Much Ado about Marduk: Questioning Discourses of Royalty in First Millennium Mesopotamian Literature 9781501504969, 9781501513855

Citation preview

Jennifer Finn Much Ado about Marduk

Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records

General Editor: Gonzalo Rubio Editors: Nicole Brisch, Petra Goedegebuure, Markus Hilgert, Amélie Kuhrt, Peter Machinist, Piotr Michalowski, Cécile Michel, Beate Pongratz-Leisten, D. T. Potts, Kim Ryholt

Volume 16

Jennifer Finn

Much Ado about Marduk Questioning Discourses of Royalty in First Millennium Mesopotamian Literature

ISBN 978-1-5015-1385-5 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0496-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0498-3 ISSN 2161-4415 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter Inc., Boston/Berlin Printing: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Preface This book has a rather long and complicated history. Its genesis was as a project on interdisciplinary approaches to gleaning criticisms of authority in Ancient Mesopotamia and the Greco-Roman World, upon which I worked during the 2011 iteration of The Advanced Seminar for the Humanities, held at Venice International University. At the time, I was finishing my doctorate in Greco-Roman History at the University of Michigan, during which a passion for Assyriology had unexpectedly overtaken me after attending a lecture on Gilgamesh by Piotr Michalowski. The next morning, I rushed to the director of the Interdepartmental Program in Greek and Roman History to proclaim it a necessity that I learn Akkadian, so that I might incorporate Babylonian material into my Ph.D. thesis on Alexander the Great in the Near East. The program very generously encouraged me to pursue a concurrent MA degree in cuneiform studies through the Department of Near Eastern Studies (also at Michigan). Norm Yoffee very patiently guided me through the basics of Akkadian, and there was no turning back. Perhaps predictably, upon completion of the Ph.D. in the next year, I had already decided that I would like to pursue a second Ph.D. in Assyriology, with my Venice project forming the kernel of the proposed thesis. Once again, Michigan agreed to keep me on, this time with the welcoming guidance of Gary Beckman and Piotr Michalowski, the latter of whom had the great pleasure of sitting on not one, but two thesis committees on my behalf. Difficulties associated with my long tenure at Michigan made funding a challenge, and I was lucky to be able to transfer my project to Munich, as a fellow in the graduate school Distant Worlds (associated with the Münchner Zentrum für Antike Welten). There, Walther Sallaberger was a tireless mentor, and I am so grateful for his continued guidance and support. Without the funding of the Graduate School, during and after the defense of the thesis in July 2015, this project would never have seen completion. For their willingness to help in every step of the project, I am eternally indebted. Every scholar is a product of great teamwork, and I will most certainly forget an important name in the process, but I will do my best to recognize the support I have received along the way. David Potter graciously encouraged all of my intellectual endeavors since I was an undergraduate in Classics at The University of Michigan in 2001‒2005. For his advice, his timely email responses, his genuine concern for my well-being, and his tireless book lending, I thank him from the bottom of my heart. In her various capacities as a professor and director of The Interdepartmental Program in Greek and Roman History, Sara Forsdyke enabled and supported my growth as a student and then as a jobseeker. In her kind DOI 10.1515/9781501504969-000

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and thoughtful approach, Margaret Root showed me that interdisciplinary approaches to studying the Ancient World could be productive and exciting. I give thanks to Piotr Michalowski for his great patience, but also for his belief in my ability to do more than I thought I could do (I can imagine the face I made when he requested that I learn Sumerian in only two weeks). My classmates and friends at both Michigan and Munich served—and continue to serve —as sounding boards and sources of support. I am also incredibly thankful for my colleagues at Marquette, who were so encouraging and helpful to me as I juggled the challenges of serving as a new professor in Ancient History while trying to finish my first book. The book benefitted from scholarly dialogue in several locations: the 2014 Graduate Colloquium of the Near and Middle Eastern Students’ Association at The University of Toronto; the 2014 and 2016 American Oriental Society meetings; the 2014 “Building History” Colloquium hosted in Verona, Italy; the Kolloquium zum Alten Orient in Munich; and the Distant Worlds Graduate School. I am indebted to Anne Coulling for her help in correcting my many grammatical infelicities in the final stages of preparation. The patience and kindness of Gonzalo Rubio in his tireless re-reading and editing of the book was far beyond expectations. Finally, I am thankful to the anonymous peer reviewers for the SANER series. This book has benefitted immensely from their meticulous and thoughtful comments. Of course, all remaining mistakes and omissions are mine alone. Most of all, I would like to give thanks to my family. To my loyal canine companions, Boudicca and Aero, who sat at the side of my desk patiently waiting to walk outside until I finished just one more sentence. To my sister Julie, my brother-in-law Rob (who willfully participated more than once in my need to run a marathon as an outlet), and to my sweet, smiling niece, Dani, I give my endless thanks. I could never express my gratitude enough to my husband Jason, whose support never flailed and who served as a much-needed calming presence throughout the process. And finally, I give thanks to my parents especially, who never once questioned my decision to take the academic path less traveled, and have been a source of indefatigable support and love. This book is for you.

Contents Preface

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Standard Abbreviations

IX

Chapter 1: Reading Counterdiscursive Texts in the First Millennium BC King and Scholar in the Neo-Assyrian Period 3 Establishing a Counterdiscourse on Royalty 9 The Counterdiscursive Scholar 16 Cracking the Royal Code: Creating a Lexicon of 19 Counterdiscursiveness Breach of Contract and Crime 21 22 Sin and Perversion Justice 24 Wind 27 Cracking the Royal Code: Methods and Modes of 29 Counterdiscursiveness “Warning” Literature 31 33 Constructive Criticism (“Suggestive Literature”) Outright Criticism 34 Subversive Texts/History 35 Marduk 37 42 Chapter 2: The Kassite Revolution Much Ado about Marduk: The Kassite and Isin II periods 42 Scribal identity 53 Neo-Assyrian Literature in Context 58 The Standard Babylonian Cuthaean Legend as Paradigmatic of the Subversive Neo-Assyrian Scholar 58 Neo-Assyrian renarrations 72 Chapter 3: The Library of Assurbanipal and the Counterdiscursive Landscape 78 The Library of Assurbanipal 78 Advice to a Prince 85

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Chapter 4: The “Babylonian Problem” and Scribal Dialogues of 96 Counterdiscursiveness The Sin of Sargon 97 Authorship and Intention in The Sin of Sargon 101 The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown-Prince 104 109 Political Critique in Context The Counterdiscursive Scholar (again) 112 117 The Crimes and Sacrileges of Nabû-šuma-iškun Chapter 5: Counterdiscursiveness beyond belles lettres in and out of Nineveh 126 The Letter of Arad-Gula 127 The Weidner Chronicle 130 138 The Letter of Gilgamesh Middle Babylonian Letters in the Library at Nineveh 141 Chapter 6: Textual Hegemony and the Counterdiscursive Public 150 Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions and Textual Hegemony in the Public Sphere 150 Cultural Memory and Challenges to Kingship: Ritual Parallels to Textual 163 Hegemony The Akītu Festival 163 Bīt rimki 167 Epilogue The Legacy of Late Akkadian Countertexts 172 The Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus 172 Continuity and(?) Change; Ḫarrān Reconsidered 178 The Assyrianization of Nabonidus 185 Countertexts and a Return to “Justice” 190 The Dynastic Prophecy 193 The Dynastic Prophecy in Context 198 Reconsidering Advice to a Prince 200 Conclusion 202 Bibliography Index

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Standard Abbreviations AfO AJA AJSL AI AOAT AnSt ArOr AS ASJ BagF BagM BICS BCSMS BO BSOAS CAD CANE CM CSMSJ CT CTMMA HUCA IEJ JANER JANES JAOS JBL JCS JESHO JNES JRAS JSOT NABU OA OBO OIP OIS OLA ORA OrNS PAPS PIHANS RA RIMB

Archiv für Orientforschung American Journal of Archaeology The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures Acta Iranica Alter Orient und Altes Testament Anatolian Studies Archív Orientální Assyriological Studies Acta Sumerologica Baghdader Forschungen Baghdader Mitteilungen Bulletin for the Institute of Classical Studies Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies Bibliotheca Orientalis Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (ed. J. Sasson) Civilizations of the Ancient Near East ( volumes) Cuneiform Monographs Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies Journal Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum Cuneiform Texts in the Metropolitan Museum of Art Hebrew Union College Annual Israel Exploration Society Journal Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Records Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Society Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Biblical Literature Journal of Cuneiform Studies Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient Journal of Near Eastern Studies Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Nouvelles Assyriologiques Bréves et Utilitaires Oriens Antiquus Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Oriental Institute Publications Oriental Institute Seminars Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta Oriental Religions in Antiquity Orientalia: Nova Series Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society Publications de l’Institut historique-archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul Revue d’Assyriologie The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Babylonian Periods

DOI 10.1515/9781501504969-000

X

RINAP RlA SAA SAAS SAAB SAACT SANER SH SO SpTU TCS UET UF VAB WO WZKM YOS ZA

Standard Abbreviations

Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period Reallexicon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie State Archives of Assyria State Archive of Assyria Studies State Archives of Assyria Bulletin State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records Scripta Hierosolymitana Studia Orientalia Spätbabylonische Texte aus Uruk Texts from Cuneiform Sources Ur Excavation Texts Ugarit-Forschungen Vorderasiatische Bibliothek Die Welt des Orients Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes Yale Oriental Series, Babylonian Texts Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie

A note on translation and text editions: In every case in which a primary source is used, the text edition(s) referenced will be given in the footnotes. Unless otherwise noted, the translations of Sumerian and Akkadian texts in this work are my own. However, due to the quality of the work of my predecessors in the study of these texts, my translations by default will often stray very little from those of the editions cited in the footnotes. My main aim was to standardize the translations of important vocabulary that I have identified as essential to the expression of counterdiscursiveness in the first millennium.

Chapter 1 Reading Counterdiscursive Texts in the First Millennium BC In the first tablet of the epic Atraḫasis, we learn that the Igigi gods acted as an inferior workforce for the great Anunnaki gods, for whom they labored arduously during the first 3,600 years of history. But the Igigi eventually rebelled against this domination: [Every one of us] gods has declared war, We [have formed our group] in the ditch. Excessive [drudgery] has killed us, Our forced labor [was heavy], the misery too much! [Now, every] one of us gods Has resolved [on a battle] with Enlil.¹

The Annunaki recognized their revolt; the solution was the creation of man, who was fashioned from the flesh of a wise god mixed with clay. Humans would now bear the Igigi’s burden. Thus, as von Dassow (2010: ix) points out, “the spirit of rebellion…flows in our veins; that original act of revolt is perpetuated in our every heartbeat.” As Barbalet (1985: 531‒548) argues, the micro- and macro power structures in any society are inevitably accompanied by some level of resistance. While such opposition does not invariably lead to conflict, its very existence implies an attempt to limit the power structures being criticized. Similarly, Scott (1990: 103) notes that in any society where there is social inequality, the members of the ruling party are by default subject to censure for failing to perform their social function to the expected paradigm: “The basis of the claim to privilege and power creates, as it were, the groundwork for a blistering critique of domination on the terms invoked by the elites.” Though the Mesopotamian king is often viewed as an omnipotent “Oriental despot,” Mesopotamian society was such that the monarchs’ power was not entirely absolute: so Sallaberger (2012: 3), using a final curse in the codex of Ur-Namma, proves that in Mesopotamia, “die Macht des Herrschers musste von den Menschen akzeptiert werden, um wirksam zu sein.” But it was not just the general populace that needed to support the

 For the text translation see Foster (2005: 234). DOI 10.1515/9781501504969-001

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rather static precepts of royal ideology;² it was also the very creators of that image—the scholars at the royal court—who were perhaps the most important audience for the ideal of royalty. This book will focus on the scholars responsible for creating a discourse about royalty in the Neo-Assyrian period.³ As both authors and audience, the scholars at the Neo-Assyrian royal court held a unique and powerful position. In her 2015 monograph, Religion and Ideology in Imperial Assyria, Pongratz-Leisten executed a thorough examination of the ways in which these scholars were directly involved in advising and counseling the kings, stressing their role as constructors of the royal image. In this sense, this book will participate in active dialogue with her rich study. By contrast, however, my interest will lie in describing the ways in which the scribes were able to deconstruct and problematize the reigns of particular Assyrian kings, and how those evaluations both reflected and affected royal practice in the same period. Thus I ascribe to scholars a dual role, one which allowed them not only to produce, but also to upend, the discourses they were responsible for creating. By presenting late Akkadian texts that subvert royal narratives, this book will challenge the seemingly monolithic, static structures that drove the production of literature⁴ in the late periods of Mesopotamian history. While contextualizing this literature in the history of a disruptive sociopolitical conflict with neighboring Babylonia, this study will provide a window into the possibilities for questioning kings in one of the last great Mesopotamian empires.

 Defined appropriately by Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 21) as the “condensed form of the royal perspective.”  I approach “discourse” in the Foucauldian sense, as structures of meaning that shape and govern human interaction. See here Farfán and Holzscheiter (2011: 139). The main object of Foucauldian discourse analysis, then, is to delineate the ways in which discourses produce, reproduce, and limit power relationships.  Though the book will cover other literary media such as letters, a majority of the texts discussed herein will be referred to as “literature” or “belles lettres,” especially when a particular text survives in multiple copies and appears to have gone through redaction over time. For an attempt at a definition of “Akkadian literature,” see Foster (2005: 45‒47). I will also include in the category of “literature” those texts that survive in only one copy, as they exhibit many qualities of their more popular brethren, such as intertextuality, repetition, and parallelism.

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King and Scholar in the Neo-Assyrian Period While our knowledge about the changes in scribal education throughout the long history of the Ancient Near East is quite varied,⁵ it is clear that the connection between king and scholar was strong from the very early periods of cuneiform documentation. From the late fourth millennium to the end of the third millennium, most texts are of a primarily administrative nature. The most frequently copied texts from this period consist primarily of lexical lists; it was only in the Early Dynastic II period that more “literary” texts appeared in the school repertoire (Charpin 2010b: 17‒21). In the Ur III dynasty, professional scribes appear to have followed a more standardized program of the e₂-dub-ba-(a) (Akkadian bīt ṭuppi), termed by Michalowski (1981: 51) “an ideological molder of minds,” where future administrators “received a common stock of ideas and attitudes.”⁶ The production of royal hymnology and a new interest in disseminating royal ideology precipitated the establishment of a scribal schooling system, the introduction of which—based on the claims of the Ur III king Šulgi—scholars believe to have occurred during his reign. Šulgi achieved his goal of having his name memorialized, as the copying of hymns played a major role in scribal education until the mid-eighteenth century (Charpin 2010b: 25); such activities in a primary educational setting would immediately begin to help form a Mesopotamian perception of the past.⁷ During the Old Babylonian period, new genres, writing styles, and formats developed. In this era we can also glean a move towards the “privatization” of scribal education.⁸ Education—and its resultant literacy—was naturally not uniform throughout the history of the Ancient Near East,⁹ but it is clear that the system was designed

 However, for a good overview, see Pearce (1995: 2265‒2278) and Alster (2008: 47‒63).  The e₂-dub-ba-(a) of the Old Babylonian (and probably Kassite) period is now thought to have been a part of the family dwelling space, not an independent self-standing structure. See e. g., Cohen (2013: 27), and for archaeological remains indicating school tablets and archives in private houses, see Wilcke (2000: 7‒22).  See Jonker (1995: 86‒87 and 177). The first texts in the scribal school paradigm, naturally, were lexical lists and proverbs, elementary pedagogical aids because of their ease of memorization.  George (2005: 127‒37) shows that the scribal school should not be described as a “secular university” (pace Landsberger) but that we should understand it—from the Old Babylonian period forward—as a small enterprise conducted mostly out of private homes with a limited number of students. The large-scale “schools” as described in the e₂-dub-ba-(a) literature, he argues, were architectural and institutional realities only at the moment of their introduction in the Ur III period, when their connection to the state was strongly enforced.  See, for instance, for the second millennium, Michalowski (2012: 39‒58). Debates have arisen regarding the spread and availability of literacy in the Ancient Near East. Charpin (2004: 481‒

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to create an elite class of citizens who were uniquely literate and enculturated,¹⁰ with access to specialized knowledge.¹¹ We have a more detailed idea of the process of scribal education in the first millennium (upon which we will mainly focus), as provided by the work of Gesche. Her work divided the Neo-Babylonian scribal school system into two main parts (I. Schulstufe and II. Schulstufe). In the first stage, which would have led to employment in the court milieu, the scribes were inculcated with a certain type of ideology that molded their impressions of the ideal king (Gesche 2001: 212‒220).¹² The five major texts in this first

501) and Wilcke (2000) both argue for what Veldhuis (2011: 70‒73) calls “functional literacy,” a level of literacy which would allow a person to compose or read a basic letter or administrative document, though he distinguishes this level from “technical” and “scholarly” literacy, the last of which is most applicable to our study and implies a total knowledge of the writing system and its literature. Parpola (1997b: 320‒322) argues for a relatively high level of “functional literacy” in the Assyrian Empire. We know that literacy was not restricted to such a small population; for instance, there is evidence that merchants engaged in writing without the aid of a professional scribe. See Larsen (1976: 305).  Carr (2008: 20). Indeed, there was a keen self-awareness among the scribes of the difficulty— and usefulness—of their art. We have several early texts, such as the Sumerian “Schooldays,” as labeled by Kramer (1949: 199‒215), and the bilingual texts first labeled by Landsberger Examenstexts A, B, C and D. Text D is given by Sjöberg (1972: 126‒131). All of these texts can be placed in the two categories identified by Oppenheim (1975: 37 n. 1), wherein he finds that most of these early texts either 1) bemoan the difficulty of the scribal art and/or 2) take pride in a student’s mastery of cuneiform literacy.  Not least as exemplified by YOS 19: 110, a Neo-Babylonian tablet containing a common refrain in its colophon, proclaiming the content of the tablet to be limited only to the initiated (“The initiate may show the initiate/The uninitiated may not see/Taboo of DN”). This text, and texts like it, argues Beaulieu (1992a: 109), reflect the social dimensions of restricting access to certain types of information. They also demonstrate that these restrictions resulted not only from an exclusive and elitist scribal culture, but evidently from royal initiative, since royal punishment is indicated for violators of the protocol. Pongratz-Leisten (2013: 292) notes: “Cult and divination as conduits of the divine voice in the form of astrology, prophecy, dream oracles, and extispicy are the primary domains through which an entire class of experts defines its position within the hierarchical structure, segregating themselves from the rest of the population by claiming the exclusivity and even secrecy of their knowledge.” On this see also van der Toorn (2007: 21‒29). The recent study of Stevens (2013: 211‒253) uses case studies from Late Babylonian Uruk to prove that those tablets that contain “Geheimwissen” colophons are not to be considered “secret” per se, but are all specifically associated with material whose core relevance is to the specialist’s (in this case, the āšipu’s and kalû’s) knowledge and expertise; therefore, she argues, previous studies have been too broad in attempting to delineate a general corpus of “secret knowledge,” as this designation was in fact associated in antiquity with particular specialization.  Wilcke (1993: 67) points out that the texts used in the first stage of the schooling system performed a double function, both to serve as an example for the students and future administra-

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phase all portray kings addressing other sovereigns or high officials; they present a consistent image of the monarch, focusing on instructions for proper guidance and government (Beaulieu 2007c: 140‒142). Thus in the first millennium, kingship held the primary place as the choice subject matter upon which the scribal system was concentrated; scribal education not only taught students writing, but “also an entire system of values and perspectives, including value for their own profession, cherishing of tradition, and loyalty to the king” (Carr 2008: 21). But as Michalowski (1994: 58‒59) rightly emphasizes with respect to earlier periods, “The crucial aspect of the new technology—writing—was not the recording of orality but the invention of a new form of discourse…[I]t added to the communicative possibilities of humankind and provided it not only a powerful tool for social control, but also for opposition and for reaction to power and control.” This was even more true in the first millennium, when the scribes gained notable proximity to palace affairs.¹³ The unique skills and social position that accompanied Mesopotamian scribal education created a strong group identity among its practitioners.¹⁴ In the second millennium, scribes were organized into more clearly defined groups, with the authorship of major literary compositions being attributed to legendary scribes who were considered the extended “kin” or ancestors of these groups.¹⁵ In the first millennium, this self-identification became increasingly associated with divinity,¹⁶ and highlighted the relationship of the scribes to the king. As such, the exclusiveness of royal scholars was highly dependent upon the king, all the while being constitutive of it: as producers of royal inscriptions and hymns, the scribes at the court were actively involved in creating an image of the king while also incorporating his intents and attitudes towards his rule (Oppenheim 1975: 40). At the same time, royal scribes formed a group that was in

tors, but also to quantify expectations of rulership for the royal children who attended the school. The second stage of the school process was meant for those scribes who desired a career as scholars or temple personnel. Pace Gesche, see the review of Veldhuis (2003: 628), who complains that Gesche’s model “represents an approach to texts and tablets focused on use rather than on origin.”  As will be discussed in great detail in Chapter 2. On the education of the Neo-Assyrian scribe, see Hurowitz (2008: 71‒76).  Though there were what Oppenheim (1975: passim) calls “independent scribes,” who took on more utilitarian tasks such as recording administrative documents, my focus here will be on the better-known “court scribe” or “scribe as scholar,” a group which, as Oppenheim himself admits, may have consisted of many of the same individuals.  See Michalowski (1996: 186), citing Lambert (1957: 12), and Lambert (1962: 59‒77).  There is some evidence that several famous canonical texts—and by extension their authors —were divinely inspired, and of significant cosmic importance. See Foster (1991: 26 and 31).

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and of itself a mirror image of the king: as Robson (2011: 562) describes it, “with its heavy emphasis on literacy, numeracy, and law this was a heritage that positioned the scribe at its centre, as the upholder of social justice on behalf of royalty and deity by means of fair measurement and accurate calculation.” We cannot know much about the situation of scribes in the second millennium, though we can say for certain that they were learned men, products of a more or less standardized (yet in its essence, exclusive) educational system, who were able to produce literary commentary on kings and kingship that was often based on intertextual allusions from earlier Babylonian tradition. In the Neo-Assyrian era, we know more. Royal scribes in this period would be distinguished from those whose level of literacy can be considered “functional,” part of what Parpola (1993: xxv‒xxvii) calls the “inner circle” of scholars at the court, further differentiated from those in the “outer circle,” who were lesser scholars with little influence. All are united by their distinguished access to (protected) knowledge and—in most cases—their ubiquitous proximity to the king and his affairs. As a cohesive body with definable characteristics, the scholars at court could maintain a significant amount of political authority.¹⁷ The chief scribe, rab tupšarri, was an advisor to the king and was essentially in charge of planning, organizing, and running the affairs of the Neo-Assyrian state, whereas the palace scribe, tupšar ēkalli, can be described as a sort of secretary of the state, maintaining important relationships with both the king and foreign dignitaries. Often, the duties of these men would overlap, with responsibilities in construction works, the performance of rituals, the appointment of palace officials, and legal matters (Luukko 2007: 227‒256). For the purposes of this work, I will focus on those individuals who were considered ummânū at the Assyrian court.¹⁸ These people were “scholars,” representatives of the “Five Disciplines:” astrologer/scribe (tupšarru), haruspex/diviner (bārû), exorcist/magician (āšipu), physician (asû), and lamentation chanter (kalû) (Parpola 1993: xiii). These individuals were distinct from purely bureaucratic scribes, and, having graduated through the various levels of first-millennium scribal schools, maintained a wide range of competencies. As with scribal education in the Ur III period, these scholars would have had an ingrained sense of first-millennium Assyrian

 See Parpola (1993: xix-xxiv) on the duties of the scholars at court, which included prophylactic and advisory functions. For a firmer definition of some of the more influential offices at the Neo-Assyrian court, see Mattila (2000). At the very least in the Old Babylonian period, we have omens that mention the possibility of royal courtiers conspiring ina puḫrim against the king. See Jeyes (1989: 134‒135, no. 9 obv. 21).  Perhaps a formalized replacement of the Middle Assyrian “royal scribe.” See Wiggermann (2008: 210).

