddon’s anxieties, but it removed a number of political adversaries who were carefully selected for the role. The idea of a substitute being capable of warding off evil influences was deeply rooted in Mesopotamian culture, but rather than this ritual, it was the energetic crown prince Ashurbanipal who saved the situation by assuming many of the royal responsibilities. One of them was a successful conclusion to the Egyptian campaign, which left a compliant pharaoh to rule Lower Egypt as an Assyrian vassal.   None of these events were known before Austen Henry Layard undertook his excavations at Nineveh between 1847 and 1851. On his way to Sri Lanka, where he hoped to find suitable employment, Layard was intrigued by the pyramidal mounds of earth marking the locations of ancient Mesopotamian cities, since they had been constructed entirely with mud and clay. Unlike wood, these building materials do not decompose and, unlike stone, they cannot be easily reused. As a consequence, a crumbling mud-brick wall tended to be pushed over and levelled to create a new floor, which was stamped flat. New bricks were then introduced to erect another structure, so that gradually this practice raised the height of a settlement.   Layard’s finds at Nineveh and Kalhu, another Assyrian city also known as Nimrud, generated a wave of excitement among scholars and the general public unmatched in the annals of archaeology. They literally made him, and Assyriology, household names. For what Layard decisively demonstrated was that the Greeks and the Romans, and indeed the Egyptians, do not constitute the ancient world. No matter the modern fascination with Greek sculpture, temples and philosophy, Roman gladiators, roads and legions, and Egyptian deities, pyramids and mummies, these peoples had nothing to do with the beginnings of civilization, because it was in ancient Mesopotamia that humanity took the very first steps along the path which pointed towards the society we know today. 2

INTRODUCTION

  What Layard uncovered at Nineveh was the library of King Ashurbanipal, the last effective ruler of Assyria. During his reign from 668 to 627 BC, Ashurbanipal assembled for his own personal use a huge collection of 22,000 clay tablets, which now form the most prized portion of the British Museum’s cuneiform archive. Aware of the find’s significance, Layard wrote that “we cannot overrate their value. They furnish us with materials for the complete decipherment of the cuneiform character, for restoring the language and history of Assyria, and for inquiring into the customs, sciences, and, we may perhaps even add, literature of its people.”   But Layard seriously underestimated the importance of the tablets in the royal library, since they not only shed light on the origins of civilization itself two and a half thousand years earlier in Sumer, present-day southern Iraq, but even more they provided an historical account of Babylon and Assyria, the first great powers. That Assyria was always dependent culturally on Babylon goes some way in explaining the love-hate relationship between these two great powers. The cultural debt might well be compared to the Roman poet Horace’s comment on the Greeks: “vanquished Greece vanquished its fierce victor and brought civilization to the Latin peasants.”   Thus Ashurbanipal’s library is priceless as it contains so much detail about Mesopotamian civilization, including the reign of King Hammurabi, which saw from 1792 to 1750 BC the establishment by Babylon of a brief imperial hegemony. Although Assyria, Babylon’s northern neighbour, had already emerged as a separate state, Hammurabi captured its capital of Ashur and squashed any ambitions that it may then have cherished. During the early centuries of the first millennium BC, Babylon experienced a long political crisis caused by both internal and external factors, while Assyria slowly grew into what became the first true empire in world history. Babylon’s eventual subjugation always remained problematic for the Assyrians. Tiring of an arm’s-length method of domination in Babylon, several Assyrian kings assumed Babylonian sovereignty before Sennacherib imposed 3

THE FIRST GREAT POWERS

puppet rulers. When one of these, his oldest son and heir apparent Ashur-nadin-sumi, was seized by the rebellious Babylonians and handed over as a prisoner to the Elamites, an enraged Sennacherib invaded Elam and sacked the city of Babylon as well. While Sennacherib’s successors tried to make amends through a gigantic building programme in the city, hatred seethed in Babylonian breasts and ultimately led to an alliance with the Medes which brought Assyrian power to a sudden end.   The remarkable revival of Babylon as an imperial power afterwards is well known from the Bible. In 586 BC Nebuchadrezzar II ended Jewish independence and the so-called Babylonian captivity began. During the Jewish sojourn Babylon was transformed into the greatest city in Mesopotamia, with such magnificent buildings that it was called a wonder of the world. Babylon’s final imperial dynasty ended in 539 BC, when the Persians took control of the city. According to the exiled Jews, the Persian conqueror Cyrus was a godsend: the prophet Isaiah claimed that the rise of Persia was part of a divine plan to rebuild Jerusalem. The Babylonians put a rather different slant on events. They accounted for the Persian success by reference to their own city god Marduk, who “scanned and looked through every land, searching for a king who would grace his annual procession. Then he pronounced Cyrus to be the ruler of the world.” And this view is persuasive when we recall the slavish devotion of the last Babylonian king Nabonidas to the moon god Sin. It was this royal neglect of Marduk that must explain Cyrus’ almost unopposed occupation of Babylon.   The Persians went on to found a mega-empire which stretched from India to Europe, but the imperial experiences of the Babylonians and the Assyrians remain unique: in their dominions can be discerned the earliest experiments in the construction and maintenance of an extended state. That a characteristic of both their regimes was an attempt to centralize production, or at least to control production, goes a long way in explaining the survival of so much detail. It is indeed the flood of light that is often shed on society by commercial, 4

INTRODUCTION

legal and administrative documents, in cuneiform script impressed upon clay tablets, which provides such a privileged view of the first great powers to exist on the planet.   This book focuses on Babylon and Assyria, covering a time span of over a millennium, but their story only starts when Mesopotamian civilization itself was already 1,400 years old. In Chapter 1 reference is therefore made to the emergence of urban life in the Sumerian citystates, the earliest of which appeared at Uruk during the late fourth millennium BC. Also considered is Akkadian aggression. That Sennacherib’s father chose to style himself Sargon II shows that Akkad was seen as an imperial precursor by the Assyrians. By his death in 2315 BC the Akkadian king Sargon dominated territories which stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. Inscriptions mention trading vessels arriving from Egypt, Bahrain, and as far away as India. So impressed was Sargon’s grandson, Naramsin, by the extent of Akkad’s possessions that he assumed divine honours. No Mesopotamian ruler had ever dared to do this before.   Chapter 2 begins with the first Babylonian empire, largely the creation of King Hammurabi, best remembered perhaps for his law code. Incorrectly called the inventor of law, Hammurabi built his code upon the earlier laws of the Sumerian kings of Ur, Isin and Eshnunna. In the settlement of disputes, however, the Babylonians diverged from the Sumerians: the Semitic custom of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” replaced the system of fines previously used in Sumer, although murder and robbery had always been punished there by death. Following the decline of Babylon, the centre of the political stage was occupied by the Assyrian empire. A tremendous shift in the balance of power took place after the accession of Tiglath-pileser III in 744 BC, since this vigorous king not only dealt with external enemies but reformed the army and the administration as well. In Chapter 3 we observe how much of the empire was systematically organized into provinces and put under the authority of properly-appointed governors and military commanders. Trusted allies within the imperial  

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borders were granted a degree of local freedom, provided they delivered annual tribute, but Assyrian officials were on hand to report any sign of disobedience. At its height during the seventh century BC, the Assyrian empire included Egypt.   Chapters 4 and 5 examine the nature of kingship and warfare in Mesopotamia, while Chapters 7 and 8 explore the social structure and the economy of Babylon and Assyria as well as their religion and beliefs. Nothing short of a revolution on the battlefield was caused by the appearance of the chariot, and then the mounted archer. Both were deployed to disrupt the ranks of foot soldiers prior to a full-scale engagement. At its peak the Assyrian army could muster 200,000 men, some of whom specialized in siege warfare since the capture of fortified cities formed a key part of strategy.   A Mesopotamian king was always the commander-in-chief but, with the growth of the Assyrian empire, professional generals conducted most campaigns. These aristocrats owed their positions to the throne and, except during periods of dynastic weakness, they possessed little scope for independent action. One courtier urged Esarhaddon “not to go into the midst of battle like his forbears” but instead to “take up a position on a hill and let your great men do the fighting.” As Assyria was surrounded by enemies, this was sound advice.   The earliest glorification of violence dates from the era of Akkad’s ascendency, between 2340 and 2169 BC. A surviving monument, the so-called Victory Stele, actually shows King Naramsin exultantly trampling upon the bodies of the slain. Under Assyrian rulers, however, the bloody nature of conflict was given greater prominence in bas-reliefs depicting the torture of prisoners. For the Assyrians came to believe that they were entitled to wage unrestricted warfare against the forces of chaos. An inscription on a pair of bronze doors found at Balawat refers to one of Sennacherib’s campaigns as the equivalent of an assault on Tiamat, the chaos dragon originally subdued by the Babylonian champion Marduk.   Kings occupied a pivotal position in ancient Mesopotamia. They dominated political, military and economic life, and also shaped reli 

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INTRODUCTION

gion and culture. Their sponsorship of temples allowed them to advertise personal triumphs as examples of divine favour. Yet religion formed such an integral part of society that Babylon and Assyria were unthinkable without their gods and goddesses, whose will was made manifest through omens and portents. Particular attention is therefore paid in Chapter 6 to the imperial capitals of Ashur, Nineveh and Babylon so as to illuminate the ceremonial basis of these great powers, with palaces, temples and defences revealing where Babylonian and Assyrian kings actually saw their own roles in the cosmos. Assyria moved its capital on several occasions but Nineveh was always regarded as its greatest city. There Sennacherib built ekalla sa sanina la isu, “the palace without rival”. Until the recent devastation of ancient sites by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, Nineveh’s ruins still impressed visitors: bulldozers and explosives have now smashed much of the surviving statuary, inscriptions and walls. It is perhaps fortunate that the ancient site was never fully excavated.   In Chapters 9 and 10 we reach the final era of Mesopotamian power. They recount the amazing revival of Babylon. In alliance with the Medes, the Babylonian king Nabopolassar even captured Nineveh after a three-month siege. Once Assyrian power was broken, his son Nebuchadrezzar II conquered Syria and Palestine, advancing as far south as Egypt. He also ended Jewish independence and removed as hostages a large number of prominent Jews to Babylon, an event that profoundly marked their religious outlook. Today biblical scholars are still trying to evaluate the impact of this exile on Judaism. The prophet Ezekiel, who was also deported, blamed the sins of the Jews for the loss of Jerusalem. Yet he offered comforting words when he announced that Yahweh intended at a future date to return the chosen people to the land of their ancestors. For Yahweh said: “I will sprinkle clean water over you and you shall be clean from your defilements and from your idols. I will give you new heart, and I will put new spirit in you.” Traumatic though the Babylonian captivity was for the Jews, Ezekiel’s prophecies gave the returning exiles hope during the Persian 7

THE FIRST GREAT POWERS

period, which came after the eclipse of Mesopotamian dominance in the ancient Near East.   By 515 BC the Temple had been rebuilt in Jerusalem and we are told how “the children of Israel, the priests, and the Levites, and the rest of the children of the captivity, kept the dedication of this house of God with joy.” Although severe political problems were to reappear under the Macedonian Seleucids and even more under the Romans, who eventually forbad Jewish residence in Jerusalem itself, the tolerant religious policy of the Persians gave the Jews a welcome respite for over two centuries.

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CHRONOLOGY Chronology of Babylon and Assyria BC

Babylon

1800 Rim-Sin of Larsa (1822–1763) Hammurabi (1792–50) Samsuiluna (1749–12) Fall of Babylon (1595) Kadashman-enlil I (1374–60) Burnaburiash II (1359–33) Kurigalzu II (1332–08)

Assyria Shamshi-adad I (1813–1781)

Ashur-uballit I (1363–28)

Shalmaneser I (1273–44) 1200

Tukulti-ninurta I (1243–07) Fall of Kassite dynasty (1155) Nebuchadrezzar I (1125–04)

Tiglath-pileser I (1114–1076) Ashur-dan II (934–12) Adad-nerari II (911–891) Tukulti-ninurta II (890–84) Ashurnasirpal II (883–59) Shalmaneser III (858–24) Battle of Qarqar (853 BC) Shamshi-adad V (823–11) Adad-nerari III (810–783)

600

Nabu-nasir (747–34)

Tiglath-pileser III (744–27) Sargon II (721–05)

Sack of Babylon (689)

Sennacherib (704–681) Esarhaddon (680–69)

Shamash-shum-ukin (667–48)

Ashurbanipal (668–27) Battle of Til Tuba (653)

Nabopolassar (625–05)

Fall of Nineveh (612)

Battle of Carchemish (605) Nebuchadrezzar II (604–562) Fall of Jerusalem (587) Nabonidas (555–39) Cyrus the Great captures Babylon (539)

9

A cuneiform text dating from the reign of King Shulgi

1 SUMER AND AKKAD

All the windstorms and gales arose together, and the flood swept over the land, and waves and windstorms rocked the huge boat for seven days and seven nights. The sun god Utu then came out, illuminating heaven and earth. King Ziudsura drilled a hole in the huge boat and hero Utu entered with his rays. After prostrating himself before the sun god, Ziudsura sacrificed oxen and innumerable sheep. From the Sumerian story of the Flood

By the time the Babylonian king Hammurabi established the first effective imperial hegemony in the 1760s BC, civilization in ancient Mesopotamia was already more than a thousand years old. In what is now southern Iraq, the Sumerians had founded Uruk, the earliest city to appear on the planet, and in about 3000 BC its inhabitants hit upon the idea of creating hundreds of pictograms, plus signs for numbers and measures; these were pressed into clay tablets with a reed stylus to record the assets belonging to their temples. From this tentative step towards literacy evolved the cuneiform script, named after cuneus, the Latin for wedge, since the script’s characters were all wedge-shaped. The Sumerians themselves were certain that putting words on clay represented a critical advance for civilization. And there is no doubt that without this stroke of genius we would have no access to the events, decisions and ideas that shaped the origins of world civilization. Nor would we possess any means of understanding

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A seal showing the sun god Utu rising behind mountains, while Inanna stands on the left and Enki on the right, with the Euphrates and the Tigris pouring from his shoulders

The ziggurat at Ur

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Babylon and Assyria, its first great powers. Arguably the invention of writing revolutionized our minds and increased our intellectual possibilities a hundredfold. It laid the foundation of civilization as we know it today.   Mesopotamia, “the land between two rivers” as the Greeks named this land, was in fact a vast alluvial plain that had once been the bed of a single river, whose remnants today are the Tigris and the Euphrates. With such fertile soil and a regular supply of river water, all that was required to guarantee a food surplus capable of sustaining urban life was an agricultural revolution. This was achieved by the Sumerians, whose increase in productivity was no less impressive than the mechanization of modern farming.   Fed by snowmelt from the Taurus mountains of Asia Minor and the Zagros mountains of western Iran, both the Euphrates and the Tigris were prone to chaotic flooding in their lower reaches, a circumstance which must stand behind the story of the Flood. As soon as the river water could be canalized and the land irrigated, Sumer became a veritable paradise. Instrumental in this far-reaching transformation of the

Eridu temple

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landscape was the Sumerian water god Enki, who flooded the rivers with life-giving power, while Ennugi acted as the deity responsible for dykes and canals. Even though Ennugi assisted his father, the storm god Enlil, in flooding the world so as to reduce the number of noisy Sumerians overcrowding the cities, it was the water god who warned of the approaching catastrophe.   Having promised not to reveal Enlil’s decision, Enki let the Sumerian Noah, Ziudsura, know by the sound of wind blowing through a reed wall. So Ziudsura was told to “build a boat and put on board the seed of all living creatures”. The ingenious device of the reeds may be explained by the location of Enki’s cult centre at Eridu, a city close to the vast spread of marshland into which the Euphrates and the Tigris flow before reaching the Persian Gulf.   In the Sumerian pantheon Enlil, whose name means “Lord Wind”, was the second most important deity, after the sky god An. Utterly unpredictable, Enlil could be friend or foe just as the wind varies from a benign zephyr to a destructive tempest. It was Enlil’s inability to get a good night’s sleep that really provoked his violent side. So angry was he with the racket arising from Sumerian cities that he decided to wipe out their inhabitants. Finding that famine and disease had little impact, Enlil chose a general inundation of the land. At this stage it seems that the gods had overlooked how the timing of death might impact on overpopulation.   That it was the Sumerians who shaped the consciousness of the ancient Near East became transparent in 1872, when a translation of cuneiform tablets at the British Museum revealed the Babylonian version of the Flood, a story thought to have been biblical in origin. When scholars discovered that this myth went all the way back to Ziudsura, they realised that here was one of the oldest ideas to survive anywhere on the planet. Entirely absent was the Old Testament explanation of the catastrophe, Yahweh’s punishment of Jewish sinfulness, as well as the Islamic view of Allah’s anger at the worship of a multitude of deities. 14

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  The original Sumerian version of the Flood makes no bones about the selfishness of Enlil. Human existence was precarious, since this powerful god would neither protect nor sustain people if, however inadvertently, they became a nuisance. As long as the Sumerians remained quietly efficient and fulfilled their religious duties, they could expect to survive, but not otherwise.

The Sumerian city-states Such a religious outlook is hardly surprising when it is recalled that a temple priesthood was the driving force behind the emergence of Uruk, which had a population of between 50,000 and 100,000 at the

Inanna, the original love goddess

15

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city’s height. Although powerful secular leaders eventually came to control Sumerian cities, all the evidence suggests that they evolved from being first and foremost cult centres. Disputes between temples and palaces were to become commonplace, but the piety of the Sumerians ensured that the city gods always got their due. Like human beings, the Sumerian deities had to be sheltered and fed, so meat, beer, bread, vegetables and fruit were laid out for them several times a day. The priesthood took care of these daily needs as well as public festivals. It managed relations with the divine, providing a theological justification for inequality in society. Sumerian rulers soon came to appreciate that in the priesthood there was a restraining influence upon their own conduct, not least because the first duty of every king was ensuring the satisfaction of the gods by means of support for the temples in which they dwelt.   City skylines were punctuated by ziggurats, structures with superimposed levels, each of which diminished in size like a wedding cake. A god or a goddess was believed to reside at the top of a ziggurat, well above the hubbub of the city, but their cult statues were carried down to a temple at ground level whenever they held court. The status of temples, and their importance to city life, caused them to be awarded special names. They usually begin with e, the Sumerian word for “house”. Thus in Uruk, the temple of the sky god An and the fertility goddess Inanna was Eanna, “house of heaven”; in Nippur, the storm god Enlil resided at Ekur, “mountain-house”; and in Babylon, the city god Marduk enjoyed life in Esagila, “house of the eminent peak”. Noteworthy is the use of the Sumerian language to describe Marduk’s cult centre as well as his ziggurat, Etemenanki, “house-support of the universe”, for the Semitic Babylonians adopted Sumerian beliefs lock, stock and barrel.   In Mesopotamia, the image of the temporal ruler acting as a steward of the divine estates meant the divinity of a king was rarely professed, in contrast to ancient Egypt, but a formula accepted that kingship “came down from heaven” and inscriptions maintain that the assembly 16

SUMER AND AKKAD

of the gods, which met as occasion demanded in Enlil’s temple at Nippur, invested each monarch. Early Babylonian kings looked to this Sumerian city for confirmation of their entitlement to rule until Marduk rose to the top of the cosmic order, after which he became the protector of Babylonian kings, once they had clasped the hands of his cult statue. Neither Babylonian nor Assyrian rulers assumed divine honours, unlike the Akkadian king Naramsin who ruled from 2291 to 2255 BC. He was careful, however, to seek divine approval for his own elevation by claiming the people of Akkad wished to worship their king as a god. The gods and goddesses are said to have agreed to this unusual request so a temple was dedicated in his honour. Despite former Sumerian kings being accorded a quasi-divine status after their deaths, the idea that a living ruler could become a divinity was unacceptable in Sumer. Such a lack of respect for the gods was bound to invite retribution.   According to the Sumerian King List, there were eight to ten “kings before the Flood”, their reigns extending to an incredible 72,000 years in total. An invention comparable to the lengthy genealogy in Genesis, the contrast with sources available for the period after Akkad’s ascendency could not be greater. Following the collapse of Akkad and the expulsion of the Gutians, who were supposed to have brought down this early imperial power as a consequence of Naramsin’s assumption of divinity, there was something of a renaissance in Sumerian culture and a greater number of inscriptions are available. But for the earliest period of Sumer we are obliged to rely on estimates. Attempts have been made to establish dates more exactly with the help of the carbon-14 method, which measures the age of objects by ascertaining the level of radioactive isotopes. As yet, this approach has not succeeded in filling the chronological gap in early Sumerian history.   The long period on the throne attributed to Lugalbana in the Sumerian King List makes it difficult to fix precise dates for him and his famous son Gilgamesh. Their reigns are now thought to lie between 2800 and 2500 BC. It is not impossible that Gilgamesh con 

 

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quered Uruk as an outsider, and then pretended that his father was the king of the usurped dynasty. We cannot be sure. But there is no question that Gilgamesh built the city wall, because he had to coerce the inhabitants into undertaking the task. Its length ran for an unprecedented 9.5 kilometres and its strength relied on at least nine hundred towers. The enclosed area was 5.5 square kilometres, twice the size of the original settlement, making Uruk the largest city-state in Sumer.   Apart from his reign in Uruk, Gilgamesh’s adventures were celebrated in the Gilgamesh epic, the most complete version of which survives in Akkadian, the Semitic language of Babylon. In Sumerian texts recovered from the city of Ur, as well as Uruk, the name of Gilgamesh is rendered “Bilgames”, which appears to mean “the firstborn” or “senior prince”. The Sumerian tablets are largely the products of eighteenth-century-BC scribal exercises, but they were certainly copying the classics recited during the third dynasty of Ur. Thanks to King Shulgi, its second ruler, a revival of scribal activity then preserved a great deal of Sumerian literature. Uruk’s earliest rulers fasci-

Lower Mesopotamia

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A fragment of the Gilgamesh epic

nated later poets, much as the heroes of the Trojan War did the Greek epic poet Homer. They were the favourite subjects of court entertainment, their exploits retold to king after king.   The dominant theme of the Gilgamesh epic is death. The Sumerians were exercised by the fear of dying before they could enjoy a full life. In the case of Gilgamesh himself, a profound anxiety about mortality derived from his human inheritance, since he was two-thirds god and one-third man. Gilgamesh’s divine inheritance derived from his mother Ninsun, a goddess whose name translates as “lady wild-cow”. Her cult was associated with wild cattle, the untamed animals still roaming on the fringes of the Euphrates-Tigris valley. In order to seek out a means of thwarting death Gilgamesh went in search of his ancestor Utanapishtim, one of the names given to the Babylonian Noah. 19

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  Even though Gilgamesh’s quest was in vain, the king traversed the entire cosmos, reaching the western mountains where the sun sets. There he persuaded a gigantic scorpion-man and his wife to let him pass, travelled through a dark tunnel which ended in a wondrous garden where the sun rises, roamed the deserts beyond this paradise, and crossed the waters of death to the abode of Utanapishtim. Made immortal by the gods after the Flood, Utanapishtim warned Gilgamesh that, as he could not resist sleep, there was little chance of avoiding death itself. Moved by pity, Utanapishtim’s wife asked her husband to give Gilgamesh a parting present, and Utanapishtim revealed the existence of a herb of eternal life at the bottom of Abzu, the great underground reservoir of sweet water belonging to Enki. Because rainfall was so low in Sumer it was believed that the water in streams and lakes came from this hidden source.

Gilgamesh killing the Bull of Heaven

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  On his way back to Uruk with the miraculous herb which he intended to consume as he grew older, Gilgamesh went to sleep by a water-hole. Smelling the wonderful perfume of the leaves, a serpent stole up and swallowed the lot. At once the snake gained the ability to slough its skin and Gilgamesh, remembering the words of Utanapishtim, realized that death was now his certain fate.   Another epic centred upon a king of Uruk is The Matter of Aratta, four narrative poems probably dating from the third dynasty of Ur period. They concern international trade. Notoriously lacking in metals, the alluvium of southern Mesopotamia obliged the Sumerians to reap the great expanses of barley that sustained their cities with claysickles, crescent-shaped tools with sharpened internal edges. It was indeed the absence of metals, stone and wood which stimulated longdistance commerce. This is the context of King Enmerkar’s dispute with Aratta, an as yet unidentified city in central Iran. Fabulously wealthy, Aratta refused to enter into commercial relations with Uruk, until the storm god Enlil gave his backing to King Enmerkar. At the end of the poem, a written demand broke the impasse. We are told: Enmerkar’s speech was very grand, its meaning very deep. The messenger’s mouth was too heavy; he could not repeat it. Because the messenger’s mouth was too heavy,   and he could not repeat it, The king patted some clay and put the message on a tablet. Before that day, there had been no putting words on clay.

 Besides the question of trade, which had spread well beyond the Euphrates-Tigris valley, an intriguing feature of Enmerkar’s success is the invention of writing, because it shows that Sumerian was then the international language. Anyone who was anybody understood the speech of Sumer, long before it was written down. But there is still something missing from this story, since it remains unclear whether Sumerian trade was in the hands of merchants, as later on in Assyria and Babylon, or whether each city-state procured the raw materials it 21

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Early cuneiform script, the writing system invented for administrative purposes in Uruk

King Sargon of Akkad

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needed through some central agency. Were traders in effect the servants of temples and palaces? At present we simply have no idea.   That commerce was stimulated throughout Mesopotamia by cities such as Uruk is apparent from the archaeological record. It even seems that Uruk maintained trading colonies as far north as Assyria and eastern Syria. But the spread of this city’s influence did not last long. At Arslantepe, near present-day Malatya in Turkey, on the upper reaches of the Euphrates, a large temple along with its storerooms was destroyed by fire and immediately replaced by a village of simple households. The construction of a lavish tomb on the ruins of the temple complex may explain the destruction, since its occupant could have led the attack on Arslantepe. The population of southern Mesopotamia was of course far larger than that of any other part of the Euphrates-Tigris valley, which ensured at least the continuation of Sumerian culture even though such outposts as Arslantepe were abandoned. And rivalry between cities did not undermine Sumer’s sense of identity in spite of the diversion of resources that internecine conflict entailed. In Chapter 4 on the Mesopotamian way of war we shall consider warfare between Sumerian city-states, with particular reference to the Stele of the Vultures. This monument was carved and erected after the settlement of a border dispute around 2460 BC over the ownership of Quedenna, a fertile tract of land situated between the cities of Lagash and Umma. It remains the earliest surviving public war monument. More serious fighting, however, was about to engage the Sumerians through the campaigns of Sargon, the Semitic ruler of Akkad. During his long reign from 2370 to 2315 BC the city of Akkad came to dominate Mesopotamia.

Akkadian aggression Akkad’s foundation was the achievement of Sargon, a newcomer to the political scene, who is considered to be the first empire-builder in the ancient Near East. Sargon’s background remains obscure: he was 23

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said like Moses to have been found in a basket floating down the Euphrates and raised at the royal court of Kish, where he became the cupbearer of its Sumerian king. Another legend claims he was loved and protected by Ishtar, the Semitic name for the great Sumerian goddess Inanna.   Even in his own inscriptions, the complete silence about Sargon’s predecessors contrasts with detailed statements regarding his personal triumphs. The swift rise of such an outsider facilitated the emergence of a new image for Mesopotamian kingship: it replaced the cultic and administrative role performed by Sumerian rulers with adulation for a war hero. Sargon was pleased to advertise his thirtyfour military campaigns, including the first great expedition as far as the Persian Gulf, or the Lower Sea. During this campaign he defeated Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk, and the rulers of other Sumerian citystates. Sargon boasted of winning numerous battles and washing his weapons in the Lower Sea. The Akkadian king had gained a tactical advantage through the deployment of bowmen and light-armed troops who overcame the compact infantry formations favoured by the Sumerians.   It was indeed Sargon who set the pattern of Akkadian aggression, marked as it was by unexampled cruelty, violence and exploitation. Above all, he wished to be remembered for three achievements: placing Akkadian governors in conquered cities; bringing international trade to his capital; and having sufficient resources at his disposal to maintain a permanent army of 5,400 men. As no previous Mesopotamian king had ever made such claims, Sargon became later on a model for the equally aggressive Assyrians.   Sargon’s meteoric career began with his seizure of Kish, which he rebuilt perhaps intending to make it his capital. But he moved to Akkad, whose site in Babylon is still unknown. We are as uncertain of Sargon’s personal name, because he took the Akkadian title sharru kenu, meaning “legitimate king”. In the Old Testament this was transformed into Sargon. Possibly to appease the Sumerians, he appointed 24

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his daughter Enheduanna as high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur. Sumerian was still spoken in this city, but Nanna had already become Sin, the deity’s Akkadian name. The Sumerians called the moon god Nanna or Suen, which explains the change of name to Sin in Akkadian. Enheduanna composed hymns in the Sumerian language as well as an autobiographical poem in which she tells us how she prayed to Sin when rebels took control of Ur. Since the moon god did nothing to help, Enheduanna appealed to the warlike aspect of Inanna’s complex nature instead, and this goddess responded with such frightening swiftness that the rebels fled the city in panic. Combined in Inanna’s person were several originally distinct goddesses, whose functions she discharged including prowess on the battlefield. Like the Greek goddess Athena, Inanna loved manly deeds and joined warriors in the fray.   The rebels who troubled Enheduanna at Ur had tried to shake off the harshness of Sargon’s rule. Their local rising was followed by a more widespread rebellion on the succession of his son Rimush: it was suppressed with such severity that the Akkadians were thereafter regarded as merciless oppressors. Large numbers of Sumerians were killed or deported to forced labour camps, where many also died. For the first time in Mesopotamian history, thousands were slaughtered in battle or as prisoners of war. It was therefore something of a relief when Rimush was murdered in a palace conspiracy and was succeeded by his brother, Manishtusu. The new king’s interest was international trade, which he encouraged by friendly and unfriendly means.   Despite an expedition directed by Sargon against Elam, a powerful state in southwestern Iran, the eastern frontier of Akkad was never really at peace. The Elamites continued to confront the Akkadians and, after the fall of Akkad, they overthrew the third Sumerian dynasty of Ur. Naramsin, Sargon’s grandson, had more success against Elam but he could not remove entirely the menace of their periodic invasions of the Euphrates-Tigris valley.   Manishtusu himself invaded central Iran in search of valuable materials and products, anticipating the booty-led campaigns of the Assyrians 25

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Sumerian infantry depicted on the Stele of the Vultures

prior to Tiglath-Pileser III’s reform of Assyria’s empire. What this energetic king did in 732 BC was to substitute the collection of annual tribute from annexed lands and vassal kingdoms for the raids that had previously maintained the position of the Assyrian kings. But the surge in wealth resulting from Manishtusu’s expansive policy may have wrecked Akkad in the longer term because its fourth king Naramsin came to see divinity as his due. His father Manishtusu had perished in another palace conspiracy after ruling for fifteen years.   Not long after he ascended the throne in 2291 BC, there was a widespread rebellion that almost succeeded in toppling Naramsin; but against all the odds, the new king reasserted imperial authority with superhuman strength. In his inscriptions, Naramsin readily proclaimed himself a peerless conqueror, to whom the heavily fortified cities of Syria submitted one by one. To capture these fortified settlements he mastered the art of siegecraft, penetrating in a number of 26

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instances multiple defence walls. Wars were no longer viewed as struggles between city-gods, but as public demonstrations of royal heroism. This new emphasis is evident in the inscription which explained Naramsin’s entitlement to divine honours. It reads: Naramsin the mighty, king of Akkad, when the four quarters of the earth attacked him together, through the love that Ishtar bore him, he was victorious in nine battles in a single year and captured kings who had rebelled against him. Because he defended his city in such a crisis, the people of his city asked him to become the city god of Akkad, with Ishtar in Eanna, with Enlil in Nippur, with Dagan in Tuttul, with Ninhursag in Kish, with Enki in Eridu, with Sin in Ur, with Shamash in Sippar, with Nergal in Cutha, and they built a temple for him in Akkad.

  Thus the warrior-king Naramsin joined the ranks of the gods. But this ambitious king was not content to shine in combat: he also ordered the construction of new temples at Nineveh in Assyria, the city of Babylon, and at least one Sumerian city.   Because Naramsin further claimed the special favour of Enlil, in whose temple of Ekur at Nippur he had been crowned, he decided to rebuild Ekur from the foundation up. As the storm god’s temple was considered particularly holy, this decision verged on sacrilege. A fortunate chance has preserved administrative records dealing with the project, which provide a rare glimpse of the day-to-day activities of Naramsin’s workmen, under the direction of his son, the crown prince Sharkalisharri. One tablet lists seventy-seven woodworkers, eighty-six goldsmiths, ten sculptors and fifty-four carpenters as well as engineers, stone masons and engravers. So ornate were the temple fittings that hundreds of kilograms of bronze, silver and gold were used, plus tonnes of copper. Bricks stamped with Naramsin’s name 27

THE FIRST GREAT POWERS

Rimush stele depicting the massacre of prisoners

have been unearthed at Nippur, but they may have only been laid after his death in 2255 BC.   The decline and fall of Sargon’s dynasty was believed by the Sumerians to have been the result of Naramsin’s arrogant assumption of divinity. According to The Curse of Akkad, later composed in Ur as a warning to the Sumerian king Shulgi not to hanker after divine honours himself, an enraged Enlil called upon the semi-nomadic Gutians to descend from the Zagros mountains and punish Akkad. Knowing “no order,” these hill-men were “made like humans but with the brains of dogs, the shapes of apes” and “like the plague of locusts they scoured the land” so that “nothing escaped their reach.” It is telling that in The Curse of Akkad specifically Enlil laments how “his beloved Ekur had been destroyed”: the implication is that Naramsin’s wholesale reconstruction of Enlil’s temple was as much to blame for the Gutian invasion as any claim the Akkadian king made to divine status.   Sharkalisharri was actually crowned in Nippur while Ekur was still under reconstruction. Although his name means “king of all kings”, Sharkalisharri could not hold together the conquests of his forebears 28

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and, like Rimush before him, this fifth Akkadian king was murdered by his courtiers, an action which inaugurated a period of anarchy. The Sumerian King List pointedly asks: “Who was king? Who was not king?” The last Akkadian king was Shuturul, or “the mighty one”, a grandiose title which belied the fact that he controlled no more than the environs of the city of Akkad.   Naked aggression had typified the two centuries of Akkad’s ascendency. Once it lacked the capacity for continuous military action, the days of Sargon’s dynasty were numbered. Pulling down the walls of captured cities was not enough to guarantee Akkadian dominance, if invaders such as the Gutians and determined rebels like the Sumerians were prepared to take the field. A Sumerian poet perhaps best summed up the situation when he asked: From time out of mind, from the start of this land, Who has ever seen a royal dynasty that lasted for long?

A brick stamp belonging to Naramsin, who is described as ‘builder of the temple of Enlil’

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The third dynasty of Ur After the collapse of Akkad, the Sumerian cities of Ur, Uruk, Umma and Lagash reasserted their independence while fending off Gutian assaults. The Sumerian King List only refers to a dynasty at Uruk, but it would seem that the city-state of Lagash led this political revival in Sumer, especially under Gudea whose piety found expression in the building of temples, the composition of hymns and the carving of statues. Almost life-size statues of Gudea himself in hard black dolerite were beautifully carved and inscribed with his acts; they were placed in the temples he patronized.   We are fortunate that the records this pious ruler kept of his building activities provide details of how a temple was constructed and consecrated. They tell us how the warrior god Ninurta showed himself to Gudea in a dream as a huge man with a divine crown on his head, wings like a bird, and the lower part of his body resembling “a flood

Akkadian man

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King Gudea of Lagash

wave”. He ordered the king to build a temple and, in a second dream, an architect actually drew its plan on a tablet. Once the priests in Lagash interpreted this epiphany Gudea started work on Eninnu, literally “the house of fifty birds”, and this temple was completed in record time; the building was opened with a splendid feast during which social distinctions were deliberately set aside, as all were equal in the presence of divinity. Hymns were sung and goodwill prevailed so that no strife would mar such an auspicious occasion. That is one reason why joyful music along with alcohol always formed an essential part of Sumerian worship; the other reason was the obvious delight of the Sumerians in the here and now.   The only conflict during Gudea’s reign involved the repulse of an Elamite attack. Because the Gutians left Sumer largely alone, and only occupied Babylon, the Sumerian city-states were free to flourish once again. When Utuhegal, the king of Uruk, finally drove the Gutians out 31

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of Mesopotamia, there was even more scope for a final Sumerian renaissance before the Babylonians became dominant. Not long after Gudea’s death in 2122 BC, King Urnammu had founded the third dynasty at Ur.   Previously the Uruk-appointed governor of Ur, King Urnammu was soon called “the strongman” because of his forceful foreign policy, which resulted in Sumerian control over most of Mesopotamia. Urnammu’s strict supervision of the cities in Sumer would have been unbearable had his rule not returned prosperity to their inhabitants. Many of this king’s inscriptions place emphasis on peaceful projects such as the draining of marshes, the digging of canals, the protection of villages, and the repair of temples and ziggurats. He hoped they would be looked upon “in wonder, and preserve the name of Urnammu for ever”.   It might be said that Urnammu’s programme of temple construction, including Ur’s first ziggurat, was part of a political strategy designed to put his dynasty at a safe distance from that of Akkad. He must have witnessed the dissolution of the Akkadian empire and noted how local priesthoods had taken a leading role in opposition to its rule. So Urnammu’s deliberate enhancement of Sumerian temples could not but conciliate the priestly establishment. That no protest met his other policies confirms the wisdom of this approach. One of them was the creation of the earliest known law code. Even though its laws were inspired by previous royal edicts, their collection in a single format was innovative. Urnammu also standardised weights and measures.   But the frequency of his military campaigns also signals an unfortunate urge to imitate the territorial ambitions of Akkad. Urnammu soon discovered how difficult it was to secure a northern frontier and his son Shulgi concentrated instead on the promotion of the economy. With some 200,000 people living in the city of Ur, it was critical for the dynasty to keep track of agricultural production as well as the output of craftsmen. Although he could not exercise the same degree of control beyond 32

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Sumer, Shulgi’s concern anticipated the imperial policies of both Babylon and Assyria.   A parallel with Akkad was the attempted deification of Ur’s kings. That the Gutian invasion took place nearly a century after the end of Naramsin’s reign did not stop the priesthood from using the event as a dire warning to Shulgi. They composed The Curse of Akkad to remind this king of the dangers of self-deification. Unlike Akkad, Sumer had little sympathy for deified rulers: even semi-divine Gilgamesh had only sought immortality, never divinity. Fear of an early death had haunted this Sumerian ruler throughout his life, as he could not but notice how “the dead outnumber the living.”   Two sons of Shulgi, Amarsin and Shusin, who succeeded their father, had to continue with costly wars in northern Mesopotamia as

Urnammu, being given a rod and a measuring tape by a deity

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well as blocking incoming Semitic tribesmen. They were obliged to build a wall to halt the Martu, or Amurru, Amorite nomads moving from the north into the Euphrates-Tigris valley. A second wall built by Ibbisin, the last king of the third dynasty of Ur, was meant to deter the Elamites in the east. The empire that Ibbisin inherited from his father Shusin was the same size as its fullest extent in Shulgi’s reign, but enemies were already placing it under intense pressure, while a reduction in the flow of both the Euphrates and the Tigris seems to have caused difficulties with irrigation, even famine.   Despite the construction of “a long wall in front of the mountains,” the Elamites invaded Sumer and looted Ur in 2004 BC. A lament says that at Ur, “water no longer flows in weed-free canals, the hoe does not tend fertile fields, no seed is planted in the ground, on the plain the oxherd’s song goes unheard, and there is never the sound of churning.” Such outpourings of woe developed in Sumer to commemorate the periodic destruction of its cities. They were the forerunner of The Book of Lamentations, in which the Jews expressed their anguish over the loss of “their inheritance to strangers” and their “houses to foreigners”. Yet nothing similar to the Jewish admission of sinfulness as a cause of their sorrow ever features in Sumerian compositions, for it was the departure of the gods which ensured the ancient ways “changed forever.” Not even the dogs of Ur remained in the ruined city.   After the withdrawal of the Elamites from Sumer, the king of Isin emerged from the new fortifications which had saved his own city, and annexed the territory of Ur. Another settlement arose on the site of Ur, but the city never flourished as before. Its continued decline coincided with the end of Sumer, for in 1750 BC King Hammurabi conquered Larsa, the last independent Sumerian city-state. Incorporation in the Babylonian empire marked the virtual disappearance of a civilization that had begun nearly a millennium and a half earlier with the foundation of Uruk. By the time of Hammurabi’s triumph Sumerian speakers were in a minority anyway. But the  

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Babylonians were in such awe of Sumer that, like Latin in medieval Europe, the Sumerian language retained an exalted position in cuneiform texts. And the cultural synthesis between Semitic and Sumerian peoples which started under the Akkadian kings now reached its fulfilment in Hammurabi’s Babylon. His own success as an empirebuilder was to be short-lived but his conquest of Sumer facilitated the development of Mesopotamian civilization, which achieved maturity under the rule of Babylonian and Assyrian kings.

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Hammurabi showing reverence to the sun god Shamash

2 THE FIRST BABYLONIAN HEGEMONY

King Hammurabi, the mighty one, beloved of Marduk, thanks to the sublime power of the gods, has overcome Elam, which gathered large numbers of troops behind the frontier with Marhasi: Subartum, Gutium, Eshnunna and Malgium. Thus he has strengthened Sumer and Akkad. A Babylonian inscription dated to 1764 BC

Despite its triumphant tone, there is a great deal missing from this account of Elam’s failed invasion of Mesopotamia. The inscription gives the impression that it was the help Hammurabi received from the god Marduk that decided the issue, entirely overlooking the contribution made by his allies. We are aware, for instance, of Mari’s assistance from a surviving letter of King Zimri-Lim, who put together a coalition which blocked Elam’s northern thrust. It was strong enough to deter the 30,000 men assembled under the king of Elam’s command. Just how serious the Elamite threat was to Babylon can be judged from the emergency measures that Hammurabi adopted. He went beyond conscription to the extent of freeing slaves in return for joining the ranks of the Babylonian army.   At this point in Hammurabi’s long reign of forty-two years from 1792 to 1750 BC, Babylon was not the dominant power in Mesopotamia. Even on the threshold of his great victories, Hammurabi hardly struck any of his contemporaries as a world-conqueror. As an  



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envoy reported to Zimri-Lim: “There is no king who is mighty by himself. Ten or fifteen kings follow Hammurabi, the ruler of Babylon, a like number Rim-Sin of Larsa, a like number Ibalpiel of Eshnunna, a like number Amutpiel of Qatna, and twenty-four follow Yarimlin of Yamkhad.” What the writer was trying to do here is reassure the king of Mari about his own city’s security. Diplomacy and border wars, he asserts, are the means of preserving the status quo, not the prelude to permanent conquest. He implies that there was little scope for the kind of empire which Sargon of Akkad had founded, although the balance of power was about to tip in favour of Babylon.

