A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  Šamši‐Adad was possibly not the first who attempted to raise the influence of the god Assur by equating him with a king of the gods. Long before Šamši‐Adad was Dagan, the “Enlil” of the middle Euphrates region, worshipped in the house of Assur (Grayson 1987: A.0.31) – probably, just like Enlil later, as an emanation of Assur himself. So it may be that Šamši‐Adad took up again an already old idea, this time to make Ashur into a cultic center whose prestige would reach far beyond northern Mesopotamia and into the south. As the “appointee of Enlil,” he probably had in mind to extend his reach of power far into that region. This would admittedly not come to pass. But the idea of establishing a supraregional center by creating a “new Nippur,” erected at another location, that adopted the city’s old traditions continued to persist over several centuries. Indeed, the doctrine of Ashur as the seat of the “Assyrian Enlil, the lord of all lands” constituted the ideological core of the expansive power politics of Assyria in the Middle and Neo‐Assyrian periods.

  Šamši‐Adad’s attempt to appropriate the status of Nippur for his own political interests was also highly consequential in another respect. For it appears as though, only a short time after Šamši‐Adad, Hammurabi, the powerful king of Babylon, took up Šamši‐Adad’s idea. He considered Babylon the “new Nippur” and himself the appointee of Enlil. Hammurabi believed that his aggressive politics were crowned with such great success because he fulfilled a divine plan of salvation. In the introduction to his collection of exemplary “legal decisions,” the so‐called Hammurabi Code, Hammurabi explains, retrospectively, the vast success of his expansionist politics with the fact that in a “prelude in heaven,” Anum, the sky‐god, and Enlil, the king of gods, effectively transferred to Marduk, the city god of Babylon, the “Enlilship” – that is, the divine king’s authority over all mankind, to be held in perpetuity. Simultaneously, Hammurabi himself, the “appointee” of Enlil, was entrusted with the leadership of the people. Marduk, the previously rather unimportant god of Babylon, was little by little transformed into a new divine king, modeled after Enlil (Sommerfeld 1982), and Babylon and Esagil, the sanctuary of Marduk, were likewise redeveloped following the example of Nippur (George 1992: 4–7 and passim). This new Marduk–Enlil theology may well have been inspired by the model of Šamši‐Adad’s attempt to identify Assur with Enlil. Once instituted in Babylon, it enjoyed enduring success. Even in periods in which the political influence of Babylon was limited, the city’s claim, originally associated with Nippur, to be the center of the world inspired its rulers and citizens in their fight for independence and greater power.

  How enormously significant the equation of Assur with the old Sumerian king of gods Enlil was to become in Assyria is first apparent in the Middle Assyrian period, when a territorial state with more than two dozen provinces came into being. We know from archives of the Assur temple’s administration of offerings (Freydank 1997; Maul 2013) that each individual province had to deliver, year by year, a (fairly modest) amount of grain, sesame, fruits, and honey for sacrifices offered up daily to Assur. That this obligation was considered highly relevant politically can be seen from the fact that it was regulated as a contractually bound agreement concluded between the highest administrator of offerings of the temple and the particular governors of the individual provinces. Both incoming and missing deliveries were recorded with great diligence in the temple. Had only practical concerns mattered, the daily provisions of Assur and the other gods residing in his temple could probably have been covered easily by royal domains or temple estates or could have been defrayed completely by the hinterland of the capital city. But the scrupulous documentation left by the Assur temple’s administrator of offerings clearly shows that exactly this was not intended. What really mattered was that the basic care of the god was carried out by all parts of the Assyrian state jointly. Far more important than the need to amass the natural produce required for the regular offerings appears to have been that commodities from the entire country ended up on the table of the gods. God and country thus bear the same name with a very good reason: the land Ashur (māt Aššur) with all of its individual parts feeds the god, who himself embodies the land.