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and Babylonian royal ideology (see below),¹⁹ and the ability to produce literary texts to both reflect and defy those notions. Their elevation in status during the Neo-Assyrian period (Chapter 2) made them intimate—but also precarious—bedfellows of the Assyrian king. Because of the unique sociopolitical situation of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, the Assyrian royal court housed both Assyrian and Babylonian scholars.²⁰ The interactions between these two groups lie in the background to much of the literature collected in this work. Naturally, both Assyrian and Babylonian scholars had a strong influence on the Assyrian king. One of the most famous extant examples comes from two letters of Bēl-ušēzib, a Babylonian astrologer in the service of the king Esarhaddon.²¹ In these letters, the scholar provides not only an interpretation of celestial omens but also an open suggestion as to how to incorporate them into royal policy, indicating that “the astrologer saw his own observations and interpretation as a starting point for strategic considerations” (Radner 2011: 372), while also insinuating the king’s willingness to accommodate them. Though the king could expel an expert from his court at will (see Chapter 5), this example indicates that the scholars were essential to the proper operation of the court. Simultaneously, scribal proximity to the creative production of Mesopotamian royal self-representation provided the scribes with the unique opportunity to both elevate the king and express discontent with him. Another way of conceptualizing this codependence is through Foucault’s notion of “relationality,” in which the “circuitry of power” is never simply unidirectional but at least bi-directional, wherein the power structure is both subject to and subject of relations of force. This mutual relationality between the scribe and king can be understood through acceptance of the Foucauldian principle “…that power is a dynamic and interactional force,” which in turn requires that we recognize “the possibility that those subjected to power may also, paradoxically, play a significant role in the functioning of that power which acts upon them” (Hook 2007: 79). Concomitant with this bi-directional movement is that such a dialogical interchange conceives of the possibility of resistance. Yet, naturally, the intensity of that resistance will be directly proportionate to the type of government and the degree to which change in the established order is expected. This was very limited in Mesopotamia because their society was what Dahl (1973: 2‒3) characterizes as a “hegemony,” a “regime that impose[s] the most severe limits on the ex-

 Oppenheim (1975: 40‒41) differentiates these scholars as “poet-scribes.”  See Fincke (2014: 274) and especially Chapter 4.  See SAA 10: 111‒112. See also Chapter 4.

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pression, organization, and representation of political preferences and on the opportunities available to opponents of the government,” where organized dissent and opposition are prohibited in any form. The elites at the Mesopotamian royal court were dependent on the king and did not necessarily expect (or want) a revolution; thus, any record of disapproval of a particular king’s reign is mostly likely to appear in literary material rather than violent protestation. All of these considerations make texts the most fitting avenue in which to explore such issues, because access to them was generally located within an exclusive group; in late Mesopotamia, this group comprises the scholars who created the text, also confidants and advisors of the rulers who became the object of their criticism. For Neo-Assyrian scholars, “[w]hat literature offers is an index of socially construable meaning rather than an image of reality; it is to the construction of social meaning, rather than the transmission of messages about the world, that the exercise of literature is directed” (Spiegel 1999: 5). In the literary texts compiled in this work, scholars who are accountable to the king (and his image) can be seen creating new texts or modifying/copying older texts, in an attempt to question the fidelity of the royal image, most notably with reference to the last Neo-Assyrian kings Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal. In creating such texts, the scholars also exert independent influence “behind closed doors,” through the production of counterdiscursive literature that could have more widely ranging and corrosive effects on royal society by encouraging policy change (Chapter 4); questioning the permanence or stability of the reigning Assyrian king (Chapters 3 and 5); or even fomenting rebellion (below). A further eroding force is indicated by this textual output when one considers that much of it reflects an open dialogue between Assyrian and Babylonian scholars sharing the same creative space. Thus, the texts often betray a fiery dynamic between and among scholarly groups that would mirror competing Assyro-Babylonian discourses about the problems of Neo-Assyrian kingship. Ultimately, those sour relationships would spell the downfall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Finally, we should recognize that scholars were not the only force able to exert pressure on the royal Mesopotamian image. As I will argue primarily in Chapter 6, the potential for manipulating popular cultural memory, of which the scribes were the primary transmitters, should also be considered as a dynamic impulse in the arena of royal ideology. While it was inevitable that the court dictated the contents of that cultural memory to a great extent, it is important, on the other hand, to scrutinize the ways in which ordinary people and scholars interacted with that heritage to shape and understand the royal image. In order to explore this dynamic, I will analyze aspects of literary heritage (as well as rit-

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ual) in the Neo-Assyrian period that represent subversive elements on a wider, more public scale.

Establishing a Counterdiscourse on Royalty Because most of the royal discourse and its critique to be discussed in this book derives from texts produced or copied in the Neo-Assyrian period, it is imperative to lay some groundwork for understanding Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions as a tool of ideological representation. Garelli has described Neo-Assyrian kingship as an institution defined by its exclusivity, militarism, formal ceremonial attributes, and political centralization. The king, as the center of these establishments, was portrayed in royal inscriptions²² and annals²³ in ideal terms.²⁴ Fales (1981: 194) describes the various constitutive components of the Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions as a literary “code,” in which semantic, stylistic, and lexical elements were part of a system that could regenerate itself for the “amplification of the factual and ideological message to be purveyed.” Using narratives of Assurbanipal’s Egyptian campaigns as a case study, he argues that even when the campaign accounts differ, the constitutive features remain the same. Sennacherib’s Cylinder D is just one document that exemplifies the consistency in content of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. Cylinder D occurs in copies from both Nineveh and Assur. The text reads: Sennacherib, great king, strong king, king of the entire world, king of the land of Assur, king of the four quarters, capable shepherd (re-é-um), the favorite of the great gods (⸢mi⸣gir dingirmeš galmeš), defender of truth, who loves justice ([na]-⸢ṣir⸣ kit-ti ra-’i-im mi-šárim). He gives support, goes in solidarity with the powerless, and he seeks out good deeds. He is the perfect man, a manly hero (qar-du), the foremost of all kings. He is the bridle that keeps in check the insubmissive (la ma-gi-ri), and strikes his enemies (za-ma-a-ni) with lightning. (Cylinder D i 1‒14)²⁵

 Assyrian royal inscriptions are in and of themselves of great interest, but I cannot do them justice here. Yet as “suggestive” literature par excellence, they served to provide maxims for kingship as well as points of critical departure for those who wished to defy it. For a cursory overview of the text type, see, Grayson (1981: 35‒47); Liverani (1995: 2353‒2366); Renger (1980‒1983: 65‒77); Renger (1986: 109‒128); Tadmor (1981: 13‒33); and Green (2010).  Assyrian annals collated the accounts of several campaigns and were periodically rewritten. Glassner (2004: 19‒20) notes that the annals were written in the first person singular, as if the kings themselves (who were of course always victorious) had written the texts. He describes the annals as “situated on the frontier where memory was transformed into history.”  Garelli (1982: esp. 19). See also Garelli (1981: 1‒11).  Text edition from RINAP 3/1: Sennacherib 16.

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Cylinder D is fairly typical of Sargonid inscriptions. It extols the king as a shepherd of his people; avows his rule as unique, whose memory will be carried on because he was chosen by divine mandate; proclaims his love for truth and justice; (indirectly) addresses his martial prowess; and depicts his unruly enemies as capably subdued by the Assyrian king’s immense—even god-like—power.²⁶ Those enemies, as we will see, can be vilified for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is their perpetration of some kind of crime against Assyrian kingship, often represented through a broken loyalty treaty (adê). While just a short sample, Cylinder D is representative of the thematic repertoire that appears constantly (often in much more verbose iterations) in the corpus of late Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. For Fales (1981: 202), this consistency indicates a scribal competence, for royal scribes could be expected to receive a similar education and draw upon a common lexicon of royal ideology, in order to produce inscriptions that “show the intriguing characteristic of being somehow always different, but at the same time clearly the offshoots of a single plant.” The inscriptions were the confluence of “well-worn literary structures” and a “culturally ‘orthodox’ mindset regarding the overall institution of Assyrian kingship” (Fales 1999‒2001: 134) that for the most part evoked a standard paradigm for royal behavior. By understanding the concrete nature of these well-ingrained ideologies, it is easier to appreciate their subversion to question the legitimacy of those same discourses. One very important element of our discussion is the Foucauldian insistence that discourses “not only represent political, social, and cultural realities, but also shape them” (Frahm 2016: 76). This axiomatic insistence on the dual function of discourse highlights the role of the scribe not just in creating an image of the ruler, but also in his ability to shape the ruler (or his ideological opposite) through text. It is the malleability of Neo-Assyrian royal texts and the influence of the scribes on those texts that allow for such a mutually beneficial exchange. One of the most famous examples of scribal elaboration on Neo-Assyrian royal ideology is the letter of Sargon II to the god Assur describing his campaign against the Urarteans (commonly known as The Eighth Campaign of Sargon). This is an exceptionally detailed Neo-Assyrian royal document, and veers away in many aspects from the rather dry description of royal martial accomplishments typical of an Assyrian Feldbericht. Extensive studies of the inscription have been undertaken.²⁷ For our purposes, one of the most interesting aspects of The Eighth Campaign of Sargon is the way in which it presents the

 These issues are all addressed in more detailed terms by Liverani (1979: 297‒317).  Notable here are Zaccagnini (1981: 259‒295) and Fales (1991: 129‒147).

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enemy, Prince Rusa of Urartu. In lines 200‒212 of the text, Rusa’s achievements are enumerated; he commences with extensive building projects, ensures the production of abundant crops, and provides for successful irrigation works. All of these initiatives would have typically been expected of a Neo-Assyrian king. And indeed, those very projects are systematically overturned by Sargon in lines 215‒232. That inversion not only provides that Rusa’s achievements be undermined, but also that Sargon retake ownership of Neo-Assyrian royal perquisites, which had, in this text, been temporarily applied to the enemy.²⁸ This example shows that Neo-Assyrian royal ideology was malleable enough that scholars could manipulate its paradigmatic formularies, transferring them to the undeserving. If such a subversion of the Neo-Assyrian royal vocabulary could be possible in this direction, then we must consider other possible permutations of that discourse. The only people who could effectively question a king while simultaneously understanding the problematic nuances of royal ideology were the same scholars who were entrusted with composing the royal inscriptions described above (Tadmor 1981: 32). As Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 460) argues, “The textual evidence points to a complex balance between power and authority. In Mesopotamia, power and authority were not united seamlessly in a single agent. While power was the preserve of the king…the scholars nevertheless retained their authoritative voice as the rightful guardians of tradition. In assuming their role as transmitters and producers of symbolic systems and practices, the scholars played a key role in creating the authority of kingship.” But the production of discourse is an active occurrence: it simultaneously implements and is power and action; it does not simply reproduce power structures that already exist, but indeed has the capacity to create them (Foucault 1981: 67). It is, then, because the scribes were the rightful keepers of tradition, that they also occupied a position of power; as Terdiman (1985: 51) argues, “[k]nowing how discourses were made served as ideal preparation for those who were seeking…to unmake them.” The creation of these initial royal discourses was the very fact that put scholars in position to produce their opposite, the counterdiscourses on which this book is based. Approaching texts with an eye for the manipulation or subversion of an existing discourse allows them to be read anew, “as evidence for political process if we read them against the grain, as implicitly dialogic and responsive to silent interlocutors” (Richardson 2010a: xix). In this book, I will concentrate on the ways in which these royal narratives (especially Neo-Assyrian) were actively used in literary texts to challenge, prob-

 See especially Zaccagnini (1981: 275).

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lematize, or criticize contemporary Assyrian kings. The first millennium is of great interest in this arena because of the scribes’ increased intellectual independence in this period, despite their even closer association with the king (Chapter 2). This precarious situation means that any literary attempts to resist the royal figure are difficult to identify, and—if identification is even possible —such sentiments are necessarily concealed in texts that are apparently incongruous to these aims.²⁹ Surprisingly, the closer the scribe became to the Neo-Assyrian king, the more likely he was to participate in counterdiscursive dialogue. But his narratives were directed within his own circle (including, potentially, the king himself), the only place where they would have been intelligible. Even though the audience was limited, these narratives were effective because they perpetuated their own social spaces of resistance; they existed as direct reactions to the reality of Assyrian kingship; and they themselves were a product of social relations among subordinates.³⁰ The study of literature as a means of criticizing authority has, with the exception of Finet (1973), been a rather recent trend in scholarship on the Ancient Near East, and thus is a field open to new interpretations and application of theoretical models. This technique has typically been under the purview of Biblical scholars, who study a book that “exists in the modern world” (Clines 1995: 20). According to Green (2010: 31), the earlier eschewal of research by Assyriologists is due to the fact that Near Eastern texts (namely, royal inscriptions) carry no weight in our current society, having “no power to compete in the marketplace of modern ideologies.” However, new ground was broken in the 1990s by several scholars whose interests lie not simply in problematizing the reliability of royal assertions but also in identifying actual opposition to authoritative rule, through the medium of Mesopotamian literature.³¹ Yet while separate studies have been done on individual texts, none have attempted a systematic collection of Akkadian literature that challenges kings of any particular period.³²

 My sentiments are echoed by the observation of Bernbeck (2008: 161‒162), when he states: “Thus, faced with a diminishing Handlungsraum, the elite seeks for itself a substitute in veiled, vain discourses. Governmentality becomes largely an exercise in self-deprecating introspection.”  These elements of narrative effectiveness in the Neo-Assyrian period transfer the theories of Scott (1990: 119).  Some representative examples: Wilcke (1993: 29‒75); Snell (1998: 359‒363); Van De Mieroop (1999b: 327‒339); Talon (2005: 69‒84); Selz (2010: 1‒15); Liverani (2010: 229‒244); Richardson (2014: 433‒505); and Pongratz-Leisten (2014b: 527‒548) and Frahm (2016: 76‒92), whose approaches most closely resemble mine.  Wilcke (1973: 37‒65) makes a preliminary attempt at such an analysis for Sumerian mythology. Twenty years after this initial contribution to the conversation, Wilcke published another article (Wilcke 1993: 11‒32) in which his focus is on the ways in which myth was used (mostly

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Such efforts, however, have been made in related fields. Notable examples include that of Portier-Young on literary resistance to Seleucid domination³³ and that of Chan (2009: 717‒733) on the subversion of Neo-Assyrian ideology in the book of Isaiah.³⁴ However, the work of both Portier-Young and Chan addresses only a subjugated people’s reaction to their oppressors, rather than invoking conflict internal to a society, or sub-section of a society, as is the case with this study.³⁵ In his work on democratic Athens, Josiah Ober has introduced the possibility for internal societal conflict into the narrative. In Political Dissent in Democratic Athens, Ober (2001: 5) postulates that “…the Western tradition of formal political theorizing originated in the work of an informal, intellectual, and aristocratic community of Athenian readers and writers…In an atmosphere of profound disillusionment with practical attempts to establish a nondemocratic government at Athens [after the collapse of the oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants in 403 BC], the elite Athenian critics of popular rule set themselves the arduous task of reinventing political dissent.” In Athens, the effort to explain “what was wrong with democracy” led to the creation of what Ober describes as a “critical community.” He argues that the unique environment of Athens—which was fairly tolerant of open political expression and even provided resources to do so—was a precondition for elite ability to invoke discourses on the solution to the problem of democracy (Ober 2001: 7). Furthermore, this battle for discursive authority was between two powerful communities: the elites at Athens and the Athenian citizenry (Ober 2001: 12).

by the kings of the Ur III dynasty) in its “Legitimationsfunktion.” He also explores the ways in which social questions were addressed in common mythology (e. g., he interprets Enki and Ninmaḫ as an attempt to find ways to meaningfully incorporate disabled persons into Mesopotamian society).  Her thesis is that Jewish apocalypse emerged as a literature of resistance to empire, which sought to challenge the prevailing empire’s claims about knowledge and the world. See Portier-Young (2011: xxii).  See also Otto (1999: esp. 73‒88). Otto argues that the Book of Deuteronomy can be understood as a subversion of Assyrian royal ideology, especially as seen through the “Urdeuteronomium,” an anti-Assyrian loyalty oath to YHWH which was based on documents produced during the reign of Esarhaddon (most notably the Vassal Treaties).  Such work has been done, however, by Seibert (2006: 42‒96). He identifies several literary means by which the scribes, though limited by their position to some extent, may still attempt to criticize: 1) camouflaged character critiques, 2) redactional recasting, 3) prophetic fronts, 4) self-incriminatory statements, 5) strategic omissions, 6) irony, and 7) ambiguity. He also suggests ways in which one can identify intentional scribal subversion, including through rhetorical excess (or when an author appears to be “trying too hard”), evaluative ambiguity (when the reign of a king is presented without recourse to either positive or negative assessment), and the simple inclusion of potentially corrosive elements.

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Though Athens was most certainly at the vanguard of ancient political thought, this book will argue that the advent of democracy was not a prerequisite for dialogue about the limits of authority: the problems presented by the Mesopotamian monarchy also precipitated a narrative that can serve as a precedent for Western political thought (however one chooses to define “the West”). In her 2015 work, Israel and the Assyrians: Deuteronomy, the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon, and the Nature of Subversion, Carly Crouch provides a paradigm for the ways in which these problems can be approached in studies of ancient Near Eastern literature. Crouch’s primary goal is to assess whether or not the Biblical book of Deuteronomy was influenced in some way by the vassal treaties of Esarhaddon. She enters into a polemic with previous scholarship, which has maintained that loyalty to the Assyrian king in the vassal treaties is reassigned, appearing as loyalty to the Israelite YHWH in Deuteronomy as a bid for freedom from Assyrian imperial rule.³⁶ By systematically applying methods from literary criticism, she finds that this kind of literary subversion did not, in fact, take place. Nevertheless, her criteria for determining elements of literary discourse are useful here. Her requirements (Crouch 2014: 15‒27): 1) In literary criticism especially, “subversion” is defined as an attempt to undermine or challenge a conventional form, genre, or idea by using or presenting it in a new or unorthodox way. 2) By her definition, this action is a new reactive response to an old existing entity, “in which the meaning of the new, subversive entity is inextricably connected to its relationship to its predecessor.” 3) Subversion is not effective unless there is an audience whose opinions can be changed through contact with the new entity. So there must be a bilateral relationship between Text B and Text A, as well as Text B and the audience, in order to transform the audience’s relationship with Text A. 4) In most situations, the relationship of Text A and Text B must be characterized by something quite specific. However, if Text B intends to subvert an entire tradition, it does not need to meet this requirement, and can focus instead on a “characteristic combination of tropes and ideas.” The nature of a subversive text, she argues, is Janus-like, in that it not only subverts the original text but it also reveres it, in deeming it worthy of elements significant enough to highlight. 5) In circumstances where Text B is meant to be antagonistic to the ideas in Text A, the audience is crucial, since here the contrast between the texts is the most important element. Without knowledge of Text A, Text B can have informative value but its polemic will go unrecognized. 6) Text A, therefore, needs to be part of a shared community of knowledge.³⁷

 See above (n. 34) and Crouch (2014: 11 fn. 24) for previous bibliography in which this case is made.  Crouch (2014: 43), quoting Sanders (2006: 97).

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The dynamic relationship which is here applied to Texts A and B is simply an analogue of what Bakhtin (1981: 426) has described as dialogism. This theory states that in no case can a discourse be considered a monologue; all discourse is inherently adversative, always presupposing “a horizon of competing, contrary utterances against which it asserts its own energies” (Terdiman 1985: 36‒37). One of the ways in which such a discourse has been discussed in modern scholarship is with the concept of “hidden transcripts.” This term was coined by Scott (1990: 4) to describe the “speeches, gestures, and practices that confirm, contradict, or inflect what appears in the public transcript,”³⁸ the latter of which is defined by the public discourse of power relations that exists between the ruler and the ruled (Scott 1990: 10). Scott’s focus is on the “secret discourses” through which subaltern groups create ideological resistance to power, and the effects that the publication of such ideas can have on the ruling bodies against whom such dialogues were initially created. These aspects of literary subversion, or those aspects of private narrative that seek to challenge the “public transcript,” will be referred to in this book as “counterdiscourses.” In our case, we can recognize Text A as the body of Neo-Assyrian royal ideology that had been created and diffused in documents like royal annals, royal inscriptions, letters, and even performative acts like ritual and the installation of palace or monumental architecture/reliefs. The subject of this book will be “Text B.” I define Text B as literature, epistolary, or performative acts that react to the existing narrative of Text A in a dialogic manner. Text B will seek to problematize the themes in Text A (the image of kingship propagated by Neo-Assyrian kings) by overturning or manipulating them against that same discourse. Tadmor (1981: 32) argues that in the short span of Neo-Assyrian kingship between the reigns of Sargon and Assurbanipal, there were significant changes to the royal inscriptions, especially in their depiction of the king’s military feats and the “geneaological formulae” of his legitimacy. These alterations in style and content of the royal inscriptions most often occurred in times of significant upheaval, and indicate the “changing views and styles of influential royal scribes.”³⁹ Naturally, those shifting views would not just ap-

 Scott describes the public transcript, in its crudest form, as “the self-portrait of the dominant elites as they have themselves seen,” being a highly partisan and partial narrative meant to affirm and naturalize the power of dominant elites (18).  Liverani (1981: 229‒230) claims that the changes made to royal inscriptions are of course inevitable as a reign goes on, but he says: “The intervention of the scribes on the text, in order to correct it or to improve it, is to be connected with the diachronical development of the individual reign; i. e., both with the enlargement of exterior military evolvement and with the consolidation of inner positions, and more generally with the political situation which is always changing.

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pear in royal inscriptions, but would also leak into transcripts that reacted to royal narrative. Thus these texts can serve as a mirror to pressures on the royal house, while also acting as corrosive forces within the system itself.⁴⁰

The Counterdiscursive Scholar According to the model set out by Crouch, the audience is one of the most important aspects of literary subversion or the creation of a counterdiscourse. While precepts of royal ideology in general were likely to be widely available to the Assyrian populace through oral transmission, ceremonial staging, or iconic representation (Liverani 1995: 2355), only a few of the texts under study in this book betray evidence of wide dissemination. In fact, a majority of the counterdiscursive narratives under study here are available in only a few copies, and some have survived in just one. The circumstances of these texts, then, indicate a relatively small audience for narratives that run counter to the idealization presented in the royal inscriptions and annals. Literature plays a key role in a study of royal counternarratives because in most cases, we would not expect a scholar to participate in plotting outright rebellion against the king. His betrayal might consist of failing to report his knowledge of such plans, or in producing a text that depicts the king in language typically reserved for such conspirators. Yet we have evidence, especially in the late periods of Mesopotamian history, that such resistance was becoming more commonplace. It is during the reign of Esarhaddon that this fear of conspiracy within the royal court became most acute. During his reign, at least twice the king reacted to challenges to his right to rule. In 681 BC, Esarhaddon ordered his first mass execution of Assyrian state officials in the wake of the murder of his father, Sennacherib. Then, in 670 BC, there was another systematic execution of disloyal officials, as mentioned by a Babylonian Chronicle (Grayson 1975a: 69‒87, no. 1 iv 29). The precipitating event for this purge was a revolt that was nominally led by an Assyrian official named Sasî. Two letters (SAA 16: 59 and 60) dated to 670 BC

From this point of view, variants can be appreciated a priori as hints of the change in the political and ideological tendencies inside the Palace.” Thus the manipulation of themes utilized in the Assyrian royal inscriptions merits serious consideration.  In this way we can understand the production of a literary counternarrative as “corrosive discourse,” a term coined by Bruce Lincoln (1995: 78). He describes the concept as “all those sorts of speech that are nonauthoritative, but downright antithetical to the construction of authority, given their capacity to eat away at the claims and pretensions of the discourses and speaker who try to arrogate authority for themselves.”

