by Eckart Frahm
Even after they had abandoned Ashur as their royal residence, the Assyrian rulers returned to Ashur and the “Old Palace” on a regular basis in order to observe their cultic responsibilities, especially during the annual spring festivities (Maul 2000). In the house of their fathers, the old royal palace, they also found their last resting places, close to their god (Lundström 2009).
As repentant and modest the “vice‐regent” appeared when he faced his god in crisis situations, so godlike he appeared to the people entrusted to him, the “subjects of Enlil.” It seems that the idea that the Assyrian ruler possessed certain “divine” qualities gained substantial ground with the proliferation of Assyrian power in the middle of the second millennium BCE (Machinist 2011). In the Neo‐Assyrian period, the great Assyrian kings stylized themselves, following the ancient Sumerian example, as the children of the gods, who were reared with the milk of a caring goddess (Foster 2005: 820, IV.4c:13–19 and 39–40; 829–830, IV.4f). After the spring celebrations in Ashur had been rearranged by Ashurbanipal, the king even showed himself to the people on the great forecourt of the Assur temple with the crown of Assur, which was worshipped as divine (Maul 2000: 398). The “day on which the king wears the crown,” the 24th of Šabatu, was considered “the day of the city god,” one of the highest holidays of the Assyrian calendar, and brought before the people’s eyes not only the close bond of the “vice‐regent of Assur” with his god, but also showed clearly that divine Assur and the person of the king essentially flowed into each other. A similar message was probably conveyed by the starred cloak of Ashurbanipal (see, for example, Barnett and Lorenzini 1975: 118), which dressed the Assyrian king in the garment of the universe and turned him into the ruler of the world, far above earthly restrictions.
The idea of the divine nature of the Assyrian king found an abominable expression in the brutal warfare of Sennacherib (704–681 BCE). The old conflict between Babylonia and Assyria over dominance in the Near East, increasingly heated since the time of Tukulti‐Ninurta I, had led, during the twenty‐three‐year reign of Sennacherib, to previously unknown dimensions of hostility. After all attempts to secure the sovereignty over Babylonia with political means had failed, Sennacherib decided to solve his “Babylonian problem” with violence. Babylon was to be obliterated once and for all. By command of the king, the Assyrian armies plundered the city, slew its population, and defiled the temples and divine images. Sennacherib accomplished the Assyrian “retribution” that fell upon Babylon with a mythical “weapon of the gods,” the “deluge” (Seidl 1998), with which the god of creation had once vanquished the dark forces of chaos in order to fashion the world (Enūma eliš IV: 49) and which had then been used by Enlil in his attempt to destroy the world again. Deliberately imitating the flood myth, Sennacherib dispensed the weapon, which was attributed to Assur, and reenacted the annihilation of Babylonia as an obliterating flood. He dammed the Euphrates, cut ditches through the metropolitan area, and destroyed Babylon so forcefully with the floodwater that debris was allegedly washed up even in the vicinity of the Gulf island of Bahrain (Dilmun). But by stirring up deep anti‐Assyrian resentment, these brutal acts also precipitated Assyria’s eventual downfall.
Politics as Religion and Religion as Politics
Until the end of the Assyrian state, the religious “orthopraxy” of the Assyrian kings was regarded as the real reason for their political and military successes. The “vice‐regent” had to provide for the care and fostering of Assur and all the other gods, reconstruct and sustain their temples (Lackenbacher 1982), and face the gods in festivals and rituals in his capacity as High Priest (van Driel 1969: 139ff.; Maul 2000). Only then could he anticipate stability and success. From the Middle Assyrian period onwards, the territorial expansion of Assyria, along with the prosperity of the “subjects of Enlil,” was considered to be a specific sign of divine blessing. Already in the late second millennium BCE, and very much in contrast to the Babylonian south, the Assyrians couched their expansive policy in theological language and explicitly considered it a religious duty. In the coronation ritual of the Assyrian kings, the order the ruler received from the god Assur was: “Expand your land!” (Müller 1937: 12, 35; Livingstone 1989: 26, 3) – even though it was also stipulated that the king should dispense wisdom and exercise law and justice.