  This notion, characterizing the Middle Assyrian offering practice, is apparently very old and has a long prehistory, which can be traced back within the cult of Enlil to the third millennium BCE. Already in the 21st century BCE, in the period of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the governors and rulers of the individual provinces belonging to the empire were required, exactly as in the later period, to deliver goods to the Ekur, Enlil’s temple in Nippur. From a corpus of several hundred documents from Puzriš‐Dagan (modern Drehem), we learn where exactly the meat came from that was placed before Enlil for his daily meals (Sallaberger 2003/2004). The animals for slaughter required for this purpose stemmed not only from the great herds of the state and the temple, but were delivered regularly by all regions of the state. Year after year, governors and rulers of individual provinces sent a fatted sheep or a small billy goat as a gift for the supraregional god Enlil, without shying away from the somewhat disproportionate effort of sending a messenger with a single animal over distances of several hundred kilometers to Nippur.

  We find the ancient idea that all parts of the land should nourish their god also in sources from the Neo‐Assyrian period, now from the perspective of an all‐encompassing worldwide claim to power and with an added cosmological dimension. A royal inscription of Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE), in which he describes the festivals that took place on the occasion of the roofing ceremony for the renovated temple of the imperial god Assur, states: “I slaughtered fattened bulls and butchered sheep; I killed birds of the heavens and fish from the apsû, without number; I piled up before them (the gods of the Assur temple) the harvest of the sea and the abundance of the mountains. … I presented them with gifts from (all) the inhabited settlements, (their) heavy audience gifts” (Borger 1956: 5; Leichty 2011: 127–8). The animals delivered here were not only the sustenance for the god; they represented in addition and above all the three cosmic layers of the world as conceived in the ancient Near East: sheep and bulls stand for the earth, for the man‐made and natural swaths of land, the birds for the heavens, and the fish for the sweet‐water ocean (apsû), over which the earth arches. The highest god is thus sustained by the life force of the entire cosmos in its vertical order, comprising heaven, earth, and sweet‐water ocean (apsû). And if, as our text claims, “gifts from (all) the inhabited settlements” arrived in Ashur, the idea suggests itself that the entire community of (civilized) mankind and thus, effectively, the whole “universe” brought its tribute to the god in order to sustain him in a collective effort.

  The Assyrian offering practice described here is to a significant extent motivated by the desire to comply with a divine mandate to mankind articulated over and over again in the creation myths. The ancient Sumerian myth Enki and Ninma as well as the Old Babylonian Atraasis story and the Babylonian world creation epic Enūma eliš, composed in the late second millennium BCE, unanimously relate that man was solely created in order to provide the gods with food and drink. The care and feeding of the gods is, according to these myths, the real, the true task of man, who, in order to show them his gratitude for his existence, had to apply a considerable portion of his labor so that the gods, released from any burden of work, would be cared for.

  The demand on man formulated in the creation myths, that the work of all should nourish the gods, was implemented in Assyria with the utmost literalness. For Middle Assyrian documents show that, for the preparation of the dishes placed before the god, at least occasionally workers from all provinces of the kingdom were enlisted, even though men living in Ashur could have been readily employed for this purpose (Maul 2013). And both in the Middle Assyrian and the Neo‐Assyrian period, even the king and the high dignitaries residing in the capital city of the empire provided natural produce for the preparation of the regular offering called the ginā’u. In other words:
kings, governors, officials and high dignitaries, craftsmen, farmers, and probably also herdsmen and cattle‐breeders together supplied the daily meals for the god, which could, hence, be considered as gifts that had been provided by a community that comprised all strata of society and the entire territory of the Assyrian state.

  Such a conception of sacrifice can create a powerful sense of identity among those involved. Through the act of collective offering, rulers and subjects together become a people of god. In the case of Assyria, in which the name of the god Assur also designates the land and its inhabitants, this is particularly clear. The message delivered by Esarhaddon is in line with this. On the one hand, individuals of “foreign seed” are forbidden from participating in the sacrifice for Assur (Borger 1956: 5; Leichty 2011: 128, vii 13–15), while, on the other hand, in the ritual of the ceremonial laying of the foundation for the new Assur temple, both “noble and lower class people” of the city of Ashur were involved alongside the king’s sons (Leichty 2011: 153, lines 16–176).