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give fairly detailed information regarding the situation: Sasî is recognized by a “slave girl” (geme₂, amtu) in Ḫarrān as the rightful king of the Assyrian Empire. In an ecstasy, she proclaims: …a-bat Nusku(dpa.túg) ši-i ma-a šarrūtu(lugal)-u-tu a-na msa-si-i ma-a šuma(mu) zēra(numun) šá Sîn-aḫḫē-erība(md30-pabmeš-su) ú-ḫal-la-qa… (SAA 16: 59 rev. 4’‒5’) “The word of Nusku: the kingship is for Sasî. I will destroy the name and the seed of Sennacherib.”

The king is then warned to preserve his life (SAA 16: 60 rev. 10’ zimeš-ka še-zib). The uprising spread quickly through the Assyrian empire, with several high officials reputedly involved.⁴¹ Loyalty to Sasî was cemented through oaths (SAA 16: 243), much like those that Esarhaddon would later impose on behalf of his son, Assurbanipal (SAA 2: 6).⁴² Sasî may have been a distant relative of the royal family (or his candidacy for the kingship would have been illegitimate) (Radner 2003: 173), though both Nissinen (1998: 146‒147) and Frahm (2010b: 125 and 2016: 87) suggest that Sasî was an agent provocateur, not a rebel at all but a willing pawn to sniff out such conspiracies. Importantly, several documents from the period refer to Sasî as a copyist of Babylonian texts (SAA 11: 156) and as a high official responsible for the supervision of scholars in Nineveh (SAA 4: 18). Even if Sasî was only an agent provocateur, the fact that he was chosen for such a job indicates that Neo-Assyrian kings saw the scribal circle in the royal court to be a potential locus for such conspiratorial behavior. Conversely, if Sasî truly was at the helm of a conspiracy,⁴³ it is striking that those scholars closely connected to the royal court could serve as a real threat to the kingship. Radner (2016: 53) emphasizes the disruptive nature of Esarhaddon’s reaction of reckless abandon, arguing that the absence of an eponymous līmu-official in the year 669 BC implies that “the well-oiled machinery of Assyria’s administration was the backbone of the empire and [the executions] caused permanent harm to the state, perhaps far more than murdering a king would have.”

 Including an official by the name of Abdâ.  Knapp (2016: 181‒195) suggests that the so-called “Apology of Esarhaddon” (Nineveh A i 8‒ ii 11), understood by many to have been written against the background of the nomination of Assurbanipal as crown-prince of Assyria, was actually composed upon the Assyrian army’s defeat in Egypt in 674 BC. If interpreted in this way, the text could represent another piece of evidence that there were increasing concerns about Esarhaddon’s effectiveness and royal legitimacy within Assyria itself.  So Radner (2003: 175), who favors the idea that Sasî was personally involved in the conspiracy, citing evidence for the destruction of private houses in the area of Ḫarrān.

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Other letters from this period provide a glimpse into the “obsessive fear” of Esarhaddon that revolts might originate within the imperial elite (Frahm 2016: 88),⁴⁴ but also, more specifically, through scholarly influence. One of the most prolific sources for such threats comes from an “enigmatic” informer who writes to king Esarhaddon anonymously, detailing threats to the integrity of the Neo-Assyrian throne (Luukko and van Buylaere 2002: xxx). One letter, CT 53: 46 (SAA 16: 63), addresses problems that have arisen in Guzana, near Ḫarrān, and accuses three scribes in the area (Kutî, Tutî, and Tarṣî) of committing crimes. Luukko and van Buylaere date the text to sometime between 672‒669 BC, mostly because of its reference to the treaty of Esarhaddon in rev.4 ff.; the treaty had demanded that any word of potential conspiracy be delivered to justice immediately.⁴⁵ They assume that the author was a scholar of relatively intimate familiarity with the king, perhaps identifiable as Mar-Issar, Esarhaddon’s “special agent” in Babylonia in the last few years of his reign (Luukko and van Buylaere 2002: xxxi‒xxxv). Such paranoia is readily evident not just in letters, but in an abundance of oracular queries relating possible insurrection at the court of both Esarhaddon and his son, Assurbanipal (SAA 4: 139‒157). Queries no. 139 (regarding insurrection against Esarhaddon) and no. 142 (regarding insurrection against Assurbanipal) are almost identical, indicating that a certain type of formulaic discourse about the possibility for internal political upheaval was in circulation in the latter years of the Neo-Assyrian period. The scope of the threat is apparent in the flexibility of the formula, which in one instance adds Assyrian and Aramaic scribes as potential dangers to royal power (SAA 4: 144 obv. 9: […lu-ú lú dub.sar]meš aš.šurki-a-a lu-ú lúdub.sarmeš ár-ma-a-a). At no time does a revolt—including Sasî’s—question the monarchy as an institution, but only the kingship of an individual (Radner 2016: 54).⁴⁶ However, the corrosive nature of such insurrections from within the Neo-Assyrian court had far-reaching consequences for the stability of the state itself. One reason

 See also SAA 10: 199, a letter from a scholar (active in the reigns of both Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal) which reveals a plot against the king (most likely in the reign of Esarhaddon, as the ill health of the king is mentioned). In the same vein is SAA 10: 286, a protestation of an exorcist who worked in the reigns of Assurbanipal and his father that denies concealment of suspicious information from/about the king.  A fairly extensive part of the treaty deals with insurrection, conspiracy, and slander (VTE col ii ls. 108‒172). See the transliteration and translation of Wiseman 1958, and the more recent version in Parpola and Watanabe (1988: no. 6). A letter in which the treaty is said to have been violated can be found in Parpola (1972: 21‒34), in which three astrologers (Šamaš-zēra-iqīša, Bēleṭir, and Aplāyu) are denounced for having failed to report knowledge to Esarhaddon about potential criminal activities.  This trend of particularization will coincide with our study of the texts in Chapter 4.

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for this dramatic effect is that during periods of rapid change, the dominant discourse is always internalized less fully than during relatively stable periods (Terdiman 1985: 59). This means that in eras in which the security of the royal house was in doubt, royal ideology was at a greater risk for and more susceptible to corrosive forces. Importantly, according to Terdiman (1985: 56), “the counterdiscourses which exploit such vulnerability implicitly evoke a principle of order just as systematic as that which sustains the discourses they seek to subvert.” The systematic nature of that discourse will be revealed here through the collection and categorization of texts whose authors appear to have counterdiscursive goals. It is hoped that this approach will yield valuable information about the writers, their subjects, and the ideological world within which both functioned. In Assyria, where literacy was restricted to a small percentage of the population, the production of a counterdiscourse is that much more significant. As Scott remarks: The practice of domination, then, creates the hidden transcript. If the domination is particularly severe, it is likely to produce a hidden transcript of corresponding richness. The hidden transcript of subordinate groups, in turn, reacts back on the public transcript by engendering a subculture and by opposing its own variant form of social domination against that of the dominant elite. Both are realms of power and interests (Scott 1990: 27).

The study of such texts allows for the definition of a scholarly “critical community,” which served to simultaneously challenge, problematize, and reify ideals of Assyrian kingship. More generally, the definition of themes and methods common to the production of Mesopotamian counterdiscursive literature opens new avenues for categorizing Akkadian texts, as well illuminating Assyro-Babylonian political and cultural relationships during the late periods. It is the systematic nature of those counterdiscourses that will now be examined.

Cracking the Royal Code: Creating a Lexicon of Counterdiscursiveness In this book, I have sought to collect texts that I believe participate in a dialogue of counterdiscursiveness, mostly in reference to specific Assyrian kings. Inclusion of texts in my discussion is based on objective standards. I have chosen to focus on late Akkadian pieces that are unified by thematic, semantic, and typological characteristics. In this I follow Liverani’s model for assessment of Near Eastern literature. He argues that any single document must be placed in the context of similar documents: “The most productive type of study of the single document towards its total comprehension derives from the setting of the text

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in a homologous series, chosen so as to enlighten the particular structure under study, and to set apart the paradigmatic variants and the syntagmatic successions” (Liverani 1973: 181). Before identifying a trajectory of literary themes on the limits of Neo-Assyrian kings, we must delineate a semantic consistency and thematic stability as a basis for common analysis. This process is aided greatly by the work of Fales (1987: 425‒435), who first studied the ways in which the enemy was depicted in Assyrian royal inscriptions.⁴⁷ This work has been expanded relatively recently by Seth Richardson, who sought to provide a “toolkit” for detecting a vocabulary of rebellion in Akkadian literary sources from Mesopotamia. Both authors work primarily from the vantage point of Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, which are more interested in portraying antagonists to Neo-Assyrian kingship. Because of this bias and the medium through which it is expressed, the investigations of both Fales and Richardson will be nuanced to conform to the generic field with which I will work: that is, with written literature not necessarily meant to be circulated with the intention of transmitting royal ideology. As we will see, in the texts that I will identify as “counterdiscursive,” there is an identifiable inversion of many of these metaphors to reflect the perceived inadequacies of the king in question, meaning that these representations of ideal kingship can be both universally applicable and quite specific. Richardson (2010b: 4) identifies five major metaphorical categories of language in which motifs of rebels and rebellions appear: 1) noise and movement; 2) children disobeying their parents; 3) animals requiring control; 4) breach of contract and crime; and 5) sin and perversion. Importantly, he identifies a diachronic shift in the use of such language: “[C]ertainly Old Babylonian kings were more concerned to speak paternalistically (in ‘noise/silence’ and ‘child’ metaphors) than Neo-Assyrian emperors, whose rhetoric was invested more heavily in the ‘crime’ and ‘sin’ complex of metaphors.” He argues that this development was a product of the imperialized and self-policing nature of the Neo-Assyrian empire (Richardson 2010b: 11). Indeed, the whole nakrūtu complex in Assyrian royal inscriptions, Fales (1987: 425) maintains, “gives origin to so many recurring literary images, exactly because it constitutes the counterpart of the values assigned by the authors to Assyrian kingship ideology.” It is this literary climax—likely borrowed from much earlier patterns—that informs many of our counterdiscursive texts. In order to provide a stable schematic system for viewing these texts, I will adopt variations of Richardson’s metaphors number 4

 A study of more abstract representations of the enemy in royal inscriptions has been carried out more recently by Zawadzki (2014: 765‒778).

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(breach of contract and crime)⁴⁸ and 5 (sin and perversion); additionally, I have identified a third important theme, also associated with royal language, which I will simply refer to as “justice.”

Breach of Contract and Crime The terminology associated with political contracts is often connected to oaths of loyalty imposed upon subject peoples by the sovereign state.⁴⁹ These oaths (frequently characterized with variations on tāmītu) were legally-binding, and fell under the categories of adû-agreements, mitgurtu-concords, and rikistu-treaties, with the violation of one of these often appearing as justification for military action against the offending party, especially during the Neo-Assyrian period (Richardson 2010b: 9).⁵⁰ Of greatest interest for our project is the functioning of diplomatic contacts specifically between Babylonia and Assyria. Indications for such relations come from the two Assyrian documents, the Middle Assyrian Tukulti-Ninurta Epic and the Neo-Assyrian Synchronistic History. The latter (which will be dealt with in more detail in Chapters 3 and 4) is preserved in three copies of the seventh century BC and is a chronicle of Assyrian military engagements, diplomatic marriages, and border realignments, with probable dating in the second quarter of the eighth century BC. The document utilizes variations on the verbs māmītu and rakāsu to describe the Assyro-Babylonian relations of the period, which Brinkman (1990: 86‒89) describes as cooperative “in the midst of vi-

 Fales’ “Type a.”  Such oaths existed since the third millennium, though often in the capacity of more petty relationships between persons, with the oath taken in the name of the king instead of the gods. See Wilcke (2007: 115‒116).  For earlier treaties between kings in the Old Babylonian period, see Charpin (2010a: 107‒114). The famous “vassal treaties” of Esarhaddon have been treated in great detail. For a good introduction to the texts, see Wiseman (1958). For the suggestion that there was a distinction in meaning between a riksu-treaty and an adû-loyalty oath (with the former meant to designate agreements about military matters and the designation of boundaries, and the latter representing loyalty to a definitive person), see Gelb (1962: esp. 162). It must be noted that though these treaties appear strictly political, they cannot be disconnected from the religious sphere, as the gods served as guarantors of and witnesses to these agreements. To violate a treaty was a sacrilege against the gods, and a broken treaty would mean disruption of the normal order of a country. See Parpola and Watnabe (1988: xxii-xxiii). It was also the duty of the gods to avenge broken treaties. See Oded (1982: 12 and 89). Furthermore, these oaths carried some measure of mutual benefit, as they also provided security to the vassal state. Thus counteraction of these oaths indicated real hybris on the part of the subject, who had now indicated even their refusal to accept protection from the more powerful state.

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cissitudes.”⁵¹ However, the earlier text of The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic contains a vilification of the Babylonian king Kaštiliašu IV through his breach of contract.⁵² Such a manipulation of themes of contract and loyalty is consonant with the counterdiscursive literary texts of the ninth and eighth centuries, like Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3) and The Crimes of Nabû-šuma-iškun (Chapter 4), in which Assyro-Babylonian relationships are handled in an unmistakably derogatory tone. Fales (2012: 134) has argued that these types of treaties were common especially in the reign of Esarhaddon, wherein it became specifically associated with loyalty to the newly appointed Assyrian king, in cases where the king’s succession took place in precarious political circumstances.⁵³ This situation will become particularly relevant to our discussion of The Sin of Sargon (Chapter 4), where we also see an Assyrian king engaged in treaties with the gods.⁵⁴ Therefore the unique concerns of the Neo-Assyrian period are reflected upon and reflected at both Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian kings, using terminology that had become commonplace in relationships between the two parties. This reveals a process where political language was carefully considered within the court itself, and where ideologically meaningfully language could be subtly reversed to criticize the very administrative body by whom it was instituted.

Sin and Perversion Richardson delineates a “sin and perversion” category of metaphors in Akkadian literature, most of which were generally used to describe an “enemy” of the rul On 95‒96, Brinkman gives a (short) list of surviving loyalty treaties between Assyrian and Babylonian political parties. These have been discussed in great part by Grayson (1987: 127‒ 160). More general bibliography can be found in Weinfeld (1976: 379‒414) and Tadmor (1982: 127‒152).  For a study of the text, see Machinist (1978). For an extended list of words used to denote the breach of a contract, see Oded (1982: 87).  Similarly, Pongratz-Leisten (2002: 231) notes that in Near Eastern royal propaganda “…the motif of the lie is either connected to the rebellion against an already existing overlord, and is thus linked to the breaching of a treaty, or addresses the claims of pretenders to the throne in crises occasioned by an irregular succession.” Of interest here is the discussion of two treaties by Parpola (1987a: 161‒189), in which we see Esarhaddon himself acting as the imposer of the treaty. Weeks (2004: 43) suggests that it is a development of Esarhaddon’s reign that the enemy is represented as a violator of treaties, while the Assyrian king is represented as the custodian of treaties.  This is another possible nuance of Richardson’s definition of treaty relations. See also Weeks (2004: 32‒37, and 48) where he suggests that K 2401, an oracle to Esarhaddon, is also exemplary of a treaty between king and god. For the text, see Parpola (1997a: 22‒27).

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ing administration, whether that enemy was perceived as an internal (i. e., within the court hierarchy itself) or external (e. g., an insubordinate vassal king) threat.⁵⁵ Though the words “sin” and “perversion” often played interchangeable roles, “mystifying the basis of the king’s law and lending legal force to his religious authority,” Richardson (2010b: 10) does make an attempt to distinguish the categories in some form. He includes under the “crime” motif the terms arnu (“wrongdoing,” which yields the lexical extension amēl arni, “evildoer”),⁵⁶ and the verbal ḫaṭû (“to sin,” which itself produces the noun-equivalent ḫīṭu, “crime,” and ḫaṭṭi’u, “sinner”).⁵⁷ Under this category I would also include the perpetration of forbidden deeds (especially in religious contexts), identified using the verb ikkibu (Sum: nig₂-gig)⁵⁸ as well as the variations on the verb gullulu (often paired with the noun arnu), with the meaning “to commit sins.” Richardson identifies the “perversion” motif as more common to the apodoses of omens, which used “all-purpose inversions of state-sanctioned order” to describe the perceived enemy (nakru). These include adjectival phrases like lemnu (“wicked”) and lā kanšu (“unsubmissive”),⁵⁹ though value-neutral terms such as šanānu (“to rival or compete”) could also be used (Richardson 2010b: 11).⁶⁰

 Also subsumed under Fales’ “Type a.” Thus Green (2010: 20) with respect to Assyrian royal inscriptions in particular: “Even more interesting from the perspective of ideological analysis is the way the inscriptions manipulate the characterization of suzerains and fellow vassals, that is, characters who are respectively superior and equal on the evenemential level to the inscriptional king.” They function “as minor characters who exist to highlight the greatness of the narrative’s hero.” On this, see also now Van De Mieroop (2010: 417‒434).  Löhnert (2012: 249‒250) locates the beginning phases of the moralistic use of this term in the second millennium, where it is imposed by judges upon those people who have participated in unfounded acts of vindication and/or impairment of a person, or the denigration of a city.  Another source to add to the discussion is van der Toorn (1985), though the perspective taken in that work dampens its applicability in this particular case. It should be noted that the idea of a “sin” committed by the enemy is a long-standing motif even from the third millennium, as is exemplified in Ukg. 16 7.10‒9.3, where thrice the nam-dag, “sin” of the enemy king Lugalzagesi in the Umma-Lagaš conflict, is cited as the reason for negative outcomes for its offender. See Steible (1982: 333‒337).  See Löhnert (2012: 250).  This is a term often used to describe the enemy, part of an ideological calculation that has the Assyrian king constantly returning the world to its previous state of order as reparation for the chaos caused by the “state of disorder” induced by a rebel king. See Green (2010: 38‒40).  See also the extended list of Oded (1992: 46‒47), which includes terminology of slander, such as dabāb sarrāti (“to tell lies”), dabāb tušši (“to speak maliciously”), and zērāti dabābu (“to convey hostile messages”).

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In most cases, qualities that are ascribed to the enemy served as a general framework of “negativity” to directly contrast with the “positivity” of Neo-Assyrian kingship ideology (Fales 1987: 425 and 430).⁶¹ Words in the semantic category of “sin” served not only to reaffirm the king’s expected role, but also to examine the king’s behavior in a critical way. Fales observes the increased attention on the enemy figure in Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, understanding that the various iterations of the enemy—as one who lacks judgment (for instance, lā idû), who speaks slanderously and plots, and who is wicked, hostile, rebellious, or murderous—are associated in the main with the period from Sargon to Assurbanipal. He interprets this trend as indicating, in fact, a weakness in the Assyrian power structure: The ‘senseless,’ ‘plotting,’ and ‘wicked’ enemies, become, in brief, standard characters of the Sargonids’ view of nakrūtu, while at the same time giving life to an abundance of literary images on the relevant standards; and it may, in my opinion, be asked whether this decided relish in depicting the most negative traits of the nakru’s personality, whether this gusto for heaping abuse on the enemy, may not be connected to the onsurging of difficulties for Assyrian kingship, and thus for its ideological backbone, at one and the same time with the attaining of maximal military power, and from this point through the entire phase of progressive decline. In brief, it may be asked whether Assyrian ideology did not progressively—from Sargon to Assurbanipal—bury its enemies beneath heaps of words, rather than beneath the force of its arms, as it states explicitly—perhaps too explicitly—to be doing (Fales 1987: 431).

The thematic “enemy” will be a major component of the reading of both the earlier Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3) and the Hellenistic Dynastic Prophecy (epilogue), partly a function of their similar generic style (see below under “omens and prophecy”). Finally, the connotations of “sin” with relation to royal mishaps in the religious sphere will be the focus of two rituals (discussed in Chapter 6)⁶² that serve to reify the opportunities for literary dialogues about kings.

Justice Richardson subsumes my category of “justice” under both the “crime” and “sin” metaphors, claiming that invocations of such metaphors as “crime” and “sin”  For even longer lists of terminology associated with the contravention of an oath, negative adjectival descriptions of the enemy, and his slanderous and treacherous nature, see Fales (1987: 428‒430).  Also mentioned in Löhnert (2012: 251).

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“suggest a response in royal rhetoric to accusations that the Crown had failed in its purported role as guarantor of justice (mīšaru); the deployment of sin and perversion motifs responded to indictments that the king had failed as guarantor of the divine order of the cosmos (šīmtu)” (Richardson 2010b: 8‒9). Yet “justice” deserves its own category, as a major identification marker and prerequisite of royalty in all periods of Mesopotamian history, which could both appear in ideologically-driven royal representations and in texts meant to question that power. In all of Mesopotamian history, one of the most important aspects of the ruler lay in his ability to maintain order and stability throughout the land. All types of texts from the cuneiform world (literary texts, law codes, and royal inscriptions, as a few examples) betray a preoccupation with this expectation (Baines and Yoffee 1998: 212‒213). One linguistic combination that deserves mention in this context is that of kittu and mīšaru “truth/stability and justice,” part of the standard royal ideology in Mesopotamia.⁶³ This pair is attested in v: 20 of Hammurapi’s code: “I established kittam and mīšaram in the land.” Weinfeld (1987: 493) argues that the practical aim of implementing kittu and mīšaru was to alleviate general societal burdens through royal proclamations of debt cancellation, the liberation of slaves, abolition of taxes, and release of corvée labor.⁶⁴ Derived from kânu, “to be firm in place,” “to last, endure, remain in effect,” kittu can also connote the permanence of a city foundation, a king’s rule, or a person’s life. The origins of the term mīšaru can be detected much earlier than our late-period texts, and were associated with the god Šamaš, at least since the third millennium.⁶⁵ The reason is given in The Hymn to Šamaš, which describes the omnipotence of this god due to his position in the sky (Charpin 2013: 66), with the daily rise of the sun conceived of as “the perpetual establishment and maintenance of justice” (Nel 2000: 145).⁶⁶ The word mīšaru derives from ešēru, “to go straight”; “to thrive, prosper”; “to give correct decisions”; “to put in order”; and “to ensure the correct performance (of a ritual).” There appears, then, to have been some latent expectation that the king’s actions—the performance of just and correct decision-making, in both political and religious affairs—would have the effect of permanence, most likely both for himself (in

 For a lexical study of this “binôme” and its spread through the Semitic West, see Cazelles (1973: 59‒73).  On this see also Wilcke (2007: 209‒244); Otto (1994: 143 ff.); as well as Lämmerhirt (2010: esp. 393).  For the Sumerian origins of the term, see Weinfeld (1995: 64). See also von Dassow (2011: 208‒211).  There is ample literature on mīšaru, especially with relation to the edicts of Ammiṣaduqa and others, in which the term was associated with the dissolution of popular debt.