The military campaigns of the Middle and Neo‐Assyrian kings are accordingly described in their inscriptions as the fulfillment of a divine mandate. Completely in line with this view, the copies of the Neo‐Assyrian state treaties concluded with dependent rulers in order to secure loyalty to the Assyrian heir to the throne (Parpola and Watanabe 1988: 28ff.) were sealed not with the king’s seal, but rather with various seals of the god Assur, which – to illustrate the everlasting power of the god – originated from the Old, Middle, and Neo‐Assyrian periods. The breaking of such a treaty was accordingly considered in Assyria not only as a betrayal of the ruler of Ashur, but also, first and foremost, as a sinister offense against the god of the world himself.
In the Middle Assyrian period, certain specificities of the Assur‐Enlil theology attained great meaning in warfare. Ninurta, the son of Enlil, who was venerated in Nippur as a hero‐god who, at the dawn of time, by the command of his father, had defeated the dark forces of chaos and then had established the world order (Annus 2002), was promoted – henceforth as the son of Assur‐Enlil – to the position of an important Assyrian god who held the fortunes of war in his hand. The name of the great Assyrian king Tukulti‐Ninurta I (1233–1197 [1243–1207] BCE) reflects the significance that Ninurta had acquired in that time: literally translated, he was called “my trust is in Ninurta.” Certain expressions in Assyrian royal inscriptions reveal that the king understood his struggle against the enemy as the re‐actualization of the mythical struggle of the hero Ninurta and considered himself his earthly image, who had achieved in Ninurta’s place the mission of the divine father to rescue the land from the grasp of the “evil forces” (Maul 1999). So it is hardly by chance that Ninurta was worshipped in Kalu, the royal residence newly established by Aššurnaṣirpal II (883–859 BCE) 120 kilometers to the north of Ashur, as the main god of the city.
Just as, in the mythical narratives, Ninurta had to provide an account of his various combats to his divine father, the rulers of Ashur presented to their god, the other gods worshipped in the Assur temple, as well as the city of Ashur and its residents, reports about their martial actions. From the Neo‐Assyrian period, several “letters” are preserved with campaign reports directed to the god Assur and probably publicly read to him and other deities (Borger 1971; Frahm 2009: 69–70, text no. 29). In addition, replies composed in the names of Assur and Ninurta are known (Livingstone 1987: 108–15). They are reminiscent of prophecies encouraging the king in the name of Ištar of Arbela, which were likewise recorded in writing (Parpola 1997). The reports read to the gods are probably to be connected to royal triumphs, carried out with great pomp, which culminated in the offering of spoils at the temple. In the Neo‐Assyrian period, the sanctuary of the warlike Ištar of Arbela held a prominent position on these occasions. “Tribute from all lands enters into it,” a hymn to this important Assyrian city claims (Livingstone 1987: 20, line 19). There were also visual statements informing the god about military actions undertaken by the king: representations of campaigns on glazed bricks adorned the podium of the Assur temple as well as the ramp and the gate towers that formed an entrance from the northeast to the “main courtyard” of the temple (Haller and Andrae 1955: 56–62).
Ninurta, Nergal, and other gods accompanied the Assyrian king and his army on campaign in the form of standards (Pongratz‐Leisten, Deller, and Bleibtreu 1992). Rightly so could a king – as in an inscription of Esarhaddon – claim that he, “with great trust” in his gods, “followed behind their great divinity” into battle (Borger 1956: 65 § 28; Leichty 2011: 54, line 17). Under the last Assyrian kings, martial actions were often scarcely described anymore as achievements of th
e royal warrior but rather as the work of the gods. In the campaign narratives of Assurbanipal, Assur and Ištar are the ones that attack the enemies of the king (Borger 1996: 234, A § 37:22), and it is the fire‐god who, in a manner of speaking, on his own incentive “dropped from heaven and burned (the enemies)” (Borger 1996: 251, Stück 6 16–17). And an Assurbanipal hymn to the warlike Ištars of Nineveh and Arbela claims: “Neither [… by] my [might] nor by the might of my bow, but by the strength and might of my goddesses did I cause the lands disobedient to me to submit to the yoke of Assur” (Foster 2005: 820, 28–30).