  We observe here how the “commensal community” of Assur is situated on the way to developing a kind of state identity: among the willing, an Assyrian is he who, whatever his social or geographic background, participates in the care of the deity that carries the name of the land of Ashur and whose sustenance the Assyrian king has to guarantee. The path that leads from an “offering community” to a supranational political community of the Assyrian people is laid out here.

  Significantly, provinces that were newly integrated into the aggressively expanding Neo‐Assyrian empire were forced to take part in the regular feeding of the imperial god. King Esarhaddon not only placed a governor over the conquered Egypt, he also imposed upon it, as we learn from his inscriptions, the obligation to provide “in perpetuity regular offerings for Assur and the great gods” (Borger 1956: 99; Leichty 2011: 186, lines 48–9). The regular offerings imposed on the conquered forced them, in addition to everything else, to show their respect to the almost transcendent power of a foreign deity, and to ask for divine benevolence from those who had disempowered them. The correspondence of the later Neo‐Assyrian kings shows us that resistance regarding the delivery of the expected gifts was not tolerated and was severely punished. A breakaway from the community of the “subjects of Enlil,” which had to feed the god and thereby sustain the world order, was understood as the gravest transgression.

  Assur, His Earthly Representative, and the Community of Gods

  The Assyrian kings’ functions as High Priest and “vice‐regent” of the highest god had a significant impact, at least since the time of Šamši‐Adad, on the topography of the city Ashur, which remained fundamentally unchanged until the late period. The monumental royal palace, constructed in the early second millennium BCE in the north of the city (Preusser 1955; Pedde 2008), lay in the midst of the great temples of Ashur, in a location that bore the name “Courtyard of the (divine) Emblems.” The streets and alleys of the city led to this “forum of the gods.” The deities worshipped here, the personified powers of the cosmic order, thus appeared to turn directly towards the city and its people.

  The sanctuary of Assur, in contrast, was not only isolated from the inhabited metropolitan area by an elongated five‐cornered forecourt that lay below the temple, but also by the royal palace, which closed the “Courtyard of the Emblems” towards the east. Like a locking bolt, it pushed itself in front of the sanctuary of the chief god. A direct and ground‐level entrance to the sanctum of the Assur temple, reserved for the ruler alone, existed only on the side of the palace facing away from the city, alongside the northern cliff face, which was fortified with a massive brick construction that is still impressive today (see Figures 18.1 and 23.1). Only here, a direct entrance by way of a stairwell led from the lateral branch of the Tigris to the temple and palace. From the building inscriptions of the Middle Assyrian period we know that the god Assur attended upon the ruler yearly in his palace, where a sanctified place with a pedestal designed specifically for him was made available for this purpose (Grayson 1987: A.0.76.16; Weidner 1956: 276, statue 8; Grayson 1991: A.0.87.4:77–89). The other great gods of Ashur were also regularly “invited” into the palace. The highly meaningful proximity of temple and palace that becomes apparent here is also reflected, incidentally, in the ceremonial names that Tukulti‐Ninurta I gave to his palace and to the Assur temple in his newly constructed residence Kar‐Tukulti‐Ninurta. While the palace bore the name É‐gal‐me‐šár‐ra, “Palace of the Totality of Divine Powers,” he gave to the temple the name É‐kur‐me‐šár‐ra, “House, Mountain of the Totality of Divine Powers” (George 1993: 171, no. 1444, and 117, no. 687), thus indicating that temple and palace were two inseparable counterparts that mirrored each other.

  Figure 18.1 View from the roof of the temple of Assur westwards towards the ziggurat and the northern part of the city of Ashur; reconstruction.

  Drawing by Walter Andrae. From W. Andrae, Das wiedererstandene Assur, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs 1938, 33.