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terms of the memorialization of his reign) and for the societal structure. Fundamentally, Charpin (2013: 74‒75) underlines that kittu (Sum. nig₂-gi-na) is a static term that represents order and stability, which can be achieved only through mīšaru (Sum. si-sa₂), a dynamic principle encompassing the correction of unfair situations. He argues that this essential royal schema “was so resilient in the Near-East that it was still alive at the time of Jesus Christ, who drew on it to be recognized as king.”⁶⁷ The deliverance of this justice upheld the entire office of kingship: “der König gibt den Menschen seines Landes eine Gerechtigkeit, die ein sicheres Leben und Wirtschaften erlaubt und so seine Herrschaft stützt” (Sallaberger 2010: 57). Later the term came to play an important part in Old Babylonian and Kassite political ideology. Also in the second millennium, Šamaš remained the shepherd (rē’û) with whom the king is compared;⁶⁸ thus, by analogy, the king’s person was connected to the divine world and associated with the implementation of justice, with the expectation that he would intervene in cases of oppression (Westbrook 1995: 150).⁶⁹ Though these combined terms held weight throughout Mesopotamian history, Tadmor argues that kittu and mīšaru were renewed in Neo-Assyrian political representations, especially evocative “in das assyrisch-babylonische Weltbild,” being at one and the same time intimately connected with the sun god;⁷⁰ as an example, I quote from a letter to Assurbanipal: qa-bu-ú še-mu-ú kit-⸢ti⸣ mišá-ru [a-na ši]-rik-ti lu šar-ku-šú (“may eloquence, understanding, truth, and justice be given to him [Assurbanipal] as a gift!”) (SAA 3: 11, obv. 8). It was precisely in the later Assyrian period, especially after the reign of Sargon, that the theme of the king as purveyor of justice was reemphasized.⁷¹ These themes will play a

 On the survival of this concept into later periods, see Maul (1999: 202‒203 and 212‒213). With respect to the concept’s connection to Šamaš, Maul states: “Diese Tradition, beim Regierungsantritt ‘Gerechtigkeit zu setzen,’ hat bis in neuassyrische Zeit fortbestanden. So wie der Sonnengott durch das Einhalten seiner Bahn den Kosmos immer wieder ‘recht leitete,’ übernahm der König diese Ordungsfunktion für das politisch-soziale Gefüge.”  For the history of this terminology, see Oded (1992: 113‒116). For its use in Neo-Assyrian royal ideology, see Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 210‒217). We also have some examples of the establishment of mīšarum by Neo-Babylonian kings, though Weinfeld (1995: 61) argues that these were not in reference to concrete reforms but to conduct in general.  See also Weinfeld (1995: 27), who points out that kittu and mīšaru were traits endowed by the gods.  Especially after the reign of Esarhaddon. See now also Frahm (2013: 101) on this combination in inscriptions of Esarhaddon.  Postgate (1974: 420) suggests that this occurred as an Assyrian attempt to realign their interests with their Babylonian neighbors to the south. For a condensed overview of the evolution of this terminology in Neo-Assyrian legitimation practices, see Oded (1982: 37).

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great role in Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3); they will become prominent again in a later Babylonian counter-text, The King of Justice (epilogue). We know from Mesopotamian royal ideology that society unquestionably expected justice from their king. This demand for justice is often explicitly connected with the imposition of corvée labor (mentioned above, in Akkadian ilku or abšānu), and the two concepts often appear in tandem, especially in those texts elaborating on the maxims of proper Babylonian kingship. Richardson’s emphasis is (rightly) focused on the semantics with which rebellions, sedition, slander, and breaches of contract were described in the historiographic record. In late Mesopotamian counterdiscursive literature, however, we can observe a clever subversion of this language. Common motifs used to describe the idyllic king in panegyric or self-representative literature—or, alternatively, vocabulary utilized as descriptive of violators of peaceful diplomatic relationships or established hierarchical structures—were now being employed as tools to criticize the very champions of that royal ideology. This reversal was indicative of the effective extension of state ideology into the cultural realm (Richardson 2010b: 11). Perhaps more importantly, the transposition of these metaphors for retaliatory purposes illustrates the increased power of the scribes to create counterdiscourses by using the same language and terminology with which royal ideology itself was being propagated.

Wind One category missing from Richardson’s analysis is that of “wind.” The semantic field for the Akkadian nominal terms šāru, zaqīqu, and meḫû ⁷² is wide-ranging; in addition to signifying the astrological principles, both favorable and destructive,⁷³ references to “wind” could indicate the breath of humans, divine entities,⁷⁴

 The lexical lists give Sumerian equivalents for these terms as im, lil₂, sig₃-sig₃, tu₁₅, and mir. See CAD Š₂, 133; Z, 58; and M₂, 4‒5. While they are listed as synonyms (see, for instance, the entry in har-ra=ḫubullu II 306 ff., which reads: sig₃-sig₃=šá-a-ru, meḫû, zaqīqu), meḫû carries connotations of violence, especially as associated with storms, while zaqīqu is often related to ghosts, spirits, souls, and dreams. See, most famously, the work of Oppenheim (1956: 233 ff.), who gives its etymology from zuq. and various references to the dream god. See also Ribichini (1978: 25‒33) on the origins of zaqīqu as a ghost. Contra Lambert (1974: 155), who argues that the meaning of zaqīqu ought not be restricted to such categories but should also include a forceful wind.  Adjectives often associated with these nouns are ṭābu and lemnu. Military force—especially that of the Assyrians—is often represented using metaphors associated with “evil winds.” See, for instance, Assurbanipal’s Cylinder B v 44‒46, in which his defeat of the Elamite Teumann

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or even the dead.⁷⁵ Yet it is in its abstract sense—as a metaphor for lies, vanity, or nothingness⁷⁶—that the literary “wind” is of great interest, especially in late Akkadian literature.⁷⁷ Its most famous attestation in this latter meaning is an oftquoted line from the Old Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, in which the protagonist appears to listlessly bemoan the life of a mortal: i-lu-ma it-ti šamši(dutu) da-ri-iš u[š-bu] a-wi-lu-tum-ma ma-nu-ú u₄-mu-ša mi-im-ma ša i-te-né-pu-šu ša-ru-ma (OB Gilgamesh iv 141‒143) The gods alone have [dwelled] forever in the sunlight. As for man: his days are numbered, Everything he does is wind.⁷⁸

Lambert relates this sentiment to a “futility of life” theme common in Babylonian “wisdom literature,”⁷⁹ discussed below. Such a theme is categorized by Alster as “critical” wisdom, and is often combined with a “carpe diem” motif. This pairing is exemplified early in Sumerian literature, not least in The Ballad of Early Rulers, a bilingual text that was copied for centuries, into the Neo-Assyrian period (Cohen 2013: 129).⁸⁰ It bemoans the inevitable fate of man (nam-ti-la! nam-lu₂u₁₈-lu u₄-da-ri-iš nu-nig₂-gal₂: “Life of mankind cannot [last] forever”), and mentions Gilgamesh as one of the paradigmatic kings whose legacy is at risk to fade away (me-e MDgiš-tuk-m[aš zi-u₄-sud-ra₂-g]in₇ nam-ti-la kin-kin: “Where is Gilgamesh who sought (eternal) life like (that of) Ziusudra?) (Cohen 2013: 140, no. 2.2 obv. 10, 13). The poem’s final line (24) ultimately determines that such is indeed the fate of man. The cause for such suffering is identified

is recounted: “You, (Assurbanipal), hero of the gods, as a burden(?), rip him (Teumann) open in the heat of battle; let loose upon him a tempest, an evil wind.” See Crouch (2013: 134‒135).  See Unger (1931: 128‒135) for a study of the divinity as represented through “Windhauch.”  For example: ana ša šarri bēlīya dšamšiya ilāniya ša-ri balāṭiya qibīma “say to the king, my lord, my sun, my gods, the breath of my life” EA 141:2 (CAD Š₂ 4a, 139).  Given in the CAD Š₂ 5a and 5b, 139‒140.  All of these potential categories are summarized in Streck (1999: 181).  Text edition from George (2003: 201).  For “wisdom literature,” see n. 86 below. Lambert (1998a: esp. 36‒38) connects this theme to Late Akkadian texts such as The Dialogue of Pessimism and similar works, wherein sentiments about the ephemerality of man’s achievements are a main focus. He cites, for example, line 10 of Counsels of a Pessimist as representative of this trend in the later period: [a-me-l]u-tum ù ši-pir ibba-nu-ú iš-te-niš i-qat-t[i] “Mankind and (their) achievements alike come to an end.” Text edition and translation of Counsels of a Pessimist in Lambert (1996: 108‒109).  See the editions of Alster (2005: 300‒305) and Cohen (2013: 132‒141).

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in line 3 of the composition, whose reading, unfortunately, is tenuous. Based on the manuscript Ua, Alster originally read the line: ⸢u₄-da⸣-ta im al-gal₂-la [i]š-tu u₄-mi pa-na-⸢a⸣-ma ip-pa-á[š(?) ša-ru] Since time immemorial there has been [wi]nd! (Alster 2005: 300)

Though in these texts “wind” appears to have a negative semantic connotation as a metaphor for man’s helplessness in the face of divine will, its presence in Neo-Assyrian counterdiscourses is remarkable (see Advice to a Prince, Chapter 3; The Netherworld Vision, Chapter 4). A return to Gilgamesh is instructive here: not five lines after this initial complaint, we discover that Gilgamesh’s sentiment was part of a rallying cry to his companion Enkidu, that if they do not fight the monster Huwawa, their names will not live into the future: šum-ma am-ta-qú-ut šu-mi lu uš-zi-iz giš-mi it-ti dḫu-wa-wa da-pi-nim ⸢ta⸣-qum-tam iš-tu (OB Gilgamesh IV 148‒150)

d

If I fall, I will have made my name: “Gilgamesh came to blows with warlike Ḫuwawa!”⁸¹

Thus this motif is associated with the endurance of a king’s legacy, which, of course, is directly connected with the scholars responsible for the written memorialization of his rule. As we will see, this motif is actively utilized by scholars to (positively) describe their own art; the motif is reversed in order to threaten the king’s legacy, even being directly utilized by one royal figure to threaten the memory of another, impious, king (The Persian Verse Account, epilogue).

Cracking the Royal Code: Methods and Modes of Counterdiscursiveness It has likely become evident by now that scribes in ancient Mesopotamia were a powerful force behind the (de)construction of royal ideology. This control was possible because they wielded significant authorial influence over the text. Karel van der Toorn, in his comparative work Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible, has described the phenomenon whereby certain literature

 Text edition from George (2003: 200).

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can be described as a “scribal construct” (Van der Toorn 2007: esp. 205‒232). Using Jeremiah as an example, he attempts to prove that oracles which had previously existed only in the oral tradition attracted the intellectual investment of scribes, who completed original transcription, followed by invention, and then expansion, mostly done from memory. He uses as a form of comparison the late second-millennium and first-millennium “canonization” of the Mesopotamian textual tradition, wherein Mesopotamian scholars legitimized their activities by calling them “secret,” available only to the initiated as divine revelation. This claim enabled Mesopotamian scribes to dictate the textual tradition through their creative choices. In an analogue to this, argues van der Toorn (2007: 224), the books of the prophets are also a “scribal construct”: texts had to be written down, “canonized,” and labeled with some mark of uniqueness or authenticity. An example is the claim that Moses wrote the Book of Deuteronomy, which van der Toorn argues is an invention “to convey an aura of false antiquity,” which was formulated in the sixth century BC. Thus the books of the prophets, who were now developed as scribal characters, lent legitimacy to the more recent scribes, whose knowledge could be presented as secret, and whose compilation of the Torah provided the only way for the divine voice to be relayed to human beings. It is in a similar way that Mesopotamian scholars, especially those of the first millennium, dictated the image of the king—whether through panegyric or through a subtle subversion—that would be transmitted to modern times. They were in control of the representational present, the textual past, and the “historical” future, and hence, could be a substantial limiter on the definition and exercise of royal authority. Throughout this work, I will identify four major ways in which Neo-Assyrian scholars, through their own constructs, maintained control over Mesopotamian texts and the (Neo-Assyrian) royal image. Rather than discussing the different genres in which this authorial control took place,⁸² I will identify four primary

 Although we are able to identify linguistic and semantic consistencies across what I describe as “counterdiscursive” literature, the genres in which such narratives appear in the late period are of a very heterogeneous character (e. g., satire, omen literature, “wisdom” literature, prophecy, even epistolary). Furthermore, Michalowski (1999: 73) cautions against utilizing “generic” terminology when describing Mesopotamian literature: “Genre to us has more than classificatory significance. It tells us how to write as well as how to read, and in a literary tradition that values innovation, it provides norms that need to be transgressed.” Similarly, Michalowski (2010: 7) argues for a change in perspective from genre as classificatory tool to genre as a framework for world-making. Thus I will use the term “genre” with caution, mostly as an effort to describe classificatory categories. For a good categorical overview of the different types of historiographical texts that survive from Mesopotamia, see Grayson (1980: 140‒194). Neujahr (2012: 76‒81) gives an excellent overview of genre studies relating to ancient Near Eastern texts, including discus-

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methods (and by default, degrees) by which Mesopotamian scribes could register discontentment with particular kings.

“Warning” Literature The first category of royal criticism (both thematically and chronologically) in the post-Kassite literary space is what I will refer to as “warning” literature. This terminology is meant to be most evocative of a very popular text, referred to by most scholars as Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3). This text is the first of its kind to directly criticize the office of kingship in Mesopotamia. Using casuistic formulae to describe circumstances and their consequences (if…then), Advice to a Prince takes as its textual paradigm a form familiar from Mesopotamian omen literature. I cannot attempt to cover the vast expanse of literature that exists on omens and prophecies in the Ancient Near East, and it is perhaps inauspicious for our purposes that Glassner (2004: 20) describes such pieces as “a small group of texts for which it is hard to formulate a definition.” Omens generally have a protasis and an apodosis, with the former containing a hypothetical (or real) observation and the latter containing the consequence of that observation—normally in the future tense—for the private sphere, the rule of a king, or the country as a whole (Veldhuis 1999: 161). In perhaps his most famous article, Finkelstein argued that Mesopotamian historiography lay, in its roots, with omen texts, whose reliability with respect to historical events should be considered superior to any other Mesopotamian textual type. The significance of past events, he argues, was in the exemplificative value of an action, and these values—as transmitted through the cause-and-effect style of omens—remained more or less constant throughout Mesopotamian history (Finkelstein 1962: 461‒472). While his arguments have generally been debunked in subsequent scholarship,⁸³ they did harness the essence of Mesopotamian historical method, which Glassner (2004: 21) argues was “to choose, according to a definite focus of interest, among the carefully collected data from the past, certain facts that, from that

sions of form criticism, prototype theory, “New Critic” formalism, and structuralism, though he admits that most studies of Mesopotamian textual types have been heavily influenced by Biblical studies. All of these text types can be used simultaneously, juxtaposed to one another, and singularly.  See, for instance, Cooper (1980: 99‒105), and most recently Pongratz-Leisten (2014a: esp. 40‒42). Nevertheless, Finkelstein’s work maintains some merit in providing a basis for understanding commentary—and later, criticism—of kingship, at least in this textual mode, as royal figures are frequently the subjects of such texts.

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point of view, had acquired universal relevance and significance.” Omen texts are frequent and significant for the comprehension of the Mesopotamian political milieu, in many cases concerned with the order of the land and the course of rule, “an essential means of orientation in life.”⁸⁴ By warning of consequences for overburdening his people, disturbing cultic ordinances, or neglecting his scholars, Advice to a Prince uses the omen formula as a means to check the king’s power, through a recognized and respected text type. The legacy of Advice to a Prince is perhaps the most enduring of any piece of Mesopotamian counterdiscursive literature, and will see an afterlife far into the first millennium (see epilogue). The “warning” form can also occur in literature that I will refer to as “theology as politics,” by which previous regimes or rulers are set up as counterpositions to the (religious) status quo, to portray current leaders as adherents to new theological norms essential to proper governance (see Ludlul in Chapter 2). Those who fail(ed) to abide by the new theology are made aware of potential ramifications through text.⁸⁵ In these cases, “warning” literature expresses the ideal form of leadership (especially with relation to the treatment of Babylonian cult), and may not necessarily denigrate a particular person. This generalized tone, present in both Ludlul and Advice to a Prince, led Lambert to categorize texts of this type as “wisdom literature.” ⁸⁶ Interestingly, this particular text type is relatively scant

 See Oppenheim (1964: 214, and the general discussion from 210‒227). Oppenheim (1980: 463) famously argued: “The best insurance for coping with the future is the most reliable and accurate knowledge of the experience of the past.” Through an exemplificative principle, determinations for future action in Mesopotamian society were made through omens based on past events. Edzard (1965: 172‒174) views omens as a “mirror” for their time, especially in the Old Babylonian period. According to him, “Die Omina vermitteln ein höchst anschauliches Bild von den politischen, wirtschaftlichen, gelegentlich auch von den sozialen Zuständen der unruhigen altbabylonischen Zeit” (172). Bottéro (1992: 125‒137), on the other hand, describes omens as a Mesopotamian empirical science, with divination as a function of direct observation. Intrinsic, or even causal, relationships were assumed between events and the interpreted signs. For the latter, see Veldhuis (1999: 163 and 171), where he defines the interpretation of omens as “speculative knowledge,” comparable to a “scholastic theology.”  Richardson (2010c: esp. 248) emphasizes that the concerns of omens (his focus is on the Old Babylonian period) should be read as “of-the-moment” and reflective of actual and real threats to kingship in a shifting status quo.  The collection of some Mesopotamian texts into such a category is based on their (at times faulty) comparison with Biblical themes. See Lambert (1996: 1). See also the helpful review of Alster (2005: 18‒24); the review of secondary literature in Denning-Bolle (1982: 13‒23); and further, the review of secondary literature in Cohen (2013: 7‒13). Beaulieu calls wisdom literature a “vast and inclusive notion,” indeed an intuitive category, “based on a general recognition of certain themes and questions that wisdom literature is expected to address.” See Beaulieu (2007: 3).

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in general and disappears altogether after ca. 900 BC, leading Beaulieu to describe wisdom literature as an “epiphenomenon.” This development, I argue, has to do with the emergence of a scribal environment in which it was more acceptable to openly censure the king, when it was no longer necessary to utilize analogues or metaphorical paradigms as forms of critical expression.

Constructive Criticism (“Suggestive Literature”) The second mode through which I identify literary dialogue about kings I will term “constructive criticism,” or “suggestive literature.” Importantly, this method is very specific to the cultural milieu in which disapproval of the king was first

On the other hand, scholars such as van Dijk (1953) were invested in concretely classifying “wisdom” literature in Mesopotamia. Van Dijk’s work identifies eleven categories, some of which include only one text. Gordon (1959) follows these demarcations. Lambert (1996: 10) points out that one real concern behind these Mesopotamian texts is not the moral qualities inherent in Biblical “wisdom” texts, but rather the much more Babylonian concept of “justice,” though the seemingly moral character of the former texts would often invade that of the latter. Indeed, the distinction between “practical” and “theoretical” texts for maxims of life was not one recognized by the Mesopotamians. See Denning-Bolle (1982: 217). However, Kleinerman (2011: 69‒74) argues that in the Old Babylonian period, “wisdom” compositions do appear to have been thematically grouped on Sammeltafeln, allowing us “to imagine something of the ancients’ conceptualization of wisdom literature.” As Buccellati (1981: 44) argues, the origin of the types of texts defined as “wisdom literature” in Mesopotamia is not limited to a certain body of texts, but is composed of an entire cultural tradition that draws on both the scribal schooling traditions and the folk tradition of the “common people.” “Wisdom literature,” he argues, should be defined more broadly, as “[i]t provides the mental categories for a conscious, abstract confrontation with reality, from common sense correlations to higher level theory.” Both “wisdom literature” and folk tradition are unified in their effort to comprehend divine will, based on concepts current in a very real human world. Alster (2005: 30) identified two categories of “wisdom literature”: a traditional/conservative outlook, focusing on the performance of a proper life and the preservation of life’s necessities; and a critical approach, wherein two maxims meet to form the idea that “nothing is of value, therefore one must enjoy life before its inevitable demise.” The latter is the theme encompassing the texts of interest in our study, “represented by those compositions characterized by scribal wit.” Fox (2011: 1‒11) later expanded upon these terms by calling the two types “positive” and “negative wisdom” literature. Though I do not seek to redefine the text type of “wisdom literature” in Mesopotamia (if only for simplicity of reader reference), it is in the combination of Foster and Lambert’s theories about the category that I understand the term. This is in line with the theory of Denning-Bolle (1982: 239), who argues that all of these texts discuss the problem of justice, the righteous sufferer, and the role of the divine; “what is at stake here,” she states, “concerns the very structure of the cosmos and man’s place within it. [The texts] deal with highly abstract matters that are expressed in images drawn from specific, everyday happenings.”

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overtly expressed (namely, the Neo-Assyrian court), as there is every indication that this type is used exclusively by Assyrian scholars seeking to remonstrate Assyrian kings within their own imperial environment.⁸⁷ In a similarly abrasive Roman monarchical context, this type of literature has been defined by scholars as “protreptic” (Braund 2012: esp. 62). Protreptic literature adapts the motifs and messages of a ruler’s own ideology and uses it to provide subtle suggestions for improvement, a sort of “reminder” of the most important tenets of (here, Assyrian) kingship. In this way, even what appears on the surface to be panegyric may serve as a gentle nudge toward correcting lapses in the ingrained paradigm of kingship. For instance, when an emperor is praised for his attention to justice, there is an implied expectation that he will in fact uphold the laws; but beneath the accolade, there may also be a hint that he is less committed to justice than he should be. This type of text can be used to point out problems when the object of criticism is too close, physically or ideologically, for a direct rebuke. At the time, this method of writing is very important for defining the character of a burgeoning, struggling, or uncertain kingship ideology, as it does in several texts in Chapter 4 (The Netherworld Vision, The Coronation Hymn of Assurbanipal) and Chapter 2 (The Creation of Kingship).

Outright Criticism In the practice of divinatory arts, the scholars at the Neo-Assyrian royal court were held in high esteem and exerted great influence over the king’s decisions; this important position required constant monitoring of loyalty, lest conspiracies arise (Maul 2013: 279‒313). This delicate relationship—in which the scholar was also dependent on the king’s patronage for his livelihood—made the open expression of criticism of any kind (let alone literary) a difficult prospect. However, with the emergence of scribal authorial agency, the difficulties inherent in Assyro-Babylonian relationships, and eventually, the fall of the Assyrian empire, this text type will evolve from existing solely as “hidden transcripts,” to finally entering the public sphere in a rather explosive way. In the Neo-Assyrian period, these direct critiques will focus around the reign of Sennacherib, who, as we will see, experienced the most trouble in negotiating the “Babylonian problem.” The

 Whereas, Babylonian scholars or Assyrian scholars with Babylonian sympathies who wish to challenge the authority of Assyrian kings in a broader Assyro-Babylonian context will almost always utilize another variety of critique, such as outright censure, warnings, or subversion of history.