Hammurabi’s accession Hammurabi was the sixth member of the first dynasty of Babylon and he inherited a modest city-state. The Amorites, a group of Semiticspeaking semi-nomads, had moved into the Babylonian plain shortly after 2000 BC: they captured cities, settled down and adapted to local ways. The word Amorite, Akkadian Amurrum, comes from the Sumerian meaning simply “the west”, and was used to describe incoming tribesmen from the time of the third dynasty of Ur. Initially the cities of Isin and Larsa, two old Sumerian foundations, stood out politically before Rim-Sin, the son of an Amorite chieftain, was able to expand his power base at Larsa so as to end Isin’s independence. Difficulties with the canal system may have been behind the decline of Isin, because Hammurabi was obliged to undertake a large-scale reconstruction programme following his own capture of the city in 1763 BC.   In Akkadian, the written language of the ancient Near East after the close of the Sumerian period, the name for the city of Babylon was babilim, meaning “the gate of god”. During Hammurabi’s reign the rise of Marduk as the chief Babylonian deity certainly began, as priests endeavoured to simplify the extended pantheon inherited from the Sumerians. The era of Babylon’s first hegemony was noted for its bilingualism: Sumerian and Babylonian. Even today, the date at which 38

THE FIRST BABYLONIAN HEGEMONY

Diorite head of Hammurabi

Sumerian became extinct as a living language is a matter of debate, but gradually it became the preserve of the scribes. The Semites were clearly baffled by the large number of Sumerian deities being worshipped within the geographical confines of lower Mesopotamia. Marduk’s ultimate elevation to the role of supreme god at Babylon would not take place before the reign of Nebuchadrezzar I, who died in 1105 BC. It was to be celebrated in the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation epic. By then it was customary for each Babylonian monarch to receive the entitlement to rule by grasping the hands of Marduk’s cult statue.   For well over a century Babylon had quietly gone about its own business on a branch of the Euphrates. Its territory extended as far north as Sippar and Sippar-Amnanum, two cities under the protection of the Akkadian warrior goddess Annunitum, a local version of fearsome Ishtar. To the east there was Kish, the city from which Sargon had launched the Akkadian empire. Bricks found at Kish refer  

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Cuneiform script from Hammurabi’s law code

to Hammurabi’s restoration of the ziggurat belonging to Zababa, an Akkadian deity identified with Ningirsu and Ninurta, the Sumerian warrior gods. The southern limit of Babylon stretched beyond the city of Borsippa and the temple of Nabu, the patron of scribes. A typically Babylonian deity, Nabu, whose name meant “shining” or “brilliant”, was probably of West Semitic origin. Important though he was as “the scribe and minister of Marduk”, Nabu continued to reside near Borsippa at Ezida, “the true house”. This was the same title given to his other temples in Nineveh, Nimrud and Ashur, where the Assyrians readily embraced his cult. Like the late Sumerian king Shulgi, who did so much to stimulate and preserve the literary heritage of Sumer, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal was also instrumental in the preservation of Akkadian culture. Ashurbanipal’s personal library, which Layard discovered at Nineveh, contained the finest texts available in the Assyrian empire. Yet this great king, for all his undoubted literary 40

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Upper Mesopotamia

accomplishments, always dedicated his own compositions to Nabu, “the scribe of the universe”. After the downfall of Assyria, Nabu remained a major deity in Babylon.   The most formidable power on the northern border of Babylon was the kingdom of Shamshi-adad I, the earliest known Assyrian ruler. While in the south Rim-Sin’s Larsa had to be placated by Babylon, with Hammurabi’s grandfather, his father, and subsequently Hammurabi himself accepting vassal status, it was Shamshi-adad I who commanded most respect, once the Assyrian king had consoli 41

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dated his position and no longer “lived in tents.” Through sheer effort Shamshi-adad I took control of Upper Mesopotamia, and, especially by pushing back the incursions of Yamkhad, present-day Aleppo. Taking advantage of domestic difficulties in Mari, Shamshi-adad I occupied the city, while the heir apparent Zimri-Lim sought refuge in Yamkhad. In possession now of an empire which ran from the foothills of the Zagros mountains all the way to the banks of the Euphrates, the Assyrian king decided to share power with his two sons. It was a decision Shamshi-adad I had cause to regret.   Correspondence recovered from Mari reveals the incompetence of Yasmah-addu, the son Shamshi-adad I installed in the city. This listless young man gave his father endless worry since he feared for the safety of the Assyrian garrison there. Realising the easy-going character of Yasmah-addu, the neighbouring ruler of Carchemish sent him large quantities of wine, which at least eased the humiliation the Assyrian prince felt as the family failure. The success of his brother on the battlefield irked him even more than his father’s strictures. After Shamshi-adad I’s death in 1781 BC, a great upheaval occurred in northern Mesopotamia, with the result that Assyria suffered assault from several directions and Ashur, its capital, was captured by the Babylonians. Zimri-Lim succeeded in ruling an independent Mari during these troubled years and, for a period of time at least, maintained friendly relations with Babylon.   Little is known about the early years of Hammurabi’s reign. Apart from the cancellation of debts in 1792 or 1791 BC, the new king seems to have concentrated upon the building of temples and the digging of canals. Then around 1782 BC Hammurabi turned his attention to enlarging Babylon’s territory in two directions: southwards and eastwards. Even though he could not gain any advantage to the south over Rim-Sin in Larsa, and he had to be satisfied with booty gained in raids on Uruk and Isin, Babylonian forces fared much better against Malgium. The strategic position occupied by this city on the Tigris clearly attracted Hammurabi: he realised that in a future dispute with 42

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downstream Larsa he would be able to interrupt its water supply from there. That Malgium recovered sufficiently from its capture to participate in the Elamite invasion of 1764 BC signals the continued military weakness of Babylon. Not until 1760 BC would Hammurabi finally suppress Malgium.

The annexations It was the repulse of the Elamites which galvanised Hammurabi into action. That war was essentially of a defensive nature, but in the years that followed Babylon moved to annex other kingdoms. The first was Larsa, then Mari and Malgium.   The only Mesopotamian king who failed to join the struggle against the Elamites was Rim-Sin. So indifferent was he to the victory of Hammurabi and his allies, that Rim-Sin regularly raided Babylonian territory. Rim-Sin’s eclipse of Isin in 1796 BC had given him control of the entire area south of Babylon. In spite of the agricultural difficulties then facing southern Mesopotamia, where salinization led to the abandonment of many fields, Rim-Sin still believed that he was strong enough to stand alone. Because of poor drainage, intensive irrigation tended to cause salts to rise to the surface and destroy the fertility of the soil. The complete absence of field drains and limited use of fertilizer only compounded the problem, and for the first time led to a drop in population.   The specific reason for Hammurabi’s attack on Larsa is unknown, but on the eve of the war he sent to Mari for help, revealing that continued encroachment by Rim-Sin obliged him to act. “Now the man of Larsa,” wrote Hammurabi, “has disturbed my kingdom through pillage. Since the great gods have removed the grip of the Elamites from this land, I have shown favours to the man of Larsa but he has not repaid me with any sign of friendship.” With the cooperation of Eshnunna, and of course Mari, the Babylonian king was sure he would prevail, since his diviners had already ascertained the approval of the gods. Without seeking the 43

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advice of the priesthood about their attitude, no Mesopotamian king would dare to undertake a military expedition: the outcome of all such actions depended entirely upon the will of the gods.   For that reason the king paid careful attention to the reports he received about any auspicious signs that occurred in his kingdom, for these would certainly be regarded as an indication of what the gods intended. Hammurabi adopted a systematic approach to consulting oracles, before and during military campaigns. We are aware that his diviners always accompanied him, answering questions he put to the gods and reporting their own daily consultations with the divine realm. The Greeks and the Romans also adopted the Mesopotamian practice of examining the entrails of sacrificial animals in order to determine the will of the gods. Famously Alexander the Great resolved a strategic dilemma in India by the same method in 326 BC. Despite his wishing to move eastwards into the Ganges river valley, Alexander’s Macedonian soldiers wanted to halt the advance. Not only were they worn out by weeks of monsoon rain, but the promised end of Asia was nowhere in sight. It has to be said that Alexander himself was baffled by the size of the Indian subcontinent and, recognising that it was now impossible to go on without specific divine approval, he sacrificed only to discover the omens were all unfavourable. Calling his commanders and closest friends together, he told them he had taken the decision to turn back. The announcement was greeted by the army with shouts of joy and tears of relief.   With the rise of Babylon, and internecine conflict among the Amorite tribes dwelling along his northern frontier, Rim-Sin might have been expected to make preparations for resisting an attack by Hammurabi. He appears to have done little, so that the city of Mashkan-shapir fell easily to the Babylonians. According to Hammurabi, “I asked Shamash and Marduk about my concerns and their constant response was positive. So I have not mounted this attack without the approval of the gods.” Yet he hesitated whenever an ominous event was reported and then sought immediate advice from his diviners.  

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An inscribed clay liver

  South of Malgium on a canal fed by the Tigris, the city of Mashkanshapir could have been used to hold up the Babylonian advance. A garrison of several thousand soldiers under the command of SinMuballit, the brother of Rim-Sin, received no assistance against the attackers and they were unable to resist for long. The surrender of Mashkan-shapir, whose principal temple was the Emeshlam, “the house of the netherworld warrior” Nergal, is one of the events celebrated in the prologue to the law code of Hammurabi. As the Babylonian army was ordered to show mercy to surrendered opponents as well as civilians, the march on Larsa became something of a popular movement, with the inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia rallying to Hammurabi’s side. In part, the switch of loyalty can be explained by the traditional hostility between Mashkan-shapir and Larsa, but it must also reflect a widespread discontent with Rim-Sin’s rule. Reinforced by these volunteers and additional forces sent from Mari, Hammurabi laid siege to Larsa for six months. Such a long 45

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investment was unprecedented but once its stockpile of grain was exhausted, Larsa had no choice but to give in.   “Then the Babylonian troops entered Larsa,” we are told, “and they occupied the citadel. In the morning the entire army went into the city.” As for Rim-Sin, he was spared and removed with his sons to Babylon. Presumably he died there as a captive. Hammurabi destroyed the fortifications of Larsa, leaving its temples and houses intact. So “Hammurabi the king, with the assistance of the gods An and Enlil, took possession of the kingdom of Rim-Sin.” One of the Babylonian king’s first actions after his victory was to make urgent repairs to the irrigation system of southern Mesopotamia, which was then unable to supply enough water for the needs of Nippur, Eridu, Ur, Larsa, Uruk and Isin. Possible crop failure connected with this breakdown of the economy may have been a factor in Rim-Sin’s own downfall. The prosperity of a kingdom depended on its ruler and, with rainfall so poor,

A votive portrait dedicated to the life of Hammurabi

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maintenance of canals represented a duty no Mesopotamian king could afford to neglect. An inscription unearthed at Sippar, in northern Babylon, records Hammurabi naming a new canal after the goddess Aya as an expression of gratitude to her. As the wife of the sun god Shamash, she was greatly venerated at Sippar. “The lord of heaven and earth”, Shamash was the god of justice whose view of Hammurabi’s conduct was of critical importance to the Babylonian monarch.   The unification of Babylon and Larsa allowed Hammurabi to style himself king of Sumer and Akkad. Mindful of the disastrous impact that the same claim had on the dynasty of Sargon, following the wholesale reconstruction of Enlil’s temple at Nippur, Hammurabi was keen to ascertain the attitude of its priesthood. His circumspection worked at Ekur, the temple of Enlil, since a meeting of the gods held there elevated him to the kingship. Despite never being the seat of any royal authority, the city of Nippur was held to be especially holy because the sky god Enlil dwelt there in Ekur, “mountain house”. His father An, the rather remote god of heaven, had given Enlil the power to announce each legitimate ruler of Mesopotamia.   A number of inscriptions in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages proudly relate Hammurabi’s new position, suggesting a communal sense of relief that political unity in Mesopotamia had been achieved without the excessive violence of Akkad. For a brief period therefore only Mari and Babylon were left as super-powers. Relations between the two kingdoms had not always been smooth, as there were quarrels over cities like Hit, midway between Mari and Babylon: Hit was an important source of bitumen. But as a trading city-state, Mari needed good relations with Babylon because it acted as an exchange for Mediterranean and Mesopotamian goods. Zimri-Lim sent a piece of Cretan cloth as a present to Hammurabi. First the Elamites and then Rim-Sin kept Zimri-Lim and Hammurabi on good terms. They needed each other.   The death of King Zimri-Lim in 1762 BC dramatically changed the situation, although Hammurabi was already flexing his muscles. That 47

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year he humbled Eshnunna where the installation of a compliant ruler turned this northern kingdom into a Babylonian vassal. Another vassal king was Ishme-dagan, whom Hammurabi restored to the Assyrian throne. Concerned to strengthen his own position in northern Mesopotamia, Hammurabi marched on Ashur and returned Ishmedagan to power, which he held for the next forty years. Later Assyria entered a long period of obscurity when it came under the sway of Mitanni, a completely forgotten kingdom until its existence was rediscovered in Assyrian records. Mitanni’s reach from the Zagros mountains to the Mediterranean stemmed from the mastery of the chariot, as we shall see in the chapter devoted to Mesopotamian warfare. Not until the fourteenth century BC would Mitanni be reduced to the position of a minor power, squeezed between a resurgent Assyria and Hatti, the original stronghold of the Hittites in Asia Minor.

A Mari soldier

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Plan of the Mari palace

  Hammurabi’s final annexation was Mari in 1759 BC. He sacked the city and burned its great palace to the ground. So systematic was the destruction, an inscription relates, that Hammurabi “pulled down the walls and left no place as more than mounds and ruins.” The destruction left the king of Babylon as the unrivalled ruler of Mesopotamia and left in the palace ruins one of the most extensive archives for ancient Near Eastern history. The surviving 20,000 clay tablets at Mari include all kinds of letters, ration lists, records of legal judgments, taxation accounts, even the groceries for the palace kitchens. They were composed in the Akkadian language, mainly a syllabic script in which one cuneiform sign represents one syllable. The earliest exclusive use of an alphabetic system of writing evolved among the Western Semites, but only passed from the Phoenicians to the ancient Greeks in the eighth century BC.  

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The end of Babylon’s first dynasty There was no doubt in the mind of Hammurabi that his annexations had brought peace to Mesopotamia. As he put it at the end of his law code: I am Hammurabi, the noble king. I have not been careless or negligent towards the men whom Enlil has entrusted me and whom Marduk gave me to nourish. I have found peaceful places for them to live … I made enemies disappear and I have put an end to conflicts … I have embraced the people of Sumer and Akkad and they have prospered in safety. I have protected them through my wisdom.

  He was the good shepherd, who acts justly and leads his people along correct pathways. Other Mesopotamian kings placed emphasis on their strength, but Hammurabi seems to have desired above all else

A man from Mari

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to be looked upon as a just ruler, the earthly equivalent of the sun god Shamash. At the top of the elegant stone column 2.25 metres high on which the law code was inscribed is a striking scene: Shamash greets Hammurabi. Seated on a throne, the bearded deity extends with his right hand the ring and rod of divinity towards the worshipping king, who raises his own right hand to his lips in a gesture of supplication. This unequivocal sign of approval was intended to show the closeness of Hammurabi to the gods. Rays and flames emerging from Shamash’s shoulders are also a reminder that here we witness a privileged encounter with the divine.   Somewhat ironic then is the fact that this stele was recovered by French archaeologists at Susa over a century ago. It had been pillaged from Babylon in the twelfth century BC and carried back as booty by the Elamites. Other copies of the law code would have been put on public display in temples throughout Hammurabi’s kingdom, because the king wished to demonstrate how his laws applied to everyone, but the sole surviving example remains the one now preserved in the Louvre.   Hammurabi’s amazing annexations are conspicuous by their absence from the final decade of his reign. All we can be certain about is the date of his death in 1750 BC and the succession of his son Samsuiluna. It appears, however, that Samsuiluna’s accession was not without its problems. Already enemies were springing up both at home and on the frontiers. Much is heard of battles in the reign of Samsuiluna, but the historical record is short on detail. One Babylonian victory hardly gets a notice, even though the defeated host comprised the Kassites, whom the ancient Greeks called Kossaeans. To the people of Mesopotamia the Kassites were at first as alien as the Gutians in former times. They had their own language, but did not write it, so only scattered words are known today, too few for us to understand its relationship with other ancient Near Eastern languages. King Samsuiluna was of course unaware that the Kassites would eventually inherit the Babylonian kingdom. He struggled to 51

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hold onto his father’s annexations, over which his own son steadily lost control. And Babylon suffered a body blow in the Hittite invasion of 1595 BC from which it never recovered.   From his capital Hattusha, located some 120 kilometres east of modern Ankara, a Hittite king by the name of Mursili I attacked northern Syria and, meeting virtually no opposition, swept down the Euphrates valley and fell upon the city of Babylon. After looting the city, Mursili I withdrew homewards with his army, no doubt savouring his extraordinary triumph, but apparently not intending to annex northern Mesopotamia. Back in Asia Minor, a whole series of palace murders ensued, including his own. Conflict among the ruling class would in the end so weaken Hatti that Hattusha was abandoned and the remnant of the kingdom moved to Syria.   The Kassites swiftly filled the political vacuum left by the Hittites, and founded a dynasty that lasted for nearly half a millennium. Some Kassites remained in Iran, where they are mentioned in Assyrian texts as late as the seventh century BC. The earliest Kassite kings of Babylon are mere names, so scant are the historical sources.  

Kassite lioness

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Kassite Babylon In spite of being originally foreign to Babylon, the Kassite dynasty was able to rule for half a millennium. Possibly the achievement of Agumkakrime, either the first or second Kassite king, ensured its longevity since he recovered the cult statue of Marduk, which had been carried off by the Hittites in 1595 BC. Marduk himself is supposed to have instructed Agum-kakrime to recover his cult statue through an oracle delivered in consultation with the sun god Shamash. Besides making arrangements for the journey back from Hattusha, there was also the question of how on his return Marduk was to be received in Esagila. In this temple the city god sat on a cedar throne and carpenters came to restore it to a satisfactory condition.   Above all else, the accommodation of Kassite rule was a tribute to the assimilative power of Babylon’s culture, which quickly turned the Kassites into honorary Babylonians. How critical to the preservation of Babylon was the residence of Marduk is apparent in a myth which describes the god’s abandonment of his cult statue as the cause of a cosmic disaster. Maintaining Marduk’s cult in the Esagila temple was therefore a prime duty of Babylon’s rulers.   The practice of removing the deities of defeated peoples was widespread in the ancient world, and continued right down to the Roman period. It was even believed that inducing a city god to leave its temple during a siege would hasten the fall of a city. This the Romans did by promising the deity a cult in Rome. A story about the arrival of Juno from the Etruscan city of Veii, after a protracted siege, illustrates this belief. “When as a joke, a Roman soldier asked the goddess if she wanted to move,” we are told, “the goddess replied that she did. On hearing her speak, the joking turned to awe and, realising now that they were carrying not a statue but Juno herself, they joyfully installed her at Rome.” Most likely the imported goddess was Uni, Juno’s Etruscan equivalent. According to Tertullian, a Christian author living in Carthage, “the Romans have committed as many sacrileges as they have trophies, they have triumphed over as many gods as they have  

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over nations. No more proof is needed than the host of captured cult statues.” Assyrian bas-reliefs show similar abductions, particularly during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III, much of whose energy was spent in restoring the Assyrian empire to order. A vigorous campaigner, Tiglath-pileser III effectively dealt with internal and external opponents in the 730s BC.   The next period of Babylonian history for which there is some reliable information is the fourteenth century BC. At Amarna, the palace city of Akhenaten which was only abandoned on that pharaoh’s death in 1332 BC, the discovery of an archive of diplomatic correspondence containing four hundred tablets written in Akkadian tells us much about Babylon’s relations with Egypt. Despite the Amarna archive in itself being an acknowledgement of the Egyptians having to accept a degree of coexistence with several ancient Near Eastern powers, there remained a deep uneasiness about the pharaoh’s parity with their leaders. That was the reason for a prohibition on the marriage of Egyptian princesses to foreign kings. Pharaohs could take foreign wives as part of diplomatic agreements, but non-Egyptians were regarded as socially inferior to members of the Egyptian royal family, no matter how exalted their status was at home. Princesses were simply not available for marriage outside Egypt.   This situation informs an amazing exchange of letters between pharaoh Amenhotep III and the Kassite king of Babylon Kadashmanenlil I. Having failed to obtain the hand of an Egyptian princess, Kadashman-enlil I suggested a ruse: let the pharaoh “send me a beautiful woman as if she were your daughter.” Again Amenhotep III refused, much to the distress of the Babylonian ruler, whose prestige would have been greatly enhanced by family ties with the Egyptian royal family, real or supposed. What galled Kadashman-enlil I most was that foreign wives of the pharaoh lacked the eminence at court that their families expected. They certainly led luxurious lives, but possessed no influence outside the bedroom of the pharaoh. Just how undistinguished foreign wives were in Egypt was evident when  

 

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Kassite seal dedicated to the sun god Shamash

Kassite seal of a water god

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Amenhotep III could not confirm to the Kassite king that his sister was still alive. She had apparently sunk without trace among his other wives and concubines.   When Amenhotep III admitted that he had forgotten which of his wives Kadashman-enlil I’s sister might be, the Babylonian king sent envoys to talk to her. The scene at the Egyptian court had all the trappings of comic opera. As none of the envoys knew the Kassite princess personally, they were reduced to inspecting the pharaoh’s entire harem, the members of which were paraded before them in turn. The women refused to speak and so the envoys returned to Babylon none the wiser. Understandably, Kadashman-enlil I was not satisfied with this; but Amenhotep III blamed him for the confusion, saying that Kadashman-enlil I should have sent somebody who would actually recognise his sister on arrival at the court. Amenhotep III’s inability to identify his own wife as an individual, and his seeming lack of ­contrition over this, serves as proof of the limited power of foreign princesses in Egyptian courts.   Slighted though the Kassite king must have felt by this unsatisfactory exchange with Egypt, this did not stop him from ruling Mesopotamia with success. He and his successors patronised its culture, repairing temples and raising new ones, while making sure the canal system still functioned properly. Temples in fact took on the role of administrative centres: at Nippur the temple archives provide evidence of improved accounting methods. Apart from the large plots of land administered by temples and located around cities, another type of land holding developed. Subjects occupied royal land which was granted in return for military service, not unconnected perhaps with the arrival of the chariot.   Yet surviving correspondence with the Hittite court suggests an equally frustrating situation to that with Egypt. Its subject is the physician Raba-as-Marduk, whose name means “great are the deeds of Marduk.” Around 1285 BC Raba-as-Marduk went to Hattusha at the request of a Hittite king, and Hattusili II may have later detained him 56

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there against his will. So far in advance of anywhere else in the ancient Near East was medicine at Babylon that any ruler who could obtain the services of one of its doctors would be loath to lose him. It could be just as true that Raba-as-Marduk was tempted into staying abroad by wealth, land and even kinship ties with the royal family. That this was no isolated case is revealed by the Greek historian Herodotus, when he relates how the Greek physician Democedes of Croton was kept in the Persian court after he had healed King Darius’ injured leg.   Babylonian medicine never entirely separated itself from exorcism. Incantations and prescriptions remained inextricably linked together, but it is obvious from medical texts that Babylonian doctors used a whole range of plants to treat illness and disease. One prescription says: “If a man gets a pulsating of the temple and his body hurts, you crush and sieve dried musukannu-tree leaves, kakku-pea flour and inninu-barley flour in beer dregs, you bandage him continually with them, and he will recover.” Another prescription advises: “If a man gets a pulsating temple and has numbness, you grind dried eru-tree leaves, mix it with wheat flour, salu and hasu-plant and with beer of the tavern keeper into a paste, you bandage him continually and he will recover.” Often these preparations were left overnight in the temple of the healing goddess Gula. Even closer to the supernatural is this prescription: “If a ghost seizes a man so that he continually has a headache, you knead fox grape with extract of kasu, you bind it on him and he will recover.” Even though Raba-as-Marduk’s prescriptions do not include incantations, there is no doubt that exorcism addressed the patient’s mental state and anxieties, while medicine concentrated upon the physical symptoms, such as pain, fever and seizures. Between them they offered the Babylonian patient a remarkably comprehensive and comforting medical service.   There were frequent wars with Assyria and Elam until attacks by both of these enemies brought an end to the Kassite dynasty in 1155 BC. Earlier the Elamite king Shutruk-nahhunte claimed to have captured seven hundred Mesopotamian settlements and taken to Susa  

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dozens of monuments, including the Victory Stele of Naramsin. “All the temples of Akkad,” he proudly boasted, “are consumed by fire.” After his murder by his son Kudur-nahhunte, the Elamites returned to the attack and looted Babylon, Uruk and Nippur. The usurper Kudur-nahhunte was attempting to combine Mesopotamia and Elam as a single kingdom, and for a time he seemed well on his way to achieving this aim. It was thwarted by Nebuchadrezzar I, the fourth and greatest king of a new Babylonian dynasty. Nebuchadrezzar, the usual spelling of Nabu-kudurri-usur, is based on a later Hebrew corruption of the name given to Nebuchadrezzar II in the Bible.   By carrying off the cult statue of Marduk, the Elamites had utterly humiliated the city of Babylon. An attempt to return the cult statue to its rightful place in the temple of Esagila was prevented by an outbreak of plague in Nebuchadrezzar I’s army. Having received favourable omens for a second attack around 1120 BC, the Babylonian king advanced in sweltering heat at the height of summer, and the unexpected timing of the attack caught the Elamites by surprise. We are told how gruelling the campaign was: In the month of Dumuzi, when the soldiers’ axes burnt like fire in their hands, and the surface of the road scorched like flame. In the wells, there was no water, nothing was available to slake a terrible thirst. The strength of the horses gave out, and even the strongest warriors shook with fatigue.

  Then in a great battle which “blotted out the light of day,” the Babylonian chariotry decided the outcome and in triumph Nebuchadrezzar I bore the cult statue home. So it happened, a chronicler relates, that “the great god Marduk relented his anger against his land and returned to protect it once again.” It may be that the crushing victory over the Elamites encouraged Nebuchadrezzar I to declare Marduk the supreme Mesopotamian deity. In Esagila, the Babylonian monarch participated in an annual ritual of renewal, a public reaffirmation of his entitlement to rule. To this impressive ceremony the gods and goddesses of other major cities were brought as witnesses, 58

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Kassite seeder-plough drawn by two humped oxen

until political unrest towards the end of Nebuchadrezzar I’s reign caused a temporary halt to the practice, because it was too risky for their cult statues to be conveyed to Babylon. Before his death in 1104 or 1103 BC, Nebuchadrezzar raised the first ziggurat in Babylon, opposite Marduk’s temple.   Besides the composition of the Enuma Elish epic, in which Marduk achieved his elevation to the head of the Babylonian pantheon, Nebuchadrezzar I’s reign witnessed the writing of the earliest mathematical texts. They anticipate among other things Pythagoras’ theorem by a thousand years. Yet calculations of all kinds, such as estimating the number of days required to complete a task or determining the size and shape of fields, show how the Babylonians were perfectly 59

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capable of solving the mathematical problems of daily life. Pythagoras dwelt on Samos, an island off the coast of Asia Minor, before his emigration to Italy.   Like Thales, who lived close by in the port of Miletus, Pythagoras would have encountered Mesopotamian ideas. Thales was one of the Seven Sages according to the ancient Greeks, and made his name through accurately predicting a solar eclipse in 586 BC; in all probability he consulted Babylonian astronomical tables. Cosmology has always been highly speculative, but in the case of Thales the practical nature of his interests was very marked, since they encompassed navigation, economics, engineering and geography. And the prime importance that Thales attributed to water, whose movements he believed were the cause of earthquakes, depended upon the Mesopotamian conception of the land floating on a cosmic ocean. Above all, Thales was celebrated by the ancient Greeks as the source of rational enquiry because he first suggested that natural processes, rather than divine action, might be behind the shaping of phenomena.   Towards the end of the first millennium BC, Babylon was subjected to more and more raids from the north by an invading force of Semitic-speaking semi-nomads, the Aramaeans. Gradually these people spread over northern Mesopotamia and Babylon entered another dark age in its history. Assyria was only a little better off in this regard, although it had to devote all its energies to keeping the Aramaeans at arm’s length. Already the Assyrians had halted the invasions of the Sea Peoples, forcing these raiders to head south towards Egypt, where in 1182 BC Ramesses III defeated one group in Palestine, and another in a sea battle off the Nile delta. Little is understood about the sudden upsurge in violence caused by the so-called Sea Peoples, but the determined stand of Assyria and Egypt to a large extent contained their violence. The Mushki may have been one of the Sea Peoples whom the Assyrians drove into eastern Anatolia where, as the Phrygians, they set up a kingdom ruled by Mita, known to the Greeks as Midas. The Aramaean invasion, however, represented a 60

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much more serious challenge and its impact can be observed in the eventual replacement of everyday Akkadian by the Aramaic language. The upper classes still wrote and spoke Babylonian but Aramaic became the common language of the ancient Near East. It was the tongue that Jesus spoke.

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Sargon II in conversation with an Assyrian noble

3 THE RISE AND DOMINATION OF ASSYRIA

The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. ‘The Destruction of Sennacherib’ by Lord Byron

Assyria had nomadic origins, its transformation into a state being achieved by Shamshi-adad I, whose capital was the city of Ashur. Between 934 and 827 BC, a number of Assyrian kings endeavoured to recover the territories which were lost after Shamshi-adad I’s death nearly a millennium earlier. The first king to undertake these regular military campaigns was Ashur-dan II: he reigned from 934 to 912 BC and, besides pursuing an aggressive foreign policy, built a new palace and gateway at Ashur. But it was his son, Adad-nerari II, who mounted expeditions to the north of Assyria against tribal groups, to the south against the Babylonians, and to the east against the Aramaeans. His eight assaults on the Aramaeans were of the utmost importance because they opened the way to the Euphrates, which the Assyrian king crossed in 899 BC. So successful was he on the battlefield that Adad-nerari II could pass through conquered lands collecting tribute without any sign of resistance. We are more informed about military events thanks to the Assyrian annals and the Babylonian chronicles which cover almost the entire period down to the Persian conquest of Babylon.  



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Ashurnasirpal II. On his chest are carved eight lines of text giving his name and titles, plus his achievements

The Assyrian revival Together Ashur-dan II and Adad-nerari II laid the foundation of the Assyrian empire, the first truly imperial power to exist in the world. Assyrian armies would continue to push further westward, finally reaching the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. One of the aims of conquest was to gain valuable goods from neighbouring city-states and peoples as booty or tribute. Inscriptions dating to the reign of Ashurdan II first mention the spoils of war but it is not until the accession of Ashurnasirpal II in 883 BC that we find details of booty as well as tribute. Booty was of course taken from defeated enemies and consisted of every type of valuable goods: palace treasures, textiles, furniture, timber, slaves, weapons, chariots and chariot horses, other animals, foodstuffs and wine. Another feature of conquest was the wholesale deportation and resettlement of displaced populations. The 64

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The god Ninurta

standard verb used to describe booty-taking is salalu, meaning “to acquire plunder”. It could also apply to deportees. Tribute had a slightly different connotation, since later Assyrian kings liked to refer to themselves as “the one who receives the tribute and gifts of the entire world.” Maddattu is the usual term for “tribute”, which comprised high value items such as silver and gold, bronze and iron, ivory, precious stones, rare wood like cedar, and luxury utensils. The systematic exploitation of the lands surrounding Assyria was a new phenomenon, but the Assyrians were not the first people to discover the economic advantages of a successful campaign: Mesopotamian kings had long looked upon spoils as the just reward of the gods.   Ashurnasirpal II’s chief military target was the same as that of Adad-nerari II: the Aramaean west. Despite an impressive run of vic 65

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An Assyrian chariot pursues fleeing enemies while a bird of prey contemplates its dinner

tories on the part of the Assyrians, the Semitic Aramaeans continued to trouble Assyria for over a century. Although the Assyrians looked upon the Aramaeans as fierce intruders from the desert, who preyed upon hapless merchants and desecrated religious sanctuaries, another view simply saw them as tribal pastoralists who had settled down to urban life in northern Syria. It is not a little ironic that the Assyrian policy of resettlement actually facilitated the rise of spoken Aramaic. Ethnically Assyria itself was undergoing a major change as the number of Aramaeans moving there increased dramatically. They came initially as labourers to work on the enormous building projects in its cities, but over the generations a considerable proportion of these newcomers were integrated in Assyrian society and, by the eighth century BC, there were Aramaeans at a very high level in the civil service and the army, so that their language was readily understood. Perhaps only the highest level of the Assyrian administration employed scribes versed in cuneiform Akkadian, which was used for the composition of the annals as well as royal inscriptions. 66

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Assyrian punishment of rebels

  Before the English archaeologist Layard returned in 1848 to London and published his findings, he had correctly identified Nimrud, the biblical Calah, as the headquarters of the Assyrian army. What Layard discovered there was a palace used by Assyrian kings prior to the reign of the usurper Sargon II, who favoured Dur Sharruken. How central Nimrud was to the Assyrian empire can be grasped from the ceremonial name of the palace entrance. It was called: Justice Gates, which fairly judge the rulers of the four quarters of the world, when they come bearing tribute from the mountains and the sea to their King, their Lord.

  The city had been expanded during Ashurnasirpal II’s reign as the administrative centre of a growing empire and witnessed the building of new temples, including one dedicated to Ninurta, the defender of the divine world order. As the son of the sky god Enlil, this warrior god was endowed with eternal kingship by his grateful father after the titanic victories he achieved in the mountains over the forces of chaos. 67

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  But it was the adoption of Ninurta as the son of Ashur, the supreme deity of the Assyrians, that secured his place in royal worship. Each Assyrian king had a special relationship with Ashur, and, by extension, with the belligerent Ninurta. The triumphal return of a king home after a campaign is described thus: The Elamite chariot, which has no seat, carries inside it the body of the underworld god Enmesarra. The horses which are harnessed to it are the ghost of the lion-headed storm bird Anzu. The king who stands in the chariot is the warrior king, the lord Ninurta.

There can be no doubt that here the warrior god and the Assyrian king are almost considered as identical. He was as triumphant as Ninurta, who vanquished the forces of chaos and rode in his chariot, pulled by the ghosts of defeated monsters.   Through association with Ninurta, Assyrian kings reinforced their claims to world-wide domination. They were deemed the favourites of Ninurta, “the one who controlled all the quarters with his strong might.” The name Ashurnasirpal indeed means “Ashur is the custodian of his son, Ninurta.” And Ashurnasirpal II’s new temple for the god in Nimrud remained the most important sanctuary until the fall of the Assyrian empire in 612 BC. An inscription explains the care taken by the king over its construction:  

I took a hand in the renovation. I cleared away the old hill and dug down to water level. I sank a foundation to a depth of 120 layers of brick. I founded therein the temple of the god Ninurta, my lord. At that time I created with my skill this image of the god Ninurta which had not existed as a cult statue of this great divinity before: it comprises the best mountain stone and red gold. I looked upon it as my great divinity in the city of Calah. I appointed festivals, completed the temple, and placed Ninurta on a holy throne—may he be truly pleased and so extend my days, love my priesthood, and grant me success in battle.

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Shalmaneser III receives the humble submission of Jehu, king of Israel

A stele of the Assyrian king Shamshi-adad V

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  That Ashurnasirpal II was certain of Ninurta’s support is evident in the huge stone reliefs that he placed in the new temple. Not only do they praise the god as “the perfect warrior unequalled in battle”, but even more they advertise the treatment that he personally meted out to his enemies. The Assyrian king relates how he “stood on the necks of his foes” and “with their blood the mountains turned red like wool.” More precisely he “cut off noses, ears and extremities” of captives, “gouged out eyes”, “burnt prisoners”, “slashed the flesh of rebels” or “flayed them alive”. One disloyal ruler had his skin “draped on the city wall of Nineveh.”   Massacre, pillage, wholesale resettlement—these were the instruments of Assyrian domination. What allowed the Assyrian king to behave without restraint was the prowess of his army, which increased in size from 60,000 during Ashurnasirpal II’s reign to an incredible 200,000 at the turn of the seventh century BC. Shalmaneser III, the son of Ashurnasirpal II, continued to campaign on a grand scale, and particularly along the empire’s western frontier. He also maintained the family devotion to Ninurta, building a ziggurat next to his father’s temple. He was just as convinced that it was the favour of this deity which kept him on the throne.   Layard’s discoveries at Nimrud, like his earlier ones at Nineveh, were greeted in Britain with enthusiasm, because he confirmed the violence of the Assyrians in the Bible. According to the prophet Isaiah, Assyria was chosen by Yahweh to punish the sinful Jews. It would be “the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation.” So angry was the Jewish god with “an hypocritical nation” that the Assyrian monarch was given “a charge, to take spoil, and take the prey, and tread them down like mire in the streets.”   From the moment of his accession, Shalmaneser III knew he possessed a divine mandate to conquer. Dated to the late 850s BC, an inscription engraved on a large stele found in 1861 near the river Tigris lists the cities conquered by Shalmaneser III along the upper reaches of that river, where at the start of his reign he took the forti 

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fied city of Aridu, “massacred many of its inhabitants, carried off booty, erected a tower of heads before the city and burned young boys and girls.” What might be termed calculated terror at Aridu was enough to cow the entire area: tribute immediately poured in from other cities.   One of the battles fought by Shalmaneser III in Syria is recorded in some detail. By the time this battle happened at Qarqar in 853 BC, the chariot had a rival in the mounted archer, whose ability to control his horse was much improved through the snaffle-bit, as it more readily communicated a rider’s intentions to his mount. Even though the chariot would eventually be supplanted in the ancient Near East by the mounted archer, a critical item of equipment was still missing:

The Assyrian empire at its greatest extent

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Tiglath-pileser III, the great conqueror and reformer

stirrups. This Central Asian invention did not arrive until after the collapse of the western Roman empire. The use of stirrups renders mounting easier, increases control over the horse, and results in a steadier seat. The unsteadiness of the Mesopotamian rider’s seat was legendary, a circumstance which prolonged the usefulness of the chariot archer. While the Assyrian army never abandoned the chariot, its development of cavalry was a response to the expansion of its arms into territory less suited to wheeled vehicles. Cavalry finally replaced chariotry as a mobile striking force, for skirmishing, flank attacks or hot pursuit, but an enlarged chariot was retained as a firing platform since by raising the chariot’s floor the archers obtained a better view. Typical of these larger Assyrian vehicles was a four-man crew: a driver, a shield bearer and two archers.   Exactly how many archers Shalmaneser III stationed in chariots is unknown, as indeed is the strength of the force he deployed at Qarqar, 72

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but we are fortunate in having a breakdown for his Syrio-Palestinian opponents. Assyrian scribes record the enemy as fielding 3,940 chariots, 1,900 horsemen, 1,000 camel troops and 52,900 foot soldiers.   The prime movers of the coalition opposed to Assyria then were the Syrian king Ben-adad II of Damascus and Ahab, his uneasy Jewish ally. They succeeded in uniting ten other kings against Shalmaneser, who claimed victory despite having to confront the coalition on several occasions. Such forays eventually converted Syria and Palestine into Assyrian territory, which Tiglath-pileser III reorganized as provinces, with governors and garrisons, or puppet kings. Even though the battle of Qarqar provided a welcome pause in Assyrian aggression, Ben-adad II and Ahab were soon at loggerheads since as the senior partner the Syrian king made unacceptable demands upon the resources of his junior. War ensued and, in 841 BC, at the battle of Ramoth-Gilead on the eastern bank of the Jordan, the armies of Damascus and Israel clashed. Fearful of Ahab’s tactical skills, the Syrian king ordered his best squadron of chariots to seek out the Israelite ruler and “fight him only.” The wily Ahab avoided its attention, fighting throughout the day in spite of a severe arrow wound. He feared his soldiers might mistake his absence from the battlefield to receive medical treatment as a sign of impending defeat and break ranks. “So the king of Israel stayed himself in his chariot until the evening: about the time of the sun going down he died.”   In his old age Shalmaneser III’s grip on the wheel of state weakened and one of his sons rose in revolt. This uprising was only suppressed by another son, the new king Shamshi-adad V. Civil strife also blighted the reign of Adad-nerari III, the son of Shamshi-adad V, and even more the reigns of his less effective successors. Powerful generals acted independently, and the number of rebellions in Assyria itself jumped to ten within the space of two decades. Suddenly it looked as if the Assyrian empire was doomed, until Tiglath-pileser III reaffirmed Assyria’s territorial claims against its foreign rivals and punished the officials and governors who had profited from the turmoil.  

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Henceforth a close watch was kept on provincial officials, who no longer enjoyed the virtual autonomy that certain Assyrian aristocrats had appropriated for themselves during previous reigns.

The reign of Tiglath-pileser III Tiglath-pileser III came to the throne as a result of an uprising in Nimrud. The exact sequence of events is unclear, but it ended with this middleaged son of Adad-nerari III becoming king. There is a suspicion that he was a usurper who took advantage of the troubled times to stage a coup and seize the Assyrian crown for himself, for he does not appear to have been in the direct line of royal succession.   There is no doubt, however, that his actions impressed his contemporaries, since he campaigned in a vigorous manner and gave no quarter to Assyria’s foes. One of these was Urartu, a tribal kingdom centred on Lake Van to the north of the Assyrian empire. Urartian raids had already obliged Shalmaneser III to march as far north as Lake Van, where he performed the ritual of washing his weapons, sacrificed to the local gods, and set up a stele bearing his own life-size portrait. Yet Assyrian pressure proved counter-productive because the threatened Urartian tribes united under a series of outstanding rulers, one of whom assumed the title “king of kings”. Tiglath-pileser III kept Urartu at bay, as did Sargon II, who came to the Assyrian throne in 721 BC, but this troublesome neighbour was only extinguished by the invading Cimmerians and Scythians around 600 BC.   The war with Urartu having been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, Tiglath-pileser III was free to pursue a cherished ambition, the conquest of all the territory right up to the Egyptian border. The death of Solomon in 922 BC had led to a period of division among the Jews: in the south, Solomon’s son Rehoboam took the throne of Judah, while in the north Israel was ruled by one of Solomon’s high officials. The history of these two kingdoms was quite different, with Judah enjoying a relatively stable dynastic experience in stark contrast to the chronic instability of Israel. 74

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  It was Ahab, the seventh king of Israel, who along with Ben-adad II of Damascus dared to defy Assyria. The suggestion that Ahab died as a consequence of a wound sustained at the drawn battle of Qarqar seems unlikely when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III fails to mention such an event in his account of the engagement. Ahab’s end came about through a conflict with Ben-adad II, a circumstance which precipitated a bloody coup in Samaria, the capital of Israel. Ahab’s widow, the Phoenician princess Jezebel, tried to fill the political vacuum without success. Her support for the worship of Baal, the West Semitic weather god, enraged the prophet Elijah to the extent that he backed a military takeover by Jehu ben Nimshi. Jezebel herself was thrown out of a palace window and then trampled by horses. Afterwards, only her skull and the bones of her hands and feet were found, which were insufficient for a proper burial. Even her bitterest enemies considered this a shameful death. The biblical version of what was the most violent revolution in Jewish history presents Jehu as a fearless ruler

Assyrian foot soldiers

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whom his successors set up as their model. King Jehu was in fact a weak and ineffectual man. Shalmaneser III quickly exploited the situation and the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon submitted to him. So did Jehu, whose acknowledgement of Assyrian overlordship is depicted on the Black Obelisk, the only surviving portrait of a Jewish king. The new vassal is shown on his hands and knees, with his face to the ground. The tribute offered to Shalmaneser III included “gold, silver, golden bowls and cups, golden buckets, tin, and a staff for a king.” Jehu’s coup and submission to Assyria was a disaster. Israel lost its independence and control of Galilee, which passed to Damascus. Both Israel and Judah consistently underestimated Assyria as much as they overestimated Egypt.   The power game that had typified relations with Egypt abruptly changed with the arrival of Tiglath-pileser III. The Syrians, Phoenicians and the Jews thought they could use the Assyrians as allies against their immediate neighbours and continue to appease them as they did the Egyptians, whose pharaohs were content with occasional forays to collect tribute. After Tiglath-pileser III, however, vassalage meant unconditional submission to Assyria. Whenever a vassal state rebelled, it was lucky if it lost only the best part of its territory, as happened to Israel in 733 BC. When Israel tried to rebel again in 721 BC, Assyria put an end to the entire kingdom. Believing he had firm control over Syria, Phoenicia and Palestine, Tiglathpileser III marched through these lands and captured Gaza. The city was plundered and a golden statue of the Assyrian king was placed in its chief temple. The ruler of Gaza, Khanunu, had fled to Egypt, but eventually he came back and was made an Assyrian vassal.   Rebellion in Syria and Palestine occupied the Assyrians for two years, 733–32 BC, and only ended with the capture of Damascus. This last Aramaean kingdom was then made an Assyrian province. Deportation of surrendered rebels, a standard imperial policy to forestall any future attempts at rebellion, meant that the deportees found themselves serving the Assyrian empire as a small minority among  

 

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Sargon II, the unlucky Assyrian king

other foreign peoples, and so the well-to-do had to secure their position through conspicuous loyalty to Assyria. Ambitious individuals used this new situation to join the imperial administration, since there were more opportunities than if they had remained at home. That Tiglath-pileser III finally overcame all opposition was a tribute to his army, now a honed instrument of war. Half his foot soldiers were armed with composite bows, capable of firing six arrows a minute; the other half were spearmen with large shields to protect the archers. They were irresistible on the battlefield, since better Assyrian logistics allowed their swift concentration wherever a threat emerged.   A perennial worry for Assyria was Babylon, whose relative strengths and weaknesses were was reflected in the cycle of raids launched on its northern neighbour. But civil strife was as much a problem as encroachment on the Assyrian empire, and Tiglath-pileser III was forced to intervene when an uprising threatened the very existence of Babylon. In 729 BC, he triumphantly entered the city of Babylon, 77

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Sargon II’s citadel at Dur Sharruken

where he was crowned king. This practice continued down to Sennacherib, who reigned from 704 to 681 BC.   Tiglath-pileser III ranks as one of the most industrious Assyrian kings for, with the exception of a single year, he campaigned every year he was on the throne. Not only was the organization of the army greatly improved in terms of weaponry and supply, but the empire itself was better administered and more secure. Tiglath-pileser III also paid attention to internal communications, by making sure there were fresh mounts at staging posts for messengers carrying official letters. The Royal Road, as the imperial relay system was called, connected an unprecedented expanse of territory, from the Mediterranean coast to the Zagros mountains, from the upper reaches of the Tigris to the Persian Gulf. When the Assyrian empire disintegrated at the end of the seventh century BC, the Royal Road did not. The Babylonians and then the Persians continued to invest in its maintenance, so that the Athenian historian Xenophon could write with admiration: 78

THE RISE AND DOMINATION OF ASSYRIA It is plain that this is the fastest land travel in the world. And it is invaluable for a ruler to learn of everything as quickly as possible so that he can deal with it without any delay.