The conception of Assur‐Enlil as the father of all gods was likewise utilized as an element of Assyria’s ideology of war. After the capture of a city, not only its king and his family were often deported to Assyria, but also the gods worshipped there. Their temples were left behind ownerless, their cities without divine protection and without cult. From the time of Tiglath‐pileser I (1114–1076 BCE) until that of Assurbanipal, some fifty‐five relevant cases are attested in the extant Assyrian royal inscriptions (Holloway 2002: 123–144). Hundreds of gods from the entire Near East arrived in Ashur in this way. They were, in the truest sense of the word, subordinated “to their father” Assur. Often provided with a cult, venerated and, in many cases, housed in the Assur temple itself or in other temples of the gods of the city, they became part of the royal household of the father of the gods and had to effectively listen to his commands. The pantheon of Ashur was thus always also an image of Assyria’s imperial power. Only after long negotiations and good conduct on the part of the deprived enemy were some of the kidnapped gods sent back to their original sanctuaries (cf. Holloway 2002: 277–83). To do so, the divine images were sometimes restored in the workshop of the Assur temple – which served as a kind of divine “birthplace” (bīt mumme). They were splendidly outfitted and, in a way, newly born. Admittedly, one did not forgo also inscribing “the might of Assur” and of the Assyrian king on the divine images that were sent back (for examples, see Borger 1956: 53, Episode 14; Leichty 2011: 19, lines 6–14; Holloway 2002: 288–91; and more generally Dick 1999) – so that the images could henceforth be recognized at first glance as being the products of Assyrian mercy.
The fate of such an Assyrian captivity befell even Marduk, the god of Babylon, who, like Assur, was modeled after Enlil. The mighty Middle Assyrian king Tukulti‐Ninurta I had conquered Babylonia in a war, captured the Babylonian king Kaštiliaš IV, and brought him as hostage to Ashur. Towards the end of the 13th century BCE, he seized Babylon and not only plundered Babylonian libraries, but also brought Marduk from his temple Esagil to the Assyrian capital city. The Babylonian god, who stayed in Ashur for no fewer than 106 years (Weidner 1939–41: 120), was provided with an elaborate cult there. A ritual text shows us (Köcher 1952) that a festival was celebrated in Ashur – probably in imitation of Babylonian customs – that revolved around Marduk and was reminiscent of the Babylonian New Year’s festival. It thus appears as though it was first under Tukulti‐Ninurta I (and his immediate successors) that an attempt was made to detach the Marduk cult from Babylon and to transfer it to Assyria, so as to fuse two competing “kings of the gods” into one single deity. Centuries later, Sargon II (721–705 BCE) made another attempt to redefine the relationship between Assur‐Enlil and Marduk‐Enlil. In a letter to Assur in which he informs his divine patron about his campaign to the land of the Urartians, Sargon describes his god as follows: “Assur, father of the gods, lord of all lands, the king of heaven and earth, begetter of all, lord of lords, to whom from of old the Enlil of the gods, Marduk, bestowed the gods of heaven and earth and the four corners of the earth, that they ever, without ceasing, honor him above all others, and that he (Assur) bring them into (his temple), the ‘House, high mountain of all lands’7 with their accumulated treasures” (Foster 2005: 806–7).
Yet Sargon’s claim that Ashur would be forever the “exalted cult site that Assur, his lord, had chosen for the world as the center [of kingship]” (Vera Chamaza 1992: 23, lines 30–1) did not remain uncontested in Babylonia – even though the Assyrians tried to enforce it through violent means. In the ever more acrimonious struggle between Ashur and Babylon over the hegemony in the Near East in the course of the first millennium BCE, the Babylonians’ unshakable belief in the “Enlilship” of Marduk increasingly became a nuisance to the Assyrians. Similarly to Ashur, so too did Babylon raise the claim, with its powerful divine patron and its cult facilities patterned after Nippur, to be the center of the cosmos and the true seat of kingship (George 1992: passim). To the adversaries of Assyria, this was, without doubt, highly welcome. Completely unlike Assur, who always remained exclusively bound to the city Ashur and closely associated with Assyrian kingship, the Babylonian god was also worshipped far beyond the borders of the regions dominated by Babylon, in the entire Near East. He was considered not only the patron god of his city but also a god of wisdom and healing, who watched over all mankind. Such popularity, not linked to state power, Assur never possessed, and some Assyrians undoubtedly envied the Babylonians because of this.