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Sin of Sargon (Chapter 4) and The Weidner Chronicle (Chapter 5) are both texts in which scribes will express their opinion about his rule, privately but in such a way as to reveal the object of their critique by making historical and personal allusions.⁸⁸ But after the fall of the Assyrian empire, outright disparagement of a specific king becomes possible. Here we have come a long way from the generalized “warning” of Advice to a Prince! The surprising evolution of this method is demonstrated not least in the famous Persian Verse Account and The Cyrus Cylinder (epilogue), direct critiques of the Neo-Babylonian Nabonidus by his archrival and successor, Cyrus the Great.

Subversive Texts/History One of the most powerful ways in which a scribe can maintain control over the text—and hence, the king—is through the subversion of known (textual) pasts. Especially in the Neo-Assyrian period, scribes manipulated known texts, especially ones that were already current in the public sphere (e. g., The Cuthaean Legend, or the inscription of Sennacherib at Halulê, Chapters 2 and 6, respectively), reading them in a way that increased scribal visibility or expressed the need for community identity in a tenuous political situation. Here, the scribe could utilize the “public transcript” (Text A) as a venue for the expression of Text B, which may represent the interests of the elites, or in some cases, of the people. A good example of this phenomenon is LKA 62 (Chapter 6), a deliberate Neo-Assyrian parody of a Middle Assyrian royal inscription.⁸⁹ Importantly, LKA 62, like other critical texts such as The Sin of Sargon and The Netherworld Vision, was an anomalous scribal exercise, not meant for public circulation. However, LKA 62 deliberately uses Text A as a way to formulate a hidden narrative (Text B); Sen-

 Importantly, the latter is often compared to Advice to a Prince, demonstrating the malleability of generic types for criticism, as well as the permeable boundaries of the degrees and methods for critique of authority.  As a satire, the piece is still incredibly important, signaling “in der Tat eine normkritische oder gar normbrechende Haltung.” Thus Frahm (1998: 149‒150) warns that the modern reader should not sweep the potential effects of humorous literature under the proverbial rug. Alster (1975: 203) makes the same point, stressing that every word in a text must be understood with regards to its reciprocal meanings within its relational context. Similarly, Vanstiphout (1995: 2194), who argues: “Although parody is a basic mode of metaphorical social behavior, a literary form has to create a constant concinnity between an underlying ‘serious’ model and the mockingly applied or totally inverted system of anti-values, with the resulting text and the masked intentions hovering somewhere in between.”

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nacherib’s inscription at Halulê, on the other hand, uses a literary Text A to create another public, ideologically-driven Text B. Importantly, in both instances, the scribes adapt existing texts to register complaints, whether in a hidden or public narrative. Similar processes will take place in the copying or production of “texts out of context,” as will be the case with the letters studied in Chapter 5. Instead of describing these later texts as “metatextual,” the typical term for such transposition, Michalowski (1999: 88) prefers to call such crossover “transtextual processes,” wherein the meaning lay “rather in the interstices between texts, and in the manner in which texts were synchronically manipulated. Intertextual meaning was produced not only by the composition of new texts, but in the creation of new relationships between existing works.”⁹⁰ Thus, scribal control over the text is multi-faceted and can be manipulated variously, as a way to problematize kings and their prevailing ideology. But this power extended even further, as exemplified by scribal manipulation of another text type: prophecies. In one important text—The Dynastic Prophecy—which we will discuss in the epilogue, scribes express their disapproval through literary ahistoricism that the public could have easily recognized. Because they were oral pronouncements, prophecies from the Ancient Near East have not often survived in written form, with the biblical books of the Old and New Testament being a notable exception.⁹¹ The largest corpus of prophecies originate from Mari, mostly comprising letters addressed to the king Zimri-Lim (c. 1775‒1761 BC); the next largest collection comes from the library at Nineveh, where eleven Neo-Assyrian tablets relate twenty-nine individual prophetic oracles addressed to Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal (Nissinen 2004: 25‒28). Many of these latter texts are said to be messages from Ishtar of Arbela;⁹² as Biggs (1992: 20) notes, most prophetic texts, with their literary connections to omens, should be considered “in principle, [as] divine messages.” He identifies several distinctive characteristics of literary prophecies: the topos of “hard times, the “reversal of fortunes,” the use of strong contrasts, and the frequent mention

 For recent work on the concept of “intertextuality” in the context of Assyriology, see Seri (2014: 89‒91). See also Pongratz-Leisten (2010: esp. 139‒146) on the concept of the “architext,” transtextuality, and genre in Near Eastern literature.  Note also Assyrian prophecies, which Parpola (1997: xiv-xvii) argues can also be studied as part of a larger religious structure, with notable effects on the production of Old Testament prophecies. He notes also (lxvii) the “hybrid” stylistic features of Assyrian prophecies, being essentially “half-prose, half-poetry.”  For the most recent work on Neo-Assyrian royal prophetic contexts, see the edited volume of Gordon and Barstad (2013). On this subject see also Parpola (1997: xviii‒xxxvi).

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of royal succession. It is no surprise, then, that prophecy often contains counterdiscursive messages, especially in the later periods of Mesopotamian empires. Thus, control over cultural memory and over the text (“textual hegemony”)⁹³ allowed scholars several different avenues with which to discuss and challenge the boundaries of first-millennium Neo-Assyrian kings; their discontent is mirrored in the increasing performance of public rituals meant to problematize kingship in the same period. No matter how strongly the criticism is registered, the motifs delineated above will be common—though some in greater amounts than others—to the texts discussed in this volume. Most importantly, the impetus for criticism—whether from Assyrian or Babylonian sources—will almost exclusively be the treatment of the Babylonian cult, and especially the Babylonian national god, Marduk.

Marduk The motifs described above are of a consistent and systematic nature, and appear in texts that are critical of Mesopotamian kings. The texts become more and more explicit in their criticism, especially during the first millennium. The kings who receive literary approbation have one thing in common: at one time or another during their reign, the status of the Babylonian god Marduk—in most cases represented by his statue—was under a perceived threat. The movement of that statue to and from Babylon was a major factor in determining whether foreign kings were challenging the integrity of traditional Babylonian religion. The trend where scribes became more explicit in expressing their discontent with the Mesopotamian king began, I believe, following a cultural moment during the reign of the Isin II king Nebuchadnezzar I in the twelfth century BC. It was during his reign that the statue of the Babylonian god Marduk, captured by the Elamites approximately thirty years before he came to the throne, was returned to his rightful place at Babylon. The reinstallation of this statue occasioned a major theological shift in Babylonia, accompanied by an explosion of creative literature and increasing self-awareness for the Mesopotamian scholar. One unique prophetic text serves as a fitting background to the issues facing the Babylonians and their Assyrian neighbors in the first millennium BC. The Marduk Prophecy, which survives in copies from Nineveh and Assur, is Marduk’s

 On “textual hegemony,” see above (Carr and van der Toorn on scribal constructions of texts). See also Boustan et al. (2011: 5‒9), with bibliography (focusing on Islamic literature).

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“autobiography” (Longman 1991: 133).⁹⁴ The text details the three times in which the god Marduk abandoned Babylon. All of these instances can be concretely identified in the historical record. In the first instance (i 13‒22), Marduk describes the installation of his throne in Hatti, where he remained for twenty-four years. We are told in line 35 of his return to Babylon (aḫ-ḫi-s[a]). Historically, this cycle of abandonment and repatriation can be attributed to the Hittite capture of Marduk’s statue⁹⁵ in their campaign against Babylon under Mursilis I in 1595 BC. The statue was returned by an early Kassite king, Agum II.⁹⁶ After a long lacuna, the text picks up again with mention of Baltil and its temple (i obv. 3’‒4’). Though we are missing the portions in which Marduk has again abandoned the city of Babylon, the god indicates that he resided in Baltil (an alternative moniker for Assur) and that he had caused the land of Assur to be blessed (i 12’: māt(kur) Aš-šur akrub(šùd)-ub). This section must reference the conflict in 1225 BC between the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I and the Kassite king of Babylonia Kaštiliaš IV, in which the statue of Marduk was removed to Assyria. The statue was repatriated to Babylon by the Assyrian king Ninurta-tukulti-Assur.⁹⁷ At the end of column i, Marduk states explicitly that his absence from Babylon was self-imposed; similarly, his return to Babylon was voluntary, emphasized by the repeated use of the first person a-na-ku (i 18’‒21’). i 22’-ii 14 gives Marduk’s third and final exile, which is again to Elam, a reference to the subjugation of Babylon by the Elamite king Kudur-Naḫḫunte (1155‒1150 BC). Following the description of the chaos in Babylon that ensues because of Marduk’s absence, much of the remaining text is styled as a prophecy (ii 19 ff.). It describes the coming of a new king in Babylon, who will restore order, renew the temple Ekursagila, and return Marduk to his rightful place. This latter section certainly refers to the defeat of Elam by Nebuchadnezzar I (r. 1125‒1104 BC) and his subsequent return of the Marduk statue to Babylon (Borger 1971: 5‒13 and 16‒17). The Marduk Prophecy is a boon to Assyriologists because it allows theological disturbances to be matched up to significant political events known in the historical record. Devastating foreign incursions into Babylonian territory and the reversal of those misfortunes are traced through the lens of the god Marduk and the welfare of his cult image. While all of the events in The Marduk Prophecy relate to occurrences in the second millennium, the variety of arguments regard-

 In his study of the text, Güterbock (1934: 79‒84) called it the “Marduk-narû.” For a list of tablet numbers, editions of the text, and translations, see Neujahr (2012: 27‒28). My line numbers will follow those of Neujahr.  The statue is mentioned twice in this portion of the text (Col i 29, 33).  As noted by an inscription of Agum II in Jensen (1892: 138‒141, i 44‒ii 17).  Grayson (1975a: 170‒177, no. 22), Glassner (2004: 278‒281, no. 45). See also Chapter 5.

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ing the authorship of this text emphasizes Marduk’s continued importance in Mesopotamian affairs even into the late first millennium. Neujahr (2012: 39‒ 41) argues for a date in or near the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, locating the text as part of that king’s “propaganda machine.” He assumes that the production of the text took place after Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Elam, an ex eventu prediction that explains Marduk’s ascendancy to the Babylonian pantheon, while also legitimizing Nebuchadnezzar’s kingship over the earthly realm. While the text is clearly politically expedient in this immediate context, others have suggested that The Marduk Prophecy was composed much later. The fact that the prophecy exists in three known copies, all from Assur or Nineveh, leads Nielsen (2012: 12‒15) to suggest that the text was written in the Neo-Assyrian period. While the Babylonian cult was not entirely neglected by Assyrian kings,⁹⁸ it was in the latter stages of the Neo-Assyrian period in particular that a sort of obsession with the restoration and repatriation of Babylonian cult images (especially Marduk) emerged. Undoubtedly, the focus on Marduk was a result of the hapless destruction of Babylon and the removal of Marduk’s cult statue to Assyria by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in 689 BC (see Chapter 4). The political ramifications of that destruction were far-reaching, especially for Sennacherib’s successors Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, who had to reverse course in order to mitigate potential tumult in a subjugated Babylonia, while also appeasing pro-Babylonian partisanship within Assyria itself. In the approximately seventy-five years between Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon and the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC, we find no fewer than twelve instances of refurbishment or return of the cult statues of Babylonian gods by Assyrian kings (Holloway 2002: 277‒283). In 669 BC, Esarhaddon made an attempt to return Marduk’s statue to Babylon. This effort, however, was halted by difficulties on the journey to Babylon.⁹⁹ The endeavor to return Marduk to his proper cultic place was clearly a prerogative of these last Neo-Assyrian kings, as only a year later, following his father’s death, Assurbanipal participated in restoration ceremonies related to Marduk’s return to Babylon. We are told that both Bēl (Marduk) and the gods of Akkad were led out of Assur (Grayson 1975a: 69‒87, no. 1 iv 34‒36). Because Esarhaddon had divided the kingship between his two sons, Assurbanipal (who was to reign in Assyria) and Šamaš-šum-ukīn (who was to reign in Babylonia), the

 The inscriptions of Sargon II, for instance, continually refer to Marduk’s favor. See Lie (1929: 42, l. 270) and Winckler (1889 II: pls. 17 and 20, nos. 36 and 43).  See for instance SAA 10: 24 and SAA 4: 64.

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latter would have received the repatriated cult statue in the city of Babylon.¹⁰⁰ Indeed, Šamaš-šum-ukīn ruled at Babylon when Marduk returned on the twenty-fifth day of Iyyar, 668 BC (Grayson 1975a: 125‒128, no. 14 obv. 35‒36). During the twenty years of Marduk’s exile in Assyria, the Babylonian New Year’s (akītu) festival had been halted, and his return signaled the reestablishment of traditional Babylonian religious affairs (Frame 2007: 103‒105). Nielsen (2012: 19) suggests that The Marduk Prophecy was written in conjunction with this occasion, highlighting the positive portrayal of Marduk’s time in Assyria as evidence for an Assyrian reworking of the text, which—although it relied on traditions preserved in Babylonia, nevertheless acknowledged that Marduk favored Assyrian imperial domination.¹⁰¹ Furthermore, Assyrian repackaging of this Babylonian discourse indicates that the Assyrians themselves recognized the events of Nebuchadnezzar I’s reign as an important cultural turn. By recycling themes relating to Nebuchadnezzar’s success and popularity (especially in Babylonia), the Assyrians used his image as a mirror for the dissemination of theo-political assertions surrounding contemporary events. Given these considerations, in the context of royal affairs, it is not crucial to pinpoint a date of composition for The Marduk Prophecy. Its message was in fact significant across many centuries and applicable to several different kings. The text (and its potential Assyrian recension) underlines the importance of this particular god to the systematic and diachronic discourse about expectations for both Babylonian and Assyrian royalty. As we will see, The Marduk Prophecy is emblematic of a growing trend in which texts that may reference earlier events become recycled to praise or criticize kings—especially in Assyria—largely based on the treatment of the Babylonian god Marduk. Within the context of these increasing concerns about Marduk, several factors—the new-found independence of the scholar at the royal court, the devolution of the Assyrian Empire, and the tumultuous relationship with their Babylonian neighbors to the south—created a unique situation in which the nature of Assyrian kingship could be more actively problematized, at least in literary

 Though the return of the statue was undoubtedly set into motion by Assurbanipal, as evidenced not least from his statement in the famous inscription L4 (ii 30‒34); for the text, see Streck (1916: 252‒271, no. 9) and SAACT 10: 18.  Evidence for Assyria’s concern about Marduk’s divine sanction of its rule over Babylonia can also be found in SAA 13: 139, a letter of the high temple official Assur-ḫamatu’a to Assurbanipal. The letter, written upon the return of Marduk to Babylonia during the reign of Assurbanipal, records a prophecy sought by the Assyrians upon the repatriation of the statue, likely an attempt to confirm that completing this task would indeed expiate the Assyrians from wrongdoing in this matter.

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form. Ultimately I seek to identify how newly composed or copied texts were used for contemporary criticism of Assyrian kingship, from the standpoint of a scholarly elite who were able both to create and to deconstruct the image of the king. In this view, it is helpful again to return to the thesis of Liverani (1973: 179), who suggests that the real importance of a text lies in discovering the ideology that provided its shape and structure. Because of this dual role of the scribe as image-maker, he was able to reverse the direction of the propagated royal ideology as a means of critique: The very binary nature of the hegemonic construction of reality…(inside/outside, center/periphery, good/bad, civilized/barbaric, normal/aberrant) also creates the possibility for resistance to hegemony through critical inversion, wherein categories are retained but the hierarchy of values or assignment of value is turned upside down (Portier-Young 2011: 14).

Thus, such a study substantiates its own importance, because it may be possible to glean anew a subaltern view commonly lost in Mesopotamian history, while also confirming or disproving previously held assumptions about the transmission—and effectiveness—of authoritarian ideals in the period covered by the study.¹⁰² In these observations we can challenge the popular view that Mesopotamian civilization lacked a central characteristic element of axial civilizations (as formulated by Eisenstadt): independent intellectual groups characterized by heterodox tendencies (Michalowski 2005: 173). In articulating the counterdiscursive tendencies of a post-Kassite scribal elite, we gain new insights into the textual, political, and social legacy of first-millennium Assyrian kingship and literature. Thus, analysis of texts delineated in this work will seek to problematize the assertion of Liverani (2010: 242) that criticism inside one’s own cultural tradition was “almost absent” in Mesopotamia.

 It should be noted, however, that as in Athens, critiques of the government system never led to any kind of revolutionary threat to the regime (much like the Assyrian monarchy would have never been toppled by the circulation of our literature). See Ober (2001: 369).

Chapter 2 The Kassite Revolution In the mid-to late second millennium BC, Mesopotamia saw Babylonia united under the Kassite kings, while Assyria too acquired a greater sense of military might and imperialistic ambition. The struggle between these two powers and political clashes with their neighbors to the east and west ushered in an era of rapid and destabilizing change on several fronts. The political tensions manifested themselves in religious transformations (marked by the replacement of the supreme god Enlil by the Babylonian Marduk and Assyrian Assur), which occurred simultaneously with a series of sociological changes that would leave a lasting effect on the cultures of both Babylonia and Assyria. This heightened sense of cultural awareness and an overwhelming need to define and categorize each empire’s place within this new ideological world caused an explosion of literature about power and identity; an interest in collecting those texts in a single “social” space (library collections); and the first forays into asserting the authority of the purveyors of that literature (namely, scholars in the royal entourage). Though precursors for the literature of this period exist (e. g., The Curse of Akkad), the new political, sociological, and intellectual contexts of the Kassite and Isin II periods allowed for a more explicit exploration of the limits of kings, now manifest in texts exhibiting affinities to the “warnings” category delineated in Chapter 1.

Much Ado about Marduk: The Kassite and Isin II periods For our purposes, a turning point in international and cultural affairs occurred in what is often known as the Kassite period. The Kassites, a people still difficult to identify with certainty, can be located in the tribal environs of Sippar and in the area of Babylonia by at least the eighteenth century BC. They reigned over a subjugated (yet unified) Babylonia by 1475 BC; their rule—the longest of any dynasty in Babylonian history—lasted until ca. 1155 BC (Brinkman 1976‒1980: 465). During their tenure in Babylonia, however, the Kassites faced threats from multiple opponents, with Assyria and, ultimately, Elam posing the most enduring danger. Though the manner of conquest is unclear, the Kassites were finally overthrown by a king of the Isin II dynasty, Marduk-kabit-aḫḫēšu (Frame 1995: 5). Under Nebuchadnezzar I, the fourth king of the Isin II dynasty, major changes in the theological and ideological landscape of Babylon occurred. But the kinetic energy for

DOI 10.1515/9781501504969-002

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such a revolution had already been building during the tenure of their conquered foe. Under the Kassite kings, Babylonia experienced a reinvigoration project of great proportions. In the reign of Kurigalzu I, temples of several gods were restored and a new political and religious center was built in the north, Dūr-Kurigalzu (Clayden 1996: 109‒121). The construction of this new capital city—the only purely “Kassite” center ever built—represented a break from tradition, perhaps a Kassite proclamation of independence from the traditional Babylonian religious order (Heinz 2012: 719). In addition to these new building projects, Brinkman (1968: 114‒115) has identified a sort of literary renaissance during the Kassite period. The reign of Kurigalzu I was also important in this respect, as it saw a noticeable resurgence in the copying and writing of Sumerian texts. Veldhuis (2000: 81‒82) has shown that the Kassite period curriculum was rich, including traditional Sumerian literature, lexical lists, technical texts, and proverbs; the extant texts, he argues, reveal a strong interest in actively preserving the Sumerian lexical and literary traditions of the past. He also notes the presence of Akkadian literature, which flourished during this period, as well. In fact, the Kassite domination of Babylonia saw the development of Standard Babylonian, an artificial Akkadian dialect that democratized Assyrian and Babylonian literature. This can be categorized, then, as a time of curricular transition, in which older texts continued to be studied, but in which newer Akkadian texts and dialects were also being formulated. A signal event during this era was the destruction of Babylon by Tukulti-Ninurta I (r. 1243‒1207 BC),¹⁰³ which resulted in the plundering of tablets and cuneiform monuments from Babylonia to the Assyrian capital of Assur. A vast majority of these tablets date to the Kassite domination of Babylonia (Potts 2000: 27). Throughout its long history,¹⁰⁴ the holdings at Assur comprised the largest collection of Akkadian literary texts, outnumbering even those held at the famous royal library in Nineveh (see Chapter 3).¹⁰⁵ The contents of the library and the cataloguing procedures utilized there—which were remarkably similar to the sophisticated practices used later at Nineveh—induce Potts to argue that Assur is an Assyrian precursor to the more famous collection of texts begun in the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Esarhaddon. Even more importantly, many of the tablets bear colophons indicating that the scribe had copied the text

 On this campaign, see Mayer (1988: 143‒161).  The presence of a library at Assur is first attested during this period (often referred to as “The Middle Assyrian”), and continues to present the largest concentration of literary and archival texts even during the Neo-Assyrian period. See Pedersén (1998: 239 figure 1 and 240).  Pedersén (1998: 276 figure 10).