One letter addressed to Esarhaddon, written by a provincial official, implores “the scribe who is reading the communication, not to hide its contents from the king. But to speak for me before the throne, so that the gods may speak for you.” The maintenance of royal correspondence was the responsibility of the palace scribe, assisted by a body of scribes. Over two thousand letters were excavated at Nineveh; many others have been recovered elsewhere. All the royal replies begin: “The King’s word.”

Assyrian zenith Tiglath-pileser III was succeeded by his oldest son Shalmaneser V, whose short reign left few traces. Sargon II, another son of Tiglathpileser III, deposed his older brother in 722 BC. Perhaps to erase all memory of this usurpation, Sargon II started in 717 BC the construction of a new royal city, named Dur Sharruken. The project was enormous and the new king spent a great deal of time and energy, not to mention resources, on the new capital. Its raised citadel contained several large palatial complexes, a Nabu temple and a ziggurat. The approach was via two ramps, wide enough to accommodate at least two chariots driven side by side.   It was Sargon II’s unexpected death on the battlefield in 705 BC that persuaded his son Sennacherib to abandon Dur Sharruken. No details of Sargon II’s end are preserved, but for the Assyrians it came as an absolute shock: possibly the king’s acknowledged bravery led him to expose himself to unnecessary danger. That he was always willing to take risks was apparent during a previous campaign along the Assyrian empire’s northern border. On his way back from an invasion of Urartu, Sargon II learned that one Urartian leader was still prepared to continue the fight. Ominous signs had appeared and the  

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diviners, who regularly accompanied the Assyrian army, were persuaded to interpret them as meaning that Sargon II should extend the campaign. One of the portents was a lunar eclipse on the evening of 24 October 714 BC. In spite of a lunar eclipse being regarded as an unfavourable omen, which would have undermined the confidence of his troops, the Assyrian king got the diviners to announce that it was intended for his opponent. Thus turning a cause for fright into incitement to further conquest and plunder, Sargon II was willing to bank on his personal prowess and secure another victory.   Because the Assyrian empire was focused to a large extent on the person of the monarch, a king’s demise was always critical. To draw a definite line between his father’s rule and his own, Sennacherib made Nineveh his capital and built there a magnificent new palace for himself. It was called ekalla sa sanina la isu, “the palace without rival”. But Sennacherib did not retire to a life of luxury. Instead, he pursued the same military goals as his father. An inscription gives us the royal image that pleased him. Confronted by foreign foes, Sennacherib relates how:  

 

I raged like a lion. I put on a coat of armour; I placed upon my head the helmet, the ornament of fighting. I quickly mounted my splendid battle chariot, which smashes my enemy, in the anger of my heart. I seized with my hands the mighty bow, which the god Ashur had given me; I grasped the life-ending arrow. Against all the hosts of wicked foes I raised my voice like a thunderstorm; I roared like the storm god Adad. At the order of Ashur, the great god, my lord, I charged like a hurricane. With the weapons of Ashur, and my furious onslaught, I made the enemy break ranks and flee in disorder under a shower of deadly arrows.

  This ideal portrayal of a reckless, heroic and ever-victorious Assyrian king was certainly royal propaganda by Sennacherib’s reign, and not a description of any monarch’s actions on the battlefield. The son of Sennacherib, the retiring Esarhaddon, was even advised by a courtier “not to go to the midst of battle.” It was better to leave the 80

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A gold tablet of Sargon II

actual fighting to Assyrian generals, the battle-hardened aristocrats who understood how to deploy troops best.   The Assyrian army formed the heterogeneous “host of Ashur”. Its core was “the royal contingent”, which comprised units raised in the great cities of Assyria under the command of members of the royal family. Vassal kings commanded their respective contingents, while soldiers recruited within the empire were led by Assyrian governors. The king was expected to reward the troops with plunder and to take care of the wounded. That so many different peoples marched in the Assyrian army does not seem to have affected its efficiency; on the contrary, competition between the separate ethnic groups may have even added a fighting edge. That the palace guard was drawn from half a dozen different peoples shows that the Assyrians knew how to handle both allied and subject peoples. No Assyrian king ever met the fate of so many Roman emperors, the puppets of their own armed forces. 81

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Esarhaddon stele

  Sennacherib initially carried on the policies and practices established by his predecessors but eventually become embroiled in a vicious war with Babylon. As ever, Elam was involved and, when the rebellious Babylonians handed over Sennacherib’s son to the Elamites, the enraged Assyrian king pillaged Babylon after a fifteen-month siege. Esarhaddon, the son and successor of Sennacherib, took the whole of 680 BC to regain control of the Assyrian empire, after his father had been assassinated in the Nabu temple at Nimrud by two of his brothers, whom Sennacherib compared to “wild billy-goats”, butting each other for no good purpose. Relying on the support of the Assyrian nobles, who had already sworn an oath of loyalty to him as the chosen successor, Esarhaddon executed the assassins and ascended the throne. Yet he never felt at ease and often remained isolated in the inner palace.   In Babylon, Esarhaddon chose appeasement and inaugurated a major rebuilding programme in the city of Babylon, including 82

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Marduk’s temple, the Esagila, which was finished in splendid fashion. The conciliatory policy seemed to pay off, since it allowed Assyria to crown its imperialism with the conquest of Egypt. Then the expansion of the Assyrian empire seemed unstoppable, as the holy Egyptian city of Thebes was sacked and its immense treasures carried away. From 663 BC onwards a compliant pharaoh was left to rule Lower Egypt on Assyria’s behalf, but it was not long before he asserted his independence, and his son Psamtik founded the last Egyptian dynasty before the arrival of the Persians in 525 BC. That Assyria’s hold over Egypt was so ephemeral was a sign of impending trouble. Overreach had already put a severe strain on its empire, which was compounded by an increasingly restive nobility. It took surprisingly little to expose Assyria’s vulnerability to determined foes: the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC would mark the end of a once mighty empire.  

Egyptian battle scene from Nineveh

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Ashurbanipal riding

  Before this event Assyria produced one of its greatest kings, Ashurbanipal, whose reign from 668 to 627 BC is often regarded as the apogee of the Assyrian empire. Warrior, administrator and bibliophile, Ashurbanipal was a complex character who seemed to exemplify the best aspects of an Assyrian monarch. He was very religious and kept the priests and diviners at court excessively busy, although his own knowledge of cuneiform texts was by no means limited. As Ashurbanipal states: “I learnt the lore of the wise sage Adapa, the hidden secret of the scribal art. I can recognize celestial and terrestrial omens and discuss them with scholars.” Of course the king could never be as accomplished as a professional scribe, whose life-long experience was not interrupted by the duties of a prince, but Esarhaddon did 84

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appoint his astrologer Balasi as Ashurbanipal’s tutor. Balasi’s expertise would have encompassed tupsarrutu, “the art of the scribe”.   Once on the throne, Ashurbanipal started to collect texts for his own library. He was concerned to gather “whatever is good for the kingship” and “whatever is good for the palace.” In the wrong hands such knowledge was potentially harmful and it thus had to be carefully controlled, with access restricted to the privileged few. This was not the same kind of imperial monopoly over knowledge that was introduced in 213 BC by Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China. Discovering that his policies drew criticism from scholars, he listened to the advice of his chief minister Li Si, who recommended the burning of the books in order to “make the people ignorant” and to prevent the “use of the past to discredit the present.” Whereas Qin Shi Huangdi tried to destroy China’s literary heritage as a means of exerting absolute control over the minds of his subjects, Ashurbanipal merely wished to ensure that critical works remained in responsible hands. The Assyrian king was worried about the misuse to which “the secret knowledge of the scribes” might be put.   The idea of a divinely created order underlaid divination, which functioned as a means of conveying the wishes of the gods to human beings. Because the Mesopotamian cosmos was never viewed as mechanistic, every phenomenon had to reflect the action or intention of a deity. The sun god Shamash was always invoked with extispicy, the examination of livers, an association that explains his title of “the decider of decisions of the great gods”. Written in the stars would have been one way of describing celestial portents, in which the Roman author Cicero claimed the Assyrians excelled because “an open and unobstructed view of the heavens met their gaze in every direction.”   Ashurbanipal endeavoured to reassert Assyrian authority over Egypt but ultimately this latest addition to the empire was lost as the king became more engrossed in Mesopotamian affairs. As an experienced commander, he appreciated that simultaneous campaigns on distant frontiers were beyond the capability of the Assyrian army. 85

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Ashurbanipal’s father Esarhaddon had received Elamite envoys in Nineveh and agreed to their request for peace: as a gesture of goodwill, he even returned the cult statues plundered from Elam as well. The Assyrian willingness to stop fighting then may have had a connection with the start of Cimmerian and Scythian incursions in the north. But a new Elamite king, Tepi-Huban-Insusinak, soon reopened hostilities and Ashurbanipal was obliged to move against him. Known to the Assyrians as Teumman, this impetuous ruler was defeated and killed at the battle of Til Tuba in 653 BC: his severed head was publicly displayed in Nineveh, before ending up as a trophy in the royal garden.   The next year the Babylonian problem resurfaced in all its starkness. For over a decade Shamash-shum-ukin, one of Ashurbanipal’s older brothers, had quietly governed Babylon and its environs on behalf of Assyria. But in 652 BC he threw his lot in with its chief opponents, the

The clubbing down and beheading of the Elamite king Teumman

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Elamites and the Chaldeans, a Semitic people living around the Persian Gulf. It took Ashurbanipal four years to restore the situation. After a siege which saw its inhabitants resort to cannibalism, Babylon was captured 648 BC, when Shamash-shum-ukin perished in his burning palace and his rebellious followers were harshly punished. But the city was not destroyed as it had been in 689 BC.   An exasperated Ashurbanipal then decided to settle the score with Elam, once and for all. His army twice invaded Elam, capturing its capital, Susa, in 646 BC. As the victorious Assyrian king rested in the Elamite palace his determined soldiers smashed temples, desecrated royal tombs, seized cult statues, emptied the royal treasury, and carried off the enslaved. The devastation in 646 BC even entailed the spreading of salt over fields so that Ashurbanipal could boast that no human voice would ever be heard again in Elam since the state had been turned into a wilderness. A bas-relief in Nineveh suggests that captured Elamites were even forced to grind the bones of their ancestors. Bones were respected in the ancient Near East, which is why the remains of a family’s ancestors were taken along whenever there was a change of abode. Some kind of diminished Elamite kingdom sur 

Ashurbanipal in his cups at Nineveh, with the severed head of the Elamite king on the far left

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vived, however, as the Assyrians received tribute afterwards. If anything, the final eclipse of Elam was brought about by the Medes and the Persians, its Iranian neighbours.

The fall of Assyria For nearly twenty years, nothing further disturbed the rule of Ashurbanipal, who had sensibly given up the reconquest of Egypt. Perhaps the perfect image of this glorious period is the bas-relief of the king enjoying his garden in Nineveh. It shows Ashurbanipal reclining in Greek fashions on a couch, but he does not drink in the company of men, as at a symposium. Only his wife, Queen Ashur-sharrat, shares the occasion with him. She sits on a throne in front of her husband, holding a wine cup to her lips while gazing upon her lord and master. Servants wave fly whisks so that no insect may spoil the royal couple’s relaxation. Yet this apparently tranquil scene embodies the bloody nature of Assyrian rule, as the severed head of King Teumman is suspended from the branch of a nearby tree. Birds are gathered to pluck out the eyes and pick off the flesh. In his cups Ashurbanipal may well have expected the Assyrian empire to last for ever, but within fifteen years of his death in 627 BC, it had disintegrated.   It may well be the case that Assyria had worn out its army through incessant military operations, but a struggle between Ashurbanipal’s sons for the throne certainly weakened the empire at a critical moment. A chronological account of the fall of Assyria is difficult to construct, because we are largely dependent upon Babylonian sources. The reign of Sin-sharra-ishkun, Assyria’s penultimate king, is best recorded by these sources, including his abortive attempts to check Nabopolassar’s seizure of Babylon. A letter from Babylonian officials loyal to Assyria in Nippur reveals how insecure they felt. It reads: “The king knows that the people hate us everywhere on account of our allegiance to Assyria … We have now locked our gates and do not venture into the city.” 88

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  Divided loyalties obviously played into the hands of Nabopolassar, the Babylonian champion, who repulsed several Assyrian counter-attacks. Nabopolassar’s own assault on Assyria had to await the Medes, who led the resistance to Assyrian penetration of Iran. Ashur fell in 614 BC, Nineveh in 612 BC and Harran in 610 BC. Such was Egypt’s concern with the new threat posed by a resurgent Babylon that it lent military assistance to its erstwhile enemy Assyria. The last Assyrian king Ashur-uballit II had tried to hold on to a semblance of authority in Harran to no avail. It was Nebuchadrezzar II, Nabopolassar’s son, who sealed Assyria’s fate by driving off the Egyptians. On his father’s demise in 605 BC, he hastened back to Babylon to claim the throne which he was to occupy with such distinction for the next forty-two years. Babylon was now the uncontested successor of Nineveh and the new capital of the ancient Near East.   The reasons for the sudden collapse of Assyria are by no means clear, but its continued existence depended upon ever greater success. This could only be achieved through increased tribute from subject and allied peoples, which in turn required a large and expensive army to guarantee collection. Egypt provided the last significant input of new revenue, and the Assyrian inability to go on exploiting its wealth is probably a clue to Assyria’s downfall. Relentless imperialism proved in the end to be too costly. That an ageing Ashurbanipal failed to secure an orderly succession also weakened royal authority, the very foundation of the Assyrian system of government. Internal division and external pressure did the rest, ending an imperial domination that had lasted for centuries.  

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With the strength which Ashur my lord gave me and with the weapons which Nergal provided me, I fought and defeated them from Qarqar to Gilzau. I slew 14,000 of their soldiers with weapons which, like Adad, rained down destruction upon them … The plain was too small to hold all their bodies and the broad countryside was filled up with their graves. I damned the Orontes with their corpses ... In that battle, I took from them their chariots, cavalry and horses broken to harness. Shalmaneser III’s account of the battle of Qarqar

As the location of Gilzau is unknown, we cannot be sure whether the Assyrian army advanced or withdrew after the battle of Qarqar in 853 BC. Its Syrio-Palestinian opponents believed that they had held Shalmaneser III to a draw, which may well be the case because the Assyrian king did not cross the Euphrates river again for another three years. But the two leaders of the anti-Assyrian coalition, the Syrian king Ben-adad II and the Jewish king Ahab, soon fell out and Shalmaneser III exploited the discord, returned in 848 BC, and pushed far down the Mediterranean coast, where the city-states of Tyre, Sidon and Byblos all became Assyrian vassals and paid tribute.   By the reign of Shalmaneser III warfare was highly organized and for Assyria an indispensable method of tapping the resources of its neighbours. Although booty-collecting campaigns were always a regular feature of Assyrian foreign policy, Shalmaneser III undertook  



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Reconstructed Stele of the Vultures (front)

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Reconstructed Stele of the Vultures (back)

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Enemies of Eannatum caught in a net by the god Ningirsu

ambitious expeditions far beyond the boundaries of Assyria. Everywhere a desire for valuable goods seems to have been the motor that drove his annual campaigns. The Assyrian annals recount Shalmaneser III’s delight in booty: “I opened his treasure house, saw his treasure; I took his goods and property and brought them to my city Ashur.”   For Assyrian kings the act of going to war was a religious obligation. They were convinced that armed conflict was the only method of defeating chaos, the disorder created by human beings to subvert the divinely ordained cosmos. So the great god Ashur lent his assistance to Shalmaneser III, the underworld deity Nergal supplied him with weapons, while the storm god Adad showered deadly arrows over his enemies. How such belligerence came to typify the Assyrian outlook is something that this chapter explores, since this was far from the situation which prevailed at the start of Mesopotamian history. 94

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Early conflicts The Sumerian city-states, the earliest examples of civilization in the world, had quarrels which were settled on the battlefield. But it is clear that they did not share the Assyrian delight in violence, which was most evident in the torture of prisoners of war. On the contrary, the Sumerians were always exercised by the need to find an ethical reason for the taking of human lives.   This is apparent in the Stele of the Vultures, a war memorial carved and erected around 2460 BC, after the settlement of a border dispute over the ownership of a fertile piece of land situated between Lagash and the neighbouring city-state of Umma. It depicts the vanquished as corpses piled in heaps or trapped in a net held by the god Ningirsu. Even though the victorious king, Eannatum of Lagash, appears as a warrior, he is not shown dealing any death blow. The incomplete stele was discovered at Tello, ancient Girsu, in the 1880s and the seven surviving fragments are housed in the Louvre in Paris. As reconstructed, the stele is nearly two metres high and more than a metre wide: it is entirely covered with images and inscriptions.   King Eannatum appears several times on the reverse side of the stele. At the top he leads a phalanx of troops, armed with spears and shields. Before him, one fragment shows naked prisoners and corpses, while another reveals a flock of vultures already carrying away severed heads. Further enemy casualties are depicted beneath the feet of the advancing infantrymen. At a lower level, Eannatum in a chariot is followed by more foot soldiers. Lower still, there is a libation scene, which may be a thanks-offering to the gods after Lagash had secured victory. A nearby heap of enemy corpses is shown with men bearing baskets on their heads; they climb up the side of the heap in order to cover the dead with earth.   The front of the stele is dominated by a gigantic portrait of Ningirsu, whose name means “lord of Girsu”. He was worshipped at Lagash as “the hero of Enlil”, but later on his cult merged with that of 95

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Ninurta, one of the gods worshipped at Nippur. Afterwards, it was always Ninurta who was credited with heroic deeds on behalf of the gods. His exploits greatly appealed to both Akkadian and Assyrian kings. On the Stele of the Vultures, Ningirsu is the patron and protector of Eannatum as well as the divine cause of Lagash’s success on the battlefield. This is obvious from the net he grasps with one hand, holding the lion-headed Imdugud bird at its opening. Inside the net are the bodies of the vanquished, thrown carelessly together. It is not Eannatum who holds the dead bodies, but his god Ningirsu, so the entitlement to inflict death belongs to the god, not the ruler. When Imdugud or Anzu stole the “tablet of destiny” from Enlil, Ningirsu overcame the lion-headed bird and recovered it, an exploit later attributed to Ninurta.   What the Stele of the Vultures signifies, above all else, are the limits of Sumerian kingship. Before the battle, Eannatum consulted his diviners and was informed that “the sun god’s rays will illuminate your right.” Only when he was absolutely certain of divine approval would he commit his forces to battle. Even then Eannatum was only encouraged to fight because the Lagash-Umma conflict was a defensive one. He maintained throughout the campaign that the war was fought within his own territory, the traditional holdings of Lagash, from which he drove out the troops of Umma. The implication is that the gods fixed the boundaries of city-states, which explains why Sumerian conflicts were conducted by rulers in the name of the gods.   The Stele of the Vultures functioned as a war memorial and a legal treaty defining the boundary between Umma and Lagash. A curse inscribed on the stele means that anyone moving or tampering with the monument faced the wrath of the gods. That Lagash had tried diplomacy to settle the dispute with Umma, but failed to get that citystate to acknowledge its encroachment, underlines the reluctance of Eannatum, and his predecessors, to rush into war. Because the Sumerians believed that at least one deity lived in each of their citystates, with for instance both Inanna and An dwelling at Uruk, unnec96

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The burial of the slain

Vultures carrying away body parts

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essary conflict could well cause divine displeasure. After all, Sumerian cities had developed around temple sites, making kings cautious in their relations with the priesthood. Although disagreements did occur when rulers tried to take over temple property, the usual solution to such a conflict of interest was a compromise which gave no offence to the city gods. With the rise of kings in Sumer, it might be anticipated that the priests would lose power but this never happened for the good reason that the Sumerians were a deeply religious people. So closely were cities associated with the gods that the cuneiform script used the same sign for the name of a city and its resident deity.   According to Sumerian epic tradition, the construction of Uruk’s city wall was the work of the heroic king Gilgamesh. Rivalry with Agga, the king of Kish, prompted Gilgamesh to build these defences, which Agga besieged but failed to breach. Yet the thwarted hegemonic ambitions of Agga were mild in comparison with those of the third dynasty of Ur, which flourished in the final century of the third millennium BC. Considering the recent aggression of Akkad, this more robust approval of warfare is hardly surprising. The Sumerians were responding to the changed nature of Mesopotamian conflict, without turning themselves into such ruthless imperialists as the Akkadians.   Akkad’s empire had relied on naked force. For the first time in Mesopotamian history the number of the slain reached the thousands. The second king of Akkad, Rimush, slew 12,652 in one battle, and 15,718 in another; he also put to death 5,700 Sumerian prisoners of war. These grisly statistics indicate a total alteration in the conduct of war. In his short reign from 2315 to 2307 BC Rimush accounted for the lives of more than 55,000 opponents. Terror was his answer to any sign of resistance. Not satisfied with defeating his enemies and razing their city walls, he used wholesale massacre to ensure that the surviving population remained docile Akkadian subjects.   But this ruthlessness failed to quell discontent. So widespread was rebellion across the Akkadian empire that Naramsin, the fourth king of Akkad, almost missed ascending the throne in 2291 BC. He literally  

 

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had to fight to survive as city after city asserted its independence. Even though he had only the forces of Akkad itself to fall back on, Naramsin performed wonders. In nine engagements he routed his enemies during a single year and regained full control of Mesopotamia right down to the Persian Gulf. He also invaded Elam and installed a compliant king in place of a more independently minded opponent. As a result, Naramsin adopted the title of “the mighty one” and “king of the four quarters”, or more aptly “of the four seas”, since the world was then thought to be a great island floating on a cosmic ocean.   A more controversial decision was Naramsin’s assumption of divine honours, something no Mesopotamian king had ever dared to do before him. The horned helmet he is shown wearing on the Victory Stele is unambiguous: such a headdress was always reserved for gods and goddesses. Carved in pink limestone, the stele celebrates Naramsin’s triumph over the Lullubi, a troublesome tribe in the Zagros mountains. The stele’s unusually dynamic composition highlights the achievement and glorifies the Akkadian king as a deity. The sun god at the top of the stele beams down approval of this newly won status for a king who led his army “where no other ruler has ever gone.” How far his elevation to divinity was a popular wish, as Naramsin claimed it was, we cannot tell now, but his resilience in the face of overwhelming opposition must have impressed the Akkadians.   The Victory Stele was in effect a dedication to Naramsin himself. It advertised his perfection as a king, the divine champion who tramples the bodies of his slain enemies. This shocking image was to become the standard way of representing royal triumphs: generally accepted by the time of King Hammurabi of Babylon, in the early second millennium BC, it had also been used by the Sumerian kings of the Ur III dynasty to record their successes on the battlefield. There was no longer any reluctance about a ruler’s right to kill and humiliate those who dared to question his authority, an outlook that would have sent shivers down the spine of Eannatum. Nor would this early Sumerian king have understood Naramsin’s transfiguration into a deity. What 99

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Assyrians flaying prisoners alive

Eannatum was likely to have disliked most, however, was the notion that kingship allowed the total subjugation of other human beings through war, violence, and physical aggression.   The unique role attributed to Naramsin in the Victory Stele, the ruthless warrior armed with spear and bow, inaugurated a new form of rule, which chimed with the attitude of Assyrian kings, whose preoccupation with war involved them in campaigns almost every year they sat on the throne.

The Assyrian war machine For the Assyrians war was just and good, because it conformed to divine plans for the maintenance of cosmic order, plans which were decreed and justified through the omens of the gods. So certain of their entitlement to exercise unrestrained violence were the Assyrians that they had no hesitation in recording the more gruesome aspects of war. Bas-reliefs show the breaking and tearing of bodies, the impal100

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Eannatum, king of Lagash

ing and flaying of living prisoners, and enormous piles of decapitated heads. Nowhere is there any suggestion of mercy being an obligation on the part of the victor. Honourable surrender never occurred to the Assyrians as an option: if they failed to achieve a military objective during one campaign, it simply became that of a second.   At Til Tuba in 653 BC the Elamite king Teumman was clubbed down and beheaded on the battlefield. The goddess Ishtar had promised the head of Teumman to King Ashurbanipal in an oracle which predicted an overwhelming victory over Elam. Apparently the Elamite king had ignored “portents of evil” and paid the price himself. After the campaign, Ashurbanipal hung Teumman’s severed head in his garden at Nineveh. He also put on display the mutilated statues of other Elamite kings. An inscription makes clear that this defacement was an act of punishment analogous to the mutilation of human beings. The removal of cult statues of the gods and statues of kings, as 101

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The divine king Naramsin depicted on the Victory Stele

well as public monuments, was believed to have serious consequences for a defeated opponent. On display in Ashurbanipal’s palace was “the statue of Hallusu, King of Elam, the one who plotted evil against Assyria and fought my grandfather, Sennacherib, King of Assyria.” Because “his tongue spoke slander”, the inscription relates, “I Ashurbanipal, King of Assyria, cut his lips. I also chopped off his hands, which had grasped the bow against Assyria.” No longer would Elam be afforded any protection from its gods or its former kings.   The Assyrian army was a dreaded fighting machine, just as capable of defeating an enemy on the battlefield as it was of taking a fortified city by siege. The Assyrians were the first to master siege warfare, and few later peoples managed to match their expertise. Depictions of sieges reveal the sheer ingenuity of Assyrian soldiers as well as the elaborate equipment they brought to bear against city walls. A special corps in the Assyrian army was responsible for the conduct of sieges: included were companies of archers and slingers whose task was to 102

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Surrendered Elamites begging the Assyrians for mercy

Assyrian chariots struggling across uneven ground

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keep down the heads of a city’s defenders whilst the besiegers approached the walls. An inscription of Sennacherib provides details of siege techniques. It tells us that when King Hezekiah of Judah refused to accept Assyrian overlordship, Sennacherib “besieged fortysix of his fortified towns and cities. Using packed-down earth ramps and applying battering rams as well as siege machines” he captured them all. For almost four centuries down to 612 BC the Assyrians dominated the ancient Near East. This era marked a peak in warfare conducted by one of the world’s first great powers.   Assyrian tactics are still a subject of debate, but it seems that there were standard procedures for an advance or a withdrawal, designed to protect the army from surprise attack. In 714 BC Sargon II was sufficiently confident, at the end of an exhausting mountain crossing, to dispense with these procedures in the face of a hostile force. “I did not send ahead any warriors,” he tells us, “nor gather my army together. I did not bring up my right and left wings, nor did I worry about the rear-guard. I had no fear for my soldiers.” Obviously the Assyrian king judged the foe insufficiently threatening to deploy immediately his exhausted men into line of battle. The enemy could wait until he was ready to fight.   It has been suggested that the Assyrian army was primarily a chariot force, part of a long tradition of ancient Near Eastern warfare. Even though there are depictions of chariots being hauled over mountainous terrain and ferried across rivers, such a dependence upon chariotry is unlikely. If anything, the role of massed chariots among the Assyrians decreased rather than increased during the course of empire. While chariot charges are depicted in the bas-reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II at Nimrud and in bronze reliefs of the campaigns of Shalmaneser III on the Balawat Gates, by the seventh century BC chariots appear to have evolved into unwieldy vehicles, whose use on the battlefield was restricted to firing platforms for archers. These larger, heavier chariots provided better protection for their crews and increased their fire power by carrying more soldiers equipped with 104

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bows. But their sacrifice of speed and manoeuvrability, the prime advantages of the chariot, meant that they could not be used in all-out assaults; instead, they probably strengthened Assyrian foot soldiers by acting as anchors for their ranks.   The best explanation for the decline in chariotry is the emergence, over this same period, of cavalry. Mounted troops appear in Assyrian bas-reliefs in the eighth century BC as lancers or archers. Apart from tactical considerations, an undoubted reason for this change was the cheapness of cavalry in comparison with chariotry. Not even bootyrich Assyria could afford to overlook the rising cost of military operations. The need to put the empire on a sound financial basis was indeed the prime objective of Tiglath-pileser III, who came to the throne in 744 BC. He reformed both the empire and the army, besides conducting a whole series of campaigns himself.   Assyrian troops were always reinforced by additional forces from allied or subject peoples. But not even the provinces of an extended empire could meet the insatiable need for soldiers. Therefore troops belonging to defeated states were often incorporated en bloc as auxiliaries. Like the rest of the Assyrian army, they served the king and accepted his absolute authority over their lives. From Tiglath-pileser III’s reign onwards, Assyria moved from being a traditional kind of kingdom to an empire centred on a royal personage. It anticipated both the Persian and the Roman empires, because Tiglath-pileser III had spectacularly altered the balance of power in the ancient Near East. Conquered states were either directly annexed and transformed into provinces, with garrisons and governors, or permitted to continue as vassal states which were subject to the payment of tribute. A close watch was kept on both provincial governors and vassal kings.   Although the Assyrian army had a permanent nucleus of full-time soldiers, the steady growth of the empire obliged Assyrian kings to leave troops in territories that were distant or hard to quell. Quite frequently these outposts were garrisoned by local contingents under their own officers. Similarly, provincial governors maintained troops  

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of local militias who could take part in large-scale operations directed by the Assyrian king. The gradual increase in the size of the Assyrian army to an unprecedented strength of 200,000 men suggests that the king of Assyria was always concerned to have a numerical advantage. Added to this tactical edge was a policy of terror against anyone who dared to oppose Assyria. After a battle, Assyrian soldiers cut the hands and heads from enemy corpses to make trophies which were recorded by army scribes. Defeated kings, if not executed on the spot, were brought back to Assyria to take part in the triumphal entry into the capital by the king and his troops, then to be exposed to public gaze in humiliating situations.   When a conquered territory proved difficult to administer, the Assyrians resorted to deporting the population. If they did not invent this practice, its original purpose being to provide a pool of slave labour, from the reign of Tiglath-pileser III onwards they made it an instrument of control, exchanging populations from very distant areas of the empire. Records of deportations indicate that several million people were caught up in this practice. A bas-relief discovered at Nimrud by Layard shows Tiglath-pileser III in his royal chariot watching the abandonment of Ashtaroth, a city in present-day Jordan. The accompanying inscription says that he devastated four other cities besides Ashtaroth, and took as spoil 8,650 people, 3,000 mules, 1,350 cattle and 19,000 sheep. The whole area was then annexed to Assyria, and Mesopotamian people were settled there in rebuilt cities.

Advances in weaponry Despite the fact that any understanding of military affairs has to take into account a whole range of influences, technology still remains a key factor in the conduct of war. Effectiveness is commonly estimated according to the killing power of a given weapon, with the result that arrows are sometimes held to be superior to the spear or sword. But this approach rests upon the assumption that the annihilation of an 106

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An Assyrian siege machine

Assyrian archers and slingers

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Tiglath-pileser III in his chariot watching prisoners from Ashtaroth

enemy is the prime objective of battle. What ancient Near Eastern peoples sought to achieve was a decisive victory which ended the need for further fighting. This might be obtained through a combination of weapons: archers firing from chariots or foot soldiers armed with bows. Half of the Assyrian infantry comprised bowmen, the other half spearmen carrying large shields, behind which the bowmen could also shelter.   That the bow was so popular a weapon is explained in the technical advance represented by the composite bow. It was far more effective than the so-called self, or ordinary, bow: for the increased velocity of its shot derived from adding strips of horn and sinew to wood. Power in a bow depends upon whether it is made of a simple stave, or of wood, horn, sinew, and glue. All these materials react differently to 108

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heat and moisture, so that a composite bow loses strength in damp conditions while the wooden stave suffers a similar loss of power in very hot weather. Either on horseback or in a chariot a composite bow was the desirable weapon, besides being the piece of offensive equipment most favoured by Assyrian foot soldiers. They wore leather for protection while higher ranks had scale armour.   As with the chariot, the invention of the composite bow remains a mystery. There can be no doubt though that this advanced weapon predated the chariot, and its antecedents are most likely to be found among nomadic tribesmen. Ex-nomads like the Persians, who left the Central Asian steppe around 1,000 BC, made sure that young men practised archery until the age of twenty years, when military service began. They may well have acquired their skill with the composite bow from the Scythians, the name given by the ancient Greeks to the Central Asian peoples living to the north of the Black Sea. It is worth

A composite bow, strung and unstrung

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Assyrians checking composite bows and arrows

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recalling the fact that the Scythians and the Persians spoke related languages and understood each other without translators.   Military revolutions have profound effects on and off the battlefield. From the Amarna archive we can observe how by the reign of the heterodox pharaoh Akhenaten, in the late fourteenth century BC, the standard greeting in royal correspondence always included reference to a ruler’s chariots, horses and chief men. They were then the basis of state power and the means of dynastic survival. It was impossible in chariot warfare to leap-frog to success by simply acquiring horses, chariots and composite bows. Without pre-existing skills in all three, and without a society that esteemed those who had already mastered them, there was no chance of meeting in battle the Babylonians or the Assyrians. In our own time, oil revenues bought Saddam Hussein vast quantities of Russian, French and American arms, but these sophisticated weapons could not confer battlefield effectiveness on forces conscripted from a society that was neither modern nor united. So in the ancient Near East, the application of bent-wood technology to chariot construction, the improvement in manufacture of the composite bow, the evolving methods of training horses, and the developing tactics of manoeuvring the chariot to best advantage had to be transmitted at first hand.   In Mitanni, the first Near Eastern kingdom to establish a chariotry, the chief men were called maryannu, foreign experts upon whom the Mitannian kings relied. Although the language of Mitanni was Hurrian, a non-Indo-European tongue, there is no doubt of the presence of an Indo-European vocabulary in Mitannian documents. The Hurrian plural maryannu, meaning “warriors”, is marya when singular and identical to the Sanskrit marya, which means “young warrior”. Also words describing the colour of horses, for instance, parallel the language of the Rig Veda, India’s oldest surviving text. It should perhaps be noted, too, that the Mitannians worshipped Indra, Mitra, Varuna and the Asvins, the twin horse-headed gods of ancient India. The association of Indra with chariotry is evident in the Rig Veda, 111

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Grooming a horse

numberless verses of which praise the glory of the chariot and mention its various parts. So potent was this divine image that it is said to “conquer the four quarters of the world.” One commentator could compare prayer itself to a well-made chariot, as “chanting should be performed in a way that causes it to stand on each syllable, like a chariot stands firmly on each of its wheelspokes in turn.”   How non-Hurrians came to occupy such a prestigious position in Mitanni is a matter of debate. There is no dispute, however, about the fact that these Indo-European speakers were outstandingly competent charioteers, who assisted the Mitannian kings in expanding their territories from the upper Euphrates and Tigris rivers to the shores of the Mediterranean.  The maryanna prided themselves on the management of light war chariots and the training of horses to pull them. It is more than likely that the famous horse trainer Kikkuli was a marya. Respect for the “words of Kikkuli, master horseman from Mitanni” was universal. His instructions for the training of chariot horses were heeded in other ancient states, as an Akkadian translation discovered in the royal archive at Hattusha, the Hittite capital, attests. It would have been 112

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read by the Babylonians as well as the Assyrians. What all their kings wanted was a foolproof method of preparing their chariotry for war. They could not afford to commit such a valuable asset to battle unless they were sure of its quality, and especially the readiness of chariot horses for the swiftness of such encounters. This is why Kikkuli emphasises continuous training day and night: When midnight comes the charioteer brings the horses out of the stable and harnesses them. He drives them for over a kilometre, and then gallops for more than seven fields … When they return, he unbridles the horses and rubs them dry. In the stable they receive two handfuls of hay, one of wheat, and four handfuls of barley. When they have finished their food, he lets them eat hay for the rest of the night.

  Exercise and nutrition, practice and reward—these were the methods by which a charioteer developed a close and trusting relationship with his team of horses, whose welfare was critical for the deployment of the world’s first war machine, the chariot. This new weapon introduced speed to the battlefield, swift clashes that could transform the

Assyrian groom holding a pair of richly caparisoned horses

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relative positions of opponents prior to a full-scale engagement between their foot soldiers.   How conscious grooms and stablehands have to be of the horses’ welfare is stressed by Kikkuli when he writes: After a gallop a stable gets very warm. If the horses are restless and start to sweat, their halter is removed as well as their blankets, and a snaffle-bit is put on them. Salt is dissolved on a fire, and after wholemeal barley has been mixed in a pitcher, they are given a basketful, and hay to eat.

 The regime of training gradually extends the range of gallops to ten, twenty, ninety fields, and even longer distances. Feeds are also varied. Sometimes little is offered to the horses, presumably because on campaign supplies could well be erratic, and at other times extensive feeding is provided to build stamina. Attention to hygiene runs throughout Kikkuli’s training manual. Horses have to be washed with warm water five times a day, or bathed in a river when necessary. And they always have to be rubbed down.   This meticulous preparation gave the charioteer confidence in the performance of his vehicle, not unlike the fighter pilot during World War Two. The effectiveness of the Spitfire, in its easy handling and top speed, allowed the Royal Air Force to have an edge in combat over southern Britain during the summer of 1940. Like chariot battle, aerial combat relied on teamwork and quick reactions. Once they had joined the battle the fighter pilot and the charioteer had to know exactly what their war machines could, and could not, accomplish. Failure to do so meant disaster, even death.   In 1274 BC, the Battle of Kadesh was aborted by series of chariot charges led by the pharaoh Ramesses II. Having been lured into a trap by the Hittite king Muwatalli II near the Syrian city of Kadesh, the pharaoh managed to hold off the Hittite chariotry long enough for Egyptian reinforcements to arrive. In a concealed position to the east of Kadesh, the Hittites awaited the moment to strike. It came when the first division of the Egyptian army was establishing a camp on a  

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spot chosen by Ramesses II on the other side of the city. There the pharaoh “seated himself on a throne of gold,” expecting to receive ambassadors from an overawed Kadesh. Instead, 3,500 Hittite chariots suddenly swung round the city and charged a second Egyptian division, “cutting through the middle as it was not drawn up for battle.” This collapse almost engulfed the Egyptian camp when in panic troops from the broken division rushed there in order to escape the pursuing Hittite chariots.   According to the Egyptian account of the battle, “the pharaoh rose like his father, the god Montu, and seized his weapons of war, putting on his coat of mail.” As the Hittite chariotry surrounded his camp in an ever-tightening circle, Ramesses II launched the first of a series of desperate counter-attacks. First, infantrymen were sent to tackle enemy chariots which came too close to the camp, pulling down charioteers and killing them with short swords and spears. Then, taking advantage of this confusion, Ramesses II mounted his own chariot

An Assyrian chariot being rowed across a river

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and drove into the Hittites with tremendous force. Even though we know how Menna, his shield-bearer, “saw the vast number of hostile chariots hemming the pharaoh in, and went deadly white with terror,” the initial counter-attack gave the surrounded Egyptians a brief respite, which Ramesses II used to rally his troops. He also noticed that the eastern wing of the Hittite chariotry was the weakest part, and next he turned in that direction, a switch in tactics which again disconcerted his opponents. If this move, inspired by another of Ramesses II’s headlong charges, was intended to convince the Egyptians of their ability to hold out until the rest of the army arrived, they were right to trust in the judgment of their young pharaoh.   Not even a new wave of chariots sent by Muwatalli II to stop this assault in its tracks could prevent the pharaoh gaining the initiative in the swirling chariot encounter. Time and again the Egyptians got the better of their foes, Ramesses II’s bow adding to the growing slaughter. Like all ancient armies, the Hittite one was unable to withstand the impact of such violence for long. Its chariotry was already losing cohesion when the first Egyptian reinforcements appeared on the battlefield. Now it was the Hittites’ turn to panic and, abandoning their chariots on the bank of the river Orontes, they “plunged like crocodiles face first into its waters.”

An early Mesopotamian chariot being drawn by asses

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The impressive wheels on Ashurbanipal’s chariot

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  Ramesses II had saved the day. The arrival of the two other divisions of the Egyptian army discouraged the Hittite king from further action. His losses were largely confined to his chariotry, but without this striking force he knew his infantry were now at a disadvantage. So Mawatalli II sent an envoy to propose peace, which the pharaoh would only accept as a truce, because he wished to reassert Egyptian suzerainty over Syria. That the truce more or less held is an indication of a reluctance on the part of the Egyptians as well as the Hittites over returning so soon to the fray. Although both sides claimed a victory, Ramesses II had done more than save the Egyptian army: he had established his own reputation as an able commander, no easy opponent to face on the battlefield. The Egyptians were certainly mauled until they recovered from the shock of the ambush and fought off the Hittite chariotry. A factor in their resilience may have been a unity of purpose among the Egyptian soldiers, since the Hittite army was less homogeneous with at least half of its strength relying on allied or mercenary troops. Ramesses II could not help pointing out after the battle of Kadesh how the Hittite king had stripped his kingdom of silver in order to swell his infantry with hired soldiers.   The genesis of chariot warfare is still unresolved, but no question remains over its perfection in the ancient Near East, where advances in bent-wood technology produced the spoked wheel. The domesticated horse, as we have noted, required special training to pull a chariot, despite being easier to manage in teams than as a mount. Possibly the greater willingness of the horse to co-operate in a team explains the charioteer’s initial fame. Yet another reason for the late appearance of cavalry was the size of the horses available: not until a supply of larger mounts could be secured was it possible to form cavalry regiments. The Assyrians regularly bought or raided such horses from their northern neighbours, and then set about breeding them for cavalry mounts. These horses were never as large as the medieval horse of 14 hands as opposed to the modern horse of 15 or 16 hands (a hand equals 10 cm). They could never carry a rider in the armour 118

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worn by medieval knights, although an archer would be able to ride an ancient horse easily. Shooting arrows while riding and controlling a galloping horse always remained far harder than firing a composite bow from a speeding chariot, which explains the prowess of the Scythians and other steppe peoples. They succeeded in mastering this difficult art by continuous practice.   The sharp decline in the numbers of chariots mentioned in Assyrian military records from the end of the eighth century BC indicates that they no longer acted as a practical component of the Assyrian war machine. From this point onwards the chariot had only a symbolic value as the vehicle which confirmed the status of kings and noblemen. Because of their expense, they might be regarded as the Assyrian equivalent of the sports car. The spread of the Assyrian empire into terrain unsuited to wheeled vehicles must also have contributed to the replacement of the chariot by the mounted archer. King Ashurbanipal still enjoyed hunting in a chariot, especially when tackling lions. This continued use suggests that chariot warfare may well have stemmed from hunting expeditions, when someone wondered what it might be like to shoot men rather than animals.