  The “Old Palace” in Ashur constituted, on the one hand, the bridge to the holiest place of divine power, the temple of Assur; on the other hand, it was part of the “Forum of the Gods” that opened up to the city. Here the gods were worshipped who served as protectors and helpers of the “vice‐regent of Assur” and determined the fates, but were also subordinated to their divine king Assur. A twin temple connected with the “Old Palace” through a gate and furnished with two small stepped towers, between which were located the actual temple rooms, was dedicated to the sky‐god Anu and his “first son,” the weather‐god Adad (Andrae 1909). The weather‐god owed his position, surprisingly prominent in comparison to southern Babylonia, to the fact that, unlike in the south of Mesopotamia, the rain‐fed agriculture practiced in the north depended to a fundamental degree on the weather. On the opposite side of the plaza were venerated, likewise in twin sanctuaries, the moon‐god Sîn and his son Šamaš, the sun (Haller and Andrae 1955; Werner 2009). The moon, with its ever renewing phases, and the sun, with its regularity, were considered by the Assyrians and Babylonians alike as guarantors of an eternal order. They gave the world its structure through time and the calendar and – within limits – made it appear predictable. The third and final great temple complex, which bordered the “Courtyard of the Emblems” to the southwest, was the ancient sanctuary dedicated to Ištar, which was regularly renewed throughout the centuries (Meinhold 2009).

  The close proximity of the “vice‐regent of Assur” to the world of the gods also reveals itself in the Assyrian coronation ritual, whose main features are familiar to us both through Middle Assyrian (Müller 1937) as well as through Neo‐Assyrian ritual scripts (Livingstone 1989: 26–7). At the center of the festivities stood the exclamation “Assur is king, Assur is king!” (Müller 1937: 8, 29; Livingstone 1989: 26, 15), which leaves no doubt about the fact that, in the Assyrian lands – unlike in Babylonia – the true kingship belonged to the god and not to the ruler, his “representative.”

  And yet, the ruler was symbolically endowed, during the festivities that accompanied his coronation, with all the divine powers. In a ceremony that took place in the Assur temple, he received insignia that were considered not his but rather borrowed to him by the gods. According to Neo‐Assyrian tradition, the sky‐god Anu handed over to him his crown, Enlil gave his throne, the pugnacious hero‐god Ninurta, Enlil’s son, placed his weapons at his disposal, and Nergal, the god who embodied the annihilating force of plagues, added his terrifying radiance (Livingstone 1989: 27:5–7). In the Middle Assyrian period, the new ruler was equipped with the “crown of Assur” and the weapons of Ninlil, the spouse of Enlil, who was added to Assur‐Enlil as consort from this point onwards. The godlike force emanating from these insignia is aptly described in an inscription of Esarhaddon: “Assur, the father of the gods, gave me (the power) to let (cities) fall into ruins and to (re)populate (them), and to enlarge the Assyrian territory; Sîn, the lord of the crown, decreed heroic strength and
robust force as my fate; Šamaš, the light of the gods, elevated my important name to the highest rank; …. Nergal, mightiest of the gods, gave me fierceness, splendor, and terror as a gift; Ištar, the mistress of battle and war, gave to me a mighty bow and a fierce arrow as a present” (Borger 1956: 46; Leichty 2011: 15, lines 30–8). Moreover, when he stepped before Assur and in other instances (Menzel 1981: T 43, 4; T 52, 4; T 76, 3’), the Assyrian ruler carried, at least during the Neo‐Assyrian period, a chain with the symbols of the deities who had equipped him with their power.

  On occasions that are unfortunately not yet precisely identifiable, the “vice‐regent of Assur” had the responsibility to offer up food and drink for each individual god of the Assur temple, for all the gods of the city, even for the gates, for the river and its gravel islands, for the clouds, for the seas, and for the stars, to ensure the divine blessings. This ritual, which was called tākultu (Frankena 1954; van Driel 1969: 159–62; Menzel 1981: T 113–T 145), was probably performed in the Assur temple and in the city and was – as numerous texts document – practiced from the Middle Assyrian period until the downfall of Ashur in the late seventh century BCE. It appears to have originated in the old Sumerian Enlil rituals (see Sallaberger 1993: 143–5).