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from an exemplar originating in southern Babylonian cities, such as Nippur and Babylon. Furthermore, the conspicuous Babylonian provenience of texts in both Assur and Nineveh presupposes that similar collections existed in Babylonia during this period Potts (2000: 28). Michalowski (2003b: 114‒115) rightly stresses the novelty of such an enterprise, highlighting the fact that, for the first time in Mesopotamian history, we can see vestiges of “willfull collecting and redactional activity,” a giant leap beyond the usual, and rather passive, activity of copying, which had been the norm until this point. The literary creativity in Babylonia and the Assyrian interest in Babylonian texts would continue to intensify, reaching its apex in the Neo-Assyrian period. The collection and creation of texts in these locales reflect the concerns of the era, being preoccupied with aspects of kingship, the status of the scholar, and the literary/political communities centered around the libraries.¹⁰⁶ Moving from the end of the Kassite into the beginning of the Isin II period, Lambert (1996: xix) sees both a sifting and an editing of old texts as well as the creation of new Babylonian texts. Many scholars understand this new interest in literary creativity to have been incited by the return of the statue of the Babylonian god Marduk to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar I (Lambert 1964: 3‒13).¹⁰⁷ According to King List C, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded his father Ninurta-nadinšumi on the throne and enjoyed a reign of twenty-two years.¹⁰⁸ The statue of Marduk, captured by Kudur-naḫḫunte II during the final Elamite subjugation of Kassite Babylonia (circa 1155 BC), had been removed from the Esagila at Babylon and deported to Elam,¹⁰⁹ leaving the country in a state of religious destitution. The statue was repatriated by Nebuchadnezzar I (r. 1125‒1104 BC), following his defeat of the Elamites.¹¹⁰ One of the main literary-historical sources for

 What Too (2010) refers to as the intellectual “space of socialities.”  Extant texts from the period make clear the emphasis on Nebuchadnezzar’s victory over the Elamites and his special care in returning Marduk to his seat in Babylon. These texts are helpfully collected in Frame (1995: 11‒35).  King List C was first analyzed and discussed in Poebel (1955: 1‒41). Nebuchadnezzar is given on line 4 of the list.  Brinkman (1968: 89); see also Potts (1999: 188).  There are several texts that describe the return of Marduk to Babylon, the foremost of which can be found in King (1912: 96‒98, no. 24 obv. 7‒12), in which we are told that Nebuchadnezzar “took the hand of Bēl (Marduk)” and led him back into Babylon. See also the discussion in Chapter 1. Both the spoliation and the repatriation of gods was widely practiced in the Near East; for an Assyrian example, see Cogan (1974: 22‒41). In almost all cases, the removal of the god(s) was meant to signify the god’s abandonment of and displeasure with his patron city. Similarly, the return of the gods to their homeland indicated complete domination by the

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this important religious moment in Babylonian history is The Marduk Prophecy, a text which describes three instances in which Marduk departs to a foreign land (see Chapter 1). The last of these, referring to Marduk’s stay in Elamite territory, describes his return to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar I, who fully restores Marduk’s cultic ordinances in the city and temple. New evidence about the celebration of the akītu festival for Marduk at Nippur suggests that Marduk’s rise as supreme god was more gradual during the Kassite period than has previously been assumed (Tenney 2016: 161). Though in the Kassite period there was a marked increase in dedicatory prayers to Marduk, especially on cylinder seals,¹¹¹ Marduk still held a secondary role to Enlil in the Mesopotamian pantheon. It has been suggested that the statue’s reinstallation at Babylon following Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of the Elamites was the occasion that prompted Marduk’s ultimate elevation to head of the pantheon (Sommerfeld 1982: 182‒189). At this time there was an explicit movement, building on previous developments, that systematically transferred significance from the god Enlil, the temple Ekur, and the city of Nippur to the god Marduk, the temple Esagila, and the city of Babylon (Oshima 2014: 71).¹¹² Eventually Marduk subsumed aspects of Enlil’s role and authority; similarly, the Esagila and Babylon itself absorbed topographical names from Ekur and Nippur, “probably in order to transfer the importance of Enlil’s cult to that of Marduk” (Oshima 2014: 71). Nebuchadnezzar’s inscriptions reflect this change, emphasizing his devotion to Marduk. This emphasis is distinct from Kassite royal inscriptions; Marduk’s supremacy (read as šar [ili], bēl mātāti or šar šamê u erṣeti) occurs only in royal inscriptions after the second dynasty of Isin.¹¹³ In fact, the theo-political explanation provided by Nebuchadnezzar for the fall of the Kassite dynasty is situated

conquering kings over those who committed the original theft. For a late example in a Near Eastern vein, see Finn (2014: 385‒403).  See Oshima (2014: 40), with bibliography. A full one-third of the 179 prayers published from the Kassite seals are dedicated to Marduk.  Following the return of a religious statue, such reorganizations of existing cosmic pantheons were commonplace. Of Marduk’s new prominence, Lambert (1964: 7) argues: “Such an elevation of the city [Babylon], which had certainly taken root in the Cassite period, must have provoked the question why, if Babylon was the first city, should its god be inferior to those of Nippur and Uruk.”  Sommerfeld (1982: 185). Contra Nielsen (2015: 59 and 59 n. 26), who argues that though Marduk’s place in the Mesopotamian pantheon was experiencing a general upward trend towards the end of the Kassite period and the beginning of the Isin II period, there was no sudden reform during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar; rather, he contends, the evidence for such a change is a later Babylonian literary back-referencing, which seeks a locus for a fluid transition that actually occurred across a longer chronological boundary.

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in exactly this context (i. e., as a direct result of the anger of Marduk) (RIMB 2: B.2.4.8, obv. i 23‒35). The correlation between the manifesto for Marduk, presented by the Babylonian priesthood, and the royal attribution of Marduk’s divine anger as the cause for the Kassite downfall leads Oshima (2014: 73) to argue that the interests of the Babylonian priesthood had a direct and influential effect on the public presentation of royal policy during this period. The great theological shift associated with the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I culminated in the production of one of the most famous pieces of Mesopotamian literature, Enūma Eliš (also known as The Babylonian Epic of Creation). The poem describes the trials of the first gods Apsû (“the Deep Water”) and Tiamat (“the sea”) against their rebellious children. Apsû, disturbed by the behavior of the younger generations of his offspring, plans to eliminate them. Ea learns of the plot and kills Apsû by reciting an incantation. Ea builds a temple on top of Apsû, where Marduk is born, the son of Ea. Tiamat, upset by the actions of her children against her lover Apsû, assembles an army of monsters and appoints the creature Kingu as commander. The Annunaki, the younger generation of gods, are afraid to confront Tiamat and her army and choose Marduk as their champion. Marduk agrees to fight Tiamat, and upon her defeat, is awarded the kingship of the gods by his comrades in arms. After slicing Tiamat into many pieces, he creates the world from her corpse, with Babylon its epicenter, and relocates the assembly of the gods from Nippur to Babylon.¹¹⁴ The epic, in the words of Lambert (2013: 439), was “composed to explain, support, and justify Marduk’s supremacy in the Babylonian pantheon.” For the date of Enūma Eliš, several suggestions have been put forward: that its first composition was upon the return of Marduk from exile after Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of the Elamites (the most widely accepted view); that it was composed during the Old Babylonian period; and that it may have first appeared during the Kassite period.¹¹⁵ George (1997a: 134) views Nebuchadnezzar’s return of the cult statue of Marduk to Babylon as having instigated the ideological and literary boom about the greatness of Babylon, of which this text was a product. Having established a chronological boundary for the work’s composition, Lambert (2013: 439) assumes that the piece was produced in Babylon; furthermore, since “scholars were generally priests” in this period, the author may have been affiliated with the temple of Marduk, the Esagila. Thus, Enūma Eliš is likely

 Enūma Eliš v 119‒130; Lambert (2013: 458).  See Oshima (2007: 357 ns. 18, 19, and 20), and Lambert (2013: 439‒444). Though see Dalley (1997: esp. 167‒171), who proposes a slower evolution of the text, which may, in her view, not be at all associated with the repatriation of this particular statue, and whose composition may be associated with periods later than the Old Babylonian.

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a very real literary representation of the immense theological transformation occurring during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I. Another work, resulting from extensive ruminations on this new leader of the Babylonian pantheon, was Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, “Let me praise the Lord of wisdom.” Its concerns, typical of literature in this period, give a first indication at how subversion will be leveled in texts of the first millennium. A work of rather considerable length, it focuses on a particular man, one Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan, and his social, medical, and political difficulties. The poem describes his various misfortunes and eventual restoration through the kindness of Marduk, to whom praise is given in the beginning and at the end of the work. A basic structural analysis of the poem shows the social tribulations of Tablet i reversed in Tablet iv, with the physical rehabilitation in Tablet iii curing the ailments described in Tablet ii (Annus and Lenzi 2010: xix). The piece appears to have been popular in the post-Kassite period, especially in the scribal schools, as there are over fifty tablets or fragments of the poem dating from the first millennium BC (Annus and Lenzi 2010: ix), at least one of which was an exercise tablet.¹¹⁶ The findspots include Nineveh, Assur, Babylon, Sippar, Sultantepe, and Kish. Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan, mentioned thrice by name (iii 44; iv 111; iv 119) in Ludlul, is the protagonist of the text. He is probably a historical figure of the Kassite period; in addition to Lambert’s (1996: 296) discovery of his name in a “historical epic(?) about Kassite times,” Gurney has identified an attestation of the name in a legal document from Ur, in the reign of Nazi-Maruttaš, a Babylonian king of Kassite origin. In this document he has the title lúgar kur (šakin māti, governor of the land); interestingly, a line in a newly discovered tablet of Ludlul that directly follows the naming of the protagonist calls him mu-ma-̕ i-ir ma-a-tu₄ (iv 112) (Annus and Lenzi 2010: xvii). A grain-ration text from Nippur in the reign of the same king mentions rations given to the messenger of Šubši-mešrêŠakkan.¹¹⁷ This information corroborates the claim of Lambert (1996: 21‒22), that Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan was a figure of high authority during this period. Although we can safely say that Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan is the subject of the poem, many have argued against identifying the protagonist as the work’s author;¹¹⁸ others have suggested that a scribe adopted this persona as a literary substitute

 BM 37596, from Babylon.  A third text, in Neo-Babylonian script but most likely a copy of a Kassite document, is BM 38611// K 9952. Because it is poorly preserved, there is no agreement as to whether this document is a historical epic or simply a resolution of a legal dispute, though it does mention the name of Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan in connection to the reign of Nazi-Maruttaš. See Oshima (2014: 17).  Von Soden (1990: 112) posited that the author of the text actually lived several generations after the reign of Nazi-Maruttaš.

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for his own plight,¹¹⁹ while still others suggest that the protagonist commissioned the text from an expert āšipu as a praise-offering to Marduk (Oshima 2014: 19). Ludlul plays on the differences between the protagonist’s expectations and the realities of his life. This dichotomy is presented metaphorically through praise of Marduk expressed at the beginning of the text: Tablet I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

lud-lul bēl(en) né-me-qí ilu(dingir) muš-[ta-lum] e-ziz mu-ši mu-up-pa-šìr ur-⸢ri⸣ Marduk(damar.utu) bēl(en) né-me-qí ilu(dingir) muš-ta-lum e-ziz mu-ši mu-up-pa-šìr ur-ri šá ki-ma ūmi(ud)-mi me-ḫe-e na-mu-ú ug-gat-su ù ki-i ma-nit še-re-e-ti za-aq-šú ṭa-a-bu uz-zu-uš-šu la ma-har a-bu-bu ru-ub-šú mu-us-saḫ-ḫir ka-ra-as-su ka-bat-ta-šú ta-a-a-rat šá nak-bat qa-ti-šú la i-na-áš-šu-ú šá-ma-’u-ú rit-tuš rab-ba-a-ti ú-kaš-šu mi-i-ta Marduk(damar.utu) šá nak-bat qa-ti-šú la i-na-áš-šu-ú šá-ma-’u-⸢ú⸣ rab-ba-a-ti rit-ta-a-šú ú-kaš-šu mi-i-ta šá i-na lib-ba-ti-šú up-ta-at-ta-a qab-ra-a-tum i-nu-šú ina ka-ra-še-e ú-šat-bi ma-aq-tú

Let me praise the lord of wisdom, the god who is del[iberate], Angry at night; his anger dissipates during the day. Marduk, the lord of wisdom, the deliberate god, Angry at night; his anger dissipates during the day. Whose fury, like a violent storm, is a desert, But whose wind is pleasing, like a morning breeze. In his anger he is irresistible, his anger is a flood, But his mind retreats, his mood relents. The weight of whose hand the heavens cannot bear, But whose palm is so gentle it helps the dead. Marduk, the weight of whose hand the heavens cannot bear, But whose palm is so gentle it helps the dead.

 For the first-person account as a scribal rhetorical strategy, see Annus and Lenzi (2010: xvii) and Longman (1991). Others have argued that the connection between the plight of the main character and that of the contemporary Kassite court figure indicates that the work is a reflective autobiographical narrative. See, for instance, Foster (2007a: 32) as well as Lambert (1998a: 34). Lenzi (2012: 38) argues that the first-person voice is a literary device to mask the true identity of the author, though he states with certainty that the author must have been a scholar (ummânu).

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Because of his fury, graves are opened up, But then he causes the fallen to rise from disaster.¹²⁰

Especially notable in this section is the introduction of the “wind” motif, which I argue was typical in texts in which kings were being criticized. Here, Marduk’s “breeze” is described twice, once in a negative and once in a positive formulation. This contrast evokes the tension within this motif, which will become a mode of expression between royal and scholarly interests, especially in the Neo-Assyrian period. The hymn continues by presenting more paired contrasts; Lambert (1998a: 32) has described the dual pattern in this first doxology as representing the poem as a whole, whereby Marduk subsequently returns the things he has taken away. Marduk is also portrayed as the purveyor of justice, in ii 3: (zapur-ti ú-ta-ṣa-pa i-šar-ti ul ut-tu, “My bad luck was increasing, I could not find justice”) and i 24 (ina ūmi(ud) i-šar-ti-šú up-ta-aṭ-ṭa-ru e’-il-tum u an-nu “But on the day of his justice liability and crime are absolved”). It is notable that the latter statement includes another important theme that I have identified as common to texts of a counterdiscursive nature: that of “sin” or “crime” (arnu). This motif appears thrice more in the text: i 40 (ḫi-is-sa-as-su damqatu(sig₅)-t [u₄] ⸢ar⸣-na-ši-na lit-bal “May his [Marduk’s] favora[ble] concern carry off their sin”); iv 113 ([šá ma-ru-u]š-tú i-mu-ru li-pa-ṭir a-ra-an-šú “[The one who] experienced [troub]le, let his sin be released”); and in a broken context in iii 58 (in which it is the only identifiable word). Thus in this text Marduk (and justice) is connected explicitly to the release of sin. But all the while, both the “justice” of Marduk and the “sin” associated with the protagonist’s ailments are unidentifiable and inexplicable—they are simply facts, associated with the unknown will of a higher power. The focus in this text is clearly of a more religious interest. As Foster (2007a: 33) argues, “The writer’s experience, he says, left him more god-fearing than ever, for Marduk smote him from the pinnacle of his power and good fortune, but rescued him from near death.” It is not, however, the identification of the writer that is most important, argues Spieckermann (1998: 332), but his experience of social declassification: “Ganz offensichtlich wird mit der Leidensschilderung beabsichtigt, dem Schicksal von Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan exemplarische Bedeutung zu verleihen, so daß alle, die von einem Leidensgeschick betroffen sind, sich in dieser Gestalt wiederfinden können.” Such as it is, the question posed

 Text edition from SAACT 7. For a useful partitur of the text, see Oshima (2014: 380‒438).

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here, and in other “wisdom” texts like The Babylonian Theodicy,¹²¹ is: “If I have been so pious and devout in my religious responsibilities, why is X political/social/medical ailment afflicting me?” The lack of a concrete answer leads the characters in these texts to proclaim they do not understand the volition of the gods: Tablet II 33 34 35 36 37 38

lu-u i-de ki-i it-ti ili(dingir) i-ta-am-gur an-na-a-ti ša dam-qat ra-ma-nu-uš a-na ili(dingir) gul-lul-⸢tum⸣ ša ina libbīšu(šà)-bi-šú mu-us-su-kàt eli(ugu) ilīšu(dingir)-šú dam-qat a-a-ú ṭè-em ilāni(dingirmeš) qé-reb šamê(an)-e i-lam-mad mi-lik šá an-za-nun-ze-e i-ḫa-ak-kim man-nu e-ka-a-ma il-ma-da a-lak-ti ilāni(dingirmeš) a-pa-a-ti

If only I knew whether these things were agreeable to the god! That which is good to oneself may be a sin to the god, That which is disgusting to one’s heart may be good to his god. Who can learn the plan of the gods in the heavens? Who understands the counsel of the netherworld? Where did humanity learn the course of the gods?

Such existential questions were of great interest throughout Mesopotamian history, but they became more clearly articulated during the Kassite/Isin II periods, when more literature of this type began to appear. The unpredictability of the protagonist’s situation is expressed with relation to Marduk; indeed, the poem may have been intended from its inception as “a personal expression of devotion to Marduk” (Oshima 2014: 15). Oshima locates Ludlul as originating in the same cultural milieu as the priests and scholars who recited, copied, and studied prayers to Marduk and

 The Babylonian Theodicy is described by Lambert (1998a: 36‒37) as a text dealing with the futility of all human endeavors, a quick and witty dialogue between a pessimist and his friend. Foster (2007a: 35) argues that “one may assume that this tour de force was for the delectation of the cultivated, to whom a certain pessimism and agnosticism were familiar literary themes.” Nine manuscripts survive, all of Neo-Assyrian or Late/Neo-Babylonian date and script. Many scholars have chosen an Isin II period date of composition for The Babylonian Theodicy, based on the acrostic present in the text (see below). The general theme behind the text is not only the unknowable will of the gods, but also the reactive fickleness of man with relation to his god. A possible precursor to this text is A Man and his God, a seventeenth century BC Old Babylonian text. Here the personal god, by whom the sufferer is punished for a sin of which he is unaware, is still described as a friendly god. The injustice of the god is not addressed, and philanthropy toward those in times of suffering is the main focus of the text. For commentary, see Lambert (1987: 187‒202); see also Kramer (1963: 125‒129) and Albertson (1983: 222).

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were familiar with beliefs in Marduk. He calls it a “fruit of all the topoi of the thinkers of Kassite-period Babylon.” The text had widespread popularity, which Oshima contends indicates its status as an important normative text, especially within the cult of Marduk. His most important argument, however, is that the text may be a criticism of the Kassite kings, who had elevated Enlil and Nippurian religion above that of Babylon (and Marduk). The Kassites had performed the New Year’s festival at Nippur, instead of Babylon, and Kurigalzu had built a temple to Enlil and Ninlil at Dūr-Kurigalzu instead of to Marduk, which was consistent with his religious revolution, described briefly above.¹²² These actions, according to Oshima, may have been viewed by the Babylonian priesthood as negligence of the cult of Marduk, the supreme Babylonian god. In Oshima’s (2014: 70‒71) reconstruction of the poem, the cause of the protagonist’s suffering is his devotion to the wrong gods; he had focused on the personal and city gods instead of Marduk, which is why he could initially claim innocence but then finally recognize the cause of his guilt. Oshima defines this as an “antithesis to the pan-Mesopotamian policy of the Kassite kings, the center of which Nippurean theology occupied.”¹²³ A religious reaction to Kassite policy may have been just one piece in a greater trend of cultural self-representation that manifested itself especially during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I.¹²⁴ To take Oshima’s argument one step further, I suggest that Ludlul be seen in light of a perceived need in the Isin II period to self-identify in contraposition to the previous rulers of Babylonian territory, i. e., the Kassites. In this view, Ludlul and the text of Enūma Eliš can be understood as elements in the process associated with installing Marduk as the supreme god at Babylon. Because Marduk’s statue was returned in the reign of an Isin II king, this dynasty’s implicit connection to Marduk—who had become not just a patron of Babylon but its supreme god—would function as part of a legitimation process, one of whose effects would be the creation of a new literature. Such a process, in fact, is paralleled in other periods of serious regal transition, the most famous example of which is the consolidation of royal ideology in the Old Babylonian period (ca. 1830‒1531 BC). After the fall of the Ur III dynasty (ca. 2112‒2004 BC), the territories of Babylonia had existed as a collection of

 Oshima (2014: 70, with bibliography).  Though known to have worshipped their own ethnic deities, the Kassites adopted the general policy of exhibiting tolerance for the traditional Mesopotamian gods, even repairing major Babylonian religious buildings. See Brinkman (1976‒1980: 472).  For instance, Nielsen (2012: 401‒411) argues that the territorial policy of this king was an extension of his father’s, a major focus of which was to consolidate control over the eastern territories that had been within the orbit of Babylonian power at the end of the Kassite dynasty.

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petty kingdoms. Paleographic evidence indicates that these petty rulers consistently focused on their common Amorite origin. Michalowski (1983: 240‒241) describes this adoption of Amorite titles as a “genealogical charter” to legitimize their kingship, necessary in the transition to Old Babylonian period kingship.¹²⁵ However, this genealogical charter was unavailable to the contemporaneous kings of the Isin dynasty. While George (1992: 5) argues that “[d]uring the course of the Kassite period, Babylon was endowed with an antiquity not its own, by means of which its status as capital and seat of kingship was given historical support,” it was not until the Isin II-period that literature about Babylon’s new supreme god—Marduk—began to proliferate. Thus a different type of ideological charter was created; Ludlul and Enūma Eliš are vestiges of a literary fiction created during the Isin II period, not as a representation of continuity but as one of transferred supremacy, where Marduk’s roles—especially in royal legitimation—were moved from Nippur. The creation of new literature to concretize the supplantation of both Enlil and Nippur by Marduk and Babylon helped to distinguish the Isin II dynasty from previous Babylonian regimes with regard to their relationship to Marduk, the new supreme god.¹²⁶ This new representation allowed the scholars of Isin II period Babylon (who were likely to be associated with the Marduk cult) to locate their kings in counterposition to Nippur-based Kassite religious policy, and by extension, undermine the latter’s royal fitness by highlighting their failure to recognize the supremacy of Marduk.¹²⁷ This would not be the first time that “theology as political critique” would appear in the textual record, and Ludlul can by no means be categorized as an Urtext; but the themes inherent in it (e. g., justice, wind) will appear with greater frequency in later first-millennium Akkadian lit-

 Most famously through The Sumerian King List and The Lament over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur. See Michalowski (1983: 242).  Tenney (2016: 160) suggests that akītu celebrations to Marduk at Nippur during this period may have been an attempt to appease older traditions, which saw the new political reality of Enlil and Nippur’s role in selecting rulers having been transferred to Marduk and Babylon.  That the transfer of supremacy to Marduk may have been a hotly contested one in intellectual and priestly circles is indicated by a “bogus epistle” that survives in a Neo-Babylonian copy from Ur. The tablet pretends to be a letter to the governor Enlil-nādin-šumi from Samsu-iluna, the son of Hammurabi of Babylon. Based on phraseology, Al-Rawi and George (1994: 135‒136) date the letter to the time surrounding the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I. The content of the letter is a “tirade against the priesthood of all the Babylonian cult-centres, who are accused in the strongest terms of profanity and sacrilege,” because they have somehow disobeyed royal authority by not recognizing the supremacy of the Marduk cult at Babylon. For more on this letter, see Chapter 5.

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erature whose express purpose is to undermine royal assertions.¹²⁸ To be sure, the “Much Ado about Marduk” prevalent in these Kassite/Isin II texts will be the center of a debate that will loom large in first-millennium literature and politics.

Scribal identity While the centrality of Marduk and Babylon increasingly influenced programmatic literary activity during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, the religious shift combined with other remarkable changes to produce an entirely new dynamic, one essential to our understanding of a cultural milieu in which royal representations were being defined and challenged. It was during the formative time between the Kassite and Isin II periods that the purveyors of this new literature began to formulate their own identity, establishing a heritage and attempting to understand their relationship to the discourses about kingship that reflected the central concerns of late second- and early first-millennium politics. We know that among the many works canonized during the Kassite period (Lambert 1957: 7), the Standard Babylonian form of the much older Epic of Gilgamesh was finalized; we are even fortunate enough to have some information about the compiler of the work, Sîn-lēqi-unninni. He is listed as such in a Neo-Assyrian catalogue of authors and their attributed works, the reconstruction of which is provided by Lambert (K 9717 + 81– 7– 27, 71 reverse, and Sm 669 reverse): 10 iškar(éš.gàr) dGilgameš(giš-gim-maš): šá pi-i mdSîn(30)-li-qí-un-nin-ni āšipu(lúm[aš.maš]) The Series of Gilgamesh, the word of Sîn-lēqi-unninni, the ex[orcist].¹²⁹

We can identify Sîn-lēqi-unninni’s probable time period through onomastics (his name betrays a typical Middle Babylonian formulation); furthermore, the Old Babylonian Akkadian version of the epic does not appear after the second mil-

 As Liverani (1973: 185) has noted, the “righteous sufferer” motif can be mapped onto the network of human social relations in both a personal and political sense; thus such literature can be a fruitful avenue both for expressing and for studying implied dissent.  Lambert (1962: 67). Lambert’s restoration gives lúm[aš.maš] (āšipu, “exorcist), whereas Beaulieu (2000b: 3) prefers the reconstruction lúu[š.ku], which would yield a form of kalû, “lamentation priest.” He considers this more likely given that most of the descendants of Sîn-lēqi-unninni in Uruk are kalûs. See now also Lambert (1957: 3‒4) for those claiming ancestry from Sînlēqi-unninni.