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Sennacherib the great king, mighty king, king of the world, king of Assyria, king of the four quarters, the wise, expert, heroic warrior, foremost among all rulers, the bridle that curbs the disobedient, and the one who smites the enemy with lightning. Ashur, the great god, gave me a kingship without rival; against all those who sit on thrones he made my weapons strong; from the upper sea to the lower sea, he made all the rulers of the world bow down at my feet. An Assyrian royal inscription

When this inscription was composed in the seventh century BC, the position of a Mesopotamian king was absolute. In the city of Nineveh Sennacherib’s court was housed in ekalla sa sanina la isu, “the palace without rival”. Here the Assyrian king received tributary vassals and the envoys of the few powerful states which lay beyond the empire’s frontiers. But court protocol was not enough to save the life of Sennacherib; he was murdered in 681 BC by two of his sons. Esarhaddon, the youngest son of Sennacherib and his successor, tightened royal security without finding peace of mind himself. Being “the great king” was never without its dangers, although Esarhaddon was more than fortunate in his own son Ashurbanipal, a crown prince able to shoulder some of the royal duties on his father’s behalf.   Sennacherib had turned Nineveh into the capital of the ancient Near Eastern world, its splendid palace and temples making the city a

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fitting centre for royal authority. Not by accident was this Assyrian city chosen as the target of Jonah’s prophecy in the Old Testament; it could hardly have been otherwise. The Book of Jonah is perhaps the most odd of all the prophetic books, since it is not a collection of oracles but a brief narrative describing the adventures of a prophet by the name of Jonah ben Amittai who tries to avoid his prophetic responsibilities. An attempted flight by sea ends with Jonah being swallowed up by a whale, and staying “in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.” Yahweh duly rescued Jonah and sent him to Nineveh, where he was instructed to inform its residents that “within forty days, Nineveh shall be overthrown.” When to Jonah’s astonishment this did not happen as predicted, Yahweh asked: “And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein there are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?”   Whether the Book of Jonah was written to convey the idea of Yahweh’s universal mercy is now impossible to tell. Self-evident though from the narrative is the cause of the divine anger directed at the Assyrian capital: the Jewish god could not tolerate the unlimited power apparently bestowed upon Assyrian kings by Ashur and other deities.

The first kings Although information about the earliest kings of Sumer remains vague, as history is often confused with legend and myth, certain characteristics of kingship are apparent including the hegemony exercised by some rulers. The use of the title lugal kisi, “king of Kish”, by later Sumerian kings with pretensions to grandeur and by the kings of Akkad recalls a suzerainty over other cities enjoyed by the earliest rulers of Kish. The adoption of this title, which probably came to mean “a mighty king”, shows how the first kings were conscious of their status in comparison with their contemporaries. To celebrate the repulse of Agga, who laid siege to the city of Uruk, Gilgamesh styled 122

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himself lugal kisi. It did not mean that Gilgamesh followed up this victory with an attack on the city of Kish itself: rather the new title was intended as a sign of parity of esteem with King Agga.   There can be no question that the city of Kish was once a regional power. One of its first kings, Mesalim, was “the beloved son of Ninhursag”, the Sumerian mother goddess. Her epithets include “mother of the gods” and “mother of all children”. She had a temple in Kish as well as Lagash. Mesalim constructed at Lagash a temple for the sun god Utu, later called Shamash in Akkadian. The temple was appropriately named Ebabbar, “shining house”. It is quite possible that Mesalim also had some connection with the ending of the territorial dispute between Umma and Lagash, when around 2460 BC the Stele of the Vultures was erected on an agreed border between these two city-states. After the death of Mesalim, however, Kish’s hegemony came to an end. In spite of efforts by Agga to revive it by force, Uruk

King Urnanshe of Lagash

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then came to the fore until the rise of Akkad sounded the death knell for all the Sumerian city-states.   The Sumerian King List is of little assistance in illuminating the reigns of the first Mesopotamian kings. It is in fact a mixture of literary comment and a list proper, beginning in the early centuries of the second millennium BC. That the original title of this document was nam-lugal, or “kingship”, raised unreasonable expectations about its contents. “When kingship came down from heaven,” the oldest version starts, “Kish was sovereign; in Kish, Gusur ruled for 2,160 years.” The excessively long reigns attributed to the first kings as well as the shifts of supreme authority from one Sumerian city-state to another make its account of early kingship suspect. Quite possibly composed during the third dynasty of Ur, at the behest of King Shulgi, the Sumerian King List was an attempt to bring a degree of order to the history of Sumer, which had been so rudely interrupted by Akkad.   Mesopotamian kingship would appear to have originated with leadership in war. When an enemy threatened a Sumerian city, a young nobleman was chosen to lead the community in battle and granted total authority during the emergency. By getting involved with justice, a few of these temporary kings managed to hold on to some of that power afterwards. They broadened their appeal by defending the underprivileged members of society.   Fundamental to a Sumerian king’s position was a large retinue of unfree retainers, in part recruited from captives whose lives the king had spared. These lifelong soldiers ate with him and did his bidding in war as well as peace. No deity played a role in the dynastic changes that are related in the Sumerian King List, which implies that kingship was transferred from city to city as a consequence of military action alone. But Sumerian kings soon came to appreciate that in the priesthood there was a restraining influence upon their conduct, because the cities of Sumer had expanded around temples, the nucleus of all significant settlements. As we saw in Chapter 1, Uruk had no palace at all when in 3200 BC it emerged as the world’s first city. For the  

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highest authority in the Sumerian universe was the assembly of the gods. It met, when occasion arose, in the forecourt of Ekur, the storm god Enlil’s temple at Nippur. And the decisions of the divine assembly were believed to include the choice of kings. A Sumerian king was assisted by a group of high-ranking officials, while his wife, the eres or “queen”, had her own officials who oversaw her land and possessions. The whole administration of a city may have been subject to a council of city elders, as there are a few references to such a decision-making or consultative body.   The title en was used by Gilgamesh as king of Uruk. It was charged with religious overtones, as the chief duty of an en was the gaining of divine favour for his people, which entailed the fertility of a city’s fields and animals. Nowhere is this more transparent than in the rite of sacred marriage. In a temple set within a beautiful garden at Uruk the ruler impersonated Dumuzi, an early king and the husband of Inanna, while a high priestess took on the role of the goddess herself. One text has the king of Uruk boast how he “lay on the splendid bed of Inanna, strewn with pure plants … The day did not dawn, the night did not pass. For fifteen hours I lay with Inanna.”   Other kings referred to themselves as “beloved husbands of Inanna”, but her main cult centre was the temple of Eanna, “house of heaven”, in Uruk. The fertility goddess was the awakening force that stirs desire in people and causes ripeness in vegetation. A ruler’s enjoyment of “the sweetness of Inanna’s holy loins” came to be regarded by Sumerians as vitally important because the sacred coupling guaranteed a city’s survival. It is tempting to see their joy during the New Year festival as recognition that a new seasonal cycle was about to begin, marked by the return of Dumuzi from the underworld to Inanna’s “ever youthful bed.”   The divinity of the king was not professed in Mesopotamia with the notable exception of King Naramsin of Akkad. Sumerian monarchs received their authority from the gods, a formula accepted equally by later Babylonian and Assyrian kings. As a consequence in Sumer the 125

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Urningirsu, the son of king Gudea of Lagash

secular leader was looked upon as the custodian of the city god’s estates. In cooperation with the local priesthood, he ensured the maintenance of the city temple, the house in which the deity lived, was clothed and fed, and received worshippers. Whenever a city fell under the suzerainty of another king, however, the subordinate ruler was termed an ensi or “viceroy”. To distinguish the superior position of the suzerain, he was called a lugal. Eventually lugal became the royal title par excellence: the word consists of a combination of lu, “man”, and gal, “big”, which points to powerful men evolving into kings. Ensi came to mean a provincial governor appointed by the king. Yet Sumerian royal statuary never emphasized such differences. Statues of kings placed in temples to remind deities of the person making an offering are similar to those of high officials. Not even the nearly life-size statues of King Gudea, who died in 2122 BC, are striking statements of royal authority; they are simply inscribed with his 126

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pious acts. The self-satisfied ruler only makes his debut during the Akkadian empire.

The heroic ruler All changed through the military successes of Akkad, starting with Sargon’s conquest of Sumer. This first Akkadian king defeated and captured Lugalzagesi, the ruler of Uruk, who had extended his hegemony over many of the Sumerian city-states and marched as far as the Mediterranean Sea. Besides Uruk, Sargon defeated Umma, Lagash and Ur, enabling him to take control of all southern Mesopotamia. He also invaded neighbouring Elam.   To the north and west, Sargon received the submission of Mari on the upper Euphrates and Ebla, one of Mari’s Syrian rivals. In addition, Sargon placed Akkadian governors backed by garrisons in conquered lands. His permanent army of light-armed troops was sufficiently effec-

The goddess Ishtar receiving a libation

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tive to tackle rebellions, or indeed foreign incursions, throughout this extensive empire. Of obscure birth, Sargon was soon credited with the special favour of the goddess Ishtar, whose protection from harm in battle seemed to explain his extraordinary success: he claimed that he was victorious during thirty-four separate military campaigns.   Even though Sargon was content to be the favourite of Ishtar, his grandson Naramsin sought greater divine approval. During his thirtysix year reign from 2291 to 2255 BC, Naramsin promoted the idea of being an heroic ruler, so much so that he even proclaimed himself to be a divinity. That such a self-deification happened for the first time with the emergence of an empire may not seem surprising to us now, but it was an unprecedented event and one that disappeared altogether after Naramsin’s death. The Victory Stele signals the Akkadian king’s apotheosis. The horns depicted on the head of Naramsin denote his assumption of divinity, although they indicate a lower status than the six horns worn by major gods and goddesses. Horns symbolised the vigour of life and reproduction and linked the concept of divinity with agriculture and cattle breeding.   But the elevation of Naramsin did not make him god of a whole territory, but of his capital city, Akkad, which he ruled with Ishtar, possibly as her divine consort. Because he had saved the Akkadian empire when it faced widespread rebellion, Naramsin was regarded by the Akkadians as their divine saviour. No details of his cult have survived, but it would seem that a temple was built in Akkad for his veneration. It appears that Naramsin’s period as a god living among his subjects was unique, for his son and successor Sharkalisharri did not aspire to divine status, and neither did his less successful successors, who presided over the disintegration of the Akkadian empire. There is a possibility that a motive behind Naramsin’s self-deification was fear of assassination, since his father Manishtusu and his uncle Rimush both perished in palace revolutions. Perhaps Naramsin thought that becoming a god would offer a degree of protection from discontented courtiers. 128

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  Notwithstanding King Shulgi, the second ruler of the third Ur dynasty, toying with the idea of divinity, divine kingship in Mesopotamia was not really revived until the conquest of the Persians by Alexander the Great. Then this Macedonian king, already recognised as a divine pharaoh in Egypt, chose to be publicly acknowledged as a god. It antagonized the conservative Macedonians, although sophisticated Greeks ridiculed the idea rather than condemning it as outright blasphemy.   Perhaps to bolster his own position King Shulgi accorded divine status to his father, Urnammu, after he died from his wounds. In three millenniums of documented Mesopotamian history only two kings are recorded as war casualties: the Sumerian Urnammu and the Assyrian Sargon II. A lamentation relates of the former:  

[the] shepherd does not give orders any more in battle and combat. The king, the advocate of Sumer, the ornament of the assembly, the leader of Sumer lies sick. His hands cannot grasp any more, he lies sick. His feet cannot walk any more, he lies sick. The trustworthy shepherd of Sumer, Urnammu was taken to the house. The king was taken into the house. The proud one lay in his palace. Urnammu, beloved by his troops, could not raise his neck any more. The wise one lay down and silence descended. He who was the vigour of the land, had fallen, and the land was demolished like a mountain; like a cypress forest it was stripped bare, its appearance totally changed. As if he were a boxwood tree, they put axes against him in his joyous resting place. As if he were a cedar tree, he was uprooted in the palace … His appointed time had arrived, and he passed away in his prime.

  That Sumer “was devastated” by Urnammu’s unexpected death in 2095 BC must be a statement of fact, because he had re-established a strong Sumerian kingdom following the oppression of Akkadian rule. Uncertain of the future, Shulgi probably hoped that his father’s deification would stabilize the third dynasty of Ur. Somehow he needed to repair the damage caused to the kingdom by Urnammu’s sudden removal from the political scene, which was bound to be seen by the 129

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The divine king Naramsin in the company of Ishtar

Sumerians as a result of divine wrath. A king always had to follow the path decreed by the gods.   Deification appeared to be the answer, and Shulgi may have endeavoured to claim divine status for himself as well. This was probably the context for the composition of The Curse of Akkad, which argued that it was the sacrilege of Naramsin’s self-deification that had brought about the downfall of Akkad. Either his own self-deification or his wholesale reconstruction of Enlil’s temple at Nippur triggered the fateful Gutian invasion of Mesopotamia. That the Gutians arrived nearly a century after the end of Naramsin’s reign did not stop priests at Ur from using the event as a dire warning to Shulgi. They composed The Curse of Akkad to warn this king about the danger of overstepping the mark. Shulgi should note how “Enlil brought out of the 130

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mountains those who do not resemble other people, who are not reckoned as part of Mesopotamia, the Gutians, an unbridled people, with human intelligence and canine instincts and monkeys’ features.” They wrought destruction everywhere. Ironically for Ur, it was yet another invasion from present-day Iran that ended its final days of glory. The culprits on this occasion were the Elamites.

Babylonian and Assyrian kings Above all else, King Hammurabi of Babylon was concerned to present himself as a just king, whose law code brought order to the inevitable confusion of daily life. As one of his inscriptions insists, he was “never careless or negligent towards humanity,” since he had been granted this “care by the god Enlil with whose shepherding the god Marduk charged him.” So Hammurabi “removed serious difficulties” through his laws. At the top of the stele upon which they are inscribed, the enthroned sun god Shamash beams approval upon the Babylonian king’s wisdom. It was believed that Shamash illuminated the life of

King Ashurbanipal of Assyria

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humanity as well as providing beneficial warmth: he revealed truth, his rays penetrating the darkest corners of society.   Hammurabi was not deified, a circumstance that led to the practice of deifying rulers disappearing. From then on a king left the divine sphere alone and took on the role of a benevolent and just shepherd. He was the protector of the weak, as the introduction to Hammurabi’s law code proclaims. It boldly states: In order that the mighty do not wrong the weak, to protect the waif and the widow, I have inscribed my precious words upon my stele and set it up before the statue of me, the king of justice, in the city of Babylon.

The notion of the righteous shepherd remained an attribute of kingship which survived well into the Christian era. Another royal duty prominently mentioned was that of building temples, also imitated by Christian monarchs who were church builders.

Leadership implied heroic deeds such as combat with wild animals

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  All Babylonian kings, like Sumerian rulers before them, stressed their piety towards the gods. A king of Babylon was “the provider of Esagila and Ezida”, the temples of Marduk and Nabu respectively. These two gods had a close relationship which lasted well into the Persian period. Residing at nearby Borsippa, Nabu was described as “the scribe and minister of Marduk”, the supreme Babylonian god. Both the Assyrians and the Babylonians worshipped Nabu, especially after the expansion of the Assyrian empire under Sargon II. Being the patron of the scribal arts, Nabu was frequently invoked in Assyrian royal inscriptions.   While subordinate and accountable to the gods, a Babylonian or Assyrian king could still rule as an absolute monarch within his own kingdom. But he never presumed to be more than their deputy. And he was never accorded divine status during his lifetime, though after death he might be thought to have joined the pantheon himself. Sometimes a dead king was said to “have become a god.”   Much less emphasis was placed on military success by the Babylonians than the Assyrians. Babylonian inscriptions obviously mention confrontations with enemy states, but military episodes never overshadow royal donations to temples, the thanks-giving due to the gods. Quite typical is an inscription dating from 1120 BC, near the start of Nebuchadrezzar I’s reign. Cut on a rock in present-day Lebanon, following the conquest of the area, the victory receives only a brief mention after a long account of the gifts that Nebuchadrezzar I had showered upon the temples at Babylon and Borsippa.   Humanity’s need for the protection and love of the gods, as expressed in prayers and hymns of praise, was complemented by the need on the part of the gods for humanity as their servants, to build and maintain their temples, and to feed and clothe their cult statues. In their inscriptions, Babylonian and Assyrian kings boasted of how they served the divine meal, consisting of food not generally consumed by ordinary people. Indeed, surviving instructions outline the proper times and manner of preparing and serving the divine meal each day in Babylonian and Assyrian temples.  

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  A reason for this piety in Babylon was that the priests stood in closer contact to the gods than the king, who required their assistance in approaching cult statues housed in temples. During the New Year festival, the highlight of Marduk’s worship, it was the high priest of Esagila who “led the king into the divine presence.” That entry to the temple’s innermost chamber necessitated the aid of a full-time priest leaves us in no doubt about his position as a mediator between god and king. In Assyria, however, the king was quite capable of undertaking a range of priestly duties himself, although he never usurped the role of the priesthood. How could he when diviners were involved in communicating the will of the gods? The Assyrian king had to accept the participation of scribes familiar with celestial and divinatory sciences in the planning of all royal actions. Not until it was transparent through the reading of omens that a proposed action had divine approval would a king risk its undertaking. Even though the Assyrians believed that their empire sustained the cosmic order, without which chaos would ensue, they were always conscious of how much it relied upon the support of the gods. Rather like a Roman triumph, a victorious Assyrian king was accompanied by the goddess Ishtar on his entry into the capital city. Immediately afterwards his worship at Ishtar’s temple was always combined with the exhibition of captives and booty, to the delight of cheering crowds.   All Mesopotamian rulers were in a sense touched by the divine, but not in the way that Naramsin believed he had been accorded personal divinity. King Adad-nerari II of Assyria announced on his accession to the throne in 911 BC that the gods had perfected his features, making him the one fit to rule. But no Assyrian ruler ever added the cuneiform sign for divinity before their name, although it was customary to say that he had “the perfect likeness of a god”. At no time was the king invested with the attributes of a deity. God-like resemblances were remarked during a triumph when, for instance, “the king who stands in the chariot is the warrior king, the lord Ninurta.” Missing from this quotation is the word “like”, since the comparison 134

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Ashurbanipal pouring a libation over dead lions

being made here was never intended to imply the god and the king were one and the same.   No comet presaged the death of Sargon II in 705 BC. But his violent end on the battlefield meant only one thing: a personal failing that resulted in divine abandonment. This totally unexpected event led to years of inquiry into the causes for such divine displeasure, the turning away of the gods and goddesses who ordinarily favoured Assyrian rulers. So disturbed by the uncertainty was Sennacherib, the son and successor of Sargon II, that he put as much distance as possible between himself and his father. Sennacherib moved the court to Nineveh from Dur Sharruken, the newly completed capital. And more telling still, he never mentioned his father’s name in any royal inscription. Sargon II had been cursed by the gods, the worst possible fate for any human being.   Towards the end of the second Babylonian empire a closer relationship developed between the king and a single deity. Thus Nabonidas, the last king of Babylon, was always portrayed in the presence of the moon god Sin, whose cult centre was located at the old Assyrian city of Harran. Only married into the Babylonian royal family, Nabonidas hailed from Harran and used the cult of Sin to justify his seizure of the throne. An inscription admits that as a usurper he did “not have  

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the honour of being somebody, and kingship was not within me.” But it continues, “the gods and goddesses prayed for me, and Sin called me to the kingship.” In a dream Nabonidas was told by the moon god to “swiftly restore my temple, the Ehulhul at Harran, and I shall give you all the lands … This happened at the appointed time, which the king of the gods, the great moon god, had predicted.”   Nabonidas’ mother, Adad-guppi, was a priestess at Ehulhul, “the house that gives joy”, and in 555 BC she must have advised her son how to present the case for a just usurpation, since he tells us that “signs written in the stars and omens” proved he was “the true legitimate heir.” This explanation did not convince the priests serving Marduk at Babylon, so the eventual removal of the court to Tema in Arabia was perhaps inevitable. They complained that the king failed to celebrate the New Year festival in Babylon because he was too busy restoring Ehulhul. Even more annoying was Nabonidas’ promotion of Sin’s cult as the lord of wisdom, “the greatest of the gods and goddesses”. Among the astral deities, the moon god was considered to be the most gentle and reliable deity, intimately connected with fertility and fruitfulness in human beings and animals. So Nabonidas claimed, after his selection as ruler, “the people of Syria and Babylon enjoyed good crops because Adad, the lockkeeper of the heavens and the underworld, at the command of Sin, sent down plenty of rain.”

Xerxes enthroned at Persepolis, the Persian capital

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  Although Nabonidas finally returned to Babylon, paying more attention to the worship of Marduk, it proved to be far too late. Marching down the Tigris in 539 BC, the Persians routed the Babylonian army and a Persian advance guard entered the city of Babylon itself, with the result, according to the conqueror Cyrus the Great, that the god Marduk “delivered Nabonidas, the king who did not revere him. All the people of Sumer and Akkad rejoiced … greeting the new Persian ruler with gladness.” Cyrus the Great was careful to accommodate the religious sentiments of the Babylonians. A tablet recovered from the ruins of Marduk’s temple relates how “Cyrus, king of all the lands, loves Esagila.”   In spite of subscribing to such a distinctive religion as Zoroas­ trianism, the Persian king was a conspicuous restorer of damaged or destroyed Mesopotamian temples. He seems to have realised that the cooperation of the Babylonians was vital to establishing his rule on a firm basis. Under the Persians there were no more mass deportations and exiles were allowed to return to their homelands if they wished. Rebellions were not unknown in Babylon or the rest of the Persian empire; but despite periodic succession crises, violent repression became a thing of the past. Yet trouble lay ahead for the Persians in the form of the Macedonians, who were briefly incorporated in the Persian empire as a result of the conquest of Thrace.

Alexander’s divinity Long before the aid sent by the Athenians and the Eretrians to Greek cities rebelling against Persian rule in Asia Minor provoked an attack on the Greek mainland, King Darius’ ambitions in Europe were public knowledge. Persian ships had already reconnoitred the Mediterranean coastline as far as Italy. The repulse of the expeditionary force dispatched to punish Eretria and Athens in 490 BC was no more than a pinprick to the Persians, although the determination of Darius to bring the Greeks to heel passed on to his son Xerxes a family obliga 137

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tion that began a see-sawing struggle between Europe and Asia which lasted into the Middle Ages.   It would appear that Darius and Xerxes came to see the conquest of Greece as the first stage of a holy war, part of the conflict foretold by the prophet Zoroaster which would mark the end of the present world. Xerxes is supposed to have said on the eve of his invasion in 480 BC that “the sun should not look down on any land containing a city or a nation capable of going into battle against us.” For the followers of Ahura Mazda, the supreme deity of the Persian pantheon, the attack on Greece was a religious duty, not unlike a Christian crusade or an Islamic jihad.   When the huge Persian invasion force advanced through northern Greece in 480 BC, the Macedonians had no choice but to submit to Xerxes, yet they were secretly in league with the Greek city-states farther south. The unexpected failure of Xerxes’ expedition was a great event for the ancient Greeks, but rivalry between Athens and Sparta gave the Persians a reprieve from a sustained counter-attack

Coin showing Alexander with horns, a sign of divinity in the ancient Near East

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until war against the old enemy provided Alexander the Great with a useful battle cry when, in 334 BC, he invaded the Persian empire.   For the withdrawal of the Persians had freed Macedon from any political restraint, and under the Temenid kings, whose ancestors had included the hero Herakles, the Macedonian kingdom gradually increased in size and influence. Alexander’s father, Philip II, subdued the Balkans and then achieved supremacy in Greece itself. Elected head of a league of Greek city-states, whose purpose was to wage war against Persia, Philip II would have led an expedition eastwards had he not been assassinated in 336 BC. Instead, it was the 22-year-old Alexander who commanded the army which invaded the Persian empire. A series of campaigns spread over more than a decade gave Alexander control of territories stretching as far east as India.  

A fragment of a Babylonian astronomical diary recording Alexander’s death

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  Alexander felt that he had a mission to fulfil, which worried some of his Macedonian and Greek followers. As the Greek historian Plutarch put it: Alexander considered that he had come from the gods to be a governor and reconciler to the world. Using force of arms when he could not bring men together by reason, he employed everything to the same end, mixing lives, manners, marriages and customs, as it were, in a loving cup.

Possibly the innovation his followers disliked most was the court ceremonial that Alexander decided to adopt, since it involved the Persian custom of prostration, which to both the Macedonians and the Greeks smacked of an acknowledgement of divinity.   But they were quite wrong to assume that the Persians ever regarded their kings as gods. Quite the contrary: kingship was a gift bestowed upon rulers by Ahura Mazda, “the lord of wisdom”. Conceived as a cosmic deity, wearing the sky as a garment, Ahura Mazda was the creator of the world, constantly sustaining it against the destructive actions of his opponent Angra Mainyu. Underlying the Zoroastrian faith was in fact a perpetual struggle between good and evil, in which humanity was expected to play a crucial part by adhering to truthful ways.   All harm came ultimately from Angra Mainyu. The prophet Zoroaster was told by Ahura Mazda that Angra Mainyu had upset his plans to make the world into an earthly paradise, because his cosmic opponent took pleasure from ‘choosing to do bad only.’ To thwart his good intentions, Angra Mainyu had introduced frost in winter, heat in summer, all manner of diseases and other ills that people have to endure. Only at a last judgement would Angra Mainyu be overcome, leaving the earth a level plain of springtime grasses.   Historians of religion used to find in the ancient Near East confirmation of divine kingship, a theory expressed in James Frazer’s The Golden Bough. Now it is clear that, except for the Akkadian king Naramsin, neither Mesopotamian nor Persian rulers were ever wor140

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shipped as living gods. Where then did Alexander get the idea that he deserved honours greater than should be paid to any man? The short answer was Egypt. Yet the young Macedonian king had been prepared for his recognition there as a deity by a desperate desire for personal fame. Like the Greek hero Achilles who died at Troy, Alexander is said to have chosen an early death and immortality rather than a long life and future obscurity. It is unlikely that Alexander ever believed himself to be invulnerable to death; rather his assumption of divinity was bound up with a quest for honour and renown.   Above all else, Alexander wanted to surpass the glory of his own father Philip II, who was in many ways a man of legendary stature. Diodorus Siculus, whose universal history written between 60 and 30 BC is the earliest surviving account of Alexander’s conquest of the Persian empire, proclaimed Philip as “the greatest king of his time”. For Philip II had transformed Macedon into the leading state in Greece and he was poised to lead a Greek army against the Persians when he was prematurely cut down by an assassin. Alexander became “the Great” as a result of this unexpected event, since the Macedonian contingent in the invasion force was his father’s outstanding legacy. Philip II had used the almost absolute powers vested in a constitutional monarchy to replan the Macedonian state. Having spent three years as a hostage in the city-state of Thebes, he appreciated its military innovations and retrained his infantry on similar lines, but armed with the sarissa, a pike for outreaching the standard spear. Constant drill was needed to master the new weapon and the close formation that the Macedonians favoured. But it was the sarissa that proved to be a decisive factor in Macedon’s success on the battlefield. Most of his subjects looked upon Philip II as an extraordinary leader, but some hated him and one killed him at Aegeae, the Macedonian capital.   An even bigger challenge for Alexander was the acknowledgement of Philip II’s stature during his lifetime as that of more than a mere mortal. Some Greek cities in Asia Minor had already honoured the Macedonian king as the future liberator from Persian suzerainty. On 141

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the Aegean island of Lesbos, altars to “Zeus Philippos” were established in gratitude for the Macedonian king’s aid in overthrowing a local tyrant, while a statue of Philip was also placed in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Exactly what these honours meant to contemporary Greeks is now unclear, although becoming a synnaos, or “temple sharer”, at Ephesus singled out Philip II as a unique individual. It was a mark of honour that Alexander felt he had to outdo.   Early in 331 BC, Alexander journeyed to the Libyan oasis of Siwah to consult the oracle of Ammon, an Egyptian deity equated by the Greeks with their god Zeus. What he wanted to know was the truth about his supposed descent from this deity. Crossing the desert to Siwah two miracles occurred: a sudden shower of rain quenched Alexander’s thirst and two crows guided him when he was lost. That the chief priest at Siwah hailed Alexander as the son of Zeus seemed to satisfy the Macedonian king’s deepest desire. As the conqueror of Egypt, however, he would have already been acknowledged as a divinity, since the pharaoh had long been regarded as a divine incarnation. While he lived he was the falcon-headed god Horus, and when dead he was Osiris, the king of the underworld. It seems likely that Alexander had gone through an abbreviated version of a pharaonic coronation at Thebes before setting out for Siwah.   Even Alexander’s detractors were amazed by the extent of his conquests. As one said: “There will be nothing left for him except to become a god.” At Athens there was lively debate about Alexander’s wish to be recognised as the thirteenth Olympian deity. Even the antiMacedonian politician Demosthenes, a convinced opponent of deification on principle, bent with the wind. “All right,” he said, “make him son of Zeus and of Poseidon too, if that’s what he wants.” And that was exactly what Alexander wanted. He had already issued his own coins in Babylon depicting himself with divine symbols, in particular the horns worn by a Mesopotamian deity. Although the Greeks voted Alexander a god, his Near Eastern subjects continued to worship their 142

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own pantheons, despite some of his successors trying to exploit Alexander’s divinity for their own political purposes. Only in Egypt did the Ptolemies manage to inherit the unique position of the pharaoh. Elsewhere divine honours voted by cities were intended to show gratitude, not worship. In June 323 BC, Alexander died at the age of thirty-two years at Babylon from an incurable disease, which probably was a form of malaria.   The thoughts of the dying king were for his Macedonian soldiers, the rank and file, with whom he had shared twelve years of a hardfought campaign. Alexander loved them and they loved him as their king and a fighter, and they could not bear to let him die without saying goodbye. So they filed past him, the ideal leader of a warrior state. As the army did so, Alexander was unable to say anything, but he welcomed each soldier by raising his head with difficulty and greeting them with his eyes.   During his final illness Alexander made a sacrifice daily, even on the day he lost the power of speech. But shortly before this happened Alexander was asked to whom he left his vast realm. Because he still lacked an heir, this was no idle question. “To the strongest,” Alexander replied, correctly anticipating the prolonged struggle between his generals.

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A restored gate at Nineveh

6 THE IMPERIAL CAPITALS ASHUR, NINEVEH AND BABYLON

At his palace he had knolls of stone which he shaped like mountains, and planted with all kinds of trees. Furthermore, he had a luxurious garden planted because his wife, who came from Media, longed for such, which was the custom in her homeland. “Jewish antiquities” by Flavius Josephus

This description of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is one of several which have come down to us from Greco-Roman times. In the first century BC, Diodorus Siculus offered an even more detailed account of the garden, which “sloped like a hillside, and several parts of the structure rose from one another like a theatre.” He explained how a layer of reeds laid in great quantities of bitumen ensured that “moisture from the soil might not penetrate beneath” its different levels. Two centuries later Quintus Curtius Rufus published a history of Alexander the Great in ten volumes. One of his most memorable descriptions is an account of the Hanging Gardens, which “equal in height to the city walls, and with their numerous trees, afford a welcome shade. These trees were three metres in circumference, and thirty metres tall; not even in their native soil would they have grown better.” He adds that from a distance they looked like “woods nodding on mountains.” Together with the impressive city walls the Hanging Gardens made Babylon into one of the seven wonders of the world.

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  The choice by the ancient Greeks of seven as the number of amazing sights, like so much else in their culture, came from the Near East. In the Akkadian language, seven or kissatu meant totality, the number of the heavens, the number of spells that had to be recited to make them work, and the number of garments that the great Sumerian goddess Inanna had to shed when she descended to the underworld to challenge her sister Ereshkigal’s deadly power. Along with the great pyramid of Giza, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the mausoleum of Maussollos in Halicarnassus, the colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos or lighthouse at Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon were an unchallenged wonder of the ancient world.   The city of Babylon rose to prominence during the reign of Hammurabi, who ascended the throne in 1792 BC, and it remained an important cult centre subsequently under the Kassites. Its religious role continued to grow when the city became a royal capital because the god Marduk invested the king with an entitlement to rule. But the Babylon of legend was essentially the creation of Nebuchadrezzar II, who used the wealth acquired under a second Babylonian hegemony to lay out the city anew. It had suffered during the final overthrow of Assyria, but not as much as the great Assyrian cities. Nineveh was a ruin and Ashur had shrunk to the size of a small town. Yet Nebuchadrezzar II’s rebuilding of Babylon did not include the Hanging Gardens. They had already been built by King Sennacherib in Nineveh, when he made this city the last, but most splendid, capital of the Assyrian empire. The Greek historian of the Persian Wars, Herodotus, never mentions the Hanging Gardens: his description of Babylon, written after the city had been a century under Persian rule, marvels instead at its size as well as “a circuit wall of some seventy kilometres in length, surrounded by a broad deep moat full of water.” Even more significant is the fact that no Babylonian inscription refers to any building which can be remotely identified with a spectacular garden. 146

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Ashur, the first Assyrian capital According to the Assyrians, the origin of their empire occurred in the 1800s BC when Shamshi-adad I reoccupied Ashur, having driven out invaders from Eshnunna, a city-state farther down the river Tigris. The displacement of Eshnunna left Assyria as the leading power in Upper Mesopotamia, and Shamshi-adad I was able to expand westwards as far as the Mediterranean coast where he set up a victory stele. After this king’s death in 1781 BC, however, Hammurabi led the Babylonian army northwards and captured Ashur.   Not until the reign of Shalmaneser I, from 1273 to 1244 BC, would Assyria be a regional power again. Then he threw off the yoke of Mitanni, a northern kingdom whose early deployment of the chariot had given it tremendous advantages on the battlefield. In spite of renewed conflict with Babylon, part and parcel of a constant struggle between the Assyrians and the Babylonians, the Assyrian empire was now up and running. It campaigned against the mountain tribes to the north and east, against the Hittites in the west, and held the Babylonians in check to the south. The greatest king of this period was

View of the Ashur temple from across the Tigris

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The sacred buildings at Ashur along with some houses in the foreground

Tiglath-pileser I, who drove the invading Phrygians into central Asia Minor and thwarted Aramaean attempts to move eastwards.   In the 1850s archaeologists discovered in the ruins of Ashur a cylinder inscription of Tiglath-pileser I. Layard’s assistant, Hormuzd Rassam, then dug this king’s palace and other inscriptions came to light. But it was a series of excavations under the auspices of the German Oriental Society which really uncovered the remains of the first Assyrian capital. From 1903 onwards Walter Andrae systematically explored the site with the same attention to detail that marked Robert Koldewey’s excavation of Babylon. These two German archaeologists showed that a wealth of information could be obtained if excavation methods of the highest standard were applied and if experts in various disciplines worked closely together.   The location of Ashur in an arid zone, lacking a prosperous countryside, seems odd. But a defensible site on a steep cliff overlooking the junction of the Tigris and a tributary probably explains its initial choice as the capital. And we need to remember that the city was also the original cult centre of Ashur, the national god of the Assyrians. The etymology of Ashur’s name is obscure, despite providing the name by which the Assyrians themselves were known. The Assyrian  

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monarch had a special relationship with the god whom he served as the chief priest when he was in residence in the capital. On occasions when he was absent on campaign, other priests performed his liturgical duties. Although it is unlikely that the king’s involvement was ever more than symbolic, there is a marked difference from the relationship of a Babylonian king with Marduk, the chief deity of Babylon. The tendency to absolutism in Assyria meant that its priesthood never acquired the independence and power of Babylonian priests.   In some Assyrian bas-reliefs there appears a winged sun-disc with a bearded god wielding bow and arrows. Its interpretation as Ashur is not without its difficulties because this has never been confirmed in writing. It might easily refer to some other deity. Only after Sennacherib’s anti-Babylonian policy, which culminated in the destruction of Babylon and the abduction of the cult statues of Marduk and other Mesopotamian deities, did the character of Ashur become truly complex. Then the Assyrian god absorbed myths belonging to Marduk and he even gained a consort, the goddess Ninlil, whose most famous son was none other than the divine champion Ninurta. Ashur’s temple was called Ehursaggalkurkura, or “the house of the mountain of the land”.   Besides the worship given to Ashur in a temple situated on the highest part of the capital, there were also temples dedicated to Sin, Anu, Shamash, Nabu, Adad and Ishtar. Even though Shalmaneser III lived either in Nineveh or Nimrud, he commissioned building projects on a grand scale at Ashur in the 840s BC. They included the Adad temple as well as strengthened city walls. But the skyline of the city was always dominated by Ashur’s temple and ziggurat, since they marked the oldest religious site of all. Shalmaneser III also built the ziggurat for the Ninurta temple at Nimrud, where this bellicose god was paired with Ashur. Arguably Assyrian kings came to see military campaigns as an imitation of Ninurta’s exploits on behalf of the gods. So an inscription says that “Shalmaneser, the vigorous hero, who is supported by the god Ninurta, marched out for vengeance.” Not  

 

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Shalmaneser III’s gateway and defensive walls at Ashur

i­nfrequently opponents, continuing the divine analogy, were termed “wicked demons”, enemies of the divine order deserving death. As a consequence, the Assyrian empire was seen as the only vehicle for the nations of the ancient Near East to live in peace, concord and social justice. The payment by vassal states of tribute, and the taxation levied on directly administered territories, was even taken to mean nothing less than general acknowledgement of such a just world order.   Other Assyrian cities enjoyed the presence of the royal court as an almost nomadic strain in the Assyrian character urged king after king to change abode. One of them, Sargon II, went so far as construct a new capital from scratch. But his own sudden death in 705 BC caused his son Sennacherib to abandon Dur Sharruken, the newly completed capital, and move to Nineveh.

Nineveh, the last Assyrian capital Nineveh lay at the heart of rich agricultural land and its chief temple, dedicated to the goddess Ishtar, stood on a large mound now called 150

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Plan of Ashur

A cult socket dating from the reign of Tukulti-ninurta I, 1243–1207 BC

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Kuyunjik. The very name of Nineveh is reminiscent of the Sumerian epithet nin, which was often applied to goddesses. By the time Sennacherib moved the Assyrian court there, it was Ishtar who was the undisputed city deity. She was a passionate goddess as capable of love as she was of the pursuit of her enemies. Many hymns were therefore addressed to Ishtar in an effort to appease her anger, to influence the omens, and to grant protection to her worshippers. Among the Sumerians, whose fertility goddess Inanna was the prototype of Ishtar, violence was also an aspect of her cult. For Inanna, like Ishtar, was restless and ambitious.   Ishtar’s temple at Nineveh was excavated during the early 1930s. The oldest foundations uncovered beneath its walls point to Akkad, whose second king Manishtusu may have ordered at least one temple to be built. It would explain, for instance, the presence of the famous bronze head of his father Sargon. The body of the statue is missing and the head has been deliberately defaced: the ears and beard have been cut, the nose battered, and one eye gouged out. Yet such mutilation of statues was common practice and, given the severity of Akkadian rule, a not unexpected event after the overthrow of the last king of Akkad around 2154 BC. Survivors of the Akkadian empire could hardly be expected to cherish such a reminder of Sargon’s harsh legacy. Possibly Shamshi-adad I ordered the statue’s mutilation because he is credited with the restoration of Ishtar’s temple. We are aware that this early Assyrian king called himself lugal kisi, “king of Kish”, a claim to greatness adopted by many Mesopotamian rulers. And the similarity of the ground-plan of Shamshi-adad I’s Ashur temple in the city of Ashur with that of Ishtar’s restored temple in Nineveh suggests that the same architects were responsible for both royal commissions. Later repairs of earthquake damage did not alter the basic layout.   No first-hand account of the discovery of the bronze head of Sargon exists, but it was later reported to have been “found lying in loose soil on an Assyrian mud platform within the limits of the temple of Ishtar.”  

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It seems more than likely the head belonged to a statue destroyed after the collapse of the Akkadian empire, because Shamshi-adad I attached great importance to his rebuilding of Ishtar’s temple which he claimed “not one of the kings before him had repaired after the fall of Akkad.” The temple was finally wrecked during the sack of Nineveh in 612 BC. Destruction debris spread across the Kuyunjik mound may include items which were housed in the temple for centuries, such as a carved stone box from Carchemish. We are so well informed about Ishtar’s worship in Nineveh because of all the buildings on Kuyunjik her temple is the one most completely excavated and fully published.   That the fertility side of Ishtar’s cult received due attention in her temple can be deduced from miniature representations of sexual activities, usually cast in lead. Not dissimilar models discovered at Ashur show that the goddess remained for the Assyrians, as she did for the Babylonians, the mistress of both battle fury and physical desire. The determined campaigner Ashurnasirpal II was responsible for a major renovation of the temple during his reign, sometime between 883 and 859 BC. In the Ishtar temple, tiles have been excavated with inscriptions celebrating this work. They mention his victories over Aramaean tribesmen, an advance to Mount Amanus in present-day Lebanon, and the cutting of timber there for temple roofs. Quite likely Ashurnasirpal II’s concern with the Ishtar temple was a result of earthquake activity, to which Upper Mesopotamia is prone. Certainly the pavements he had relaid suggest the renewal of a large part of the building. A later inscription of Sennacherib refers to Ashurnasirpal II as a pious builder, a king who fulfilled his responsibilities to the Assyrian deities without hesitation. Not to be outdone, however, Sennacherib claimed to have used stone in his own restoration of Nineveh’s temples.   But Sennacherib’s greatest achievement was the construction of his own palace on the southern slope of the Kuyunjik mound. It was literally ekalla sa sanina la isu, “the palace without rival”, since no other Mesopotamian building ever matched its size or decoration. The palace  

 

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Another restored gate at Nineveh

walls were in fact lined with slabs carved in low relief depicting scenes of royal exploits. In 1847 these remains were discovered by Layard, who realised that he had stumbled upon an unknown example of Assyrian greatness. As he noted: In this magnificent edifice I had opened no less than seventy-one halls, chambers, and passages, whose walls, almost without exception, had been panelled with slabs of sculptured alabaster recording the wars, the triumphs, and the great deeds of the Assyrian king. By a rough calculation, about 9,880 feet, or nearly two miles, of bas-reliefs, with twenty-seven portals, formed by colossal winged bulls and lionsphinxes, were uncovered in that part of the building explored during my researches.

  One of the bas-reliefs uncovered, according to its inscription, was a depiction of the siege of the Judean city of Lachish, an event recorded in the Bible. It has been suggested that this siege was given such prominence in Sennacherib’s palace because the Assyrian king 154

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Map of the partially excavated Kuyunjik mound

had been unable to capture Jerusalem afterwards. Having reduced all the cities of Judah to obedience except Jerusalem, Sennacherib sent envoys to negotiate this city’s surrender. Since no help could be expected from Egypt, the Assyrians anticipated a swift Jewish collapse but they were wrong. The surrender appeal was rejected and a siege withstood. When the Assyrians withdrew from Jerusalem, the Jews regarded the salvation of the city and the Temple as proof of Yahweh’s powerful protection.   King Hezekiah had beseeched Yahweh to listen to “the words of Sennacherib, which hath sent him to reproach the living God. Of truth, Lord, the kings of Assyria have destroyed the nations and their lands, and have cast down their gods into the fire; for they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone; therefore they have destroyed them.” When in reply to the appeal of the Judean king 155

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Map of Nineveh and its main gates

Yahweh said “I have heard,” Hezekiah knew that Jerusalem would not be taken. So it was that the city remained independent for over another century; then the king of Judah provoked the Babylonians and, in 587 BC, the so-called Babylonian captivity began. In the struggle between Babylon and Egypt, Judah had taken sides with the latter. An assault on Jerusalem therefore was inevitable; Jewish leaders and members of the upper classes were deported, and Judah became a Babylonian province.   The earlier failure hardly bothered Sennacherib as he soon had his hands full dealing with Babylon and Elam. But the Assyrian king did spend a great deal of time and treasure ensuring his palace was perfect. He took a lively interest in the quality of the stone that was being used to embellish its interior, and he even attributed the discovery of 156

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a new source upriver on the Tigris as a divine revelation. The superior stone also allowed him to construct a canal and aqueduct which brought water to the garden he made next to his palace. Over two million blocks of smooth limestone were required for this unmatched feat of engineering.   In Greco-Roman times Sennacherib was evidently confused with Nebuchadrezzar II and the former’s remarkable garden transferred to Babylon, where it was called the Hanging Gardens. Just how thorough was Sennacherib’s renewal of Nineveh can be judged from this inscription: The time I enlarged the settlement at Nineveh, I had renovation work carried out on the outer and inner walls ... and made them mountainhigh. As for the open land outside the city walls, which had become desolate for lack of water and were festooned with spiders’ webs—for the people there had no knowledge of irrigation and relied upon rain that by chance fell from the sky—I provided it with irrigation ... The

An Assyrian winged bull

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Plan of the Ishtar temple

An Assyrian fish-man

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  Thousands of foreign captives toiled at Nineveh for a dozen years before Sennacherib’s projects were finished. By naming the gates of Nineveh in the “mountain-high” city walls after the great gods, Sennacherib implied that the new Assyrian capital was the cosmic centre of the universe, and the abode of the gods. All this was intended to promote the Assyrian king’s fame since nothing came near to the splendour of his own palace: it was truly ekalla sa sanina la isu.   Like his ancestors, Sennacherib invited gods into his palace on its completion, and he left a message addressed to future rulers concerning its upkeep. Sennacherib clearly wished to make Nineveh the greatest city in the world. As far as he was concerned, from his palace radiated outwards good government, the divinely ordered peace and prosperity which would benefit every Assyrian subject and ally. For that very reason, Sennacherib could never tolerate disobedience: he had been charged by Ashur with ruling the Assyrian empire and he intended to do so in a manner pleasing to the gods.   Each royal palace comprised two main parts: the first was the setting for the palace administration and the king’s public life; the second, or inner part, held his apartments and those of the palace’s female population, in particular the king’s wives, concubines and their children. Just how comfortable these private apartments must have been is reflected in a rare inscription of Sennacherib. He relates: for the queen Tashmetum-sharrat, my beloved wife, whose features the gods have made more beautiful than all other women, I built a palace of love, joy and pleasure. By the grace of Ashur, father of the gods, and the heavenly queen Ishtar, may we both live in health and happiness in this palace and enjoy life to the full.