Against the backdrop of the political wrangling began a conflict driven not least by theologians in which the Assyrian side attempted to prove the primeval nature of Assur and, with that, the superiority of their king of the gods over his Babylonian counterpart. Here, the orthography of the name Assur played a substantial role. From the time of Sargon II onwards, a writing for the name of the god became common that designated the unlimited divine space from which arose all gods and the entire world known to us: An‐šár, a Sumerian name that literally means “totality of heaven.” The writing came very close to the name Aššur, given that one pronounced it Aššar. Following the rules of scholarly exegesis, one could thus speculate about whether that primeval Anšar and the Assyrian Assur were identical. The Assyrians liked to believe so and used the new writing in order to demonstrate that Assur must have come into being long before Marduk. The latter was thought to have emerged from Assur and was therefore considered to be subordinate to him. But the Babylonians made very similar claims regarding Marduk. Even though not using etymology as an argument, they considered Marduk, whom they called “creator of the gods, his fathers,” an avatar of Anšar as well.8
At the height of the dispute between Assyria and Babylonia, Sennacherib (see Figure 18.2) wanted to end the conflict conclusively by force of arms and to annihilate Babylon and its sanctuaries once and for all. In the “deluge” staged by Sennacherib, the Marduk temple “sank” too – it was completely destroyed. The Babylonian divine images were smashed and Marduk brought to Ashur. The most significant ritual of Babylonia, a new year’s festival in honor of Marduk called akītu, to which the creation epic Enūma eliš served as cult legend, was reenacted in Ashur (Frahm 1997: 282–8), to legitimize the political sovereignty of the Assyrian king. Marduk and his cult would be completely absorbed in Assur. On the one hand, Assyrian scholars rewrote Enūma eliš, replacing the name of Marduk with that of Assur and the name of the city of Babylon with that of Ashur (Lambert 1997). On the other hand, Sennacherib initiated a comprehensive building program, through which the cultic topography obliterated in Babylon would arise again in Ashur. Marduk’s destroyed akītu house, situated outside the gates of Babylon, was built anew outside the gates of Ashur (Haller and Andrae 1955: 74–80; Miglus 1993), and extensions to and architectural changes within the Assur temple made it possible to resume in that sanctuary the rites associated in Babylon with Marduk (Haller and Andrae 1955: 69–73; Frahm 1997: 282–8).
Figure 18.2 King Sennacherib, depicted twice, worshipping the god Assur and his wife Mullissu. Assur is standing on a mušuššu‐dragon, a feature adopted from the cult of Marduk of Babylon. Khinnis, “Großes Relief.”
Source: W. Bachmann, Felsreliefs in Assyrien, WVDOG 52, Leipzig: J.C. Hinrichs 1927, 10, Abb. 8.
Posterity considered Sennacherib’s Babylonian politics a most wicked act of hubris. Indeed, after the violent death of Sennacherib, his son
and successor Esarhaddon (680–669 BCE) strove for a policy of reconciliation and organized with great energy the reconstruction of Babylon (Porter 1993). Under Assurbanipal, the building activities had so far progressed that the “godnapped” Marduk could be repatriated to his newly constructed temple there – even though the deity, “newly born” in the Assur temple, had been furnished with Assyrian royal insignia. The Assyrians of this time acknowledged Marduk’s role of divine savior and hero, celebrated in Enūma eliš, but the role of primeval king of the gods remained that of Assur. Assur’s divinity was considered in the late Neo‐Assyrian period as so comprehensive that all other deities, even the great goddess Ištar, were regarded by some as manifestations of the Assyrian god.
Swan Song
In 614 BCE, troops under the leadership of the Median king Cyaxares besieged the ancient religious center of the Assyrian empire. Its massive fortifications, considered impregnable (and shaping the landscape of Ashur even today) could offer the city no permanent protection: the enemy troops succeeded in entering the city, and Ashur had to pay the bitter price for the centuries‐long subjugation of the peoples of the Near East. The city was left destroyed, plundered, and pillaged. The sanctuary of Assur, which embodied the religious dimensions of Assyrian imperial power like no other place, was so thoroughly leveled that appreciable remains of the building and its furnishings did not even remain preserved in the rubble (Miglus 2000). With the house of Assur and the image of the god would also the spirit of Assyrian imperial rule entirely cease to exist.