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lennium, and exhibits significant differences from the version popularized in first-millennium libraries. This information indicates that the epic was probably handed down in its final form during the Kassite period, with Sîn-lēqi-unninni as its most likely purveyor (George 2003: 29). In the Seleucid period, this author is named as the official scholar of the legendary king Gilgamesh, likely an attempt by his later Babylonian descendants to legitimize the connection of their clan through a deep tradition of authorship in a “hoary antiquity.”¹³⁰ Similarly, many scholars have chosen a late second-millennium date of composition for another work, The Babylonian Theodicy, based on the acrostic present in the text, which purports to identify the author. It reads: a-na-ku sa-ag-g-ilki-[i-na-am-u]b-bi-ib ma-áš-ma-šu ka-ri-bu ša i-li ú šar-ri “I, Saggil-kīnam-ubbib, the exorcist, am religious practitioner of god and king.”¹³¹ If this is indeed the author of the text, and not the “fiktiver Verfasser” (Sitzler 1995: 101),¹³² the presence of his name in the Uruk List of Sages and Scholars would make him a contemporary of Nebuchadnezzar I (1126‒1103 BC) or Adad-apla-iddina (1067‒1046 BC). Much like the Neo-Assyrian catalogue, this list propounds the idea that there had been a succession of sages, reaching back to the remotest antiquity; in a Hellenistic Uruk list, each sage is paired with a famous king.¹³³ Most pertinent here is the appearance of Saggil-kīnam-ubbib, author of The Babylonian Theodicy: 17 [ina tar-ṣi] Adad-apla-iddina(mdim-ibila-sum) šarru(lugal) mé-sag-gil-ki-i-ni-ub-ba umman-nu 18 [ina tar-ṣ]i Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur(mdag-níg.du-ùru) šarru(lugal) mé-sag-gil-ki-i-ni-ub-ba lú um-man-nu In the reign of Adad-apla-iddina, the king, Esagil-kīn-ubba was scholar, In the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, the king, Esagil-kīn-ubba was scholar.¹³⁴

The claim to authorship in The Babylonian Theodicy “provides evidence of the desire to claim ownership of a display of scribal dexterity” (van der Toorn

 Beaulieu (2000b: 3‒4) and Hallo (1963: 174‒175).  Oshima (2013: xv) reads the name “O (E)saggil, clear the righteous (of accusations/sin).”  Lambert (1996: 67) places The Babylonian Theodicy around 1000 BC but concedes that “there is no strong reason to compel any date in particular between about 1400 and 800.” Van Der Toorn (2003: 69) favors a date between 850 and 750 BC. Both consider the possibility of pseudepigraphy—and the presence of manuscripts only of Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian date—as an argument against Isin II composition.  Foster (2007: 30‒31). For more on these lists, see below.  This is the edition of Lenzi (2008b: 141). For the identification of Esagil-kīn-ubba as Saggilkīnam-ubbib, see the bibliography located in Lenzi (2008b: 142 n.18).

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2007: 40). Claims to authorship, rare as they are, appear in relative abundance in the Kassite and Isin II periods.¹³⁵ Besides the Theodicy, Ludlul also has a named author. As Buccellatti (1981: 42) argues, this is an important characteristic of these texts, because “declaration of authorship becomes an outward sign of the identification between an author and his work.” In turn, the author is externalized, and the text becomes the author. The Kassite watershed of creativity in Akkadian literature thus coincided with a development of a more overt scholarly identity. Also in the late second and first millennia, written sanctions become more commonly found on scholarly compositions. This increased emphasis on protected knowledge appears on tablets associated with the professional specialization (s) of the individual tablet owner or scribe, and can hence be recognized as a deliberate guard on the individual and intellectual identity of scholars in this period.¹³⁶ They laid claim to knowledge inaccessible to the common man, as is expressed in a reply of the friend (if one is amenable to reading the “friend” as a scholar) in The Babylonian Theodicy: xxiv 256 [l]i-ib-bi ili(dingir) ki-ma qí-rib šamê(an)-e né-si-ma 257 [l]e-é-a-us-su šup-šu-qat-ma nišī(unmeš) la lam-da The divine mind, like the center of the heavens, is distant. Mastery of it is very laborious; the masses do not know it.¹³⁷

Van der Toorn argues that “wisdom” (nēmequ), at first a human virtue, later became the purview only of the gods, an ideological transformation that took place solely in the first millennium BC. The “initiates” into the scribal communities in these later periods had access to wisdom “disclosed to giants,” with writing itself a skill held by just a few. All of this reflects the renewed esteem with which scholars held themselves in the Kassite and post-Kassite period, following the

 Authorship of texts is ascribed in some cases to legendary apkallus, or sages of old, though these attributions can be considered as pseudepigraphic, meant to lend authority to the text rather than the author. See Hallo (1963: 175). On authorship of Akkadian texts, especially in the first millennium, see Foster (1991: 17‒32).  Such is the conclusion of the recent study of Stevens (2013: 211‒253). Herein she problematizes Lenzi’s earlier arguments, proving that those tablets with formulae indicating secrecy are specifically associated with material that is of core relevance to the owner’s professional expertise. In this, she argues (232) that scribal expertise should be evaluated at more local or familial levels than has previously been done; such is our aim, to some extent, with reference to the scholars associated with the Neo-Assyrian court.  Text edition from Oshima (2014: 460).

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canonization of extant Sumerian texts and the creation of new Akkadian literature.¹³⁸ This trend of an emerging individual scholar continued. Beginning in the Isin II period and into the Neo-Assyrian period in particular, the scholarly class was in the midst of an ideological facelift; it was during this time that the term apkallu—previously associated with the antediluvian sages—became essentially synonymous with ummânu, the personal counselor (Parpola translates “Chief Scribe”) of the king. Previously, apkallus were seven antediluvian mythological sages, sent by the god Ea (a fount of esoteric knowledge himself) to introduce civilized arts to mankind. The most famous of these sages was Adapa (recognizable from the story of Oannes in Berossus), who later became the totem for scholarly knowledge.¹³⁹ Van der Toorn (2007: 219) describes the construction of this new ideology: Once the written tradition supplanted oral knowledge, it needed an authority that did not derive from those who transmitted it. The problem facing the scribes was legitimacy rather than credibility. Once the written texts came to serve as the standard of tradition, the tradition could not derive its authority from the experts who used the texts. The scribes found their new source of authority in the concept of divine revelation. Through the construct of an antediluvian revelation from Ea to the apkallus, transmitted in an unbroken chain of sages, scribes, and scholars, the written tradition could claim a legitimacy issuing from the gods.

The term apkallu, argues Reiner (1961: 7‒8), was used in reference to master craftsmen—that is, copyists, scribes, or authors of literary texts. Several lists naming post-Old Babylonian kings are further evidence of the shifting identities of scholars in the later periods. In these lists (termed Synchronistic King Lists), ummânus are now listed (in the formula RN, PN ummânšu) next to their royal patrons, the kings. This leads Frahm (2011a: 516) to suggest a specific translation of ummânu in this context: “chief ideologue.” Several of the advisors listed are known from other sources, further grounding their identity. In the most complete fragment (given by Grayson as King List 12), from Assur, As-

 Van der Toorn (2007: 21‒29). On 24, he argues that this idea culminated in the Standard Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic, where in Tablet XI the advice about “the futility of life” is received from a deified hero (Ut-Napištim) instead of from a tavern-keeper (as in the Old Babylonian version). Wisdom was now, he argues, a secret (pirištu).  According to Kvanvig (1988: 207‒209), the apkallu tradition contains both mythical and traditional elements. Borger (1994: 229) shows that several fragments of this myth were also found in the Ninevite Library. Likeness to Adapa was akin to the greatest compliment: (epšētu ša šarri (lugal) [bēlī(en)-ia] ⸢a⸣na ša adapi muš[la] “The deeds of the king, my lord, are similar to those of Adapa”). See SAA 10: 380.

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syrian and Babylonian kings are given from Erišum I of Assyria and Sumu-la-el of Babylonia (1880‒1845 BC) all the way to Assurbanipal (668‒627 BC) and Kandalānu (647‒627 BC). Not all, but many of the kings are paired with an ummânu. Grayson postulates that this list was written late in the reign of the Neo-Assyrian king Assurbanipal,¹⁴⁰ further evidence that the post-Kassite period was crucial in the process of transforming scribal identities.¹⁴¹ Several copies of an extant bilingual text¹⁴² also mention the apkallus in close association with kings of old. The Uruk List of Kings and Sages ¹⁴³ is of great interest in this context. Though it follows in the vein of The Sumerian King List in its ascription of hyperbolic terms of reign, the list begins by pairing the seven original apkallus with antediluvian kings (and one with Enmerkar, of the post-diluvian era), continuing by matching several other kings with ummânus, and ending with the Neo-Assyrian Esarhaddon. Both of these lists prove that the association of the apkallu figure with the ummânu appears to have developed during the Neo-Assyrian period, termed by Lenzi (2008a: 109) “the mythology of scribal succession”; these ummânus were successors to the apkallus of the aforementioned lists (Lenzi 2008a: 113).¹⁴⁴ These lists, Frahm (2011a: 517‒518) argues, reveal two things: “First, that the scribes of first-millennium Mesopotamia regarded their role as largely defined by their close relationship with the king, and second, that they believed their advice was of unique importance to the ruler.” Thus in the first millennium the stage was set for the formation of a unique relationship between the scholar and the ruler, which would manifest itself in creative textual representations of power.

 See Grayson (1980‒1983: 116 ff). He also gives other, smaller, fragments of The Synchronistic King List.  Those Assyrian kings definitively listed with an ummânu are Tiglath-pileser II, Shalmeneser III, and Assurbanipal.  See Gurney (1935: 459‒466) and Reiner (1961: 1‒11).  The edition of the text is to be found in van Dijk (1962: 44‒52 and pl. 27). See Lenzi (2008b: 140‒143) for a recent text edition and translation. See also Wilcke (1991: 263‒268).  Contra Sanders (1999: 144‒145), who argues that the apkallus were contained to myth while Mesopotamian kings remained on the throne. Lenzi maintains that the list does not indicate a telos of a developing theory of scribal identity but rather “an explicit, public, and unequivocal affirmation of an accepted and traditional view that could lend credence to and create legitimation for the men responsible for its creation.”

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Neo-Assyrian Literature in Context The Standard Babylonian Cuthaean Legend as Paradigmatic of the Subversive Neo-Assyrian Scholar The Cuthaean Legend of Narām-Sîn presents an interesting case study in the influence of the Neo-Assyrian scholar and the emergence of a Neo-Assyrian counterdiscourse. It is a text with a long history, seeing several redactions over the course of time (of which the most important for our study is the Standard Babylonian version). The Legend focuses on the Old Akkadian king Narām-Sîn,¹⁴⁵ the grandson of Sargon, who ruled for about four decades. He was militarily strong, and succeeded in incorporating lands of the upper Mesopotamian region into the empire during his tenure as king. The empire experienced a great influx of wealth during his reign, and contemporaries appear to have appreciated his accomplishments (Foster 1993: 37),¹⁴⁶ though the famous “Great Rebellion”

 The Old Akkadian period began roughly around 2350 BC, with the reign of Sargon; the tenure of the eponymous kings lasted approximately 150 years, ending with the reign of Sharkalisharri. For a short overview of the period, see van de Mieroop (2007: 63‒73). The histories of these rulers were preserved for posterity, though none better than Sargon and his grandson NarāmSîn. Less is known about this dynasty than some later Mesopotamian monarchies; its capital, Akkad, remains frustratingly unaccounted for. The dynasty’s roots lay at the feet of Sargon, who emigrated with his followers into Babylonia, and who may have originally been of nomadic origin. Seeking to integrate the North (probably “his” country) to the southern portions of Babylonia, Sargon effected military victories over the Sumerian cities, his most notable early battle being against Lugalzagesi. Thereupon he made himself LUGAL of the territory. In the later Sumerian King List, wherein he receives an unusually lengthy description (despite its dearth of evidence for the actual period of his reign), Sargon is described as having ruled for approximately 50 years. See A. Westenholz (1999: 34‒39), who challenges this number. Westenholz describes him as “of broad vision and bold originality,” effective in foreign military endeavors and extending Babylonian trade networks. See also Tricoli (2005: esp. 377) and Heinz (2007: 67‒86) for the sweeping changes associated with Sargon’s reign.  In contrast to the relative dearth of Sargon’s royal inscriptions, Narām-Sîn created a body of inscriptional literature—on diverse media such as stelae and rock reliefs, oftentimes discovered in far-off regions of the empire—recording his personal accomplishments. Franke (1995: 834‒ 835) describes his inscriptions as being characterized by the centrality of the ruler and his city within the kingdom, a reflection of increased authority and control. She notes that the inscriptions of Narām-Sîn espouse an attitude of individuality and societal agency heretofore unseen in Mesopotamian literary expression. “The world is not a Sumerian construct,” she argues, “where one must live by a prescribed order; rather, it is a place where it is possible to upset conventional order and hierarchy.” Such an observation may explain the appeal of the Old Akkadian kings in the eyes of future rulers of similarly powerful empires, such as the Neo-Assyrian; as

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launched against him by a confederation of major Babylonian cities may cause us to question that assumption. Though largely falling within a continuum established by his predecessors, he strayed from the norm in his religious policies, showing favor to Ištar rather than the foremost Sumerian god Enlil (A. Westenholz 1999: 46‒49). Perhaps most famously, Narām-Sîn was the earliest Mesopotamian divine ruler and carried a divine classifier before his name, represented in visual media with a horned crown (Michalowski 2008: 34).¹⁴⁷ Both Narām-Sîn and his grandfather Sargon left a lasting legacy in their own times,¹⁴⁸ but especially for successive Mesopotamian monarchs. Though there is much that could be said about the historical, economic, and artistic achievements of the Old Akkadian kings, my study will necessarily remain with the survival of their literary legacy in later periods. The importance and novelty of the Old Akkadian dynasty were clearly recognized already in literature of its own time. Legends about these Sargonic kings were being actively created even before the fall of the dynasty itself.¹⁴⁹ A Sumerian text labeled The Rise of Sargon reveals him as a cupbearer to the king of Kish and attributes his rise to power to the intervention of the goddess Ištar (Cooper and Heimpel 1983: 67‒82).¹⁵⁰ As is attested, for example, in The Sumerian King List, Sargon’s ascension is a source of fascination in ancient times. Other we will see, it may also explain their utility as paradigms for counterdiscursive literature in those same time periods.  Michalowski (2008: 41‒42) identifies the trend of divine kingship in Mesopotamia as relegated to the Ur III state, a trend rejected by subsequent generations because it clashed with the sacral character of kingship in the later periods and disrupted the liminal state of being inhabited by the king, between the human and divine worlds. The act of divinizing the king is ascribed to the citizens of Akkad. See Farber (1983: 67‒72), with text and German translation on 68‒69. See also Stępień (2009: esp. 241).  A. Westenholz (1979: 108) notes that it was in the reign of Sargon that Akkadian was asserted as the official language of the empire, on par with the previous status of Sumerian. The emergence of Akkadian as a written language, combined with a new ideology focused on the ruler, contributed to a greater prominence for Old Akkadian scribes, who were no longer recording simple documentary notations, but were now directly involved in promulgating the glory of the king. Though sources from the reigns of Sargon and Narām-Sîn are not nearly as verbose as their later counterparts, clues about their rule—and reception of that rule—do emerge from relatively contemporaneous texts. Some royal inscriptions of Sargon survive, being notable, as Franke argues, for their eschewal of priestly titles, the absence of the “shepherd king” motif, and an adoption of laudatory phraseology focusing on the individual ruler’s majesty (Franke 1995: 833).  For an overview of texts produced in the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods, with the Old Akkadian kings as their subjects, see Cooper (1993: 11‒23).  Cooper (1993: 18) dates the text to the Ur III period because of its affinities with The Curse of Akkad. These details are also listed in The Sumerian King List.

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texts, such as The King of Battle, deal with Sargon’s military accomplishments; this text, like many others about the Sargonic kings, has a long redactional history and betrays elements of myth and legend, though its origin likely lies in the Old Assyrian period (Franke 1995: 837). In legends about Sargon, the characteristics normally applied to Narām-Sîn in his own inscriptions—“radiant hero, a master of difficulties, a discoverer of the new” (Franke 1995: 838)—are all transposed onto his grandfather, much as the stories of Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus became conflated in later legends about those kings. The characters of these two Sargonic kings experienced a significant transformation that saw them crystallized into dichotomous exemplars of proper (the former) and debase (the latter) forms of kingship;¹⁵¹ therein, treatments of Narām-Sîn are almost universally negative. These fluctuations in later representation are indicative of the general trend associated with the representation of these rulers—and their status as a source of captivation within the longue durée. The effect of this literary production was a surviving body of literature available to future rulers,¹⁵² and—most importantly—scribes. Notably, the appeal of the Old Akkadian kings was uniquely general; older texts about them were often redacted, and entirely new spin-offs of the life and times of these kings were produced, serving as fodder not only for Babylonian kings and writers, but also (and perhaps especially) for Assyrian ones. Glassner (2004: 10) notes that Assyria, “dazzled by its unrivaled brilliance,” set the dynasty of Akkad as a model, beginning—as Finkelstein (1962: 464‒465) would have it—an era of intellectual activity that would set the standard for millennia to come.¹⁵³ For the Assyrians, the period from Sargon’s birth to the end of Narām-Sîn’s reign repre The reasons behind this development in literary portrayal are explored in a volume of papers on Akkad’s political ideology and its place within the continuum of Mesopotamian history (Liverani 1993a). It is not entirely clear why Narām-Sîn became a paradigm for improper kingship. Franke (1995: 840) surmises that “we may assign the formation of a ‘misfortune-prone’ Naram-Sin to the scribal schools, where are to be found conservativism, pietism, and a reach for sharply drawn paradigms,” while Larsen (1979: 78) proffers a similar argument: “It is probably that the really significant political and cultural changes were introduced by this ruler, which may partly explain why his reputation was destroyed by outraged traditionalists.”  There are several known instances of later rulers drawing direct connections to the Old Akkadian kings; perhaps the most famous is Nabonidus’ claim to have discovered and reburied the foundations of Narām-Sîn at the Ebabbar temple in Sippar, as recorded in The Nabonidus Cylinder from Sippar (see the translation of P.-A. Beaulieu at http://www.livius.org/na-nd/nabonidus/ cylinder.html). He likely followed the lead of Nebuchadnezzar, who claims to have laid his own foundation stone upon that of Narām-Sîn, this time at Marad. See Langdon (1912: 78‒79, Nebukadnezar II iii 22‒25) and Powell (1991: 20‒30).  Liverani (1993b: 9) also identifies Akkad as the birthplace of Mesopotamian historiography, though not in the same context as Finkelstein.

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sented a complete cycle of history which could be mapped onto relationships of much later rulers and periods; Jonker (1995: 67) calls this the “Akkad orientation,”—drawn upon, she argues, because Sargon and his successors had introduced a central form of kingship for the first time. Later texts that recalled the Old Akkadian kings in some way emerged from the idea that “messages” could be received from the distant past, creating “a genre of literature which allowed legendary characters from the past to speak to future generations through writing” (Jonker 1995: 91). Perhaps inspired by the increased importance of the scribe and his services in the Sargonic period,¹⁵⁴ the scholars of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods summoned the ghosts of the Old Akkadian kings, often as a foil for subversive expression (Potts 2001: 405). Their adaptations to previous Old Babylonian texts about these characters cemented the relative popularization of counterdiscursive literature during these later periods, and its alignment with a new scribal self-definition. The Cuthaean Legend was the most popular legend of the Mesopotamian period, though in antiquity it was known by its incipit, tupšenna pitēma “Open the Tablet Box.”¹⁵⁵ It survives in two Old Babylonian manuscripts; (possibly) two Akkadian manuscripts from Boghazköy; a late version in six copies from Nineveh, one from Sultantepe,¹⁵⁶ and one from Kish; and four possible Hittite versions from Boghazköy. Changes in the texts were intentional and likely programmatic, as shown by the varying lengths of each version: the Old Babylonian texts are significantly longer than the first-millennium editions, with the former consisting of two tablets of approximately 600 lines, while the latter was approximately 180 lines. The text, referred to by J. Westenholz (1979: 263) as “Naram-Sin and the Enemy Hordes,” is an introspective view of the character of Narām-Sîn, wherein he faces a “quintessential opponent” in the Ummān-manda, a prototypical literary enemy originating from the Old Babylonian omen tradition.¹⁵⁷ These barbar-

 The scribe, or dub-sar, saw ever-increasing prestige even in the Early Dynastic periods, as shown by the study of Visicato (2000). The demand for scribes grew exponentially in this period, in tandem with a more complex institutionalization of goods, property, and labor forces. Thus the scribe became “fully ensconced into all facets of activity throughout the country [and] was part of the system of power and control” (Visicato 2000: 242).  As preserved in the more fragmentary Old Babylonian edition vi 3’. Walker (1981: 193) suggests that the title given in the colophon is identical with the one in the Nineveh catalogue K 13684+8, wherein it follows Gilgamesh, Etana, and two compositions about Sargon of Akkad, at the very least indicating its importance in the canon.  The discovery of this tablet allowed several of the Ninevite fragments to be united, showing that what was previously known as “The Cutha Legend” could now be recognized as The Cuthaean Legend of Narām-Sîn. See Gurney (1955: 94).  Adalɪ (2011: 38), citing Lanfranchi (2002: 95‒96).

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ian hordes (established as creatures of the gods)¹⁵⁸ devastate Babylonia, and Narām-Sîn sends in his troops to conquer them. Unfortunately, he experiences intense defeat, leading to self-examination of his abilities as king. Only surviving in the late recension,¹⁵⁹ we see a conclusion in which Narām-Sîn is finally victorious, but only through non-action: he has yielded his military powers to the goddess Ištar, who eliminates the enemy. J. Westenholz (1979: 266) describes the ending of the text’s later version as “an admonition to a future ruler: his moral message is one of pacificism.”¹⁶⁰ Even though Narām-Sîn appears to have been a successful monarch, his literary heritage produces a rather more ambivalent picture of the king.¹⁶¹ Many scholars, based on the Narām-Sîn presented in this text and other texts from the Old Babylonian period and beyond, have identified Narām-Sîn as the prototypical “Unheilsherrscher.” He first appears as such through the literary characterization in The Curse of Akkad;¹⁶² in the Old Babylonian and Assyrian versions

 The Standard Babylonian recension includes an episode (lines 65‒71) wherein a messenger is sent to discover the nature of the enemy (whether human or divine). They are pricked to see whether or not blood will spill, indicating their humanity; if not, they were to be understood as messengers of death (namtarū). It is ultimately determined that they are in fact human. It is this passage that allowed Gurney (1955: 95) to connect the Hittite and Assyrian texts.  Cooper (2005: 50) differentiates between a separate recension of a text, which “shows a number of significant, if usually minor, variations from the texts of other manuscripts; and a different version of a text, identified via a great number of significant variations from other manuscripts.”  The abovementioned plot line easily places The Cuthaean Legend in the realm of narû literature, and was one of the original texts to be put in this category by Weber (1907: 202 ff. and 206 ff.). For a formal analysis of the poetic structure of the legend, see Haul (2009: 176‒185). The text’s incipit indicates that the piece is metatextual—a text about a text, one of the defining criteria in Jonker’s (1995: 95) characterization of the type. As Adalɪ (2011: 65) describes it, “The designation narû for the text of The Cuthaean Legend refers to its alleged context whereby the text was deposited in the temple of Nergal in the city Cutha, addressed to future generations with a message and an expressed desire to receive their blessings.” See the Standard Babylonian recension, lines 149‒153, and further the discussion in Chapter 5 (The Weidner Chronicle).  Much of our evidence indicates that Narām-Sîn was an incredibly successful ruler who extended the boundaries of the empire, as attested by an extant treaty with Elam, among other examples (Hallo 1971: 60‒63). Cooper (1993: 12‒13) has recognized that the “hubristic” NarāmSîn appears in texts with no demonstrable historical basis, such as The Curse of Akkad.  On this text, see Cooper (1983). Another Old Babylonian fragment, related to The Cuthaean Legend, presents the same assessment (Finkelstein 1957: 83‒88). The tablet presented here is a “pastiche of stock situations and well-worded phraseology,” being in line with other texts about the downfall of Mesopotamian cities. He conjectures based on this text and others, such as The Curse of Akkad, “that there was in circulation by the Old Babylonian period a series of more or less legendary episodes about the misfortunes of Naram-Sin” (88).