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  To these inner quarters Esarhaddon often retreated after Sennacherib’s assassination. A loss of nerve periodically incapacitated this younger son of Sennacherib, whose own son Ashurbanipal had to assume in consequence many of the royal responsibilities. Yet Esarhaddon was as fortunate in his mother as his son. Of Aramaean origin, Zakutu eventually won the favour of Sennacherib and became his most influential wife. Having obtained the appointment of her son Esarhaddon as crown prince, she assisted him during his troubled reign. It was she, again, who made sure Ashurbanipal became the next king.   Little can be gathered now about how an Assyrian king conducted an audience, although a carving depicts the head of Jehu, king of Israel, actually touching the ground before a standing Shalmaneser III. But this may be no more than a standard way of representing submission to Assyria, rather than the position a vassal ruler was actually supposed to adopt before an enthroned Assyrian monarch. How large a palace staff Sennacherib employed is not recorded, unlike Ashurbanipal whose own palace on the northern slope of Kuyunjik was served by 13,000, many of whom would have been eunuchs. Lavish entertainment always marked royal life in an Assyrian capital. We know Ashurnasirpal II once entertained 69,574 invited guests with banquets over a ten-day period. The items of food included 1,000 cows, 14,000 sheep, 1,000 lambs, 20,000 pigeons, 10,000 fish and 10,000 eggs. Huge quantities of bread, vegetables, fruit, beer and wine were consumed as well.   The palace of Ashurbanipal was not so spacious as that of Sennacherib, but it happened to be the last royal Assyrian residence ever built. Although its throne room was smaller than Sennacherib’s audience chamber, it was approached by means of a short staircase which served to emphasise the exulted position of the monarch. No visiting king or ambassador could be left in any doubt about Ashurbanipal’s authority. One famous bas-relief shows him relaxing in the company of his wife Ashur-sharrat, who shares a drink in the palace garden. Even in this apparently tranquil scene lurks Assyrian  

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An Assyrian garden

violence. On the left of the bas-relief the head of the Elamite king Teumman hangs from a tree. After the battle of Til Tuba, in 653 BC, the Assyrian king declared that he “presented the head of Teumman as an offering in front of the gate of the capital city. As it had been predicted in an oracle, I cut off the heads of my enemies and poured wine over them.” Though his son was also beheaded, Teumman’s wife and other children were held as prisoners in Nineveh.   Perhaps the most striking scenes, however, are those of the royal hunt, which depict Ashurbanipal killing lions. Despite being viewed as a symbolic act for a king, who was in the chase protecting his subjects from harm, the actual circumstances were less impressive. The release of starving lions in the royal park hardly constituted a hunt in the wild, since they were bound to charge Ashurbanipal in his chariot. Powerful rulers seem to be irresistibly drawn to the killing of animals, 161

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King Ashurbanipal hunting wild asses on horseback

large or small, as the hilarious experience of Napoleon demonstrates. The French emperor suffered the indignity of a rabbit shoot that went badly wrong. One thousand tame rather than wild rabbits were supplied and, when Napoleon arrived, they mistook him for the man who fed them their daily lettuce. Instead of fleeing to be shot, they all mobbed him so that he was forced to dash to the safety of the imperial carriage and escape their attentions.   Where Ashurbanipal really surpassed Napoleon, however, was in hunting on horseback, since one bas-relief has him shooting wild asses pursued by dogs. Doubtless these hunts were as carefully prepared as the ones with lions. More relevant for us is Ashurbanipal’s use of the composite bow on horseback. Even though a squire rides slightly behind the king with a supply of arrows, the confident archery of Ashurbanipal marks the triumph of the mounted archer as the supreme wielder of missiles. The presence of the squire could well illustrate how Assyrian cavalry evolved. A squire may once have held the reins of a mounted archer, like a charioteer, when he galloped into battle. Better reining would explain Ashurbanipal’s ability to free both hands and fire a composite bow. With greater control over a horse, a mounted archer was thus able to spend more time in action and less worrying about falling off. Credit must therefore be given to the Assyrians for realising the potential of cavalry, and the impact which mobile archers could have on the battlefield. 162

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  Devastating though a squadron of chariots undoubtedly was on the battlefield, a chariot corps was extremely expensive to assemble and maintain, and its inability to function over uneven ground drastically restricted the area of operation to relatively flat terrain. Once the Assyrian empire spread into wooded or mountainous country, the need for cavalry became obvious. By the time King Ashurbanipal hunted on horseback, the mobile arm of the Assyrian army comprised mounted archers.   For all his exploits as a hunter, Ashurbanipal’s enduring fame rests upon his library. He gave orders to requisition tablets from the various Babylonian scribal centres and thus accumulated the largest and most comprehensive collection of cuneiform texts ever gathered in a single place. Quite how large Ashurbanipal’s collection was is still unsettled, mainly because of the fragile nature of the clay tablets and the conditions under which they were excavated. Estimates range from 1,500 to more than 25,000 tablets. What Layard discovered was the oldest library in the world, which put the Assyrian empire at the centre of ancient history for the first time, because here was the means, once the script had been deciphered, of understanding one of the world’s earliest great powers. Ashurbanipal was keen on divination and so many of the texts he collected are concerned with omens and prophecies. Like other Assyrian kings, he was profoundly aware of his subservience to the will of the gods. What Ashurbanipal failed to foresee was the collapse of the Assyrian empire within a few years of his death in 627 BC.

Babylon, wonder of the world Archaeological recovery of Babylon’s past followed in the wake of the discoveries in Assyria, and despite the finds being less spectacular than those in Nineveh, the excavation of Babylon revealed one of the wonders of the ancient world. Here was the city whose vastness had so impressed Herodotus: Babylon was in fact the largest Mesopotamian 163

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A Babylonian god

settlement, exceeding even Nineveh, spread over an area of some 850 hectares. The city itself was surrounded by huge fortifications started by Nabopolassar and completed by his son Nebuchadrezzar II. These walls must have amazed a visitor approaching across the open plain upon which Babylon was located. Also rising above them was the impressive ziggurat of Marduk opposite Esagila, that god’s temple. Known as Etemenanki, “house-support of the universe”, work on the ziggurat began in earnest shortly after Nebuchadrezzar II’s accession in 604 BC.   According to Herodotus, there was a second city wall inside the towering outer line of defence. And there were fortresses “in the middle of the city; in one the royal palace surrounded by a wall of great strength, in the other the temple of Bel, the Babylonian Zeus.” “This deity’s temple,” Herodotus added, “is a square building with bronze doors.” Its ziggurat comprised:  

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Marduk’s ziggurat opposite the Esagila temple

a solid central tower ... with a second tower on top of it and then a third, and so on up to eight. All eight towers can be climbed via a central stairway running round the outside, and about half-way up there are seats for those who make the ascent to rest on. On the summit of the topmost tower stands a great temple with a fine large couch in it, richly covered, and a golden table beside it. The shrine contains no image.

  The description of Marduk’s temple and the adjacent ziggurat was not inventive, although Herodotus was unaware of the carrying of that god’s cult statue between the Esagila, the temple at ground level, and the other temple at the top of the ziggurat. An enclosure rather than a fortress, the temple complex was the holiest spot in Babylon. The Greek historian did explain that there was “a second shrine lower down, in which a great figure of Bel sat, all of gold on a golden throne, supported on a base of gold, with a golden table beside it.” By this, he clearly meant Esagila, since he noted outside the temple stood “an altar of great size, on which full-grown sheep are sacrificed.” 165

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The Ishtar Gate at Babylon

  The Esagila was certainly an old building, going back to at least Hammurabi’s reign. But the construction of Marduk’s ziggurat was really the work of Nebuchadrezzar II. Even though it was started during the reign of his father, Nabopolassar, the vast undertaking took forty-three years to complete. While the Assyrians raised enormous palaces to accommodate their rulers and the imperial administration, their ziggurats were modest box-like structures, accessible from the roofs of adjoining temples. The free-standing ziggurat, like the one built by King Urnammu at Ur, was typical of southern Mesopotamia. In Babylon the palaces were also large but the city’s grandest building remained the ziggurat of Marduk, the biggest one ever constructed. It is estimated that some 17 million bricks had to be made and fired in order to build this monumental temple.   Erected though they were in most Mesopotamian cities, the truly renowned ziggurat was Marduk’s because it inspired the Jewish myth about the Tower of Babel, although the ziggurat of Nabu in Borsippa  

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Plan of Babylon

once briefly enjoyed this reputation. During the exile of leading Jews in Babylon, however, the idea of a tower reaching up to heaven took root. Finding deification by his own people unsatisfactory, King Nimrod is supposed to have ordered the construction of a tower capable of delivering an assault on heaven. To forestall this plan Yahweh confounded the speech of his workmen. One man asked for mortar, and another handed him a brick; such misunderstanding caused strife, and people split into hostile factions. In Genesis this story accounts for the break-up of the original unity of humanity and its dispersal into different nations, speaking different tongues. The name of the tower means confusion and the legendary Nimrod receives no mention at all, but there have come to light recently fragments of a Sumerian legend that attributes the end of a golden age to the water god Enki’s diversification of language. 167

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  For the Babylonians Marduk was not simply a city god. In their view of the cosmos they were unique, since very few Semites paid much attention to the idea of creation. But in the Enuma Elish, an epic dating from the reign of Nebuchadrezzar I, there is a detailed description of the origin of the universe as well as Marduk’s decisive confrontation with the forces of chaos. The Babylonian god’s opponent was the ocean, in the form of Tiamat, a dreadful sea monster and the prototype of Leviathan, “the coiled one”. At Marduk’s challenge, Tiamat let out a terrible roar and started to tremble with rage as she threw herself into the attack. Like the Sumerian warrior god Ninurta facing the monster Azag, the Babylonian champion did not flinch but instead caught Tiamat up in a great net, so that she opened her jaws in surprise. Then, “driving in a tempest to stop her closing them again,” Marduk “let fly an arrow which split her belly and penetrated her heart.”   After Tiamat had stopped breathing, Marduk “split her in two like a fish.” Half he flattened like a roof for the heavens, the other half he used for the earth. From Tiamat’s eyes flowed the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. The rise of Marduk as a supreme deity in Babylon meant that the storm god Enlil was no longer important as he had been in Sumer and Akkad. The Assyrians were most interested in Marduk’s exploits and, during the period when Babylon was under Assyrian rule, they transferred several of them to their own great god Ashur. Of particular interest was his confrontation with the forces of chaos, a duty that each king of Assyria claimed for himself. Some inscriptions actually compare an Assyrian campaign with an expedition against Tiamat. The idea of a serpentine monster passed through Judaism to Christianity, where famously in the story of St George and the Dragon a lone knight battles with a fearsome creature not previously encountered in Europe.   Marduk’s overtaking of Enlil in the cosmic order was no more than the continuation of a struggle for supremacy which went all the way back to Sumerian times. Then the heirs of the primeval deities Enmesarra and Ninmesarra seized control: they were in fact An and 168

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Babylonian world map

Enlil. The legend of a violent overthrow of the first gods by their offspring shaped Greek cosmology when Hesiod composed his Theogony soon after 700 BC. According to Hesiod, first the sky god Ouranos was overpowered, then his son Kronos, before Zeus emerged as the ultimate winner. Kronos’ allies, the defeated Titans, were confined by Zeus in Tartarus, the lowest level of the cosmos, a not dissimilar fate to that suffered by the six hundred Anunnaki, the “princely deities” whom Marduk locked in the underworld after a rebellion.   The sheer strength of Marduk is recalled in the investiture ceremony of Babylonian kings, which told of “the unsparing arrows from the quiver of Marduk, which are terrible in their shooting off, mighty in their striking home; they slay and are drenched in blood and gore. They rain down on the lands. The gods, his fathers and brothers, the evil  

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gods, Anzu and Asakku, were defeated in their midst.” As cult dancers re-enacted battle scenes and priests recited prayers, the king was pronounced a worthy worshipper of Marduk and the proper ruler of Babylon. It seems likely that Assyrian kings, as well as the puppet rulers they imposed upon Babylon, also took part in this annual ritual.   The second great Babylonian deity was Ishtar, after whom a famous gate was named. Its excavation in 1899 by Robert Koldewey, along with the Processional Way, immediately confirmed the status of Babylon as a wonder of the ancient world. The Processional Way passed the walls of the palace and entered the city proper through the Ishtar Gate. The central section of the street was paved with white limestone, red paving on either side creating the effect of a modern street. It was along this street that the king led the procession of cult statues, temple attendants and noble citizens, followed by booty from successful campaigns during the New Year festival.   Next to the Ishtar Gate was the palace extension built by Nebuchadrezzar II. So determined a builder was the king that a vast labour force was put to work producing mud bricks which, under the supervision of royal architects, became palaces, temples, gateways and city walls, on a scale that deeply impressed his subjects as well as visiting envoys. Nebuchadrezzar II’s partiality for blue-glazed bricks could only make these new buildings resplendent in sunlight. Proud of these achievements, the king lists them in an inscription but without any reference to the Hanging Gardens.   Although Koldewey may have accepted in the end that Greeks and Romans had confused Assyrian gardens with Babylonian ones, and especially the great garden of Sennacherib at Nineveh, he still tentatively identified a vaulted building with the Hanging Gardens. He speculated that a “mechanical hydraulic machine ... which worked on the same principle as a chain pump” continuously drew water from a well beneath the structure. The thick walls of stone also seemed to point to a garden of some kind having been planted on a higher level, but Koldewey said “that the identification bristles with difficulties, will  

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surprise no one who has more than once had to bring ancient statements of fact in accordance with the discoveries of the present day.”   Babylon’s history really began with Hammurabi, who first gave the city a role as capital of an empire. Koldewey always hoped to reach the lower levels of Babylon to reveal Hammurabi’s city, but this proved to be inaccessible on account of the high water table. What the German archaeologist dug for fourteen years, winter and summer, was the capital of King Nabopolassar who had ended the Assyrian hegemony. His military success left his son Nebuchadrezzar II with the opportunity to turn Babylon into a splendid city, which he did to the wonder of all.

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Ereshkigal, ‘the mistress of death’, and Inanna’s implacable enemy

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May the small speak, and the great listen! May the great speak, and the small listen! May concord and peace prevail in Assyria! Ashur is king! Ashur is king! Ashurbanipal is the deputy of Ashur, the creation of his hands. An Assyrian royal inscription

Thus an Assyrian ruler proclaimed his entitlement to preside over an empire that covered almost all of the ancient Near East. It was the support of gods, and especially the chief Assyrian deity Ashur, which guaranteed the empire’s survival as much as the Assyrian army. That King Ashurbanipal claimed to be a separate act of creation, situated midway between a human being and a god, did not lead to his deification as it would have in Egypt. Rather he was the essential link between the divine powers and the Assyrian people, because Ashurbanipal remained the humble servant of Ashur, ever ready to do that god’s bidding. By this time in the seventh century BC the will of Ashur was determined by the careful observation and analysis of omens and portents as well as the performance of special rituals. In spite of Ashurbanipal being himself well versed in divination, his decisions were guided by a group of officials expert in predicting future events. Diviners, exorcists, dream interpreters and astrologer, all con

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tributed to the formulation of royal policy, because the Assyrians believed that these experts could resolve any apparent contradiction in the relationship between the human and the divine.   Divination in Mesopotamia descended from Sumerian ideas about the divine ordering of the world. The so-called tuppi simati, or “tablet of destiny”, was inscribed with the decisions taken by the assembly of the gods, which met in the temple of storm god Enlil at Nippur. Possession of this tablet gave Enlil supreme power over the entire world of the gods and humanity, along with the fate that would befall them. In the Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, it was Marduk who gained control of the “tablet of destiny” after his defeat of Tiamat, the chaos dragon. In due course a subservient Babylon witnessed its transfer, along with most of Marduk’s own myths, to Ashur: the Assyrians sought domination in the religious as well as the secular spheres. In the ancient Near East they were never really divided, as they are in the modern mind, so that Assyrian religion legitimized the subjugation of other peoples’ gods. Hence the practice of abducting the cult statues belonging to conquered lands, although these might in due course be returned to their own temples after the overlordship of Ashur had been inscribed upon them.

The Sumerian pantheon Despite fundamental differences between the religious beliefs of the Sumerians and those of the Semitic Babylonians and Assyrians, a long process of syncretism ensured that these differences were never so great as to cause any rejection of basic Sumerian ideas. Perhaps the most obvious difference was the size of the Sumerian pantheon in comparison with later ones, since the Semites could never understand how over three thousand gods and goddesses could be worshipped by the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia. The final tally of Sumerian deities is still unsettled, but this does not really matter as it was the greatest among them that were embraced, first by the Akkadians, then the Babylonians, and finally the Assyrians. 174

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Two limestone plaques from Ur

  For the Sumerians, divinity was everywhere. It might be said that they developed their pantheon in order to understand the universe, which they called an ki, literally “heaven earth”. The organisation of the universe could therefore be divided into that of heaven and that of earth. Heaven consisted of the sky and the space above the sky, “the great above”, where the sky gods dwelt. Earth consisted of its surface, the abode of humanity, and beneath this was “the great below” in which lay the sweet water of Abzu, and below this immense reservoir was located the underworld itself, the dwelling place of the chthonic deities as well as dead human beings. Totally anthropomorphic though they were in their approach to the gods, the Sumerians never forgot the original function that each deity performed in the natural order. The great goddess Inanna—the prototype of Ishtar, Astarte, 175

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Aphrodite and Venus—was still the power behind the rain which each spring brought forth pasture in the desert. It did not matter that Inanna’s abundant sensuality turned her into a love goddess, the protectress and colleague of prostitutes. In Akkadian, Inanna’s name became Ishtar, the favourite goddess of both the Babylonians and the Assyrians. The latter were particularly interested in her warlike aspect, so she was portrayed with a bow and quiver, sometimes even a curly beard.   Starting out as a nature religion, with worship of natural phenomena such as the sky, the wind, the thundercloud and the underground waters surfacing in rivers and marshes, Sumerian beliefs became more complicated once deities were given a human form. Then the realm of

The god Ningirsu

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the gods was imagined as a spiritual aristocracy of great landowners, Sumer’s all-powerful upper class, dutifully served by human beings. But the gods had provided the tools necessary for sustaining their luxurious life style, since the storm god Enlil not only “caused the good day to come forth” but even more he fashioned the pickaxe and the plough in order to give the first farmers a head start in growing crops.   A story recounts how Enlil saw the grain goddess Ninlil bathing in a canal and how she was impregnated by “his water”. Eventually Ninlil caught up with Enlil, who had immediately disappeared after this aquatic encounter, and their son was none other than the moon god Nanna, who travelled each night across the heavens illuminating the pitch-black sky. That Nanna went on to father Utu, the sun god, is perhaps surprising in view of the worship given to the sun in neighbouring lands, and in particular Egypt. There the heterodox pharaoh Akhenaten, in the fourteenth century BC, dared to replace the traditional sun god Ra with Aten, the solar disc. But this concentration on the purely physical character of the sun did not last, since Akhenaten’s only surviving son, Tutankhamun, allowed Egyptian worship to return to normal after his succession in 1346 BC.   Exactly where Utu went during the night is uncertain, although there is a suggestion that he passed from the “mountain of the west” to the “mountain of the east” via the underworld. As far as we know, Utu never travelled in a boat like Ra. He might instead have used a chariot: boats featured in Egypt as divine transport because they were a convenient method of getting about a country whose desert sands and flooded fields made wheeled vehicles unreliable. As Shamash, the Akkadian name for Utu, the sun god was primarily the guardian of justice. He was the “illuminator of all” and “the regulator of the light of all”. So a hymn informs us how Shamash reveals the truth: Your beams are ever mastering secrets, At the brightness of your light, The footsteps of people become visible. Your dazzle is always seeking out.

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A priest of the god Ningirsu

This power of investigation explains why Hammurabi stands before an enthroned Shamash at the start of his law code. Upon the earth, the king holds responsibility for the administration of the law, which is in fact the law of the gods.   The role of Enlil as the spring wind bringing nature back to life appears in hymns that were sung in his honour. He was “the mighty one, who holds the rains of heaven and the waters of the earth”. Without his “rain-laden” clouds barley would not grow and fill the storehouses. Even more “the fish of the deep could not lay their eggs in the marshes, nor could the birds of heaven spread their nests over the broad earth.” Yet there existed a darker side to Enlil, the sudden storm. He was always an ambiguous figure whose anger expressed itself in the destructive tempest.   It was in fact Enlil’s anger at his inability to get a good night’s rest that really demonstrated his destructive side. So angry was he with 178

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the noise rising from Sumerian cities that he decided to wipe out their inhabitants. The final method Enlil employed for the job was the Flood, from which Ziudsura escaped in his giant coracle, the predecessor of Noah’s Ark.   In spite of An, or “sky”, being ranked as the highest among the Sumerian deities, this deity was overshadowed by Enlil’s vigorous behaviour. Even in Uruk, where his temple was located, Inanna received more attention than did An, which happened because of the adventurous nature of this goddess. But as Anu, he continued to receive worship as late as the Assyrian empire, though not as an allpowerful god. As the distant god of the heavens, Anu took on the features of a deus otiosus, a god without specific duties. Enlil retained, on the other hand, his significance in human affairs: he was the god who installed and deposed kings until this function was taken over by Marduk in Babylon and finally Ashur in Assyria.   The third great Sumerian deity was Ninhursag, the goddess of animal birth. In myth, Ninhursag is usually pitted against Enki, the

Life-size alabaster mask of Inanna

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guardian of sweet water, the great underground reservoir of Abzu. How ingenious Enki could be is seen in his method of warning Ziudsura. Having sworn not to divulge Enlil’s intentions, Enki used a wind to convey the message of warning. The Babylonian version of the Flood actually begins: Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall! Atrahasis, listen to my advice, That you may live for ever. Destroy your home, and build a boat; Give up your possessions, save your life.

The Babylonians knew Ziudsura, the Sumerian Noah, either as Atrahasis or Utanapishtim. It was to his ancestor Utanapishtim that Gilgamesh journeyed in search of an elixir of life.

The divine lovers, the goddess Inanna in bed with Dumuzi

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The Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic which recounts Marduk’s creation of the world

  Despite Enki’s crafty reputation, he often astonished the other gods with solutions to apparently impossible problems. Having fashioned from clay the first human servants, the gods held a celebratory banquet, at which, overcome by strong beer, Enki got involved in a creation competition with Ninhursag, who deliberately tried to wreck Enki’s creation by declaring that for each person she made it would be her decision whether “the fate is good or bad.” Ninhursag’s ineffectual creations therefore set a challenge for Enki in finding them suitable employment. But his ingenuity “found them bread.” The cripple became the servant of the king, the blind man his minstrel, the barren woman entered the royal harem and a sexless person joined the priesthood. What this myth explains are the destinies of individuals who did not fit easily into the pattern of Sumerian family life. 181

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  This means that the profession followed by the prostitute was divinely decreed, her acceptance of many “husbands” no more than an impersonation of the goddess Inanna herself. Though “sixty find relief on her nakedness, and young men are wearied, the goddess is not wearied at all.” Possibly a favourite in taverns as well as temples, the song’s meaning is clear: Inanna was the source of endless sexual satisfaction. As one of the goddesses’ hymns acknowledged, this incredible attribute was the gift of her father Enlil. So Inanna declares how: He gave me the art of love making. He gave me the kissing of the phallus. He gave me the art of prostitution. He gave me the holy tavern.

  The Greek historian Herodotus claimed that every Babylonian woman had once in her life to sit in the temple and lie with a stranger, because it made her holy in Aphrodite’s sight. He relates:

Ashurbanipal builds Babylon

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 Incorrect though this observation is about the obligation of Babylonian women to serve the goddess with their bodies, Herodotus was right to associate the Greek goddess Aphrodite with the Sumerian Inanna and the Babylonian Ishtar. A closer link would be the Canaanite goddess Astarte, whose cult was celebrated by the Phoenicians on Cyprus, the birthplace of Aphrodite. In Aphrodite, conceived at sea within the severed phallus of the Greek sky god Ouranos, we have the export of Inanna-Ishtar-Astarte to Europe.   There are details of the onward transfer of this cult to Carthage. Elissa, the founder of Carthage, actually recruited in Cyprus eighty young girls as temple prostitutes. On their way to Tunisia in 814 BC, Elissa and her noble followers wished to ensure that Astarte’s worship continued as usual in the western Mediterranean. Temple prostitute is, however, an unsuitable description for Elissa’s girls, because the word prostitute is now so loaded with prejudice. Sexual servants or devotees of the goddess’ cult would seem a better description of their duties. Astarte was of course the Phoenician name for Ishtar. The Romans were never entirely comfortable with the erotic side of the Venus cult, despite Julius Caesar claiming to be her direct descendant through her son, the Trojan-Roman hero Aeneas. Temple prostitution seems to have survived at Eryx, in western Sicily, well into the Roman period. Diodorus Siculus says that when Roman officials visited Eryx 183

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“they put aside the gravity of office and enter into play and intercourse with women amidst great joy.” Venus, the Romanized version of Inanna-Ishtar-Astarte, also received worship in the city of Rome, but without any of these sexual rites.   In a hymn about the sacred marriage rite, an event the Sumerians believed vital for the renewal of each city, the king’s penetration of Inanna each New Year was greeted by the unbounded joy of his subjects, who were certain that now their fields would produce harvests in plenty and their flocks increase in number. For in the goddess Inanna we encounter one of the greatest Mesopotamian deities. Because she combined in her person several originally distinct goddesses, Inanna was unchallenged in the Sumerian pantheon as the source of fertility. She appears as a beautiful, wilful young aristocrat who dares to follow her own impulses wherever they may lead, even to her temporary death in the underworld.

Babylonian couple making love inside Ishtar’s temple

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The winged disc of Ashur

Babylonian lovers

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  This disastrous event occurred when Inanna dared to challenge her implacable enemy Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld. Perhaps too sure of her own creative and restorative powers, Inanna went down to “the land of no return” in order to confront her sister Ereshkigal. At each of its seven portals, she was obliged to take off a garment or ornament, until she stood naked before “the mistress of death”. After she had hung as a lifeless corpse on a stake for three days, the water god Enki sent two sexless beings to revive Inanna’s corpse with “the food and water of life”.   But after her narrow escape from the underworld, the goddess could not shake off a ghastly escort of demons who followed her as she wandered from city to city. They refused to depart unless a substitute was found. So Inanna returned home to Uruk, took offence in finding her husband Dumuzi at a feast, and let the demons carry him off to Ereshkigal’s gloomy realm. Thereafter Dumuzi’s fate was to spend half the year in the land of the living, the other half with the dead. Thus he became the ancient Near East’s original dying-andrising god.   Interestingly though, the Greeks borrowed this idea in Adonis, the victim of a wild boar. According to one version of the myth, this Syrian god was handed over to the underworld goddess Persephone for safekeeping; but, impressed by his good looks, she refused to return him to the world of the living. When Aphrodite protested to Zeus, he decided that Adonis should spend a third of every year with each goddess and the remaining third with himself.   For the Sumerians the underworld was a totally unwholesome place, nothing more than “the house of dust”. Burial rites were always carefully observed, since unburied corpses turned into malignant spirits. On the Stele of the Vultures, for instance, a mound of dead soldiers is shown being covered with earth. And the increased violence which accompanied the establishment of the Assyrian empire led understandably to a greater interest in the underworld. Upon death, the Assyrians shut the mouth tight and washed the body, while 186

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the Babylonians used honey to keep the skin in a reasonable condition. Common people were buried directly in the earth wrapped in a mat, but better-off families used clay or bronze tubs. The so-called “bathtub coffin” was beyond the means of most mourners: these copper containers have been unearthed in chamber tombs which also had goods intended to ease the deceased’s journey to the world of the dead. Royal and noble corpses were buried in stone sarcophagi, a number of which have been found in vaulted chambers underneath the old palace at Ashur. They contained the remains of several Assyrian kings such as Ashurnasirpal II and Shamshi-adad V.   Virtually all of the Mesopotamian royal tombs were plundered prior to their excavation, which cannot be entirely blamed on tomb robbers. Assyrian kings boasted of their violation of tombs belonging to enemy dynasties, disinterring cadavers and scattering the bones of royal ancestors. A famous example was Ashurbanipal’s treatment of dead Elamite kings. An inscription relates how: the burial places of their early and late kings, who feared not Ashur, I devastated. I exposed them to the sun and their bones I moved to Assyria. I laid restlessness on their spirits, for food-offerings and water-libations I denied them.

Disturbing the enemy dead was a deliberate strategy, which it was believed would weaken the will to resist. Ashurbanipal thus despoiled the tombs of Elamite kings as a final settlement of account with a persistent foe. Bas-reliefs even appear to show Elamite prisoners being forced to grind the bones of their ancestors.  The kispu rite of caring for the dead was originally connected with exorcism, since by providing food and water at regular intervals it was hoped that spiritual assistance rather than infernal interference would result. Without the kispu rite, we learn in The Descent of Ishtar, the dead are condemned to eat clay as their food. Moreover, “they see no 187

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light but dwell in darkness, and they are clothed like birds in feather garments.”   Even Ereshkigal herself was thought to possess the feet of a bird, indicating her remoteness from the voluptuous beauty of her younger sister Inanna. Yet “the mistress of death” met her match in Nergal, whose name means “chief of the great city”. This god went down to the underworld and seized Ereshkigal by the hair, pulled her from her throne, and threw her on the ground the better to cut off her head. She, however, pleaded with him for her life and offered him both marriage and rule over her kingdom. Wiping her tears away, he accepted the offer. In an alternative version of the myth, Ereshkigal persuaded the great gods to force Nergal to return to the underworld after he deserted her bed. Although the afterlife could portend horror for an ancient Mesopotamian, it seems that, as with Nergal, a not unreasonable existence was possible in “the land of no return”, provided living relatives took proper care of the departed.   Before looking at the transformation of belief inaugurated by the rise of Marduk, there is one other important Sumerian god to consider: Ninurta, son of Enlil. The most pronounced aspect of Ninurta’s

An offering scene on a limestone plaque from Nippur

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character was a delight in war, which made him popular with the Assyrians. The Sumerians had regarded him as a divine champion rather than an out-and-out war god. His greatest achievement was the recovery of “the tablet of destiny”, stolen from his father Enlil by the storm bird Anzu. But admired most of all was his victory over Azag, the dreaded offspring of the earth goddess Ki. Serpent-like Azag fought a terrible duel with Ninurta, a contest that seems to be echoed in Zeus’ combat with Typhon, the monstrous son of the Greek earth goddess Gaia. As soon as Azag saw Ninurta: the monster uprooted the sky for a club, took it in his hand … Then like a wall collapsing, Azag fell on Ninurta the son of Enlil. Like an accursed storm, Azag howled in a raucous voice; like a gigantic snake, he roared over the land. He dried up the waters of the mountains, ripped out trees, tore the flesh of the Earth and covered her with terrible wounds. He set fire to the reed-beds, bathed the sky in blood, turned it inside out … An was overwhelmed, crouched, wrung his hands on his stomach; Enlil groaned and hid himself in a corner …

Until at last Ninurta swung “his mighty mace, the lance of the mountains,” and driving Azag backwards, he finally slew the monster. “Now,” we are told, “the kings of Sumer rejoice at the heroic exploit of Lord Ninurta.”

The rise of Marduk As every Sumerian settlement gave worship to a major deity in a temple which was constantly being restored and improved, it comes as no surprise that the Semites who adopted the Sumerian pantheon did the same, and with the rise of Babylon as a great Mesopotamian power in 189

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King Shamshi-adad V’s sarcophagus, discovered at Ashur

A ‘bathtub coffin’

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the second millennium BC, its city god was bound to enjoy a parallel elevation. He was Marduk, the protector of Babylonian kings, once they had grasped the hands of the god’s cult statue. Marduk’s eventual displacement of An and Enlil at the top of the pantheon was inevitable, and the violence involved accepted by his worshippers.   A not dissimilar usurpation, after all, had led to the elevation of An and Enlil themselves. These two sons of Enmesarra and Ninmesarra, the father and mother of all the Sumerian gods and goddesses, had forcibly displaced their parents, an idea the ancient Greeks later employed to sort out their own confused cosmology. Although Ninurta had gained the title of “achiever of victory for Enlil”, there was nothing he could do to prevent Marduk’s demotion of his father. One myth records how Nergal brought news to Enmesarra of Marduk’s triumph over the great Sumerian deities, whereupon “Enmesarra’s guts burned.”   The Babylonian creation epic, the Enuma Elish, charts Marduk’s unstoppable rise to supremacy. Composed towards the end of the second millennium BC, the poem not only explains the creation of the world, but even more it celebrates the crowning of Marduk in Babylon as “king of the gods”.  The Enuma Elish, whose title comprises the epic’s first words “When on high”, starts with an account of the original state of the universe, a watery chaos in which the fresh waters underground in Absu mingled with the salt waters of the sea, personified by Tiamat. In the 280s BC the Babylonian priest Berossos wrote for the Macedonian king Antiochus I an account of Marduk’s victory over Tiamat, and the separation of heaven and earth, which allowed the formation of the sun, the moon and the stars. Berossos’ story also opens at a time when the universe was filled with water, in which creatures resembling human beings with two or four wings dwelt with fish and reptiles. By splitting Tiamat in half, Berossos says that Marduk “destroyed the creatures within her,” since these denizens of the deep “all died as they could not stand the force of light.” 191

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  The son of Ea, the Babylonian name for the Sumerian water god Enki, Marduk impressed the gods as soon as he was born. “Perturbing to behold, his four eyes and four ears knew everything, while fire blazed forth when he opened his lips.” To this divine champion fell the task of confronting Tiamat, who raised a monstrous army to crush the majority of the gods: for an unexplained reason a group of deities actually sided with her. Armed with bow and arrows, a mace, and a net, Marduk set lightning before him, filled himself with blazing flame, and mounted his storm-chariot. As a powerful tempest, therefore, the Babylonian champion advanced against the chaos dragon Tiamat. At Marduk’s challenge, Tiamat let out a terrible roar and trembled with rage as she threw herself into the attack. Like the Sumerian warrior-god Ninurta facing Azag, Marduk did not flinch but instead caught up Tiamat in his net, so that she opened her mouth in surprise. Then, “driving in a thunderstorm to stop her closing her lips,” Marduk “let fly an arrow which split her belly and penetrated her heart. Finally he held her fast until she died.”   With Tiamat slain, her followers turned to flee, but were caught in Marduk’s net, disarmed and made prisoners. From Kingu, their army commander, Marduk took the “tablet of destiny”. Not long afterwards human beings were fashioned from Kingu’s blood. From Tiamat’s dismembered body Marduk himself constructed the present world, and returning to Babylon in triumph, he was acclaimed as the supreme deity by all the gods, possibly because he spared those who had dared to side with Tiamat. This takeover of divine power by Babylon’s city god coincided with the political revival which occurred during the reign of Nebuchadrezzar I. His recovery of Marduk’s cult statue from Elam, where it had been taken on the collapse of the Kassite dynasty in 1155 BC, put this god back centre stage. As a chronicler noted, “the great god Marduk relented his anger against his land and returned to protect it again.” When in the first millennium BC Assyria rose to become the dominant power, an Assyrian scribe replaced Marduk’s name in the Enuma Elish with that of Ashur, his own god, and made a  

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few changes to let the story fit its new divine hero. In this altered form a copy of the epic was found in Ashur, the first Assyrian capital.   Another aspect of Marduk’s enhanced worship, no matter how much emphasis Babylonian kings placed on the city god’s endorsement of their royal power, was shaped by the cosmic role he played in the Enuma Elish. For Marduk was well on his way to becoming a transcendent deity, no longer tied to a specific place. A final consequence of Marduk’s elevation was paradoxically a growing closeness between the worshipper and the god. A personal religion had come into existence in which devotees could say “Marduk is my god,” a constant source of advice that anticipates the attitude expressed in the Old Testament. “Show me thy ways, O Lord,” beseeches Psalm 25, “teach me thy paths. Lead me in thy truth and teach me.” Of course a worshipper of Marduk

Offerings for the deceased

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would never have gone on to express a profound sense of personal guilt. “A broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart” was not “a suitable sacrifice” because the general concept of sin had yet to develop in the ancient Near East. Unlike for the Jews, wrongdoing for Mesopotamians was still primarily a matter of city regulation.   Reverence, admiration and self-effacement with respect to the gods dominate both Babylonian and Assyrian texts, and there is never any suggestion of the presence of divinity within a person. The gods may have actually dwelt in temples located within cities, but a yawning chasm still existed between the worshipped and the worshipper. The democracy of souls later envisaged by St Augustine is far distant, grim though this saint’s notion of eternal punishment was. St Augustine, however, saw all souls as potential saints or sinners on their way to heaven or hell, since he believed that God could be glimpsed directly by the pure in heart.   Pollution and purity were always central ideas to the Jews, who had forfeited the paradisal garden of Eden through sin. Enticed by the serpent, Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit growing on “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” and were driven from the garden for their disobedience. Though later associated with Satan, mention of the serpent in Eden may have been intended to disparage Canaanite beliefs. Snake worship was part of the rain god Baal’s cult, while a sacred serpent even guarded the temple of Enlil in Nippur.   An odd parallel of the Eden story of the Fall occurs in the Sumerian paradise myth. Whereas the Jewish version is as much about divine omniscience as the discovery of sexuality, the focus of the encounter between Enki and Ninhursag is the potency of his semen. But both tales involve the eating of tabooed fruit. “Good and evil” in Genesis means “everything”, the knowledge reserved for a deity. A variant in the Book of Ezekiel tells of a ruler who lived in a mountain paradise, but was cast down from this second Eden when he started to think of himself as a divinity. Having “walked up and down in the midst of stones of fire,” the king became so enchanted with his own “beauty” 194

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that his “wisdom” was corrupted by the “brightness”. A reason for the endless friction between Enki and Ninhursag, on the other hand, was status. Both claimed third place in the Sumerian pantheon after An and Enlil.

The Assyrian gods Apart from Ashur, the deity after whom they were named, the Assyrians worshipped the same gods as the Babylonians, but they did not always attach the same ideas to them. At the head of their pantheon stood Ashur, the god of kingship above everything else. He was the sponsor of each Assyrian monarch and, as the god of Assyria itself, his goodwill was critical in the face of the many enemies that the Assyrians made during the build-up of their empire. Subjugated

Assyrian soldiers force kneeling prisoners to grind the bones of their ancestors

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Ninurta, the original Sumerian champion

Diviners at work in an Assyrian encampment

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peoples were required to venerate him, somewhat in the manner that Roman provinces were later expected to accept the cult of the emperor. But they could worship their own deities, provided Ashur’s supremacy was acknowledged. Because of the long-standing rivalry between Babylon and Assyria, Marduk was not readily embraced by the Assyrians. His cult statue was even abducted when, in 689 BC, Sennacherib sacked Babylon.   The return of the cult statue was a headache for Esarhaddon, who expressed grave doubts about refurbishing Esagila, Marduk’s great temple in Babylon. Endeavouring to make amends after his father’s ruthless sack of the city, Esarhaddon was particularly anxious about the state of the cult statue, which may have needed repair, or worse, another one created from scratch. Diviners had told him to make good the destruction visited upon Babylon by Assyrian troops, because they feared Marduk’s possible abandonment of his cult statue could well cause damage to the cosmos. If his festivals were not observed, and if Marduk and his divine family were not cared for, the great god might quit Mesopotamia for good.  In Marduk’s Ordeal, a collection of Assyrian fragments, the anguish of this Babylonian deity is quite transparent. Utterly humiliated by Ashur, a homeless Marduk even endured temporary submersion in the Euphrates. In spite of escaping death at Ashur’s hands, it would appear that Marduk came very close to extinction, since the goddess Gula sent a messenger to inquire about his health. She was a healing goddess and the patroness of doctors.   Given this turmoil and the warning of his diviners, the hesitation of Esarhaddon remains difficult to comprehend. What seems to have worried him was the propriety of renewing Marduk’s cult statue. He asked: “Whose right is it, O great gods, to create gods and goddesses in a place where no man dare trespass? The task of refurbishment which you have given me is difficult. The making of cult statues is yours, it is in your hands.”   Yet Mesopotamian peoples did evolve a method of ensuring that a cult statue was correctly created: that it was “born in heaven, made on 197

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A votive offering to the healing goddess Gula, whose cult was associated with dogs

earth”. The special ritual and incantations involved were called by the Babylonians mis pi, by the Sumerians kaluhuda, meaning “mouth washing”. It was akin to the Egyptian ritual used in workshops where divine statues were carved. Obviously the aim was to credit the gods with the process of manufacture, which is why the craftsmen who actually made the images symbolically cut off their hands with knives of tamarisk wood. They also disclaimed any responsibility for the work they had done. How seriously Esarhaddon approached the return of Marduk’s cult statue, and those of other gods to Babylon, is evident in the festivities which marked their journey from Ashur to Babylon. Every half kilometre, piles of brushwood were lit as the procession passed; while every two kilometres, a bull was sacrificed. On the arrival of the procession in Babylon, the cult statues were taken at once to “the orchards, where the rituals of mouth-washing and mouth-opening, washing and purification were performed, before the stars of heaven, before the great gods.” 198

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  Three other Babylonian deities were highly regarded by the Assyrians: the scribal god Nabu, the champion Ninurta, and the goddess Ishtar. Next to Ishtar, Nabu played an indispensable role in royal Assyrian rituals as the divine scribe, the recorder of oaths, promises and wishes. The exulted position of Ishtar was never in doubt, when a hymn declares: You are the luminary of heaven and earth, the valiant daughter of Sin, who brandishes weapons, who prepares for battle, who gathers to herself all rites, who dons the lordly tiara. O mistress, splendid is your greatness over all the gods.

  In spite of embracing the sexual aspect of Ishtar’s cult without a second thought, the Assyrians responded strongly to the goddess’ warlike character and this influenced her worship in Assyria most. She was the “splendid lioness”, the fearsome opponent of Assyria’s foes: at the mere mention of her name “the gods totter and tremble,” not to mention human beings. Ishtar was in effect as valuable an asset to the Assyrian army as Ninurta, the warrior son of Enlil.   Because the Assyrian king saw himself as the “representative of Enlil” and the “deputy of Ashur”, it was not long before Ninurta was paired with Ashur. As the city god of Nimrud, the residence of Ashurnasirpal II, Ninurta became associated with the triumphs of Assyrian arms. This grateful king fashioned Ninurta’s cult statue out of “the best stone in the mountain and red gold.” And he added hopefully that “whenever there is battle or wars in which I strive may Ninurta let me attain my goal.” The temple in Nimrud remained the premier temple of Ninurta in Assyria until the eclipse of the Assyrian empire. The rise of this deity, however, was in progress long before Ashurnasirpal II embraced his cult with such enthusiasm. As early as 1240 BC an Assyrian king took the throne name of Tukulti-ninurta I, meaning “my protection is Ninurta”. This ruler went on to assert that he was “the favourite of the god Ninurta, the one who controls all the quarters with his might.” 199

An Assyrian fisherman

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At that time Enki spoke to Enlil: “Father Enlil, now Sheep and Grain have been created on the Holy Mound, let us send them down from the Holy Mound.” Enki and Enlil, having spoken their holy word, sent Sheep and Grain down from the Holy Mound. The Sumerian debate between Sheep and Grain

Debates were popular entertainment at the courts of Sumerian kings. Typically, a contest was between two natural phenomena such as Winter and Summer, with the performers trying to persuade the audience that one was more beneficial to humanity than the other. In this respect, the contest between Sheep and Grain, two of the fundamentals of the Sumerian economy, sheds a fascinating light on the outlook of the earliest city dwellers.   The “holy mound” represents the original home of the gods, before they moved into temples built for them inside cities. It is quite possible that ziggurats, meaning “the pre-eminent”, were intended to recall the “Holy Mound”. Cult statues either stayed in a temple at the top of a ziggurat or in a shrine at its base, according to the calendar of festivities. That the Sumerian gods were so interested in agriculture was to be expected, since they looked to humanity to feed and clothe them.   The famous debate between Sheep and Grain underlines this divine interest. We learn how: Sheep being fenced in by her sheepfold, they gave her grass and herbs generously. For Grain they made a field and gave her the plough, yoke



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An early administrative tablet from Uruk

and team. Sheep standing in her sheepfold was a shepherd of sheepfolds brimming with charm. Grain standing in her furrow was a beautiful girl radiating charm; lifting her raised head up from the field she overflowed with the beauty of heaven.

  Thus both Sheep and Grain fulfilled the wishes of the gods, filling storerooms with cereals and wool. “Wherever they directed their steps, Sheep and Grain added to the riches of the household with their weight.” As in other Sumerian myths, Sheep and Grain started a quarrel after drinking too much beer. They argued about their relative worth and the gods were asked to decide which was the most valuable. Eventually the god Enki announced that “of the two, Grain shall always be greater,” in recognition perhaps of the dependence of the Sumerians on barley. In another myth, Enki is credited with putting agriculture on a regular basis when “he organised ploughs, yokes and teams.” 202

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The funnel of a seeder-plough is clearly depicted at the bottom of this panel

An agricultural revolution It was also Enki’s supply of water for the irrigation system that sustained the agricultural revolution celebrated in the debate between Sheep and Grain. A rise in the sea level of the Persian Gulf kept river levels stable, although climatic conditions were steadily reducing the flow of both the Euphrates and the Tigris. Irrigation was a godsend in Sumer, where little rain fell. It was believed that Enki presided over Abzu, a vast underground reservoir of sweet water which appeared in rivers and canals. Lower Mesopotamia’s fertile soil combined with the use of water to reduce the amount of land required to feed an individual with barley. Without this productive combination there would never have been a food surplus that was adequate to sustain urban life, the essential feature of Mesopotamian civilization. 203

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  First of all at Uruk, then at other Sumerian cities, improvements in the methods of cultivation and the management of livestock allowed greater numbers of people to live together. The reason for the choice of barley was its fast growth and its tolerance of saline soils. In comparison with wheat, barley could tolerate pests as well as poor drainage. Rich alluvial soil and river water meant that the effective organisation of agriculture produced large surpluses, which were used for supporting infrastructure projects, including the digging of irrigation canals and the enhancement of temples. The cultivation of long fields was closely connected with the introduction of a plough pulled by oxen. Long furrows reduced the number of turns required to prepare a field, saving an enormous amount of time and assisting channel irrigation. But even more, the invention of the seeder-plough minimized the loss of seed when compared to scattering abroad by hand. A seeder-plough placed the seeds individually inside the furrow; it is estimated that it increased the barley yield by 50 per cent.   This remarkable increase in productivity accounts for the extra grain which encouraged rapid urban development, because there was now enough food to allow specialists the time needed to perfect their arts and crafts, without worrying about the next meal. In addition to the advance in sowing, animal traction also speeded up threshing through a sledge fitted with flint blades and pulled by an ass. Yet intensive irrigation, the Sumerians soon discovered, was not without its problems, since it led to the salinization of the soil. Near the marshes on the edge of the Persian Gulf, salinity was so severe that land became completely barren, indicating how critical drainage was in maintaining healthy soil because salts rise to the surface when the ground is moist. In ancient China the problem of salinization was solved through the construction of terraces and the digging of field drains. Even though this involved a great deal of labour, Chinese farmers compensated for this loss of time by the liberal application of fertiliser. Although animal manure was never wasted, they discovered that “night soil”, or human waste, when in liquid form acted as a powerful fertiliser. Not only did its high pro 

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portion of nutrients, and especially potassium, stimulate plant growth, but even more the solid element was useful for mulching the soil and retaining moisture. In ancient Mesopotamia there was hardly any use of fertilizer at all.   The accumulation of agricultural surpluses was the prompt for the development of writing: temples needed accurate records of what lay in their storerooms. It indeed appears that the cuneiform writing system gradually emerged from preliterate accounting devices. As better ways of record keeping were devised, the priesthood was able to collect, store and redistribute its stocks of grain without any fear of shortages. At this stage of economic development, wealth was largely measured in terms of food: wages were paid in kind so that the availability of labour depended entirely on the ability of a temple, and later a palace, to feed its workers, free or enslaved.   The transition to a money economy may have been largely unnoticed, since not only precious metals were treated as money payments, but so was grain. The latter does not last as long as precious metal, but it does last a considerable length of time if stored in a dry place. The changeover must have occurred when silver became more readily available. This metal might be kept in the form of rings or other ornaments although, once it had been cut into small pieces and carefully weighed, there was a universally accepted currency.   In the 2370s BC King Uruinimgina of Lagash felt obliged to intervene in that city-state’s economy. Oppressive taxation, the confiscation of temple lands, and the plight of the poor stirred him to action. Despite a short reign, Uruinimgina’s measures were a milestone in the history of Sumer, with the result that they were remembered as the foundation of law. Whether or not they brought social stability to Lagash is unknown, but the concern of this king for economic welfare shows how rulers were expected to manage an increasingly complex society. There were hired labourers, male and female, and the enslaved including children, besides free citizens who worked their own land. In Sumer, however, slaves were never attested in large numbers. But 205

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Hammurabi’s law code

they would of course have been allotted the backbreaking agricultural tasks. Not until Akkad inaugurated an era of almost constant warfare would prisoners of war swell the ranks of the enslaved. The ultimate slave society was the Assyrian empire with King Sennacherib able to deploy 52,000 slaves for a decade in the construction of his famous palace and the city walls at Nineveh. Both of these projects remained extraordinary down to that city’s destruction in 612 BC.

Hammurabi’s Babylon Under Hammurabi’s policy of centralization, Babylon became for the first time the political, religious and economic heart of a kingdom. For 206

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this king was very conscious of his own ability to shape Babylonian society, an entitlement sanctioned by none other than the sun god Shamash. As Hammurabi states about his law code: For all time in the future, may any king who shall arise in this land observe the words of justice that I inscribed on my stele. May he not change the law cases of this land that I have judged, nor the verdicts of this land that I have delivered. May he not repeal any of my regulations.

Short-lived though Hammurabi’s hegemony was, he converted Babylon from a mediocre power into the overlord of Mesopotamia. The final ten years of his reign were a period of consolidation of his conquests: hence his desire to put Babylon on a firm legal basis. This explains why his famous code is one of the most comprehensive collections of law we have.   No aspect of daily life was outside its remit. Hammurabi even sought to regulate the price and strength of beer. Because intoxication gave drinkers a sense of light-headedness which felt like leaving this world and approaching the divine, alcohol played a central role in temple services from Sumerian times onwards. Alcohol was indeed associated with the gods in ancient Mesopotamia, just as wine would be embraced by Christianity and incorporated into its most sacred rituals. And of course on health grounds alcoholic beverages were safer to drink than water because the process of fermentation killed many harmful bacteria. Another purpose of drinking beer was preparing for battle. The temple of the Sumerian war god Ningirsu at Lagash contained a brewery and brewers were themselves exempt from military service. Several of Hammurabi’s regulations deal with the rights of married women: If a woman turns against her husband and says, “You shall no longer sleep with me,” her circumstances will be investigated by the authorities of her city quarter. If she had been obedient and without fault, but her husband has been unfaithful and treats her very badly, she may

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As in this case, local matters were handled by neighbourhood courts, not always in the presence of a professional judge. Capital cases went to the palace for a final decision, for royal letters ordering executions of the convicted have survived.   But in the administration of justice not all levels of society were treated equally, since distinctions were made according to an individual’s position in society: whether they were awilum, a privileged group associated with the palace aristocracy; muskenum, the bulk of the population; or wardum, servants and slaves at the very bottom of the social ladder. Not all slaves, however, were branded and chained to deter them from running away. Many were individuals who were dependent upon a master because they were unable to look after

The head of a woman unearthed at Nimrud

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themselves. These tended to be “born in the house”, meaning that they inherited the status of slaves from their parents. Such slaves provided household labour because of the difficulties of supervising them in the fields. They were often distinguished by a special haircut called the abbuttu, which was a knot of hair worn at the top of the head. Hammurabi’s law code refers to attempts to remove the abbuttu illegally. It states: If a barber shaves the hair of a slave not belonging to him without the owner of the slave knowing they shall cut off the wrist of the barber. If a slave not belonging to him tricks a barber into shaving his hair, as for that man, they shall put him to death and hang him at his gate. The barber must swear, “When I shaved him I did not know” and he will go free.

But the number of slaves belonging to the richest households were few in number, no more than three or four. One source of slaves was the north-eastern frontier, where pre-emptive raids usually returned with a haul of prisoners. Another, more productive, source of recruitment was war. Prisoners of war could be purchased on the return of the victorious army to Babylon.   Yet there was also a steady stream of debt-slaves, individuals who had no chance of fulfilling their financial obligations and were forced to sell themselves, and sometimes members of their family, into slavery. This was a common predicament for the muskenum, who lacked the protection enjoyed by the awilum class. One of the provisions of Hammurabi’s code placed a limit of three years on debt-slavery, during which the debtor was obliged to serve in the household of a creditor. At the end of this period the slave could then regain his or her original status. In order to protect the muskenum, the core of Babylonian society, it was the custom of a king to announce the periodic cancellation of debts and the release of debt-slaves. These amnesties were possible because Babylon never relied on slave labour, unlike ancient Greece and Rome. 209

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A Sumerian harpist

A scribe

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  Although Hammurabi liked to think that his laws ensured justice to all members of society, this was not true in terms of punishment for wrongdoing, because the penalties imposed upon an offender varied according to both his own social status and that of the victim. If, for instance, an awilum broke the bone of another awilum, the offender would suffer the same injury. If, however, the awilum did the same to a muskenum, he would only suffer a fine in silver. Clearly Hammurabi’s intention in his law code was the maintenance of social order throughout his kingdom, but its regulations were, within certain limits, an attempt to persuade all his subjects that they were being treated justly. To reach those who could not read themselves, Hammurabi arranged for scribes to read out the laws relevant to the legal situation in which they found themselves. It is quite likely that everywhere his steles were erected, scribes acted as legal consultants for the illiterate.   As with other ancient communities, the family was the bedrock of Babylonian society. Both religious and customary practices reinforced the notion of male dominance, of the head of the family’s authority over its members. Thus it was understood that the authority of a father over his daughter passed to her husband when she married and left the parental home. On this occasion, the father would present a dowry to his daughter in order to provide a legacy for her children. The bridegroom would respond with a gift for the father, a “brideprice” still paid in some contemporary societies. Normally a Babylonian man had only one partner who enjoyed the legal status of wife, so that any additional women were concubines. If his wife did not produce children, he could marry again but the second wife would be subordinate to the first wife, who was regarded legally as the mother of all his children. Sometimes a marriage broke down with the arrival of another woman and a first wife then returned to her father’s house along with her dowry.   Marital infidelity was harshly punished. For a wife and her lover found together the punishment was death. Both were thrown at once into the river. In the city of Babylon the Euphrates was intimately 211

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connected with justice. If an investigation failed to establish the facts of a case, one or both parties swore an oath. If this procedure failed to get to the truth, a last resort was the water ordeal. An accuser was plunged into the river to see if he or she surfaced, proving their honesty, or almost drowned, making them guilty of a false accusation.   In spite of the supervision over trade exercised by palace authorities as well as temple officials, merchants had ample scope for their entrepreneurial schemes. And they were able to augment their own capital by slowing down the payment in silver owed to either the palace or the temple. At this stage of economic development in Mesopotamia business remained very much tied to these two institutions. It suited a temple, for instance, to let an entrepreneur handle the sale of its agricultural and craft products, and even become involved with the hire of labourers, the collection of rents and stock-breeding, because such a transfer of economic risks allowed the temple administration

A lady spinning wool

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to stay relatively lean. Just a few officials were necessary to see that these activities were performed in the best interests of the temple itself. Nearly all aspects of the palace and temple economy would eventually be managed this way. Freed from the obligation to provide rations for their workers, they were able to concentrate on the acquisition of silver as the money economy expanded apace.   Again the family was deeply involved in economic affairs. Not only did certain households retain their positions as court officials under Hammurabi and his son Samsuiluna, but hereditary privilege seems to have extended to temple administrators, other professionals and merchants. For it was perfectly natural for skills to be passed from father to son. Scribes in particular relied on their fathers to teach them their craft. Like the craftsman, a scholar had to master a body of technical knowledge, which in Assyrian times encompassed astrology, divination and lamentation. The latter was regarded as an essential means of soothing angered deities. The livelihood of such a person depended entirely upon the appreciation of his expertise by someone with the means to support him. Over time scribes fashioned themselves into the heirs of antediluvian sages like Adapa, one of the seven wise men created by Ea, the Akkadian name for the Sumerian water god Enki.   The superhuman wisdom of Adapa is evident in a myth about his taming of the wind. Out fishing one day, Adapa’s boat was overturned by a sudden gust of wind. So angry did the sage become that he shouted a curse to “break the wings” of the wind. Such was the power of his words that the wind ceased to blow “for seven days.” The temporary failure of wind to bring moisture inland and refresh the air was noticed by the god of heaven An, who called upon Adapa to account for this event. Satisfied that the sage’s wisdom was the gift of wily Ea and not some other dangerous power, An “burst into laughter” and let Adapa alone.   Hardly surprising then was the notion that scribes were the privileged holders of divine knowledge. Their scribal art was “the mother of speakers, the father of masters.” Babylonian scribes were never just 213

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compilers of administrative records. Rather they occupied major positions in the management of economic and political power. The evolution of the written script actually secured their social status, for the good reason that cuneiform underwent two apparently opposed developments. On one hand the spread of literacy encouraged simplification when cuneiform was used in legal documents or daily correspondence; on the other, the language of official record became steadily more unintelligible even if a reader could decipher the script. As a consequence, the scribes were progressively viewed as the guardians of secrets, whose role was the prevention of unauthorised access. They were the loyal servants of Nabu, the god “who creates secrets.” Only the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal could declare: “I have learned the wisdom of Nabu: I examined the entire scribal art, the teachings of the scholars, as much as there is.”

A ceremonial meal connected with feeding the deceased

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Assyrian society Unlike the kings of Babylon, those of Assyria rarely included among their royal titles any claims to be the source of justice. Instead of exhibiting a Hammurabi-like concern for legal order, Assyrian kings more or less restricted inscriptions to praise of their military prowess. This ninth-century-BC example is typical: Ashurnasirpal, king of Assyria, the great king, the mighty king, king of the four quarters, king of the four regions of the world, the sun of his people, the valiant king, the chosen of the gods Enlil and Ninurta, the one who tramples on all his opponents, who opens passages in high mountains which no one has ever reached, the powerful hero who tramples his enemies underfoot, who annihilates his foes, who destroys his enemies’ fortifications, who puts down those who rebel against

Slaves pulling ropes

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THE FIRST GREAT POWERS him, who receives tribute and taxes from the four regions of the world, who takes hostages, the conqueror of the peoples of the four regions, the son of Tukulti-ninurta, the mighty king, king of Assyria, son of Adad-nerari, king of Assyria; the valiant man whose actions are upheld by the gods Ashur, Adad, Ishtar, Ninurta, his allies, and who knows no rival among the princes of the four regions of the world; the mighty king who has extended his conquests from the banks of the Tigris to Mount Lebanon and to the great sea of the land of Amurru.

Like his predecessors, it was believed that Ashurnasirpal II enjoyed this supremacy through the steadfast support of the gods. He was no less than Ashur’s deputy, and the unquestioned authority within the Assyrian empire.

An Assyrian youth

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  Within a century, however, a recognition of the role of the monarch as a just ruler begins to appear. Sargon II was described as the “preserver of law and lover of justice”. It seems very probable that this innovation was a direct result of increased contact between Assyria and Babylon, since Assyrian royal titles start to reflect the traditions of Lower Mesopotamia. But there is no evidence of royal involvement with the judicial system other than an acknowledgement of the king’s ultimate authority. We are aware of appeals made directly to the king and in particular where maladministration was alleged. Royal intervention seems only to have happened when an injustice was shown to have arisen through official action, or inaction. Whereas in Babylon the king was expected to act as the final arbiter of legal disputes, in Assyria a much looser arrangement prevailed, and especially outside the empire’s heartland where the diverse customs of subject peoples had to be taken into account.   It was also the practice of Assyrian kings to move the inhabitants of Mesopotamia to newly incorporated territories at a distance from their homes. When Tiglath-pileser III conquered Syria in 732 BC and installed compliant rulers, he resettled thousands of people there from Babylon as well as Assyria. What this king also did to strengthen the Assyrian empire was deport the population of unreliable vassals and repopulate their territory with farmers capable of a high level of production. Subject peoples, however, were allowed to remain on their own land as long as tribute was regularly paid. Where absolutely necessary Tiglath-pileser III established a province with an Assyrian administration backed by a garrison. Each province was expected to remit annually to Assyria a fixed amount of tax.   Similarly to the imperialism of republican Rome, where annual military expeditions were popular with its citizens as well as its Italian allies, the Assyrian army cheerfully marched to wars that were in reality a well-organized system of pillage, which did not stop after victory on the battlefield and the capture of enemy soldiers. For Assyria then added the conquered land to its empire. An uncanny parallel to 217

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Assyrian violence was the action of Scipio Africanus in 209 BC at New Carthage, present-day Cartagena in southern Spain. On the fall of the city he told his troops to kill everyone and to spare no one, and not start looting until they received the order. As the historian Polybius reflected: “The purpose of this custom, I suppose, was to strike terror.” Brutality was, after all, a cheap tool of control. The slaughter at New Carthage was very great indeed, but 100,000 people still survived to be enslaved.   Rivalry between Rome and Carthage, which lasted from 264 until 146 BC, had drawn Spain into the political affairs of the western Mediterranean. Having lost Sicily and Sardinia to Rome by 238 BC, the Carthaginians turned their attention to Spain in order to achieve direct control over its mineral and agricultural resources. This policy was especially dear to Hannibal, who rejected Rome’s threats against expansion in the Iberian peninsula and, after the declaration of hostilities between Carthage and Rome, led an army from Spain, crossed the Alps, and ravaged Italy. In 216 BC at Cannae in southern Italy Hannibal inflicted the worst defeat ever suffered by the Romans, when 80,000 men were slain on a single day. Yet in the end Rome recovered and beat Carthage because, as Polybius said, Roman superiority derived from the quality of its legionaries. After the defeat of Carthage, the Romans lacked a grand strategy for Spain: rather their campaigns comprised no more than a random hunt for Celtic peoples to fight and booty to take home. It was indeed the plentiful supply of war captives which allowed slavery to become so widespread in Italy, which had nearly three million slaves, a third of the entire population. Both Rome and Assyria were addicted to merciless warfare.   Just as the landowning Roman elite delighted in the opportunities for financial gain afforded by military expansion, so war-oriented Assyrian nobles took advantage of their kings’ preference for unremitting conflict. These Assyrians used their share of the spoils to extend inherited estates, often at the expense of hard-pressed peasant farmers. Such an individual was Sulmu-sarri, who was “a friend” of King 218

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Ashurbanipal. We know about him from documents found in his mansion at Dur Katlimmu, an Assyrian city in modern Syria. Sulmusarri’s appointment to the rank of a royal friend, literally someone “who is close to the king,” suggests that he was a high-ranking military officer. Dur Katlimmu was garrisoned by a detachment of chariots and seems to have functioned as a centre for the collection of intelligence. Like many Assyrians who enjoyed Ashurbanipal’s favour, Sulmu-sarri was a wealthy man, the owner of fields, orchards and agricultural buildings. Apart from his own substantial dwelling, he owned three other houses and at least one entire village.   Sulmu-sarri’s mansion was enormous. It comprised three separate wings arranged around paved courtyards, large storage areas, several kitchens, four bathrooms and two wells. An upper storey was reached by four staircases. As many as a hundred slaves, mostly women with young daughters, met the domestic needs of Sulmu-sarri including

Plan of Sulmu-sarri’s mansion

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weaving cloth from wool supplied by his own flocks. After his death at an advanced age during the reign of Sin-sharra-ishkun, Assyria’s penultimate king, the three sons of Sulmu-sarri took over his estates. There was no preference in inheritance among sons; all inherited equally. We do not know the fate of Sulmu-sarri’s sons during the final years of the Assyrian empire. Nineveh fell in 612 BC and the last centre of resistance at Harran only lingered on for few more years. Favoured by Assyrian kings who patronised the temple of the moon god Sin there, Harran remained loyal to the Assyrian cause to the very end.   Although Assyria was deeply conservative, its social structure proved flexible enough to cope with the stresses and strains arising from the formation of an empire of unprecedented size. In fact, it was the stability of Assyrian society that sustained a powerful monarchy, the driving force behind this territorial expansion. As the cities in Assyria grew too populous to feed themselves from the agricultural produce of the surrounding countryside, kings stepped in and arranged for the arrival of an adequate supply of grain. It is not impossible that Assyrian kings regarded all land as in some sense belonging to them, despite the existence of private ownership. Royal inscriptions constantly boast of low prices but there is not enough information available to track accurately fluctuations in the economy.   Grain prices appear to have varied widely, by as much as 100 per cent depending on how dry the year had been. Previous Mesopotamian kings claimed to have ensured economic justice, but their interventions in the economy were rarely successful; nor apparently were the Assyrians’. A factor in the Assyrian failure was certainly the policy of deportation which disrupted economic life in many areas of Assyria’s empire. Unlike the later Babylonians, the economic implications of switching peoples from one location to another were only occasionally considered, as when the Assyrian king Tiglath-pileser III settled people on previously uncultivated land in the hope that they would be able to farm there. A fundamental feature of the Mesopotamian economy was  

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An Assyrian priest

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the management of agriculture, its most critical factor being the supply of labour, not the availability of land.   As can be seen from Sulmu-sarri’s household, the family was the central concern of every Assyrian, and in particular the birth of heirs. Sulmu-sarri was blessed with three sons but it was not uncommon for a childless couple to adopt a son in order to ensure the future of a family. At every level of Assyrian society the desire for continuity was paramount, which made Ashurbanipal’s failure to secure a smooth succession to the throne so damaging to Assyria. We have no knowledge of Ashurbanipal’s designated heir, and Sin-sharra-ishkun only became king in 623 BC, some four years after his father’s death. A breakdown in royal authority was immediately evident because Sinsharra-ishkun had to use “the battle troops of his own estate” to put his older brother Ashur-etel-ilani on the throne. That this happened at all must reflect the extent to which the old order had passed away with Ashurbanipal.   Ashurbanipal may well have expected the Assyrian empire to last for ever, but within fifteen years of his death in 627 BC, it had disintegrated. The Assyrian annals described several instances where the king displayed the heads or bodies of high-ranking, mostly royal, defeated enemies at city gates. The uprising in Ashur upon news of Ashurbanipal’s death indicated how volatile Assyrian cities could be. Urban unrest was seriously dangerous when combined with noble ambition, as seems to have been the case here.   The majority of Assyrians were free except for debt-slaves: these unfortunates were not as badly off as ordinary slaves, whose life was commonly harsh and showed a similar callousness to the Assyrian army’s treatment of rebels and external enemies. Debt-slaves could marry a free person, conduct business with other slaves and their masters, and could even own property. And there was also the prospect that one day their debts would be repaid and their freedom fully restored. We are aware of forced labour, called dulla sa sari, or “the work of the king”. Traditionally free peasants worked for the crown as part of their 222

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tax burden, but the government could also demand their work at other times, when it had to pay for this extra labour. Palaces and temples turned to free peasants for labour when it was needed during the agricultural cycle. But most dependent upon forced labour was undoubtedly the Assyrian army. Not only did loot from captured cities underwrite its running costs, but even more importantly enslaved prisoners were used to repair fortifications and transport supplies.   The position of women in Assyrian society was much lower than in Babylon. Entirely dependent upon her male relations—father, husband, sons and brothers—a wife’s sole responsibility was her children. Outside the home, highborn women had to go about veiled. Assyrian laws contain some of the most stringent regulations witnessed in the ancient Near East, restricting the movements and contacts of at least highborn women. Apart from wearing veils, they were expected to conduct themselves in a decorous manner. Royal women were of course used as pawns in international marriages to cement relations with far-flung sovereigns. No complaints from these women have survived, but their attitude must have included trepidation and dismay.   Foreigners living in Assyria tended to be the enslaved, and generally laboured on building projects or were otherwise employed in menial work in temples, palaces and great houses. Not a few toiled on the land. There were also other resident foreigners such as princes and nobles from vassal kingdoms, essentially hostages kept to ensure the good behaviour of their homelands. Even the odd foreign king might on occasion seek refuge at the Assyrian court. None of these people would have worried the Assyrians: they ruled most of them anyway.

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The wall of King Nebuchadrezzar II’s throne room in Babylon

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They marched along the bank of the Tigris and encamped at Nineveh. From the month of Sivan until the month of Ab, three whole months, they subjected the city to an intense siege. On the ninth day of Ab they inflicted on the great people a major defeat and Sin-sharra-ishkun, the king of Assyria, was killed. Then they carried off a vast amount of booty from the city and left Nineveh a ruin. From the Babylonian chronicle

This account of Nabopolassar’s sack of the Assyrian capital in 612 BC marked the end of the Assyrian empire. A semblance of power survived for a short period afterwards, but this was the year in which the era of Assyria’s dominance of the ancient Near East was over.   A decade earlier Nabopolassar had seized the throne of Babylon. The turmoil in Assyria itself, following the death of its last great king Ashurbanipal, offered Nabopolassar a perfect opportunity to throw off the Assyrian yoke. We have little idea who the new king of Babylon was. The suggestion that Nabopolassar was of Chaldean stock is now largely discounted, although the Chaldeans had been steadily moving northwards from the Persian Gulf and occupying southern Mesopotamia over many years. There is some evidence that he was the son of the governor of Uruk, who had rebelled against Assyrian rule. Described as “the son of a nobody,” Nabopolassar ignored such insults and concentrated on securing his southern power base, prior to taking the title of king of Babylon in 625 BC.

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Cylinder of Nebuchadrezzar II, which mentions his building projects

  Nabopolassar’s assault on Assyria was waged in alliance with the Medes, an Iranian people with a grudge against the Assyrians. The Medes are mentioned in the inscriptions of Shalmaneser III: he was the first Assyrian king to attack them. Later in the 740s BC Tiglathpileser III campaigned in Median territory, spreading terror whenever local rulers were slow to accept vassalship. With almost clinical precision, the Babylonians and the Medes destroyed Assyria: the fall of Ashur in 614 BC, Nineveh in 612 BC, and Harran in 610 BC revealed the methodical progress of their combined operations. None of these Assyrian cities were rebuilt and only at Ashur was a diminished settlement allowed to continue under Babylonian supervision. The cult statue of Ashur underwent the same fate as that of Marduk in 689 BC, being carried away by the victors.   In the meantime, Egypt had taken advantage of the political void in the west to extend its influence along the Mediterranean coast as far as the Syrian loop of the Euphrates, where an Egyptian garrison took possession of Carchemish. An energetic pharaoh by the name of Necho II was responsible for this northern thrust. While responding to an Assyrian appeal for military assistance—a last gasp bid by King Ashur-uballit to save a remnant of Assyrian power—Necho II really had an eye on restoring Egypt to its status as a great power by the 226

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annexation of Syria and Palestine. In 610 BC, however, the Egyptians and the Assyrians abandoned Harran in the face of a BabylonianMedian assault. A reason for this ignominious retreat was the delayed arrival of the main Egyptian army, which had encountered opposition in Palestine.   It was Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadrezzar II, who finally dislodged the Egyptians from Syria in 605 BC. Having won a victory over the Egyptian army at Carchemish, Nebuchadrezzar II pursued it southwards to Hamath where, according to the Babylonian chronicle, “both sides suffered severe losses,” despite the Babylonians claiming a second victory. The retreat of the Egyptians afterwards tends to confirm this claim, but not the statement that “no Egyptian returned home.” Anyway, Nebuchadrezzar II was in no position to harry the Egyptian army because he had to return to Babylon in order to occupy the throne. Nabopolassar may well have been ill when his son set off for Syria: he died shortly after Nebuchadrezzar II got there. With no agreed procedure for the succession in Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar II had no choice but to hasten back to the capital. That he was able to become king in 604 BC proved to be one of the great events in ancient history, since Nebuchadrezzar II not only established the second Babylonian empire but during his forty-two years on the throne he also turned the city of Babylon into one of the seven wonders of the world.  

The reign of Nebuchadrezzar II Concerned to prevent a rival claiming the throne, Nebuchadrezzar II ordered the Babylonian army to return home with prisoners and booty by the usual route, while he himself set out with a few companions and reached Babylon by crossing the Syrian desert. This allowed Nebuchadrezzar II to reach Babylon in less than two weeks. Having been acknowledged there as king by the aristocracy and palace officials, Nebuchadrezzar II was sufficiently confident of his position to return to Syria soon afterwards. 227

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  According to the Babylonian chronicle, the new king “marched about victoriously” almost every year for a decade in Syria and Palestine. These campaigns were probably connected with the enforcement of Babylonian authority rather than new conquests. In his first year on the throne, “all the rulers of Syria came before him and he received their tribute,” implying that these former Assyrian vassals found it expedient to switch their allegiance to Babylon. With them was King Jehoiakim of Judah, who remained loyal for the next three years. In Palestine, however, Ashkelon refused to pay tribute and its king was deposed. The Babylonian chronicle states: “Nebuchadrezzar II seized its king, plundered and sacked the city, leaving it no more than a ruin heap.” On the other hand, Judah was allowed to reinforce its own southern border so that “the king of Egypt came not again any more out of this his land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt unto the Euphrates all that pertained to the king of Egypt.” So the Bible explains Nebuchadrezzar II’s frontier policy.   Aware of the ambitions of Necho II, the Babylonians also launched a pre-emptive strike on Egypt and at Pelusium, a city close to the Nile delta, they fought the Egyptians to a standstill. Both sides once again sustained heavy casualties. Nebuchadrezzar II had to return home to rebuild his army, leaving Necho II to attempt another northern advance. On this occasion the pharaoh reached Gaza, but the Egyptians were

A fragment of a Babylonian astronomical text

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unable to make any permanent headway against the Babylonians. Yet renewed Egyptian activity encouraged the Jews to defy Babylon and on two occasions Nebuchadrezzar II captured Jerusalem. The second conquest, in 587 BC, brought an end to Judah’s existence and was accompanied by a deportation of Jews to Babylon, remembered ever after in Jewish history as “the exile”. With Jerusalem destroyed, Nebuchadrezzar II invaded Egypt but we know nothing about this campaign, which seems to have achieved no lasting success.   What Nebuchadrezzar II sought to eliminate in Palestine was proEgyptian support and as a result Babylonian garrisons were steadily reinforced. But even in Syria he seems to have been obliged to intervene in 596 BC at Carchemish, where he reordered Syrian affairs for a month before returning to Babylon. There were also problems along the eastern frontier which needed Nebuchadrezzar II’s attention. On this occasion the trouble was not caused by the Elamites, whom Ashurbanipal had effectively destroyed, but other peoples who had taken their place. They were, however, not prepared to face the Babylonian army and retreated in haste to their mountain strongholds.   Nebuchadrezzar II’s rebuilding of Babylon was not just a consequence of the inflow of tribute from vassal kingdoms, massive though it undoubtedly was. Building activity was also paid for by a period of economic growth that lasted for almost half a century, from the fall of the great Assyrian cities to just before the arrival of the Persian king Cyrus in 539 BC. Two areas of the Babylonian empire did exceptionally well with the return of peace: southern Mesopotamia and the Phoenician cities. The latter took advantage of their intermediary role between the empire and an increasingly rich Mediterranean world. If Babylon itself functioned mainly as an agricultural and political centre, the west of the empire was predominantly a commercial one.   Southern Mesopotamia experienced a boom as population figures rose, despite the decay of the network of irrigation canals. With the silting of the Persian Gulf ’s coast and the advance of the desert towards the Euphrates, the environs of Babylon were turned into  

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An oracular fish discovered in Babylon

something of an agricultural oasis, surrounded by sandy dunes in the west, marshes in the south, and a war-torn borderland in the north. But the economy of southern Mesopotamia managed to flourish through a combination of slave labour and a tied peasantry. Temples and palaces owned most of the valuable agricultural land, production being overseen by satammu, “administrators” responsible for meeting annual targets. Clashes over the share of profits between workers and institutions became an unsettling feature of city life. It is possible that the bitter disagreement between Nabonidas, Babylon’s last king, and the priesthood of Marduk arose from economic issues of this kind.   Inscriptions are abundant for the rebuilding of Babylon but they are not easily placed in chronological order. It appears that Nebuchadrezzar II first repaired the Euphrates river wall and quay to receive building supplies and to protect low-lying areas of the city from inundation. This allowed work to be resumed on the ziggurat and temple of Marduk. Next he erected law courts, administrative buildings and a palace, using glazed bricks. Progress with the famous Ishtar Gate was comparatively slow, perhaps for the reason that it was to be the city’s showpiece. The massive city walls obviously had a military function but, here again, Nebuchadrezzar II was keen to impress his subjects, vassals and foreign envoys. Other cities besides Babylon were renovated as well. Sippar, for instance, was given a clean water supply and the temples of Shamash and other deities were repaired. And all south230

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ern Mesopotamian temples were supplied with regular offerings. Even though Babylon could have used coinage, pieces of silver remained the main currency. The Lydians had minted the first coins in the 640s BC.   The best known image of Nebuchadrezzar II today is that of a haunted and terrified man crawling on all fours, his nails grown into claws, his beard dragging along the ground and his face a study in utter horror. William Blake’s illustration is the most famous portrait of the mad king, a story that goes all the way back to the Book of Daniel, which confused this ruler with Nabonidas. The biblical confusion stamped Nebuchadrezzar II with a damning character quite unlike that of the real Babylonian king. He was never “driven from men” and never “ate grass like oxen”, nor “was his body wet with the

A tablet describing the New Year festival at Babylon

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dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles’ feathers, and his nails like birds’ claws.” On the contrary, Nebuchadrezzar II is praised in contemporary documents as “king of justice”, an obvious echo of Hammurabi’s fame as a law-giver. He is described as a devotee of Marduk, whose approval he sought by protecting the poor, bridling the arrogance of the rich, and preventing the bribery of officials. Above all, Nebuchadrezzar II is credited with stimulating a religious revival that matched his imperial successes.

Nebuchadrezzar II’s successors It is likely that Amel-Marduk, the son of Nebuchadrezzar II, acted as regent during his father’s final illness. He succeeded to the throne of

Nabonidas, the last Babylonian king

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Babylon in mid-561 BC without apparent difficulty but within two years Amel-Marduk was swept away in a palace coup. The new king was a casualty of the rivalry between two groups of courtiers: one of them led by Neriglissar wanted to pursue a policy of conquest, while the other favoured consolidation of the existing empire. AmelMarduk inclined to the latter view and was assassinated as a result.   Nergal-sharra-usur, the biblical Neriglissar, became the next king of Babylon in 559 BC. Though not directly in line for the throne, Neriglissar did belong to the royal family through his marriage to Kassaia, Amel-Marduk’s sister. Apart from being an experienced general, he was also a great landowner who had used the proceeds of conquest to buy out struggling rural families. His reign was marked by the resumption of military operations, chiefly in Asia Minor, and the restoration of temples. He did not seem to share Nebuchadrezzar II’s suspicion of the Medes. No effort was made to strengthen the defensive wall that Nebuchadrezzar II had built to the north of Babylon, which ran between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers.   Neriglissar’s campaigns in southern Asia Minor were a response to unrest among its previously submissive rulers. Inherited from the Assyrians, these vassals thought the moment had arrived to assert their independence. They underestimated the determination of Neriglissar who, according to the Babylonian chronicle, pursued his enemies “for a distance of fifteen double-hours of marching through difficult mountains, where men must walk in single file.” Not only did he capture their mountain strongholds, and sack them, but he also overran “a mountain which is in the midst of the ocean.” There he took prisoner a garrison of 6,000 enemy troops “by means of boats.” The Babylonian triumph enhanced the empire’s prestige and turned the conquered area into a buffer zone between Lydia and the encroaching forces of the Medes. Only Egypt posed a problem, setting its sights once again on Palestine and Syria, but Neriglissar believed there was no great necessity to conquer it, and his military demonstration in the north was sufficient to persuade the Egyptians to respect Babylon’s sphere of influence.  

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  A problem for Babylon, however, was the fact that Neriglissar belonged to a generation which was already old. And a four-year reign was too short to guarantee a smooth succession to the throne. Neriglissar’s chosen heir was his son Labashi-Marduk, but this young man faced widespread opposition and lasted only three months as king. We cannot even be sure that he lasted that long. The new palace revolution was the work of a faction thwarted by Neriglissar’s assumption of royal authority. It raised to the throne Nabonidas, Babylon’s last and most enigmatic ruler.

The Nabonidas enigma Ever since his reign, which lasted from 555 to 539 BC, Nabonidas has been a controversial figure. Contemporaries were baffled by his behaviour and subsequent generations could make no sense of his temporary abandonment of the city of Babylon. From 551 to 541 BC Nabonidas moved his court to Tema in Arabia, leaving his son Belshazzar to run the empire.

A cylinder of Nabonidas, which registers the king’s ongoing preoccupation with the cult of Sin, the moon god

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A verse account of Nabonidas’ reign

  During Nabonidas’ voluntary exile in Arabia, the Babylonian chronicle tells us that Marduk’s annual parade around the city of Babylon did not take place. Offerings “were presented to the gods of Babylon and Borsippa in the Esagila and Ezida temples,” but “the king was in Tema and kept away from Babylon.” This break in the traditional cycle of festivities must have worried the inhabitants of the capital because it could lead to Marduk’s own abandonment of the city, with all the dreadful consequences that the withdrawal of divine protection entailed. Marduk was, after all, the supreme deity.   Nabonidas’ own relationship to the powerful priesthood of Marduk was complex. First of all, he was an outsider who hailed from Harran, where his long-lived mother Adad-guppi acted as a priestess of the moon god Sin. A second cause of his estrangement from the religious establishment in Babylon was the influence of Adad-guppi, about whom we know something as her biography was preserved on the 235

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Two of the decorations on the walls of the Ishtar Gate, a snake dragon and a bull.

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underside of a paving stone used in the Great Mosque at Harran. It was discovered in 1956. Extraordinary by any standards, Adad-guppi survived four reigning monarchs in Assyria and the sack of Harran, and her life even encompassed the whole of the new Babylonian dynasty down to the ninth year of its last king, her son Nabonidas, when she died at the age of 104.   Adad-guppi’s authority in Harran seems to have been a consequence of her close ties with the Assyrian royal family. One of Nabonidas’ early aims was the restoration of his mother’s temple, the Ehulhul or “the house which gives joy”. Its equivalent in Ashur was called the Ehulhuldirdirra, which means “the house of surpassing joys”. There it was part of a double temple complex dedicated both to the moon god Sin and the sun god Shamash. Because of his concern to restore damaged temples and reinstate sacred rituals throughout his kingdom, Nabonidas has often been regarded as an obsessive antiquarian. That Nebuchadrezzar II’s immediate successors had such short reigns, Nabonidas claimed, was a result of their impiety, a lack of concern for Mesopotamia’s pantheon. So he could argue: “I am the true legitimate heir of Nebuchadrezzar. I have continued and finished the restoration of temples, the sacred furniture and the cults.” Like Neriglissar, Nabonidas was married to a daughter of Nebuchadrezzar II, which explains the biblical tradition that his own son Belshazzar was Nebuchadrezzar’s grandson.   We should never forget that Nabonidas’ backers were senior commanders, who recognised the military credentials of the new king. They saw him as a counter to the rising power of Cyrus, the Persian king. This forceful ruler had already subdued the Medes and would extend Persian influence into Asia Minor with the conquest of Lydia. And the first years of Nabonidas’ reign witnessed the resumption of campaigns in Syria, implying that the earlier ones of Neriglissar were far from decisive. Booty, tribute and prisoners were taken to Babylon, where 2,850 captives became temple slaves. Throughout his reign Nabonidas enjoyed the support of the Babylonian army. 237

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  In 552 BC, however, Nabonidas turned his attention westwards. He advanced into northern Arabia and established a royal residence in the oasis city of Tema, a thousand kilometres from Babylon. During Nabonidas’ stay in Tema, Belshazzar was a conscientious stand-in for his father at Babylon, not only managing the empire but also supporting the cult of Marduk. No consensus has emerged about the prolonged absence of the Babylonian king from his capital. While some scholars believe that the strength of the moon god’s worship in Arabia attracted Nabonidas, others suggest that the move of the court was due to political pressure from the Persians, whose ambitions in Syria and northern Mesopotamia were becoming clear. Nabonidas may have been attempting to expand his power into wealthy Arabia as some kind of compensation. Tema itself acted as the hub of Arabian trade.   Whatever the specific reason for Nabonidas’ voluntary exile at Tema, there was a definite religious factor behind his decision. By enlarging the range of royal patronage within the Mesopotamian pantheon, the king was implicitly downgrading the role of Marduk, although Nabonidas never denied this deity’s importance for Babylon. After his return to the city from Tema, the elderly king celebrated the New Year festival in 539 BC. But the priests of Marduk always resented the royal favour shown to the moon god Sin and made residence in Babylon uncomfortable for Nabonidas. A lengthy inscription from Harran underlines the religious side of Nabonidas’ character. It runs as follows:  

The actions of Sin, greatest of the gods, and goddesses, nobody realises, since from times past it came down not to the land, where the people could see it, nor was it written upon a tablet and set down for people to read but, instead, you Sin, the lord of the gods and goddesses, dwellers of the heavens, came from the heavens in front of me, Nabonidas king of Babylon. I, Nabonidas, the lonely one, who have not the honour of being somebody, and kingship is not within me, but the gods and goddesses prayed for me, and Sin called me to kingship. In the ninth season he caused me to dream and learn that I must

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THE BABYLONIAN REVIVAL quickly restore Ehulhul, the temple of Sin in Harran, so that I should receive all the lands. But the people of Babylon, Borsippa, Nippur, Ur, Uruk, Larsa, the officials and inhabitants of the Babylonian cities, acted wickedly and offended his divinity, they knew not the terrible wrath of Sin, the moon god and king of the gods. They disregarded his rituals and spoke impious words. Like dogs they devoured one another, they brought fever and famine into their midst. So great Sin decimated the inhabitants of the land, he made me leave my city of Babylon, and led me to Tema, Dadanu, Padakku, Hibra, Yadihu, as far as Yatribu. Ten years I went about among them, and did not enter my city of Babylon. At the word of Sin, king of the gods, lord of the lords of the gods and goddesses, dwellers of the heavens, they accomplished the word of the moon god, Sin, and made Shamash, Ishtar, Adad, and Nergal guard my safety and life. Every year, in the month of Nisan and the month of Teshrit, the people of Babylon and of Syria received the bounty of the

The Babylonian empire at its greatest extent

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THE FIRST GREAT POWERS land and the sea. Adad, the lockkeeper of heavens and the underworld, at the command of Sin sent down rain, even in the heat of summer, in the months of Sivan, Tammuz, Ab, Elul and Teshrit, so that they brought their property and possessions before me in peace. At the word of Sin, the goddess Ishtar, the lady of battle, without whom hostility and peace do not exist in the land, and a weapon is not forged, placed her hand upon them: the kings of Egypt, the Medes, the lands of the Arabs, and all the hostile kings, beseeched peace and good relations with me. As regards the Arabs, ever ready to seek plunder, at the word of Sin, Nergal shattered their weapons and all of them bowed down at my feet. Shamash, lord of the oracle, without whom a mouth is not opened and a mouth is not shut, accomplishing the command of the moon god, the father who created him, made the people of Babylon and Syria, whom he had committed into my hands, be true in mouth and heart to me, so that they kept guard for me, they followed my command in tracts far distant and on the remote road I travelled. After ten years the appointed time arrived on the day which the king of the gods, Sin, had predicted, namely the seventeenth day of the month Teshrit, known as the day favoured by the moon god. Before that day, my consultations with the diviner and dream interpreter never ceased, but whenever I slept, my dreams were confusing: that is, until the word came true, the time arrived, the right moment predicted by Sin arrived. Then I sent a messenger from Tema to Babylon, the seat of my kingship. When they saw him, the Babylonians brought gifts and offerings before him; the kings of neighbouring lands came up and kissed my feet, and those far away heard it, and feared Sin’s greatness. The gods and goddesses who had left Babylon returned and brought their blessings. The word of the great god I observed, without being negligent. I let him summon the peoples of Babylon and Syria, from the borders of Egypt on the Upper Sea as far as the Lower Sea, whom Sin, king of the gods had committed into my hands. The Ehulhul temple of Sin I built, I finished its work. I led in procession Sin, Ningal, Nusku and Sadarnunna at Babylon, my royal city, and with joy and gladness I placed them in their sanctuaries. Generous libations I poured out and presented many gifts. Thus I fulfilled the command of

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  The reasons for Nabonidas’ return to Babylon are as obscure as those which led to his departure. Possibly the completion of the restoration work at Harran prompted the move, although at the age of seventy the king might have considered it advisable to go back to the capital. With its restored temple, the city of Harran remained a centre of worship for the moon god well into Roman times. Yet the writing was already on the wall for the Babylonian empire. According to the Book of Daniel, a lavish feast of Belshazzar was disrupted by the appearance of a strange script on the wall of his banqueting hall. Only Daniel could read it. The message warned Belshazzar of his imminent death and the Persian conquest of Babylon.   Although Nabonidas remained an enthusiast for the worship of Sin, whose cult statue may well have been placed in Esagila, Marduk’s own temple, the Babylonian king could not avoid noticing the political changes taking place in what is present-day Iran. The earlier fears of Nebuchadrezzar II about Median power were about to be realised, but not so much by the Medes as the Persians, their new overlords.

The cylinder describing how Cyrus captured Babylon in 539 BC

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The Persian conquest During the summer of 539 BC war clouds increased to the extent that the cult statues of several cities were brought into Babylon for safe keeping, a precaution against any attack from the east. Those of Sippar and Borsippa were not moved, even though the Persians had already reached the banks of the Tigris.   When Cyrus II, justifiably called the Great, came to the Persian throne in 559 BC, he may have already decided to overthrow his Iranian neighbours, the Medes. This was by no means an easy task, as the Persians suffered three defeats before finally overcoming the Medes. But Cyrus was astute enough to conciliate his defeated opponents by portraying himself as a successor of their own royal house. We are told that Cyrus entered the tent of Astyages, the Median king, and took his place on the throne and grasped his sceptre. The the crown was placed on Cyrus’ head.   Apart from gaining control of the Iranian plateau, Cyrus acquired in the Median royal treasure a means of financing future military operations. Next he attacked Lydia, after lulling the Babylonians into a false sense of security. Following the capture of Sardis, the Lydian capital, Cyrus subdued the Greek cities of Ionia, before turning on Babylon, where the unpopularity of Nabonidas provided the perfect pretext for an attack.   Nabonidas led the Babylonian army to the Tigris where it opposed the Persian advance with some success, because the massacres perpetuated afterwards by Cyrus’ troops attest to the rigour of the Babylonian resistance. That Nabonidas then withdrew to Babylon suggests that he decided to make a determined stand in the capital itself. Stockpiled provisions would allow the Babylonians to hold out for several years. Unable to overcome Babylon’s impressive fortifications by storming them, Cyrus was obliged to divert the waters of the Euphrates and infiltrate Babylon with a small company of soldiers, who surrounded the Esagila temple as well as capturing other strong 242

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points. The fact that the Babylonians were celebrating a major festival must have assisted this daring exploit. Belshazzar was slain; Nabonidas surrendered and his life was spared.   The swift and seemingly unexpected nature of Babylon’s collapse, as reflected in the Bible, could be explained by the assistance that anti-Nabonidas elements in the capital gave to the Persians. Now we cannot be so sure that this tipped the balance of power, since the Babylonian army remained loyal to its king, and there is no concrete evidence that Cyrus had any dealings with Marduk’s priesthood before infiltrating the city. Herodotus suggests that chance played a role in the city’s capture. “Owing to the size of the city,” he wrote, “the outskirts were captured without the people in the centre knowing about it. There was a festival going on, and they continued to dance and enjoy themselves, until they learned the news the hard way.”

Cyrus’ modest tomb

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Cyrus himself attributed his swift victory to the will of Marduk as a punishment of a regime which had tried to marginalise his cult. Even the Babylonian chronicle draws special attention to the fact that during the Persian takeover “there was no interruption of the services in Esagila or the other temples and no rite was missed.” It is also recorded on the Cyrus Cylinder how keen the Persian king was to be seen as a friend of the Babylonian people.   Cyrus understood the value of Babylonian cooperation in administering the mighty empire he was in the process of founding. His triumphal entry into Babylon was never regarded by the Persians as an unreserved submission by its inhabitants. Just as when Alexander the Great entered the city in 331 BC, Cyrus was simply reminding the Babylonians of their new obligations to Persia. What he wished to demonstrate was a definite break with Mesopotamian traditions of pillage and destruction. For under the Persians there were no more mass deportations, and exiles were allowed to return to their homelands if they wished. Rebellions were not unknown, but despite periodic usurpation crises, the violent repression of the Assyrians became a thing of the past.   Just as Cyrus took care to conduct himself appropriately as Astyages’ successor, so in the Near East as a whole the Persian king acted with consideration for his new subjects. Cyrus had spared Astyages and granted him a princely style of life. Although the contrast between the impious behaviour of Nabonidus and the pious attitude of Cyrus should not be taken at face value, it is transparent that Cyrus deliberately forged amicable relations with the Babylonian priesthood. For without the active support of this influential part of Babylonian society, there was little prospect of a lasting peace, a prerequisite for the further expansion of the Persian empire. Not long after the fall of Babylon, Cyrus was killed fighting the Massagetae near the Caspian Sea. This expedition in 530BC has been launched to secure Persia’s northern frontier against raids from Central Asian tribesmen. Typically, the great conqueror’s tomb was modest, a garbled structure set on a stepped platform after the style of Asia Minor. 244

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  No longer the capital of an empire, Babylon remained a great Mesopotamian city under Persian rule. Its temples continued to worship the gods and goddesses so dear to the Babylonians, and not least Marduk whose cult survived the Persian as well as the Macedonian conquests of the ancient Near East. Significantly the Seleucid king Antiochus III went to Esagila after his defeat by the Romans at Magnesia in 189 BC. “That day,” a Babylonian priest was pleased to note, “King Antiochus entered Esagila and prostrated himself.” Following sacrifices to other deities worshipped in the city, “in the afternoon he went to Seleucia-on-Tigris, the royal capital.”   The resilience of the city of Babylon had much to do with the lightness of the Persian yoke. It would appear that, like Greek and Phoenician cities, Babylon retained a considerable degree of autonomy, provided its financial and military obligations were fulfilled. King Darius actually spent time in Babylon, putting down revolts in Assyria and Elam, before deciding to establish his headquarters in Media. The widespread uprisings at the start of Darius’ reign constituted a serious challenge to the new king, but he overcame the crisis and put the Persian empire on a firm footing. Rebel leaders were usually impaled, although Fravastis the Mede suffered a more lingering punishment. His nose, ears and tongue were cut out as well as one eye. Then the captured rebel was “chained under guard at the entrance of the palace so that everyone could see him there.”   That Alexander the Great acquired so much gold bullion from the Persian treasury is a testimony to the ability of the Persians to collect tribute from subject peoples in their far-flung territories, which were greater in extent than the future empire of Rome. Taxes were levied on land as well as on bridges and docks. The latter were intended to tap the wealth of merchants, and in Babylon this proved to be a major source of revenue. From the beginning of the fifth century BC intermarriage between Babylonians and Iranians reveals that a proud eximperial city had settled down to life under the Persians.  

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The Ark in the form of a Greek temple on wheels

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Behold, he shall come up as clouds, and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind; his horses swifter than eagles. Woe unto us! for we are spoiled. O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved. How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee? Book of Jeremiah 4:13–14

From the very start of Jeremiah’s book, the foe from the north is a constant threat and a growing reality. And after reciting the Jewish abominations which have led to this dire situation, the enemy is at last revealed as Babylon: For thus said the Lord, Behold, I will make thee a terror to thyself, and to all thy friends; and they shall fall by the sword of their enemies, and thine eyes shall behold it; and I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and he shall slay them with the sword.

  Jeremiah, the last of the prophets of pre-exilic Judah, was the most significant in that his warnings of impending catastrophe could be interpreted as Yahweh’s punishment of Jewish backsliding. From his strictures it was possible to formulate guidelines for the future: full repentance and proper obedience, the basis of a faith which had to prove itself in a conscious acceptance of Yahweh’s commands, and which had to be justified to oneself and to others. The Book of

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Shalmaneser III’s capture of Tyre

Jeremiah reflects the beginning of this profound spiritual renewal, an attitude which would shape the future development of Judaism.

The northern threat In spite of Babylon being correctly identified by the prophet Jeremiah as the immediate threat, trouble from Mesopotamian expansion into Syria and Palestine was not a new phenomenon, since Assyria had already sought to incorporate these areas into its empire. It was Shalmaneser III who made the first serious attempt to enlarge the Assyrian empire westwards. At the battle of Qarqar, in 853 BC, he may have been temporarily checked by an anti-Assyrian coalition led by the Syrian king Ben-adad II and the Jewish king Ahab, but later he was able to exploit a falling out between these two rulers and reach the Mediterranean coast. The constant rivalry between Damascus, Benadad II’s capital, and the Israelite capital of Samaria, was a feature of regional politics which was only resolved when Ahab’s successor, Jehu ben Nimshi, acknowledged Assyrian overlordship. Overshadowed though it was by Assyria, the southern Jewish kingdom of Judah never lost its independence. After the death of Solomon in 922 BC tension between the northern and the southern tribes, perhaps combined with widespread discontent over heavy taxation, had led to open conflict and resulted in the establishment of two separate Jewish kingdoms: Judah in the south and Israel in the north. 248

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  When Israel rebelled against Assyria in the 730s BC, it tried to enlist the support of Judah without success. Its subsequent reduction to a tiny kingdom around Samaria was short-lived because in 721 BC the Assyrian king Sargon II abolished Israel altogether. The logistics of the Assyrian army were such that it could campaign outside the traditional warring season of mid-October to mid-December. Setting off in spring before the heat of summer and while its opponents were busy with the harvest, the Assyrian army was able to feed itself on the ripening corn and to disrupt agriculture to such an extent that famine often resulted in the invaded lands during the following year. Additionally, the Assyrians maintained a series of magazines for the storage of food along their lines of march.   Underestimating the resilience of Assyria, the Philistine city of Ashdod rebelled in 705 BC upon hearing the news of Sargon II’s death on the battlefield and the Assyrian failure to give the king a proper burial. Rebellion was all that was needed to bring Sargon II’s successor to the west, which he intended to thoroughly subdue. Sennacherib’s campaign of 701 BC is one of the best documented moments of Judah’s past, thanks to Assyrian accounts and the Old Testament. We learn from the latter how: In the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, and took them. And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, I have offended: that which thou puttest on me I will bear. And the king of Assyria appointed unto Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord, and in the treasures of the king’s house. At that time did Hezekiah cut off the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord, and from the pillars which Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid, and gave it to the king of Assyria.

Still distrustful of Hezekiah’s intentions though, Sennacherib brought his army against Jerusalem, where the prophet Isaiah gave the Judean king the courage to resist further Assyrian pressure. Isaiah informed 249

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Hezekiah that Yahweh had said that he would defend the city and prolong the king’s life.   Already Hezekiah had done what he could to strengthen Jerusalem, and in particular he devised a plan to secure the city’s water supply and at the same time deny water to the enemy. However strong the fortifications, the king knew he would never withstand a siege if water ran out, and a besieger could not long maintain pressure on the city if local water sources failed. Accordingly the Bible explains that Hezekiah “made a pool, and a conduit, and brought water into the city.” He also blocked the flow of water outside the city wall, cutting a tunnel to bring the diverted supply into Jerusalem. It survives to this day.   So it was that Jerusalem defied Sennacherib. Tiring of the campaign, the Assyrians returned home, leaving the Judean capital intact, an apparently miraculous escape from certain destruction. The Temple may have been less splendid in its decoration but it was undefiled. The prophecy of Isaiah had come true, and a feeling spread

The hand of Yahweh halting Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac

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among the Jews that Jerusalem was physically inviolable. This article of faith was to receive a rude shock just over a century later at the hands of the Babylonians.   Hezekiah died in 687 BC and was followed by his son Manasseh, who always endeavoured to appease Assyria. He even went so far as to loosen religious observance with the result that idolatrous ways reappeared. Despite his long reign, Manasseh receives short shrift in the Bible, and only listed are his evil deeds, the most barbaric of which was the revival of child sacrifice. The West Semitic practice of child sacrifice was followed by Jews to the dismay of Jeremiah. He railed against this evil practice, saying that Yahweh had never asked the Jews “to burn their sons and daughters in the fire.” An earlier version of child sacrifice may have been Yahweh’s temptation of Abraham, when he was told to make “a burnt offering” of his son Isaac. But when Abraham was about to cut his son’s throat, an angel appeared and ordered him to put the knife aside. This strange episode reveals how deeply rooted child sacrifice was in local customs. Arguably the “ram caught in the thorns” which Abraham substituted for Isaac established animal sacrifice as part of Jewish worship. Sheep, goats and cattle as well as birds such as doves, turtle doves and pigeons were regularly used to petition or thank Yahweh.   In the first half of the seventh century BC, the Assyrian empire was at the height of its power, having conquered Egypt as far south as Thebes. Yet, within a few years the Assyrian empire collapsed and fell, never to rise again. According to the Babylonians, who inherited large parts of the empire, its destruction was the revenge of Marduk and other gods for the sack of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC. Sennacherib’s son and successor Esarhaddon did his best to restore good relations with Babylon, but his rebuilding programme failed to heal the wounded pride of its inhabitants, who rallied to Nabopolassar when he challenged the Assyrians on the battlefield. Once this Babylonian king, with the aid of the Medes, had broken the power of Assyria, both Syria and Palestine were confronted by new imperial masters, the Babylonians.  

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  Egypt had taken advantage of the Assyrian-Babylonian conflict to reassert its authority in Palestine and Syria. Pharaoh Necho II ostensibly advanced his forces as far north as Carchemish in order to aid the Assyrians, but his real objective was Egyptian control of this prosperous area. However, the plan came to nothing when the Egyptians encountered a Babylonian army superior in strength under the command of Nebuchadrezzar II, Nabopolassar’s son.

Nebuchadrezzar II’s advance south The Egyptians were driven back to their own borders, but the struggle between Egypt and Babylon did not come to an end then, as the kingdoms in Syria and Palestine well understood. And Nebuchadrezzar II’s subsequent invasion of Egypt in 601 BC resulted in a stalemate which failed to remove the political uncertainty.   It seems more than likely that Egypt was able to dominate Palestine for several years after the abortive Babylonian invasion. If this was the case, it likely that King Jehoiakim of Judah stopped paying tribute to Babylon. The Bible simply states that “in his days Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon came up and Jehoiakim became his servant for three years: then he turned and rebelled against him.” Transferring allegiance from Babylon to Egypt was not something that Nebuchadrezzar II could tolerate, and in 597 BC the Babylonian army returned to Palestine and captured Jerusalem. The city was not destroyed, but for the first time the Babylonians interfered with the governance of Jerusalem, deported some of its residents, and took much plunder. According to the Bible again, Nebuchadrezzar II appointed Zedekiah to be the ruler of Judah, confirming the prophecy of Ezekiel that the Babylonian monarch “took one of the royal seed and made a covenant with him and made him enter into a treaty.” The aim of this arrangement must have been stability, and the avoidance of any upheaval in Judah resulting from an end of its monarchy.   But “the sins of Manasseh” still cast a dark shadow over Judah, despite the vigorous efforts of his grandson Josiah to stamp out the 252

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offensive religious practices that had reappeared. Josiah “put down idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven.” He also ended child sacrifice, “that no man might make his son or his daughter pass through the fire to Molech.” And, Josiah had read aloud “the book of covenant which was found in the house of the Lord.”   At this time of reform Jeremiah loudly called for the revival of traditional Jewish worship. His fundamental message was the First Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” The Jews were exhorted: amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these ... Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not; And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, we are delivered to do all these abominations?

  Thus Yahweh announced through Jeremiah that his presence in the national sanctuary was no longer a matter of course. Henceforth he made his protection conditional upon whether or not the Jewish people were faithful to him. Here righteous behaviour is juxtaposed with cultic ritual. Only if there is obedience to his commands would Yahweh continue to reside in the Temple. Absolute though this divine warning seemed to be then, the prophet Jeremiah also held out the hope of “a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.”   The small number of Jewish deportees in 597 BC shows that the Babylonians wanted to allow Judah to rebuild itself and the kingdom to continue. Perhaps the deportation was equal to 10 per cent of Judah’s population of around 110,000 people. The exiles were transferred to uninhabited territory in Mesopotamia that had been devas 

 

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tated during the struggle between the Assyrians and the Babylonians. More pragmatic than the mass deportations practised by the Assyrians, the Babylonian purpose was twofold: to secure Babylonian rule in the homeland of the deportees and to resettle areas laid waste by recent warfare. And the Judeans, as well as other western deportees, were settled as independent communities, which allowed them to preserve their own identities while in exile. Even after Judah ceased to exist as a kingdom, and throughout the two generations leading up to the Persian conquest, the exiled Jews remained a coherent community.   Yet Babylon itself was not without its problems. The Babylonian chronicle records in 594 BC how a revolt in the capital city lasted one month. It was suppressed only after the execution of army officers. That this unrest coincided with a resumption of Egyptian interest in Palestine caused the Babylonian king to change his policy towards his vassal kingdoms. Nebuchadrezzar II became less willing to countenance disloyalty and so a new pact between Judah and Egypt made him take action. Already he had moved against rebellious Phoenician cities: Sidon and Tyre were attacked and turned into Babylonian provinces.

The fall of Jerusalem Nebuchadrezzar II decided to conquer the remaining small kingdoms that were so tempting to Egypt; to annex them, and to rule them directly. It might be said that he was intent on creating a buffer zone along the Egyptian border. Despite the biblical account of Jerusalem’s destruction as being a result of Jewish reluctance to fully embrace the commands of Yahweh, the Babylonian reaction to Zedekiah’s rebellion should not be viewed as anything other than a move designed to end Judah’s chronic tendency to disloyalty. The Babylonians simply wanted to create a province in Judah that would not look to Jerusalem as its capital, with all the religious tensions which were focused in that city.   King Zedekiah of Judah refused to heed Jeremiah’s warnings about the unlikelihood of Egyptian military support against the Babylonians. 254

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Zedekiah also refused to accept the advice of the prophet, who told him to surrender himself to the Babylonians so “thy soul shall live, and this city shall not be burned with fire; and thou shalt live, and thine house.” As a consequence of royal stubbornness, “came Nebuchadrezzar and all his army against Jerusalem, and they besieged it.” For many months Jerusalem held out. In midsummer of the year 587 BC, however, the walls of the starving city were breached, battering rams piercing the northern defences. The king and some of his guards “fled, and went forth out of the city by night, by way of the king’s garden, by the gate betwixt the two walls, and he went out the way of the plain.” But the Babylonians gave chase and apprehended Zedekiah on the way to Jericho. He was escorted to: Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon at Riblah in the land of Hamath, where he gave judgment upon him. Then the king of Babylon slew the sons of Zedekiah: also the king of Babylon slew all the nobles of Judah. Moreover, he put out Zedekiah’s eyes, and bound him in chains, to carry him to Babylon.

A month after the fall of the city, the Babylonians “burnt the house of the Lord, the king’s house, and the houses of the people ... and broke down the walls of Jerusalem.”   The cause of the destruction, according to Nebuzaradin, the captain of the Babylonian king’s guard, was that “the Lord thy God hath pronounced this evil upon this place.” Jeremiah agreed. The fall of Jerusalem was not a defeat for Yahweh, but his punishment of his own people. It was the disobedience of the Jews, their turning to other gods, which had brought about the catastrophe. Yahweh did not so much abandon “the chosen people” as use the Babylonians as his instrument of anger.   The systematic destruction of Jerusalem implies that Nebu­ chadrezzar II wished to eliminate the city as a religious and political centre. The thoroughness of the Babylonians accords with the archaeological evidence revealed in excavations of the site. Additionally, the 255

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The capture of Jerusalem

exile of Jewish people afterwards confirmed Nebuchadrezzar II’s policy of suppression: picked out for deportation were those likely to stir up trouble again in the new Babylonian province. The Bible gives the impression that the entire population was deported, but it refers to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and not other parts of the kingdom. “Thus Judah was carried away captive out of its land” cannot be taken at its face value, because we know that a certain Gedaliah was appointed by the king of Babylon as “governor over the cities of Judah.” We are also informed that Jeremiah went to Gedaliah “and dwelt with him among the people that were left in the land.”   Like Jeremiah, the new governor appears to have cautioned Zedekiah against provoking the Babylonians, a stance which explains Gedaliah’s appointment. That Gedaliah had held a high-ranking position in the royal administration was a guarantee for Babylon that he knew how to govern. His administration at Mizpah, a city quite close 256

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to Jerusalem, was at first successful in calming the fears of the remaining Judeans. They had always believed that Zedekiah’s defiance was foolhardy and any attempt to resist a Babylonian attack was hopeless. So they welcomed Gedaliah’s redistribution of land, accepting that the revival of agriculture was in part for the benefit of Babylon, to which annual taxes were to be paid.   Gedaliah advised “those who remained in Judah” to accept the situation: “Dwell in the land, serve the king of Babylon and it shall be well with you.” But Jewish army officers who had fled to neighbouring kingdoms during the Babylonian offensive, and then returned to Mizpah after Gedaliah’s appointment, found life there intolerable. One of these in particular, Ishmael, a member of the deposed royal family, assassinated Gedaliah. Taking advantage of Gedaliah’s hospitality, Ishmael smote “with the sword, and slew him, whom the king of Babylon had made governor of the land.” The assassin most likely intended to seize the reins of government and establish himself as the king of Judah. The killing of Gedaliah’s closest supporters immediately afterwards tends to suggest an attempted coup. Despite such purges regularly punctuating Jewish history, the frenzy of the bloodshed at Mizpah backfired on Ishmael: as a result he failed to rally enough support to achieve his personal ambition, and was obliged to flee to the neighbouring kingdom of Ammon.   Those who remained in Mizpah were very afraid of the Babylonian response to the assassination and, despite Jeremiah’s warning not to move abroad, they went to Egypt. The prophetic weakness of Jeremiah is evident in the outright rejection of his advice. The refugees said they would never listen to him again. Instead they asserted, we will certainly do whatever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah; for then we had plenty of victuals, and we were well, and saw no evil. But since we left off to burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto

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The fertility goddess Asherat

Daniel in the lions’ den

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Pointedly they asked where Yahweh had been when the disaster of the Babylonian attack took place, since they could never accept that they had any responsibility themselves for what happened.   The identity of the queen of heaven remains obscure, but she was probably Astarte or Asherat. The former was the West Semitic equivalent of Ishtar while the latter was once regarded as the consort of Yahweh. The fertility goddess Asherat had been a favourite goddess of Solomon. Anathema though this was to Jeremiah, the prophet was forcefully taken by the fleeing Judeans to Egypt, where he died. The so-called book of The Lamentations of Jeremiah merely repeats the anguish of the prophet over Jerusalem’s destruction. As they parallel the Sumerian lament for the fall of Ur in 2004 BC, their composition by Jeremiah remains suspect. Lamentation was motivated by, and sought to cope with, the fear of divine abandonment. In ancient Mesopotamia it was used as a direct appeal to the gods: “heart-soothing tears” according to the Sumerians.

The Book of Daniel The prophet associated most with the exile of the Jews from 587 to 539 BC was of course Daniel. Despite the story being set during the time of Babylonian rule, much of the narrative describes the oppression of the Jews by the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled from 175 to 164 BC. The adventures of Daniel and his companions, however, display the religious pride of the exiled Jewish community and deserve consideration as such.   Nebuchadrezzar II chose Jewish children with “no blemish, but well favoured and skilful in wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science” and had them taught the Babylonian language so that they could become servants in his palace. “Now among these,” we are told, “were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.” For the  

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sake of convenience the chief eunuch changed their names to Belteshazzar (Daniel), Shadrach (Hananiah), Meshach (Mishael), and Abednego (Azariah). He also favoured Daniel who persuaded him to let them eat vegetables instead of unclean meat.   Daniel’s first challenge was the interpretation of a dream which deeply troubled Nebuchadrezzar II. None of “the wise men of Babylon” could explain its meaning. According to Daniel, the king had no need to fear for the future of his rule as “a king of kings.” In gratitude, “the king made Daniel a great man, and gave him many gifts, and made him ruler over the whole province of Babylon, and chief of the governors over all the wise men of Babylon.”   A second challenge was more dangerous for the companions of Daniel, because Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were accused of failing to “worship the golden image” which Nebuchadrezzar II had set up. Everyone else in the palace had done so. Brought before the outraged king, they were told:  

Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well; but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?

 When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego declined to obey the royal command, Nebuchadrezzar II “commanded that they should heat the furnace one seven times more than it was wont to be heated,” making the flames so hot that they “slew those men” who cast the three offenders into the furnace. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego suffered not the slightest harm, Nebuchadrezzar II issued a decree warning his subjects not to “speak any thing amiss against” their deity on pain of being “cut in pieces.” He also promoted Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.   A second dream of Nebuchadrezzar II about a huge tree which is cut down by a heavenly being was interpreted by Daniel to mean that 260

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the king would become temporarily insane and live like a beast in the fields. This episode does not fit at all into the pattern of the exile with any certainty. It seems to be an interpolation which may refer to the last Babylonian king Nabonidas, who quit the capital for ten years and took up residence at Tema in Arabia.   Perhaps the most famous event in the Book of Daniel is Belshazzar’s feast. The governor of the city of Babylon during Nabonidas’ prolonged absence at Tema, Belshazzar used at a banquet the Temple vessels which had been looted from Jerusalem. As a result, a hand appeared and wrote on the wall a message which no one but Daniel could read. He interpreted the words as follows: Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. This is the interpretation of the thing: Mene; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Tekel; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Peres; thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

“The writing on the wall” has become a familiar image, and the phrase “weighed in the balances and found wanting” is now part of the English language. Yet the biblical text ends with a garbled version of predicted events, since we are informed that “Darius the Median took the kingdom, being about three score and two years old.”   The Persian conqueror of Babylon was in fact Cyrus, not Darius, and for this conquest there are reliable non-biblical sources. The Book of Daniel goes on, however, to confuse the issue even further: Daniel was “cast into the den of lions” for disobeying one of Darius’ edicts. When the Persian king learned that Daniel’s overnight stay in the lions’ den had done him no harm, he admitted the power of the deity that Daniel worshipped.   It is already transparent that we encounter from this time onwards a unique outlook when the Jews contemplate the supernatural. “The gods of the peoples are idols, but God made the heavens”; the psalmist means that, like Nebuchadrezzar II’s golden statue, the other Near Eastern deities were nothing more than a human invention. This is 261

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A reconstruction of Solomon’s temple

The location of the Second Temple in Jerusalem

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obvious in the apocryphal book, Daniel, Bel and the Snake. With the aid of ashes sprinkled on a temple floor, Daniel is able to demonstrate to the Persian king Cyrus that the footprints of those who came secretly to eat the food set out for the god Bel belonged to “the priests, with their wives and children.” He also disposed of the sacred serpent by feeding it with cakes of boiled “pitch and fat and hair”, ingredients which burst its belly asunder.   Here we are close to fully-fledged monotheism, an attitude to divinity that would emerge over the next couple of centuries. The Babylonian exile had the effect of concentrating the Jewish mind on the nature of Yahweh, in the light of Jeremiah’s stern admonitions. Another result of exile was the idea of a final rehabilitation, which owed much to Zoroastrianism, the Persian religion. At the end of time, the Persians believed that there would be a resurrection of the dead and a final reckoning of accounts. Considering the undeveloped notion of an afterlife in the ancient Near East, this Zoroastrian belief came as an absolute shock. Derived from the Akkadian word for “desolation”, Sheol was the Jewish equivalent of the Sumerian underworld: a place, the Book of Job informs us, where the worm is addressed as father, mother and sister, for in corruption all “rest together in the dust.” After the Persians let the Jews rebuild Jerusalem, the possibility of physical resurrection no longer seemed in doubt. Daniel could proclaim: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall wake, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting contempt.”   Babylon was captured by the Persians in 539 BC, and in the ensuing year the entire Babylonian empire came under Persian control, right up to the frontier of Egypt. Thus Judah was brought under Cyrus’ rule. The Persian king proclaimed himself in favour of the restoration of the Jewish community and religion in their own land. All exiled Jews who wished to return to Judah would be permitted to do so. The Temple vessels carried away by Nebuchadrezzar II were returned and funds were granted to assist with the building of a second Temple. Cyrus’ liberal approach to the religions of his new subjects was evident in his 263

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sponsorship of temple restoration. At Babylon he contributed to repairs for Esagila, Marduk’s famous temple.   As long as they met the annual payment of tribute which the Persians imposed on them, the Jews were left to their own devices, as Persian rulers had little interest in the internal affairs of subject peoples. What drove their ambition was the establishment of a universal monarchy: they intended to be “kings of the four quarters” and much more besides. Their empire stretched as far east as India and might well have reached Italy in the west had not the failure to subdue the Greek mainland in 480–79 BC brought to a halt their expansion in the central Mediterranean.   Cyrus appointed Sheshbazzar as the governor of Judah. Possibly of royal descent, the governor succeeded to the role performed earlier by Gedaliah and his successors. Restoring the Jewish upper classes made sense to the Persians, who realised how grateful they would be after so long an exile from their homeland. At first the number of exiles returning to Palestine was small. When other Jews followed in greater numbers the work of reconstruction at Jerusalem gathered pace, and in 515 BC another temple was dedicated to Yahweh. As large as the First Temple, though much less ornate, the Second Temple seemed more impressive to the inhabitants of the city, when so much still lay in ruins. Solomon’s Temple had risen amid a formidable complex of royal buildings: the king’s palace, the barracks, the arsenal, all enclosed within a single large compound. None had been rebuilt. The Second Temple stood alone upon high ground, set in its own courtyards and surrounded by its own wall.   The Second Temple was a potent symbol of the revival of Judaism and appeared to inaugurate a splendid new era for the Jewish people. Problems with later conquerors could not then be foreseen, nor the ultimate loss of Jerusalem under the Romans, after a bitterly fought uprising devastated Palestine. Already Jews had suffered persecution under the Seleucid kings, who had acquired Alexander the Great’s conquests in Asia. Antiochus IV forbad circumcision and threw 264

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mothers of circumcised children from city walls with their babies strung round their necks. He also enforced the eating of pork and ritually unclean cattle. The Maccabeus brothers led the opposition to Seleucid rule and by 141 BC the Jews had freed themselves from Seleucid oppression.   Though less oppressive than the Seleucids, the Roman administration in Palestine still managed to provoke Jewish uprisings. Having inherited the Seleucid sphere of influence, Rome gradually imposed its authority, and the province of Judea was formed. A revolt in AD 66–70 witnessed the destruction of the Second Temple and the abolition of the high priesthood, but this pales into insignificance when compared with Bar Kokhba’s abortive war of independence. Between 132 and 136, the rebels set up a separate state which many viewed as the start of a messianic age. Bar Kokhba was prepared to use strong-arm measures to compel wavering Jews to fight, but the vast majority were fully behind him, for at first the Romans fared badly. Once the Roman army mastered the rebels, though, the province was reduced to wilderness. “At Jerusalem,” we learn from historian Cassius Dio, “the emperor Hadrian founded a city in the place of the one which had been razed to the ground, naming it Colonia Aelia Capitolina, and on the site of the Temple he raised a new temple to Jupiter.” Jews were forbidden from entering this colony for veteran soldiers, except for one day each year during the fast that commemorated the Second Temple’s destruction. This prohibition remained in force for centuries, thereby depriving the Jews of the holiest place in “the promised land”.

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The following notes and references are intended to assist the reader in pursuing topics of special interest. They draw attention to publications that may provide greater detail themselves or suggest ways in which further investigation can take place. There are books, however, that cover the whole period of Babylonian or Assyrian history, most notably the Cambridge Ancient History series. Four volumes in particular are relevant: volume II part 1, The Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1800–1380 BC; volume II part 2, The Middle East and the Aegean Region c. 1380–1000 BC; volume III part 1, The Prehistory of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Aegean World, Tenth to Eighth Centuries BC; volume III part 2, The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC. First published in the 1920s, these volumes have been revised and expanded, owing to the immense amount of new information now available. One book which covers the entire history of Babylon and Assyria, in addition to neighbouring states, is Mario Liverani’s The Ancient Near East. History, Society and Economy, translated by S. Tabatabai, London, 2014.  

1. SUMER AND AKKAD SUMER A Semitic word meaning southern Babylon. The Sumerians called their homeland Kengir, “the civilized land”: it stretched from the Persian Gulf to the city of Nippur, around one hundred kilometres south of present-day Baghdad. The Sumerian language, the earliest

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ever written down, sheds no light on the origins of the Sumerian people because it is unlike any other. Apparently tonal, Sumerian was an agglutinative language without the inflections common to Semitic tongues, so that sentences were built up by the addition of syllables. CUNEIFORM The name by which ancient Mesopotamian script is known. Writing, like other great discoveries, has been invented more than once, but the world’s earliest writing system is found in the Sumerian city of Uruk. Nearly 6,000 inscribed clay tablets have been recovered from its temple complexes. Cuneiform script remained in use down until the Christian era.   Translation of the cuneiform script was far from an easy task. That most of the clay tablets initially unearthed at the Assyrian cities of Nineveh and Nimrud were composed in a Semitic tongue was obvious to the English and French scholars who tried to unravel its structure and meaning. Instrumental in the final stage of decipherment was Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, an English East India Company official once resident in Baghdad. It was he who recommended that George Smith, an Assyrian enthusiast employed by a London printer, should join him at the British Museum in sorting out the tablets sent by Layard from Nineveh. In 1872, Smith made his great discovery when he translated “the account of the Deluge”.   A fascinating outline of Mesopotamian literacy is presented in Dominique Charpin’s Reading and Writing in Babylon, translated by J.M. Todd, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2010. He points out that cuneiform was from the start created as a recording system for administrative purposes, and only during the third dynasty at Ur is it possible to identify the professional scribe. The Sumerian king Shulgi says that “among the highborn no one could write like me ... a meticulous scholar who does not miss a thing!” Ordinary scribes were then treated as artisans and remunerated as such. For a general treatment there is The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, edited by Karen Radner and Eleanor Robson, Oxford, 2011.  

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THE FLOOD So excited was George Smith at the British Museum by the unexpected revelation of the Flood in 1872 that he started to throw off his clothes. Yet Smith was careful to choose a very public platform to announce the find: the winter meeting of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, whose members were baffled that a clay tablet belonging to an ancient Mesopotamian king could refer to the biblical Flood. Even more startling was the realisation that the Babylonians, whose version of the story Smith had translated, wrote of the great inundation mentioned in Genesis long before the Jews arrived in Palestine. At this moment in London it was still not appreciated how the Flood myth went all the way back to Ziudsura, the Sumerian Noah.   That the biblical account of the Flood ultimately derived from Sumer is evident in Yahweh’s pleasure at the sacrifice made by Noah as soon as the Ark grounded on Mount Ararat. Just as Ziudsura “sacrificed oxen and innumerable sheep”, so Noah built an altar for “burnt offerings” which Yahweh smelled, consequently saying, “I will not curse the ground any more for man’s sake.” SUMERIAN KING LIST One of several lists of Mesopotamian kings, the Sumerian King List was a gift from the gods, first bestowed on the city of Kish. Though the inhabitants of this early city regarded descent from father to son as the natural development of kingship, dynasties do not feature notably in the Sumerian King List. Eight kings were not in fact of royal birth, an exception being the ruler of Uruk. A certain disdain for Kish’s claim of being the first royal house may be explained by many of its inhabitants not being able to speak Sumerian, but a Semitic tongue instead. The Kishites appear to have adopted Sumerian culture when staking their entitlement for royal precedence.   Babylonian scribes also prepared a list of kings, covering the period from Hammurabi to Nabonidas, Babylon’s last Mesopotamian ruler. For reasons of prestige, the Assyrians drew up lists of their own which included kings before Shamshi-adad I rose to fame in the early eighteenth century BC. Not only did this energetic ruler free Assyria from  

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the domination of Eshnunna, a city-state in southern Mesopotamia, but he conquered large areas of Syria and Babylon as well. His admiration of Sargon, Akkad’s founder, caused Shamshi-adad I to visit the ruins of Akkad during his sixty-year reign. The earliest Assyrian kings were described as “living in tents.” GILGAMESH The hero of five separate Sumerian epics, this early king was celebrated most of all in the Akkadian Gilgamesh, which dates from the reign of the Babylonian king Hammurabi. This epic tells of Gilgamesh’s tyrannical rule of Uruk and the relief felt by its inhabitants when the gods created a wild man by the name of Enkidu to be at first his rival, then his boon companion. Together they killed Huwawa, the monstrous guardian of the cedar forest, returning with a great beam for Enlil’s temple at Nippur; then they killed the Bull of Heaven, which the goddess Ishtar had sent to ravage Uruk after Gilgamesh rejected her proposal of marriage; for this last deed the gods decreed that Enkidu must die. A distraught Gilgamesh refused to accept his companion’s death as the inevitable end to life: he “wept over the corpse for seven days and seven nights, refusing to give it up for burial until a maggot fell from one of the nostrils.” When Gilgamesh’s own attempt to avoid the same fate failed, the hero-king was obliged to recognise that his legacy would be the extensive city wall that he had built around Uruk.   There are a number of translations of the Gilgamesh epic, but the authoritative one is A.R. George’s The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic. Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, Oxford, 2003.  

AKKAD, sometimes Agade. What stood behind the rise of this Semitic-speaking city-state to prominence remains uncertain, although it is not unlikely that the first Akkadian king Sargon financed his military campaigns from the profits of trade. Whereas the rulers of Sumer based their power primarily upon agricultural revenue, their Akkadian rivals derived much of their wealth from commercial enterprise. This new source of finance allowed Sargon to maintain in 270

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Mesopotamia the earliest standing army, whose mobility soon overcame the soldiers that Sumer levied in an emergency. In conquered Sumerian cities Sargon installed Akkadian governors backed by troops. He also sought to break down old boundaries by establishing an imperial province in Sumer, administered from Lagash. For an up-to-date assessment of this early empire there is The Age of Agade. Inventing Empire in Ancient Mesopotamia by Benjamin R. Foster, Abingdon, 2016.  

THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR Of the five kings of this dynasty two are particularly important: Urnammu and his son Shulgi. Urnammu commissioned numerous building projects, the most ambitious of which were a new temple and a ziggurat at Ur for the moon god Nanna, or in Akkadian Sin. He also erected ziggurats at Eridu, Uruk and Nippur. About 2094 BC Shulgi succeeded to the throne at a young age and reigned for forty-eight years. Remembered for his patronage of scribes, Shulgi presided over the swan song of Sumerian literature. A surviving text explains something of the scribal art, when a supervisor informs an apprentice that coming “into contact with great minds will make his words more worthy.” It is not a little ironic that the Akkadian language rather than Sumerian saved for posterity the heroic deeds of Gilgamesh, with whom Urnammu and Shulgi claimed kinship.

2. THE FIRST BABYLONIAN HEGEMONY ELAM was a constant thorn in the side of ancient Mesopotamia. Although Elamite culture was profoundly influenced by the Sumerians, the Akkadians and the Babylonians, it possessed distinct features of its own. Throughout Elamite history, physical geography played a decisive role in shaping its polity. Susa was always more open to Mesopotamian developments, though somewhat insulated by marshland to the west and the Zagros foothills to the north. Those Elamites who lived in the highlands remained apart, except when swept into military operations, either of a defensive or offensive nature. Our knowledge of Elam is 271

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entirely dependent on Mesopotamian sources, which only become abundant with the establishment of the Assyrian empire. For an account of this later period see Matthew W. Walters, A Survey of NeoElamite History, Helsinki, 2000.  

HAMMURABI was only matched during early Babylonian history by Nebuchadrezzar I, although the achievements of the latter were essentially defensive. That Nebuchadrezzar I was remembered for the chastisement of the Elamites serves to underline his reputation as a restorer. With Hammurabi on the other hand we encounter an innovator, a ruler as much concerned with the management of his empire as its defence: hence his famous law code. An up-to-date treatment of his reign can be found in Dominique Charpin’s Hammurabi of Babylon, London, 2012.

3. THE RISE AND DOMINATION OF ASSYRIA MILITARY EVENTS are recorded in Assyrian annals and Babylonian chronicles, which provide for the first time a reliable chronology from the tenth to the seventh centuries BC. There is reason, however, not to take their contents at face value, because they descend from the legendary Sumerian narratives of early kings such as Gilgamesh. Yet these chronological accounts are an invaluable source of information. The standard edition, which includes a crisp translation and an excellent commentary, is A.K. Grayson’s Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2000.  

 

NINURTA appealed to the Assyrians as a divine champion, the comrade-in-arms of their kings. Ninurta had absorbed the exploits of the Sumerian war god Ningursu prior to his rise as Enlil’s favourite. His greater aggressiveness doubtless reflected the intense era of warfare initiated by Akkad. It seems likely that the deified Akkadian king Naramsin viewed himself as a lesser version of Ninurta. For a full discussion of the god’s transformation from Sumerian champion to 272

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Assyrian guarantor of military success see Amar Annus’ The God Ninurta in the Mythology and Royal Ideology of Ancient Mesopotamia, Helsinki, 2002. URARTU Little is known about these tribesmen before they are mentioned in Hittite and Assyrian records. Probably of Hurrian stock, the Urartians were farmers and herders living on the high plateau or table land of what is now Armenia. Very fertile soil around Lake Van led to the early development of towns and cities. So beautiful and productive was the region that it was once thought to have been the Garden of Eden. Another biblical association was the story of Noah’s Ark coming to rest on Mount Ararat, the dominant feature of the Armenian plateau.

4. THE MESOPOTAMIAN WAY OF WAR THE STELE OF THE VULTURES was unearthed at Tello, ancient Girsu, in southern Iraq. Its discoverer was Ernest de Sarzec, the last French archaeologist-consul of Mesopotamia. He was to Sumer what Layard had been to Assyria, the determined explorer of the ancient Near East’s cultural heritage. But it cost him his life in 1901, when he was caught up in a local Arab revolt against the Ottomans. An interesting account of the excavations and finds at Girsu is available in Sebastien Ray’s For the Gods of Girsu. City-State Formation in Ancient Sumer, Oxford, 2016. THE CHARIOT remains the first and most charismatic war machine ever invented. In the Near East, chariotries were for a couple of centuries the mobile arm of ancient armies. Its history, as well as that of the composite bow, is discussed in Chariot. The Astounding Rise and Fall of the World’s First War Machine by Arthur Cotterell, London, 2004. CAVALRY replacing the chariot is the subject of a chapter entitled “Chariotry to Cavalry: Developments in the Early First Millennium” 273

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by Robin Archer. It appears in Garrett G. Fagan and Matthew Trundle, New Perspectives on Ancient Warfare, Leiden, 2010.  

5. KINGSHIP IN MESOPOTAMIA PROTECTIVE GENIUS Just as a person could be harmed by an evil spirit such as a malignant ghost, so a good spirit would offer protection from supernatural harm. In the illustration of the Assyrian king Ashurnasirpal II’s protective genius, the bird-headed creature following him may well be one of the apkallu, or “sages”, who carry a purifier in their right hand and in their left a bucket. Sometimes the sages are “cloaked in the skins of fishes.” The cone is thought to be the male flower of the date palm, while the bucket may have contained either water or pollen. Both were associated with purification and clay models of protective geniuses were placed beneath the floors of palaces and houses. At Nineveh, fish-garbed figures made of sun-dried clay have been excavated in Sennacherib’s grand palace. SACRED MARRIAGE of a “divine couple” was a common festival in Sumer, although it is at Uruk that we find the best evidence for its annual celebration. There is no doubt that the king of Uruk impersonated the shepherd god Dumuzi, a dying and rising deity, while a high priestess acted as the fertility goddess Inanna. Hymns associated with the rite of sacred marriage are translated in Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer by D. Wolkstein and S.N. Kramer, New York, 1983.  

 

DIVINE KINGSHIP is no longer seen as a universal phenomenon in the ancient Near East. It is not so much that ideas about sacred or priestly monarchs have gone out of fashion; rather more detailed analysis of historical sources has invalidated such a notion. A good discussion is available in Religion and Power. Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond, edited by Nicole Brisch, Chicago, 2008. For Alexander’s divine aspirations there are Alexander of Macedon 356– 274

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323 BC. A Historical Biography by Peter Green, London, 1970, and The Genius of Alexander the Great by N.G.L. Hammond, London, 1997.   After his early death in Babylon, Alexander’s embalmed body was placed on display at Alexandria in a golden coffin by Ptolemy, one of his generals. This represented a considerable triumph for Ptolemy, who probably bribed the commander of the funeral cortege to come to Egypt instead of going on to the royal burial ground in Macedon. Alexander’s own wish to be buried at the oasis of Siwah was totally ignored. In 30 BC the great conqueror suffered a final indignity, when the Roman emperor Augustus could not resist touching the preserved body, whereupon part of the nose broke off.  

6. THE IMPERIAL CAPITALS: ASHUR, NINEVEH AND BABYLON  

ASHUR was largely excavated by German archaeologists. Seeking to advance German interests in the Near East, the Kaiser had visited Turkey in 1889 and enjoyed a warm welcome from Abdulhamid II, through whose empire a German-financed and German-built railway was attempting to link Berlin with Baghdad. The French and the British were understandably concerned about the project, which they correctly surmised would bring the Ottomans into the German camp in the event of a European war. The immediate effect of closer German-Turkish ties was that the excavation of ancient Near Eastern sites invariably went to German expeditions: Babylon in 1899, Ashur in 1903 and Hattusha, the Hittite capital, in 1906. Walter Andrae’s exploration of Assyria’s first capital is summed up in his book Das Wiedererstandene Assur, Leipzig, 1938. NINEVEH was pivotal for Assyrian archaeology. Here Layard first revealed the incredible power and wealth of the Assyrian empire and discovered in the library of King Ashurbanipal texts which offered an invaluable insight into its operations. His two books, Nineveh and its 275

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Remains and Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh, published in 1850 and 1853 respectively, still deserve attention not only for their descriptions but even more for their illustrations. Modern publications of note are Sennacherib’s Palace Without Rival at Nineveh by J.M. Russell, Chicago, 1991, and The Ishtar Temple at Nineveh by J. Reade, Baghdad, 2005.  

 

BABYLON cost Robert Koldewey his life. A dogged refusal to seek medical advice killed him in 1925, a year after the publication of the excavation reports. A revised edition of his Das Wiedererstandende Babylon was published in Munich in 1990. Three other books worth consulting are Joan Oates’ Babylon, London, 1979; Stephanie Dalley’s The Mystery of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Elusive World Wonder Traced, Oxford, 2013; and Babylon. Myth and Reality, edited by I.L. Finkel and M.J. Seymour, London, 2008.  

 

7. THE RELIGION OF BABYLON AND ASSYRIA THE AFTERLIFE in the ancient Near East has not been extensively explored so far. Two books are relevant despite the first one being an archaeological survey rather than a discussion of what the ancient Mesopotamians thought the afterlife was like. It is Yasmina Wicks’ Bronze ‘Bathtub’ Coffins in the Context of 8th–6th Century BC Babylonian, Assyrian and Elamite Funerary Practices, Oxford, 2015. A much more extensive treatment is available in A Covenant with Death. Death in the Iron Age II and Its Rhetorical Uses in Proto-Isaiah by C.B. Hays, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2015. Again this book devotes less than fifty pages to Mesopotamian ideas about death and the dead.  

MESOPOTAMIAN RELIGION needs to be viewed as a whole. There are differences between the beliefs of the Sumerians and the Semiticspeaking peoples who later took control of Mesopotamia, but the scale of the latter’s debt to Sumer makes any sharp distinction pointless. The Babylonians adopted Sumerian religion lock, stock and bar276

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rel, although they were most attracted to astral deities. Recommended reading includes Wolfram von Soden’s The Ancient Orient. An Introduction to the Study of the Ancient Near East, translated by D.G. Schley, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1994; Jean Bottero’s Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, translated by T.L. Fagan, Chicago, 2001; S.N. Kramer’s Sumerian Mythology. A Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium BC, New York, 1961; and Thorkild Jacobsen’s The Treasures of Darkness. A History of Mesopotamian Religion, New Haven, 1976.  

 

 

BEROSSOS When dying at Babylon in 323 BC Alexander the Great was asked to whom he bequeathed his authority; he replied “to the strongest”, correctly anticipating the struggle between his senior commanders. Their wars ensured the division of Alexander’s conquests into separate states. Only one of these new powers, founded in the ancient Near East by Seleucus in 305 BC, stayed close to Alexander’s ideal of a multi-ethnic society. At his eastern capital, Seleucia-onTigris, a suburb was named Apamea after Seleucus’ Asian wife Apama, whom he had married at the behest of Alexander. The marriage lasted, unlike others between senior Macedonian commanders and Asian brides, and Apama gave birth to Seleucus’ eldest son and most able successor, Antiochus I.   From the start, Seleucus appreciated the problems involved in running a far-flung and diverse empire, which stretched from Asia Minor to the borders of India. For this reason he styled himself as a latterday Persian monarch, rather than a second Alexander; Alexander’s portrait rarely appears on his coins, unlike those minted by the great conqueror’s other successors. It was an approach enthusiastically endorsed by Antiochus I who in 286 BC placed this Akkadian inscription in Nabu’s temple at Borsippa, near Babylon. It begins: “Antiochus, the great king, the mighty king, the king of the world, king of Babylon, king of the lands, guardian of Esagila and Ezida, the first son of Seleucus, the Macedonian I am. When I decided to 277

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rebuild Esagila and Ezida, the bricks I made with my own hands using the finest oil …”   That the Seleucid empire lasted so long had much to do with such pragmatism. Hence Antiochus’ commission of Berossos’ history of Mesopotamian cosmology, a primer he needed to fulfil his royal duties in the eyes of the Babylonians. Contemporary Macedonian rulers of Egypt, the descendants of another of Alexander’s generals, Ptolemy, commissioned from an Egyptian priest named Manetho an historical account of the pharaonic period, starting around 3100 BC and coming down to the founding of the Ptolemaic dynasty in 305 BC. For both the Seleucids and the Ptolemies there was an urgent need to come to terms with the ancient cultures of their subjects.  

8. BABYLONIAN AND ASSYRIAN SOCIETY DEBATES between Sheep and Grain as well as Bird and Fish, along with other myths about the natural order including the Flood, can be found in The Literature of Ancient Sumer, translated and introduced by J. Black, G. Cunningham, E. Robson and G. Zolyomi, Oxford, 2004.  

 

 

 

THE MESOPOTAMIAN ECONOMY is discussed in a variety of books and articles, but there are three publications of special interest. These are The Babylonian World, edited by G. Leick, London, 2007; Hans J. Nissen’s The Early History of the Ancient Near East 9000–2000 BC, translated by E. Lutzeier and K.J. Northcott, Chicago, 1988; and Daniel Snell’s Life in the Ancient Near East, New Haven, 1997.  

 

 

 

 

9. THE BABYLONIAN REVIVAL NABOPOLASSAR’S DYNASTY was the last Mesopotamian royal house to rule in the ancient Near East. Real power, real energy had shifted to another kingdom on its eastern border, that of the Persians. Their empire was destined to be the largest ever established in the ancient world, stretching from Thrace to the Indus valley. For a com278

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plete survey of Persian power there is Pierre Briant’s From Cyrus to Alexander. A History of the Persian Empire, translated by P.T. Daniels, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2002.  

THE ELEVATION OF SIN in the Mesopotamian pantheon was a priority of Nabonidas which unsettled and annoyed many Babylonians. The Assyrian king Esarhaddon had refurbished the temples of the Babylonian gods following the sack of the city in 689 BC by his father Sennacherib. Then the temple of Sin was one of many and not especially important to either the Assyrians or the Babylonians. Not until Nabonidas sponsored Sin’s cult did the moon god rise to prominence. Nabonidas even made his daughter high priestess of the deity at Ur, the Sumerian city where his original temple stood. And he also repaired the ziggurat there. The influence of Adad-guppi, Nabonidas’ mother, would seem to be behind Sin’s sudden elevation. After the Persian occupation of Babylon, Marduk returned to his place as the supreme Mesopotamian deity, not least because Cyrus desired that there should be continuity and peace under his rule.

10. THE JEWISH EXILE JEREMIAH has always been interesting for the good reason that he occupies more space than any other prophet in the biblical narrative. His imprisonment and sufferings, to the point of his reluctant exile in Egypt, offer a rounded picture of a determined advocate of Yahweh worship. That he also correctly predicted the destruction of Jerusalem only serves to underline his political astuteness. The Jewish prophets believed that their entitlement to speak out came directly from Yahweh. Whereas Hosea thundered against Israel’s idolatry and apostasy, Jeremiah tried to get Judah to appreciate its weakness when faced by the might of Babylon. Aware of Jeremiah’s warnings about the rashness of defying the Babylonians, King Nebuchadrezzar II allowed the prophet to go wherever he wished, unlike the deposed 279

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Jewish king who, after being forced to watch the slaughter of his children, was blinded and led in chains to Babylon. There are many studies of Jeremiah available, but a recent publication throws light on the period immediately after the deportation of the leading Jews. It is Keith Bodner’s After the Invasion. A Reading of Jeremiah 40–44, Oxford, 2015. THE BOOK OF DANIEL is among the most complicated books in the Old Testament. Even its text presents problems because it begins in Hebrew, switches to Aramaic in the middle of the narrative, and then returns to Hebrew. The first part contains six stories about Daniel and his companions’ sojourn in Babylon. A second part features four visions, including four beasts emerging from the sea which are judged and destroyed; a ram attacking a goat, whose meaning is explained by the angel Gabriel; then Jeremiah’s prophecies are also explained; and, finally, Daniel has a vision related to the wars between Seleucid Syria and Ptolemaic Egypt. The visions are clearly apocryphal, and are unusual in the Old Testament. The composition of the Book of Daniel can be regarded as a turning point for Judaism because it imagined as imminent a catastrophic end of time coinciding with the final judgement of Yahweh: it was meant to comfort those Jews fighting against foreign oppression, Seleucid or Roman. Eschatology and politics decisively overlapped, with the result that after the second century BC there was a surge in messianism. According to Daniel, divine justice would be so all-embracing that even the dead would rise from their graves, in order to be justified or, as the case may be, condemned. Here is the biblical root of the idea of the Last Judgement, which so profoundly influenced medieval Christian thought. JERUSALEM and Judah receive excellent treatment in Oded Lipschits’ The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2005. Two other books worth consulting are Judah and the Judeans in the Neo280

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Babylonian Period, edited by Oded Lipschits and Joseph Blenkinsopp, Winona Lake, Indiana, 2003; and Jerusalem, Sacred City of Mankind. A History of Forty Centuries by Teddy Kollek and Moshe Pearlman, Jerusalem, 1968. ANTIOCHUS IV EPIPHANES was a complex character. Although to traditional Jews this Seleucid king was an outright monster, his contemporaries regarded him more as an eccentric. Antiochus IV liked to stroll through his Syrian capital, Seleucia-in-Piera, alone or with one or two attendants, distributing largesse as fancy took him. He also enjoyed drinking parties and, like the Roman emperor Nero, fancied himself as a great actor. His proscription of Jewish customs was probably encouraged by Jews who had embraced Greek culture. Worries over unrest in Palestine and external pressure exerted by the Iranian Parthians combined to persuade him to clamp down on what he considered to be outmoded Jewish ways. Antiochus IV died on a campaign against the Parthians; among his final acts the dying king rescinded his decree of persecution of Judaism. But this volte-face came too late to head off the Jewish uprising led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers Jonathan and Simon. The Book of Daniel must have been composed before 163 BC, since it shows no knowledge of Antiochus’ death that year nor of the restoration of the Second Temple by Judas Maccabeus. For more background information there is Peter Green’s Alexander to Actium. The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age, London, 1990.

281

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The age and provenance of each illustration are provided as far as details allow. Chapter 1



A cuneiform text dating from the reign of King Shulgi. 2094–47 BC. A seal showing the sun god Utu rising behind mountains, while Inanna stands on the left and Enki on the right, with the Euphrates and the Tigris pouring from his shoulders. Second millennium BC. The ziggurat at Ur, started by King Urnammu. 2094–47 BC. Enki’s temple at Eridu, one of the oldest Sumerian cities. Fourth millennium BC. Inanna, the original love goddess. A fragment dating from the early second millennium BC. A fragment of the Gilgamesh epic in Akkadian. Second millennium BC. Gilgamesh killing the Bull of Heaven. A clay plaque dating from the early third millennium BC. Early cuneiform script, the writing system inven­ ted for administrative purposes in Uruk. Around 3000 BC. King Sargon of Akkad. This damaged bronze head of the king, dating from 2370–15 BC, was excavated in Nineveh. 283

10

12 12 13 15 19

20

22

22

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Sumerian infantry depicted on the Stele of the Vultures, erected by King Eannatum of Lagash in 2460 BC. Rimush stele depicting the massacre of prisoners. The Akkadian king Rimush, who reigned from 2315 to 2307 BC, boasted that he killed 23,000 men in battle and took twice that number of captives, presumably killing them as well. A brick stamp belonging to King Naramsin, who is described as “builder of the temple of Enlil”. Early twenty-third century BC. Akkadian man. Third millennium BC. King Gudea of Lagash. Unearthed at Tello. 2141– 22 BC. Urnammu, being given a rod and a measuring tape by a deity. Later kings, including Hammurabi of Babylon, based their laws on Urnammu’s code. Late third millennium BC. Chapter 2

284

Hammurabi showing reverence to the sun god Shamash. From the top of the column on which the king’s law code was recorded. 1792–50 BC. Diorite head of Hammurabi, subsequently damaged like other royal portraits. 1792–50 BC. Cuneiform script from Hammurabi’s law code. It boldly states: “If a noble has destroyed the eye of another noble, they shall destroy his eye.” 1792–50 BC. An inscribed clay liver, an essential aid to divination. Late second millennium BC. A votive portrait dedicated to the life of Hammurabi. 1792–50 BC. A Mari soldier. A shell plaque from the Mari palace, which Hammurabi destroyed in 1761 BC.

26

28

29 30 31

33

36 39

40 45 46 48

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A man from Mari holding an animal, possibly intended for sacrifice. Early second millennium BC. Kassite lioness. Twelfth century BC. Kassite lioness Kassite seal dedicated to the sun god Shamash. Fourteenth century BC. Kassite seal of a water god. It was excavated at Thebes in central Greece. It probably dates from around 1350 BC. Kassite seeder-plough drawn by two humped oxen. The man in the middle has a bag over his shoulder and puts seeds into the funnel of the drill. Discovered in Nippur. Fourteenth century BC. Chapter 3

Sargon II in conversation with an Assyrian noble. 721–05 BC. Ashurnasirpal II. On the king’s chest are carved eight lines of text giving his name and titles, plus his achievements. 883–59 BC. The god Ninurta. An Assyrian seal impression from Nimrud, the cult centre of this bellicose deity. It shows Ninurta astride his dragon. Ninth century BC. An Assyrian chariot pursues fleeing enemies while a bird of prey contemplates its dinner. Eighth century BC. Assyrian punishment of rebels. Whereas the Egyptians cut off hands to number the enemy dead, the Assyrians always collected heads, and especially those of rebellious subjects. A relief from Nineveh, late seventh century BC. Shalmaneser III receives the humble submission of Jehu, king of Israel. Symbols of the gods are shown before the Assyrian king. From an obelisk recovered at Nineveh. 858–24 BC.

50 52 55

55

59 62

 

64

65

66

67

69

285

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A stele of the Assyrian king Shamshi-adad V. 823– 11 BC. Tiglath-pileser III, the great conqueror and refor­ mer. 744–27 BC. Assyrian foot soldiers. Seventh century BC. Sargon II, the unlucky Assyrian king. He died on the battle­field in 705 BC. Sargon II’s palace at Dur Sharruken. A gold tablet of Sargon II. It refers to the construction of his new capital, Dur Sharruken. 712–05 BC. Esarhaddon stele. 680–69 BC. King Esarhaddon is shown on the large panel with two prisoners, who represent Egypt and Tyre. On each side two smaller steles depict Esarhaddon’s sons, Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin. The latter eventually rebelled against Ashurbanipal and perished in Babylon. Egyptian battle scene from Nineveh. Late first millennium BC. Ashurbanipal riding. 668–27 BC. The clubbing down and beheading of the Elamite king Teumman. This happened at the Battle of Til Tuba in late 653 BC. Ashurbanipal in his cups at Nineveh, with the severed head of the Elamite king on the far left. 668–27 BC.  

69 72 75 77 78

 

81

 

Chapter 4

286

An Assyrian officer with his charioteer. An eighthcentury basalt carving. Reconstructed Stele of the Vultures, showing both front and back panels. 2460 BC. Enemies of Eannatum caught in a net by the god Ningirsu. A detail from the Stele of the Vultures. The burial of the slain. Another detail.

82 83 84

86

87 90 92 94 97

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Vultures carrying away body parts. Yet another detail. Assyrians flaying prisoners alive. Part of the uncompromising Assyrian approach to warfare. First millennium BC. Eannatum, king of Lagash. A corner of a plaque dating from the middle of the third millennium BC. The divine king Naramsin depicted on the Victory Stele. 2291–55 BC. Surrendered Elamites begging the Assyrians for mercy. Shortly after the Battle of Til Tuba, 653 BC. Assyrian chariots struggling across uneven ground. Part of a bronze relief found on wooden doors at Balawat. Seventh century BC. An Assyrian siege machine. The Assyrian army had specialist siege engineers. First millennium BC. Assyrian archers and slingers. First millennium BC. Tiglath-pileser III in his chariot watching prisoners from Ashtaroth. 744–27 BC. A composite bow, strung and unstrung. A drawing based on surviving weapons. Assyrians checking composite bows and arrows. Half the Assyrian army were archers. First millennium BC. Grooming a horse, an Assyrian relief from Nimrud dating from 865 BC. An Assyrian groom holding a pair of richly caparisoned horses. Part of a relief from Dur Skarruken, Sargon II’s capital. Eights century BC.

97

100

101 102

103

103

107 107 108 109

110 112

113

287

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

An Assyrian chariot being rowed across a river. Eighth century BC. An early Mesopotamian chariot being drawn by asses. A limestone plaque from the royal cemetery at Ur, dating from the middle of the third millennium BC. What appears to be a leopard skin is draped over the back of the chariot. The impressive wheels on Ashurbanipal’s chariot, showing its corrugated tyre and iron plates used to strengthen the fellow. 668–27 BC.

115

 

Chapter 5

Ashurnasirpal II with his protective genius. 883– 59 BC. King Urnanshe of Lagash, bearing a basket on his head (left) and drinking from a cup (right) with his sons. Urnanshe was not of royal birth himself, but claimed to have been enthroned by Nanshe, a local goddess. A limestone plaque dating from the third millennium BC. Urningirsu, the son of king Gudea of Lagash. Twenty-first century BC. The goddess Ishtar receiving a libation. An Akkadian seal dating from about 2330 BC. The divine king Naramsin in the company of Ishtar. A fragmentary impression from a mold, 2291–55 BC. King Ashurbanipal of Assyria. 668–27 BC. Leadership implied heroic deeds such as combat with wild animals. A seal dating from the second millennium BC. Ashurbanipal pouring a libation over dead lions. 668–27 BC. The lion hunt, as a test and demonstration of a ruler’s fitness for kingship, was a prominent theme in ancient Mesopotamia.

116

117 120

123 126 127

130 131

132

 

288

135

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Xerxes enthroned at Persepolis, the Persian capital. His invasion of Greece in 480 BC inaugurated a conflict between Asia and Europe. Xerxes ruled Persia from 486 to 465 BC. Coin showing Alexander with horns, a sign of divinity in the ancient Near East. Minted in Babylon. A fragment of a Babylonian astronomical diary recording Alexander’s death. 323 BC. Chapter 6

A restored gate at Nineveh, originally constructed by Sennacherib. 704–681 BC. View of the Ashur temple from across the Tigris. Its earliest foundation dates from the early second millennium BC. The sacred buildings at Ashur along with some houses in the foreground. Second millennium BC. Shalmaneser III’s gateway and defensive walls at Ashur. 858–24 BC. A cult socket dating from the reign of Tukultininurta I, 1243–07 BC. The Assyrian king is depicted kneeling and standing before the inscribed cult socket, in which a sacred staff would have stood. Another restored gate at Nineveh. Eighth century BC. An Assyrian winged bull. These gigantic statues were incorporated into royal palaces as guardians. Eighth century BC. An Assyrian fish-man. A representation of a sage like Adapa, the fish-man was intended to protect the occupants of a royal palace. Discovered at Nineveh by Layard in 1847. An Assyrian garden. This depiction of one of Sennacherib’s gardens in Nineveh probably

136 138 139 144

147 148 150

 

151 154

157

158

289

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

explains the mystery of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. It is clear that Assyrian kings, rather than Nebuchadrezzar II, were the great gardeners of the ancient Near East. King Ashurbanipal hunting wild asses on horseback. 668–27 BC. A Babylonian god, whose divinity is evident from his headdress. This small statue was buried near a doorway as a protective device. Sixth century BC. Marduk’s ziggurat opposite the Esagila temple. It was rediscovered in the 1880s when a massive structure of baked bricks was uncovered just below the surface of the ground. It was the largest ziggurat ever built. The Ishtar Gate at Babylon, one of Nebu­ chadrezzar II’s most splendid buildings. Its sophisticated decoration was meant to represent the power of the gods as well as the king. Seventh century BC. Babylonian world map, dating from the sixth century BC. Not surprisingly the city of Babylon is placed at the centre, in the middle of the circular cosmic ocean.

161 162

164

165

166

 

Chapter 7

290

Ereshkigal, “the mistress of death”, and Inanna’s implacable enemy. Baked clay with a mixture of straw, originally painted red with multi-coloured wings against a black background. The horned headdress and the rod and ring of justice declare Ereshkigal’s divinity. Two limestone plaques from Ur. The top one shows a king dedicating a temple, while the bottom records a service there. Third century BC. The god Ningirsu. A bas-relief discovered at Tello and ­dating from the third millennium BC.

169

172

175 176

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A priest of the god Ningirsu, wearing a flounced skirt and holding a staff. It was excavated at Tello and dates from the third millennium BC. Life-size alabaster mask of Inanna that once fitted on a wooden statue at Uruk. Third millennium BC. The divine lovers, the goddess Inanna in bed with Dumuzi. This clay plaque is a definite reference to the rite of sacred marriage. Early second millennium BC. The Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic which recounts Marduk’s creation of the world. Sixth century BC. Ashurbanipal builds Babylon. Like his father Esarhaddon, this Assyrian king sponsored a major programme of reconstruction in the city. Here Ashurbanipal is shown in traditional fashion carrying a basket of clay on his head. 668–27 BC. Babylonian couple making love inside Ishtar’s temple. Second millennium BC. The winged disc of Ashur. First millennium BC. Babylonian lovers. The woman is drinking beer through a straw. Second millennium BC. An offering scene on a limestone plaque from Nippur. It seems to refer to a local goddess and dates from the late third millennium BC. King Shamshi-adad V’s sarcophagus, discovered at Ashur. 823–11 BC. A “bathtub coffin”. Usually made from three sheets of bronze, shaped and riveted together to form a container with long, straight sides, squared off at one end and rounded at the other. A popular means of burial for the well-to-do during the second millennium BC.

178 179

180

181

182 184 185 185

188 190

190

291

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Offerings for the deceased. This funerary stele was excavated at Zinjirli, the site of an allied Assyrian city in present-day Turkey. First century BC. Assyrian soldiers force kneeling prisoners to grind the bones of their ancestors. This enigmatic scene may well refer to Ashurbanipal’s devastation of Elam in 653 BC. Ninurta, the original Sumerian champion of the gods. Second century BC. Diviners at work in an Assyrian encampment. Assyrian commanders continuously consulted with the gods during a campaign. A bas-relief from Nimrud dated to the ninth century BC. A votive offering to the healing goddess Gula, whose cult was associated with dogs. It was intended either to ward off illness or to help recover from an ailment. Late second millennium BC. Chapter 8

An Assyrian fisherman. Both the Euphrates and the Tigris provided a useful source of food. First millennium BC. An early administrative tablet from Uruk. Third millennium BC. The funnel of a seeder-plough is clearly depicted at the bottom of this panel. Third millennium BC. Hammurabi’s law code. The stele was recovered from Susa, the Elamite capital. 1792–50 BC. The head of a woman unearthed at Nimrud. Ivory dating from early first millennium BC. A Sumerian harpist, who would have accompanied male and female singers in temple services. Third millennium BC. A scribe. This statue is dedicated to Ningirsu. Believed to have come from Lagash and dated to the twenty-fifth century BC.

292

193

195 196

196

198

200 202 203 206 208

210

210

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A lady spinning wool. A stone relief from Susa, dated to the first millennium BC. A ceremonial meal connected with feeding the deceased. Early first millennium BC. Slaves pulling ropes. Like the Romans, slavery was critical for the Assyrians. First millennium BC. An Assyrian youth. Seventh century BC. An Assyrian priest from the temple of Ninurta at Nimrud. Ninth century BC. Chapter 9

The wall of King Nebuchadrezzar II’s throne room in Babylon. 604–562 BC. Cylinder of Nebuchadrezzar II, which mentions his building projects. 604–562 BC. A fragment of a Babylonian astronomical text. The Greek philosopher Thales seems to have had access to such scientific information. Late first millennium BC. An oracular fish discovered in Babylon. This model of a deformed fish predicts the destruction of a foreign army. Late first millennium BC. A tablet describing the New Year festival at Babylon. Among other things it mentions the recitation of the Enuma Elish, the creation epic that exalted Marduk’s prowess as the champion of the gods. Around 500 BC. Nabonidas, the last Babylonian king. 555–39 BC. A cylinder of Nabonidas, which registers the king’s ongoing preoccupation with the cult of Sin, the moon god. 555–39 BC. A verse account of Nabonidas’ reign. It would seem that the pro-Persian faction in Babylon composed this poem in order to ridicule the king’s elevation of Sin. 555–39 BC.

212 214 215 216 221 224 226

228

230

231 232

234

235

293

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Two of the decorations on the walls of the Ishtar Gate, a snake dragon and a bull. 604–562 BC. The cylinder describing how Cyrus captured Babylon in 539 BC. It was discovered near the site of the ancient city in 1879. Cyrus’ modest tomb. Sixth century BC.

236

 

Chapter 10 The Ark in the form of a Greek temple on wheels. Carved on a column in the synagogue at Caper­ naum. Second century BC. Shalmaneser III’s capture of Tyre. Part of the bronze decoration on the Balawat gates. 858–24 BC. The hand of Yahweh halting Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. A second-century-BC Jewish mural. The capture of Jerusalem. This cuneiform tablet records Nebuchadrezzar II’s first success in 597 BC. The fertility goddess Asherat. A favourite of King Solomon, and the possible consort of Yahweh, she may be “the Queen of Heaven” mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah. Daniel in the lions’ den. A Byzantine view of his ordeal. Seventh or eighth century BC. A reconstruction of Solomon’s temple. Tenth century BC.

294

241 243

246

248 250 256

258 258 262

INDEX

Abraham (patriarch), 251 Achilles (Greek hero), 141 Adad (Assyrian god), 94, 136, 149 Adad-guppi (priestess), 136, 235, 236 Adad-nerari II (Assyrian king), 63, 64, 65, 134 Adapa (legendary sage), 84, 213 Adonis (Greek god), 186 Agga (Sumerian king), 98, 122, 123 Aeneas (Trojan-Roman hero), 183 agricultural revolution (Sumerian), 13, 203–206 Agum-kakrime (Kassite king), 53 Ahab (Jewish king), 73, 75, 91, 248 Ahura Mazda (Persian god), 138, 140 Akhenaten (Egyptian pharaoh), 54, 111 Akkad (early Mesopotamian power), 5, 6, 11–35, 47, 98, 99, 124, 125, 127–130, 152, 153, 174 Akkadian (Semitic language), 18, 25, 33, 49, 54, 61, 66 Alexander the Great (Macedonian king), 44, 129, 137–142, 143, 244, 245, 264



Amenhotep III (Egyptian pharaoh), 54, 56 Amorites (Semitic people), 34, 38, 44 An (Sumerian god), 14, 16, 96, 168, 179, 191, 213 Antiochus I (Seleucid king), 245 Antiochus IV Epiphanes (Seleucid king), 259, 264, 265 Anu see An Aphrodite (Greek goddess), 176, 183 Aramaeans (Semitic people), 60, 61, 63, 76 Arslantope (Sumerian trading post), 23 Asherat (West Semitic goddess), 259 Ashur (Assyrian god), 68, 91, 94, 122, 148, 149, 152, 168, 173, 174, 179, 192, 195 Ashur (Assyrian city), 3, 40, 42, 48, 63, 147–150, 153, 187, 193 Ashurbanipal (Assyrian king), 2, 3, 40, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 101, 102, 160, 161, 162, 163, 173, 219, 221, 222

295

INDEX Ashur-dan II (Assryian king), 63, 64 Ashurnasirpal II (Assyrian king), 64, 65, 67, 68, 70, 104, 153, 160, 199, 215, 216 Ashur-uballit II (Assyrian king), 89 Asia Minor, 13, 48, 52, 233 Assyria and the Assyrians, xi, xii, 1, 3, 6, 7, 13, 23, 24, 25, 33, 35, 41, 42, 43, 48, 57, 60, 63–89, 100– 106, 118, 121, 131–137, 146, 147–163, 173–199, 215–223, 225, 249, 250, 251 Astarte (West Semitic goddess), 175, 183, 184, 259 Azag (Sumerian monster), 189, 192

cavalry, 72, 105, 162, 163 Chaldeans (Semitic people), 225 chariot, 48, 56, 64, 71, 72, 104, 105, 109, 111, 116, 118, 162, 163; see also Kikkuli China, 85, 204, 205 Cicero (Roman author), 85 city-states (Sumerian), 15–23 cuneiform (script), 5, 11, 21, 205, 214 Curse of Akkad (Sumerian composition) 33, 130 Cyprus, 183 Cyrus the Great (Persian king), 4, 137, 242, 261, 263, 264

Babylon and the Babylonians, xi, xii, 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 18, 32, 34, 35, 37–61, 63, 77, 78, 82, 83, 89, 113, 131– 137, 143, 144, 147, 163–171, 173– 199, 220, 225–245, 247, 248, 251 Babylonian captivity (Jewish), 7, 156, 167, 247–265 Balawat (Assyrian city), 6, 104 Bar Kokhba (Jewish leader), 265 Belshazzar (Babylonian prince), 234, 237, 238, 241 Ben-adad II (king of Damascus), 73, 75, 91, 248 Berossos (Mesopotamian priest), 191 bow (composite), 105, 106, 108, 109, 118

Daniel (Jewish prophet), 241, 244, 259, 260, 261, 263 Darius (Persian king), 137, 138, 261 divination, 44, 79, 80, 85, 135, 173, 174 Dumuzi (Sumerian god), 125, 186 Dur Sharruken (Assyrian city), 1, 67, 79, 135, 150

Carthage and the Carthaginians, 183, 218

296

Ea see Enki Eannatum (Sumerian king), 95, 96, 99, 100 Egypt and the Egyptians, 2, 5, 6, 16, 54, 56, 60, 76, 83, 89, 141, 142, 143, 177, 226, 227, 228, 229, 233, 252, 254 Elam and the Elamites, 4, 25, 31, 34, 37, 43, 51, 57, 58, 82, 86, 87, 88, 99, 101, 127, 192 Enheduanna (prietess), 25

INDEX Enki (Sumerian god), 14, 20, 167, 179, 180, 181, 186, 192, 201, 202, 203 Enlil (Sumerian god), 14, 15, 16, 17, 27, 47, 67, 125, 130, 131, 168, 169, 174, 177, 178, 179, 182, 185, 191, 194, 194, 195, 199, 201 Enmerkar (Sumerian king), 21 Enmesarra (Sumerian god), 168, 191 Enuma Elish (Babylonian epic), 39, 168, 174, 191, 192, 193 Ereshkigel (Sumerian goddess), 186, 188 Eridu (Sumerian city), 14 Esagila (Marduk’s temple), 16, 53, 58, 83, 133, 134, 187, 164, 165, 166, 242, 244, 245, 264 Esarhaddon (Assyrian king), 1, 6, 79, 80, 82, 86, 198, 251 Etruscans, 53 Flood, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 20, 179 Frazer, James, 140 Gaza (Philistine city), 76, 228 Gedaliah (Babylonian governor), 256, 257 Gilgamesh (Sumerian king), 17, 18, 19, 98, 122, 180 Gilgamesh (Babylonian epic), 18, 19 Greece and the Greeks, 2, 3, 19, 44, 49, 60, 137, 138, 209 Gudea (Sumerian king), 30, 31, 126, 127 Gula (Sumerian goddess), 57, 19

Gutians (invaders from the Zagros), 29, 31, 51, 130 Hadrian (Roman emperor), 265 Hammurabi (Babylonian king), 3, 5, 11, 34, 37, 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 51, 99, 131, 132, 146, 166, 171, 178, 206–214, 218, 232 Hanging Gardens, 143, 144, 170 Hatti see Hittites Hattusli I (Hittite king), 56 Hebrews see Jews Herakles (Greek hero), 139 Herodotus (Greek historian), 140, 163, 164, 165, 182, 183, 243 Hesiod (Greek poet), 169 Hezekiah (Jewish king), 155, 156, 249, 250 Homer (Greek port), 19 Hittites, 48, 52, 53, 56, 57, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119 Ibbisin (Sumerian king), 34 India, 5, 44, 111, 139 Inanna (Sumeian goddess), 16, 25, 96, 125, 152, 175, 179, 182, 183, 184, 186, 188 irrigation, 13, 14, 45, 47, 157, 203, 204, 205, 229 Isaiah (Jewish prophet), 70, 250 Ishtar (Babylonian goddess), 150, 152, 153, 170, 175, 183, 184, 199 Israel (Jewish kingdom), 74, 76, 248, 249 Jehoiakim (Jewish king), 252 Jehu (Jewish king), 75, 76, 160, 248

297

INDEX Jeremiah (Jewish prophet), 247, 253, 254, 255, 256, 257, 263 Jerusalem, 4, 8, 155, 156, 229, 249, 250, 251, 252, 255, 264, 265 Jews, xii, 4, 7, 8, 75, 76, 156, 167, 194, 247–265 Jezebel (queen of Israel), 75 Jonah (Jewish prophet), 122 Josiah (Jewish king), 252, 253 Judah (Jewish kingdom), 74, 104, 248, 252, 254 Kadashman-enlil I (Kassite king), 54, 56 Kadesh (battle), 114, 115, 116, 118 Kalhu see Nimrud Kassites (Babylonian dynasty), 51, 52, 53–61 Kikkili (master horseman), 112, 113, 114 kingship, 121–143, 149 Kish (Sumerian city), 24, 122 Koleway, Robert (archaeologist), 148, 170, 171 Kudur-nahhunte (Elamite king), 58 Layard, Austen Henry (archaeologist), 2, 9, 67, 70, 106, 148, 154, 163 Li Si (Chinese minister), 85 Lugalbana (Sumerian king), 17 Lugalzagesi (Sumerian king), 24, 127 Lydia (Asia Minor), 231, 233 Maccabeus, Judus (Jewish leader), 265

298

Macedon and the Macedonians, 137, 138, 139 Manasseh (Jewish king), 251, 252 Manishtusu (Akkadian king), 25, 128, 152 Marduk (Babylonian god), 4, 6, 16, 37, 40, 53, 58, 83, 131, 134, 137, 146, 149, 164, 166, 168, 169, 170, 174, 179, 188, 189–195, 197, 198, 230, 238, 243, 244 Mari (Syrian city), 37, 42, 43, 49, 127 mathematics, 59, 60 Medes (Iranian people), 226, 241 medicine, 56, 57 merchants, 21, 212, 213 Mesalim (Sumerian king), 122 Mitanni (northern kingdom), 48, 111, 112, 147 Mursili I (Hittite king), 52 Muwatali II (Hittite king), 114, 115 Nabonidas (Babylonian king), 4, 135, 136, 137, 234–241, 242, 243, 261 Nabopolassar (Babylonian king), 88, 89, 166, 225, 226 Nabu (Babylonian god), 40, 41, 82, 133, 199 Nanna (Sumerian god), 25; see also Sin Naramsin (Akkadian king), 5, 6, 16, 25, 26, 27, 98, 99, 125, 128, 130, 140; his deification, 5, 16, 26, 99, 125, 128, 130, 140 Nebuchadrezzar I (Babylonian king), xii, 39, 58, 59, 133

INDEX Nebuchadrezzar II (Babylonian king), 89, 146, 158, 164, 166, 170, 171, 227, 228, 229, 231, 232, 237, 241, 252, 254, 258, 259, 261 Nergal (Sumerian god), 91, 94, 188 Neriglissar (Babylonian king), 233, 234 Nimrod (legendary king), 167 Nimrud (Assyrian city), 2, 40, 67, 82, 149 Nineveh (Assyrian city), 1, 2, 3, 7, 40, 80, 83, 86, 88, 101, 121, 122, 149, 150–163, 206, 220, 226 Ningirsu (Sumerian god), 40, 95 Ninhursag (Sumerian goddess), 123, 179, 181, 195 Ninlil (Sumerian goddess), 177 Ninurta (Sumerian god), 40, 67, 68, 69, 96, 134, 149, 188, 189, 192, 199 Nippur (Sumerian city), 16, 17, 27, 28, 47, 56, 88, 125, 194 Palestine, 7, 76, 226, 228, 233, 248, 251, 252, 264 Pelusium (battle), 228 Persia and the Persians, 4, 7, 8, 106, 109, 129, 137, 138, 140, 141, 241–245, 263 Philip II (Macedonian king), 139, 141, 142 Phoenicians, 49, 76, 183, 229 Phrygia (Asia Minor), 60 Pythagoras (Greek philosopher), 59, 60 Qarqar (battle), 71, 72, 75, 91, 248

Qin Shi Huangdi (Chinese emperor), 85 Raba-as-Marduk (Babylonian doctor), 56, 57 Ramesses II (Egyptian pharaoh), 114, 115, 116, 118 Ramesses III (Egyptian pharaoh), 60 Ramoth-Gilead (battle), 73 Rig Veda (ancient Indian poem), 111, 112 Rim-Sin (Amorite king), 38, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47 Rimush (Akkadian king), 25, 29, 98, 128 Rome and the Romans, 2, 3, 8, 44, 53, 81, 105, 134, 197, 209, 217, 218, 241, 245, 265 Royal Road, 78, 79 sacred marriage (Sumerian rite), 125, 134 Sargon (Akkadian king), 5, 23, 24, 25, 127, 152 Sargon II (Assyrian king), 1, 67, 79, 80, 129, 135, 159, 217, 249 Scipio Africanus (Roman general), 218 Sea Peoples, 60 seeder-plough (Sumerian invention), 203 Seleucids (Macedonian dynasty), 8, 264, 265 Samsuiluna (Babylonian king), 51, 52 Scythians, 86, 109, 111

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INDEX Sennacherib (Assyrian king), 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 78, 79, 80, 82, 104, 121, 135, 146, 152, 153, 154, 157, 159, 160, 206, 249, 250, 251; and the sack of Babylon (689 BC), 4, 82 Shalmaneser I (Assyrian king), 147 Shalmaneser III (Assyrian king), 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 91, 92, 94, 149, 230, 237 Shamash (Babylonian god), 51, 53, 85, 122, 131, 132, 177, 178 Shamash-adad I (Assyrian king), 41, 42, 63, 147, 152 Shamash-adad V (Assyrian king), 73 Shamash-shuma-ukin (Assyrian governor), 86 Shamsuiluna (Babylonian king), 51, 52 Sharkalisharri (Akkadian king), 27, 28, 29 Shulgi (Sumerian king), 32, 38, 40, 129, 130 Shutruk-nahhunte (Elamite king), 57 Shutural (Akkadian king), 29 Sin (Babylonian god), 4, 136, 220, 235, 237, 238–241 Sin-sharra-ishkun (Assyrian king), 88, 226 Siwah (oasis), 142 slavery, 106, 205, 206, 208, 209, 218, 219, 222, 230, 237 Solomon (Jewish king), 74, 248, 259, 264 Stele of the Vultures (Sumerian memorial), 23, 92, 93, 95, 96, 186

300

Sumer and the Sumerians, 5, 11–35, 40, 95–98, 122–127, 129, 130, 174–189, 201–206 Sumerian King List, 17, 29 Susa (Elamite city), 51, 87 Syria, 7, 23, 26, 52, 66, 71, 73, 76, 114, 115, 116, 118, 136, 217, 226, 227, 228, 233, 248, 251 “tablet of destiny”, 174 Tema (Arabian city), 234, 238 Tertullian (Christian author), 53, 54 Teumman (Elamite king), 86, 88, 101, 161 Thales (Greek philosopher), 60 third dynasty of Ur (Sumerian), 21, 30, 35, 38, 98, 99, 124 Tiamat (Babylonian chaos dragon), 6, 168, 174, 191, 192 Tiglath-pileser I (Assyrian king), 148 Tiglath-pileser III (Assyrian king), 5, 26, 54, 73, 74–79, 105, 106, 217, 220; his reforms, 5, 26, 105 Til Tuba (battle), 86, 101, 161 Tower of Babel, 166, 167 Tyre (Phoenician city), 76, 91 Umma (Sumerian city), 23, 30, 95, 127 Ur (Sumerian city), 23, 25, 30, 34, 98, 131 Urartu (northern kingdom), 74, 79 Urnammu (Sumerian king), 32, 129 Uruinimgina (Sumerian king), 205 Uruk (Sumerian city), 11, 15, 16,

INDEX 18, 23, 24, 30, 31, 34, 96, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 179, 180, 204 Utanapishtim (Babylonian Noah), 19, 20, 21 Utu (Sumerian god), 11, 123, 171; see also Sin Venus (Roman goddess), 176, 183, 184; in Sicily, 183, 184 Victory Stele (Akkadian monument), 58, 99, 100, 127 warfare, 6, 24, 32, 37, 64, 67, 70, 77, 80, 81, 95, 91–119, 127, 128; the Assyrian war machine, 6, 64, 67, 70, 77, 80, 81, 85, 91, 92, 100– 106, 217, 249

women, 136, 157, 160, 211, 222, 223, 235, 237 Xenophon (Greek historian), 78, 79 Xerxes (Persian king), 137, 138 Yahweh (Jewish god), 7, 14, 70, 122, 155, 156, 176, 253, 255, 259, 263 Zakutu (Assyrian queen), 157 Zedekiah (Jewish king), 252, 254 Zeus (Greek god), 142, 169, 186 Zimri-Lim (king of Mari), 37, 38, 42, 47 Ziudsura (Sumerian Noah), 14, 179, 180 Zoroaster (Persian prophet), 140

301