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of The Cuthaean Legend, the king’s misfortunes are presented through self-interrogation about his capabilities as a ruler. Having ignored ominous signs recommending that he eschew battle, Narām-Sîn evaluates his worth as king following his devastating defeat by the Ummān-manda: 89 90 91 92 93

ki-a-am aq-bi a-na libbī(šà)-bi-ia um-ma lu-u a-na-ku-ma a-na pa-le-e mi-na-a e-zib a-na-ku šarru(lugal) la mu-šal-li-mu mātīšu(kur)-šú ù re-é-um la mu-šal-li-mu um-ma-ni-šú ki lu-uš-tak-kan-ma pag-ri u pu-ti lu-še-ṣi ¹⁶³

Thus I said to my heart, so I spoke: “What have I left to the dynasty!? I am a king who does not keep his country safe and a shepherd who does not keep his people safe. What should I do? How can I get myself out (of this)!?”¹⁶⁴

The reason for Narām-Sîn’s failures, the text tells us, is that he neglected the will of the gods.¹⁶⁵ His response to this devastating loss is to displace responsibility onto divinity, as instructed by the goddess Ištar. The Standard Babylonian recension reads: 147 [X.meš] rabûti(galmeš) a-[n]a bi-bíl-ti ú-bil-šú-nu-ti 148 [qa]-ti a-na da-a-[k]i ul ú-bil-šú-nu-ti I brought them [the enemies] [to] the great [gods] for decimation.¹⁶⁶ I did not bring them to my hand to be killed.

After divine intervention, Narām-Sîn is finally successful against the enemy hordes.¹⁶⁷

 This phrase has been the subject of much debate among translators of the text. J. Westenholz (1979: 273, note on iii.14‒15) gives translations by several scholars. Importantly, the phrase also appears in SAA 3: 33 obv. 12‒13 […pu-ti//u pag-ri it-ti dingir lu-še-e-ṣi (The Sin of Sargon, Chapter 4), where it is translated by Livingstone, as “…with the god’s help let me save myself.”  Text edition for The Cuthaean Legend taken from J. Westenholz (1979). Here, the Standard Babylonian version is given (reconstructed from her composite score, pp. 300‒368), which differs unremarkably from the Old Babylonian version (iii 8‒15).  Cooper (1993: 21) cites the same criticism (that of failing to submit to the will of the gods) in The Curse of Akkad.  The CAD (B pg. 219) gives an uncertain reading for bibiltu, translating it as “decimation(?)” or “removal(?).” The term is unique to the Standard Babylonian dialect.  Because of the fragmentary nature of earlier versions of the text, it is unclear whether this portion was a part of the Old or Middle Babylonian editions of The Cuthaean Legend. Regardless, the “moral” here has been a topic of heated scholarly debate. Many have suggested that here Narām-Sîn is meant to be advocating for pacifism, despite the fact that such inaction is distinctly contrary to traditional Mesopotamian perquisites for kingship. See Adalɪ (2011: 65‒66) for pre-

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Of greatest interest in this context is the verifiably new material in the Standard Babylonian version of The Cuthaean Legend, indicative of a defiant political agenda among the Neo-Assyrian scholarly elite. The Standard Babylonian version of the text is written in what J. Westenholz (1979: 24, 296) calls a discourse framework, a “narrative mode” with a first-person narration by an overt narrator.¹⁶⁸ Notably, the main body of the text remains unchanged; the other recensions indeed included a first-person “autobiography” ostensibly transmitted through Narām-Sîn’s own voice, apparently providing the king’s personal perception of himself. But the late version of this text is distinct in one very definable way: though a compressed version of the earlier narrative, the later recension has an extended introduction and conclusion, which frames the story and simultaneously changes its entire frame of reference.

vious bibliography on the subject. Adalɪ nuances the argument of Longman (1991: 116), who reads an isolationist goal for the text, by stressing that it is the divine will that has forced Narām-Sîn to refrain from action, thereby connecting pacificism with piety. Glassner’s (2004: 22) observations—namely that pacificism was an unrealistic prescription in real political situations—leads Adalɪ (2011: 70‒71) to stress the relevance of The Cuthaean Legend throughout the generations. It allowed leaders, he argues, to gloss over or justify real involuntary submission to and/or military activity against foreign peoples, converting potential humiliation instead to heroism (qarradūtu, as in the SB version l. 165). Others have argued that the text serves a didactic purpose. Pongratz-Leisten (1999a: 8‒11) has suggested that the text is meant to teach the proper way to handle divinatory practices and to represent standard ideological thought regarding divine will in the face of human will. Grayson (1980: 188) has taken a slightly different bent, agreeing with the didactic nature of the text, though not only as a warning that even royalty must obey the omina, but also emphasizing its use as a document meant to remind the king of the diviner’s power. This last point is of vital importance when we remember the influence of such figures at the Neo-Assyrian court in particular; they were often in close connection with —if not the same people as—those advising the king, and producing the texts that would ingrain his accomplishments into the social fabric for generations to come.  See further the description and questions posed by J. Westenholz (1992: 137): “These compositions have not only the outward form of a royal inscriptions but also the diction found in such. There is use of certain formulae known from the royal inscriptions. Reflecting the narrative style of the period, the third millennium text is written in third person while second millennium and later texts are characterized by first person narration. In these texts, the overt narrator Naram-Sin relates his exploits for the edification of his implied audience, his peoples and/or future rulers. In first person narration, the protagonist as narrator presents us with a record of speech of a single character, Naram-Sin. However, he says that he has written his achievements down. The implied aural audience is also the implied potential reader. Thus, the oral and written registers meet and the question then arises: Is the real audience also composed of readers or of hearers?”

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1 [XXXXXX] narâ(na.rú.a) ši-tas-si 2 [XXXXX] mār(dumu) Šarru-kīn(mlugal.gi.na) 3 [XXXX] u₄-me ṣa-a-ti [Open the tablet-box and] read out the stela, [which I, Narām-Sîn], son of Sargon, [have inscribed and left for] future days.¹⁶⁹

Though this portion is known probably from the Old Babylonian period (Walker 1981: 191‒194), in the Standard Babylonian text, twenty-five lines are occupied with the failure of this king to abide by divine omina, which the text apparently blames for his demise at the hands of Šamaš (En-me-kár šalamtašu(lú.ú[š-šu…] di-na mar-ṣa Šamaš(dutu) iškun(gar)-[un] “[…] Enmerkar[’s cor]pse. A severe judgment Šamaš passed (upon him)” SB version l. 23). The text then delivers the famous complaint in which Narām-Sîn chastises Enmerkar for failing to leave a stele narrating his deeds. This portion first appears in the Middle Babylonian section (KBo 19 98, Side b), but—as far as the text is intelligible—comprises the beginning of the first tablet (corresponding to lines 28‒30 of the Standard Babylonian version): 1’ [En]-me-kàr! ú-ul iš-ṭú-ra-am-m na-x[‐x] 2’ [šu-ú ú]-ul a-ḫi-ma ù ri-e-it-ti ú-ul 3’ [iṣ-bat-ma] ma-ḫar Šamaš(dutu) ú-ul ak-ru-ub-⸢šu-ma⸣ [En]merkar did not inscribe a stela(?) for me. [He] was not my brother and he did not seize the opportunity.¹⁷⁰ (Thus) before Šamaš I did not pray for him.

This commentary appears to have been embedded in the framework of the legend at least from the Middle Babylonian period, emphasizing the importance of leaving a legacy for later kings to follow, but in the Standard Babylonian text we are given Enmerkar’s example as a mirrored paradigm through which to understand the faults of Narām-Sîn. The suggestion is that the failure of Enmerkar to

 J. Westenholz (1979: 263) is able to reconstruct the sense of this line using the fully preserved incipit of a letter to Bēl-ēṭir (SAA 3: 29 obv. 1), which reads: ṭup-šin-na bad-ma na4na.rú.a ši-t[as-si], “Open the tablet box and read the stele…” For the irony of Enmerkar—the legendary impetus for the invention of writing—as lacking written record for his reign, see Michalowski (1999: 82‒84). J. Westenholz (1993: 207) notes that the lack of writing was perceived to cause ignorance of tradition, citing versions A/B of Nabonidus’ Ḫarrān Stele i 1‒4.  The CAD (rittu B, R pg. 388) indicates that rittu in the meaning of “opportunity” is commonly found in texts from Boghazköy, whence this tablet came. Thus I chose this translation over Westenholz’ “he did not guide me [lit. he did not seize my hand],” given under rittu A.

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record his deeds led another king to repeat the same mistakes.¹⁷¹ Here we see a very strong emphasis on the strength of the paradigmatic exemplar, as well as the need to memorialize royal deeds. Additionally, the Standard Babylonian supplement to The Cuthaean Legend would have immediately recalled the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, which also contained a similarly novel metatextual narrative in its later recension: Tablet I 24 25 26 27 28

[a-mur?] gištup-šen-na šá erēni(gišerin) [pu-uṭ-ṭe]r? ḫar-gal-li-šu šá siparri(zabar) [pi-te-m]a? bāba(ká) šá ni-ṣir-ti-šú [i-š]i?-ma ṭup-pi uqnî(na4za.gín) ši-tas-si [mim-m]u-ú Gilgameš(dgiš-gím-maš) ittallaku(du.du)-ku ka-lu mar-ṣa-a-ti

[Find] the tablet-box of cedar, [release] its clasps of bronze! [Open] the lid of its secret, [lift] up the tablet of lapis lazuli and read out all the misfortunes, all that Gilgameš went through!¹⁷²

Indeed, Michalowski has argued that the late version of the Gilgamesh epic was intentionally aligned by Neo-Assyrian scribes to The Cuthaean Legend, with the emphasis placed on writing and commemoration of a king’s deeds.¹⁷³ Additionally, new work by Milstein (2016: 110‒146) has shown that though a similar prologue has been discovered in a Middle Babylonian version of the text found at Ugarit, the Standard Babylonian version is distinct in being addressed to the audience (the Middle Babylonian version addresses Gilgamesh instead). While in both versions, the addressee is bidden to remove a tablet from a box, Milstein argues that the Standard Babylonian version’s “tablet” represents the epic itself,

 Contra J. Westenholz (1979: 294), who argues that Enmerkar’s crime was certainly “not that he did not write down the way in which he extricated himself from the teeth of disaster.”  Text edition from George (2003: 538‒539). I could not improve on his translation; thus it will read the same as his.  He cites their similar use of the “tablet-box” as a mode for the transmission of text, and hence, memory. See Michalowski (1999: 81‒82). See also Pongratz-Leisten (1999b: 83‒85), who identifies a Neo-Assyrian parody of the incipit of The Standard Babylonian Cuthaean Legend, indicating “daß dieser Topos einen wichtigen Aspekt der Intertextualität dieser Texte darstellt.” So also George (2003: 32‒33), who attributes the final version—with its profound changes that, he believes, cause it to be more akin to “wisdom” literature—to the authorship of Sîn-lēqi-unninni, connecting the text once more to The Cuthaean Legend.

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while the Middle Babylonian version’s text appears to reference something more like a foundation deposit. The tablet in the Standard Babylonian version, then, is representative of Gilgamesh’s story, which will be the vehicle for his later fame. The end of the Standard Babylonian text also represents a new addition to the text, which indicates a changed focus. It reads: 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

at-ta man-nu lu-u iššakku(lúpa.te.si) u rubû(nun) lu mim-ma šá-na-ma ša ilānu(dingir) i-nam-bu-šú šarrūta(lugal)-ta ippuš(du)-uš ṭup-šin-na e-pu-uš-k[a narâ(n]a.rú.a) áš-ṭur-ka i-na Kutî(du₈.aki) ina Emeslam(é.mes.lam) i-na pa-paḫ Nergal(du.gur) e-zi-bak-ka narâ(na4na.rú.a) an-na-a a-mur-ma šá pi-i narê(na4na.rú.a) an-na-a ši-me-ma

175 176 177 178 179 180

ṭupšarrē(lúdub.sar) en-qu-te lis-ku-ru narâka(na.rú.a)-ka šu-ut narē’a(na4na.rú.a)-e-a ta-mu-ru-ma pu-ut-ka tu-še-ṣu-u šu-ut ia-ši ⸢tak-tar-ba⸣ ar-ku-u lik-ta-rab-ka ka-a-šá

You, whoever you are, be it a governor or prince or anyone else, whom the gods nominate to perform kingship, I made a tablet-box for you and inscribed a stele for you. In Kutha, in the Emeslam, in the shrine of Nergal, I left (it) for you. Read this stele! Listen to the words of this stele! Wise scribes, let them declaim your stele. You who have read my inscription and thus have uttered (its contents), you who have blessed me, may a future (ruler) Bless you!

It is this new self-referential portion in the beginning and end of the text that marks the Standard Babylonian version as distinct.¹⁷⁴ The first lines, with their

 Hoffner (1970: 18) notes that some of these lines (corresponding to lines 159‒166 in Westenholz’ edition of the Standard Babylonian recension) are extant in the Hittite version of the text. However, the crucial difference between them is that in the Standard Babylonian version of the legend, this advice is offered by the king himself, while in the Hittite version the words are spoken by the gods to the king. The change of agent and referent is doubtless crucial within its Standard Babylonian context.

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mention of the tablet-box and stele placed in the Emeslam in Kutha, refers to the Epic of Erra and Išum, an epic poem whose first attestation is in the Ninevite library (see Chapter 3), but whose composition may have taken place anywhere between one and four centuries earlier.¹⁷⁵ In the epic, the seven primeval apkallus—in charge of maintaining the Babylonian cult statue of Marduk—are removed by Marduk from earth to dwell in the apsû, later to be returned to earth upon the promise that his statue, worn down by time, will be renewed. But when they reappear, they are in the form of ummânus, and their work is overseen by Erra, a rival to Marduk’s—and hence, Babylon’s—supremacy. Erra’s home is in the Emeslam in Kutha, to which he returns several times in the epic, the final one after learning, via prophecy, that Babylon will once again rise from the ashes (Kvanvig 2011: 159‒165).¹⁷⁶ Thus the first-millennium section of The Cuthaean Legend obliquely references the pivotal influence of scholars— ummânus—as well as their roles in the rise and fall of great empires. The new portion, in its general tone of admonishment to current and future rulers, has affinities to newer texts, most notably Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3), The Weidner Chronicle (beginning portion; see Chapter 5),¹⁷⁷ and The Sin of Sargon (final portion; see Chapter 4).¹⁷⁸ Here the role of scholars in memorializing kings—and the fates of Mesopotamian empires—is highlighted, all the while framing those parts of the prologue that contain more prototypically Old Babylonian thematic elements.¹⁷⁹ Such additions re-present a well-known Text A as a new Text B, antiquating the Neo-Assyrian scholar’s influence on the royal figure by reframing the focus of the text. The Neo-Assyrian Cuthaean Legend—unlike its predecessors—is at once ageless and self-consciously dependent on a scribe-as-sponsor. This self-awareness is made manifest in the penultimate invocation of the text in lines 175‒176. Through this component, the scribe exerts his value as an agent for the king’s

 On the date of Erra and Išum, see most recently George (2013: 47), with bibliography. For the Akkadian attribution of this work to Kabti-ilāni-Marduk, see Lambert (1962: 65, iii obv. 1‒2, and commentary on p. 70).  On the Epic of Erra, see Foster (2007: 73‒75); George (2013: esp. 47 ff.); and Machinist (1983: 221‒226).  See for instance J. Westenholz (1979: 303 n. 7‒8); there are also several allusions to Assurbanipal’s inscriptions (J. Westenholz 1979: 300 n. 3‒4, 303 n. 9).  J. Westenholz (1979: 328 n. 168, 329 n. 169 and 170, 330 n. 173). Parpola (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 46) also suggested that The Sin of Sargon was written using The Cuthaean Legend as its inspiration. Such inspiration would be unsurprising given the mutual influences of the Assyrian and Babylonian scribes at the Neo-Assyrian court.  Lines 156‒176, wherein sentiments more familiar from the “Siduri episode” in the Gilgamesh epic are presented in enhanced format.

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memorialization. Because of the new conceptual frame, the self-criticism of the hapless Narām-Sîn now unabashedly originates from the scribal sponsor of the text, upon whom the entire text is newly dependent, as reified through these later metatextual additions. Even through the final blessing, the scribe inserts protreptic elements—through precatives ostensibly meant for future generations—as if they were from the mouth of the king himself. This scribal-sponsored invocation blurs the lines between a king’s reality and elite notions of proper royal behavior.¹⁸⁰ In effect, the scribe and the king play an equal role in the movement of the legend, both within its own text and through the assurance of it as a durable part of Mesopotamian social memory. It is only in a milieu where the scholars have forcefully exerted their influence—through a redefinition of “scribal succession” and a reinforced awareness of their worth for both defining kingship and preserving it—that such a charter could be introduced into an ancient, well-known text. These observations lead us back to a motif that will be encountered for one of the first times in Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3), that of “wind,” and its associations with the memorialization of royal rule. This emphasis on scribal agency as a means of preserving the king’s legacy was indeed a holdover from the ideological makeover that began during the Kassite period. In this context, George (2003: 32‒33) connects the late version of The Cuthaean Legend with the new edition of the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic at the hands of the Kassite scribe Sîn-lēqi-unninni, who, he argues, added the prologue and a sort of appendix in Tablet xii which allowed him to “recast” the text, likewise introducing an

 As von Dassow (2010: xii) remarks, such texts were meant to address the “would-be Sargons and Naram-Sins” of the author’s respective worlds, “to counsel restraint in the exercise of their power.” The adventures of Narām-Sîn were clearly of interest to the Neo-Assyrian kings in particular; this is no better evidenced than by an extant inscription of Assurbanipal (K 2652). In this literary account, Ištar played a leading role in Assurbanipal’s representation of his conflict with the Elamite Teumann. The text edition can be found in Streck (1916: 189‒ 195, esp. 192, rev. 4‒7). See also the account of Cylinder B, studied by Crouch (2013: 132‒136), here represented by a dream sequence. Ištar is reported to have given Assurbanipal very similar advice as that related to Narām-Sîn in The Cuthaean Legend. Though it is difficult to be certain, it is possible that the influence of Narām-Sîn’s relationship with Ištar played a role in the adoption of certain Neo-Assyrian royal ideologies; for instance, Porter (2004: 41) highlights the importance of Ištar (both of Arbela and of Nineveh) in the “Assurbanipal-for-king project.” See for instance K 1290 (SAA 3: 3), where she is credited with both the birth of Assurbanipal and his creation as king. As this example shows, the Neo-Assyrian kings and their scholarly entourage utilized the figures of the Old Akkadian kings—and their literary representations—for their own political purposes.

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emphasis on posterity.¹⁸¹ We have some indication that the scribe’s talents—and the potential power associated with his unique literacy—are reflected also in Standard Babylonian literary texts, a natural progression given the trajectory of scribal self-identification from the Kassite to the Neo-Assyrian period. Here, the motif is specifically connected to the “wind” metaphor. For instance, in BM 28825, a letter from scholars in Borsippa to Assurbanipal, Frame and George (2005: 272) have recognized a direct allusion to The Hymn to Ninurta, in which the god is described as a learned scholar, who “blows like the wind” on cuneiform writing:¹⁸² …12 ummânī(lúum.me.ameš) a[n-nu-tú…] [šá] ⸢i⸣-ḫi-ṭu-ú ib-ru-ú kīma(gin₇) gu!-ru-⸢un⸣-né-e a-na kar-ši-šú-nu kam-su (BM 28823 98 – 11– 12 obv. 13‒14) These twelve scholars [the entire corpus of scribal learning that] they have checked and collated, they have gathered in their minds as if in a ritual jug…

Compare The Hymn to Ninurta: um-man-nu mu-du-u šá ki-ma šá-a-ri a-na me-ḫi-il-ti i-ziq-qa u kul-lat ṭupšarrūtu(lúdub.sar)-ú-tu kīma(gin₇) gu-ru-un-né-e ina kar-ši-šú kam-su (xix LB MSS l.37b‒39a) Learned scholar, who blows like the wind on cuneiform writing, And has the entire corpus of scribal learning stored in his mind as if in a ritual jug.¹⁸³

The positive potential of a scribe’s scholarship for memorializing a king’s reign is present in The Dialogue between Assurbanipal and Nabû. Here Assurbanipal is assured by Nabû that he will be given a long life, that the god “will entrust pleas-

 As such it became a more introspective text, so much so that George is keen to identify in the SB version characteristics reminiscent of “wisdom literature,” a designation that would indeed follow the general pattern of my argument for late-period Akkadian texts in their scribal milieu. Tigay (2002: 140‒149) sees a similar comparison between the two texts, though he argues that the main contributions of the Standard Babylonian prologue of the Gilgamesh epic are the wisdom acquired by Gilgamesh in the course of his adventures, and the “indirect immortality by reputation which he achieved by his inscription(s) and building projects.”  See Annus (2002: 86‒89) for commentary on this passage and on the importance of Ninurta with respect to the investiture of Neo-Assyrian kings.  Text edition from Mayer (1992: 26). The Hymn to Ninurta survives primarily on late Babylonian tablets from Babylon (?) and Sippar, as well as one from Sultantepe. Because of the late date of the surviving texts in which this metaphor is articulated, it is possible that the correlation made here between wind, writing, and the scribes is a witness to these first-millennium experiments in scribal self-identification.

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ant breezes with (his) soul,” and furthermore that Assurbanipal will forever be blessed in the assembly of the gods: e-tap-la za-qí-qu ištu(ta) pān(igi) dNabû(pa) bēlīšu(en)-šú la ta-pal-làḫ assur-bān-aplu(man.šár-dù-a) napšāti(zimeš) arkāti(gíd.dameš) ad-da-nak-ka šārāni(tu₁₅.meš) ṭabūti(dùg.gameš) itti(ta) napšātīka(zimeš)-ka a-paq-qid pi-ia am-mì-u ša ṭābi(dùg.ga) ik-ta-nar-rab-ka ina puḫur(ukkin) ilāni(dingirmeš) rabûti(galmeš) (SAA 3: 13 obv. 23‒26) A phantom answered from the presence of Nabû, his lord: “Do not fear, Assurbanipal! I will give you long life, I will entrust pleasant winds with your life; my pleasant mouth will always bless you in the assembly of the great gods.”

This portion of the text, likely a reference to the king’s preoccupation with his immortality,¹⁸⁴ is directly preceded by a plea from the king (SAA 3: 13 obv. 19‒21): Assurbanipal is on his knees, praying incessantly to Nabû, his lord: “Please, Nabû, do not abandon me! My life is written before you (balṭī(ti.la-mu) ina pānīka(igi)-ka šá-ṭir napšātī (zimeš)-ia), my soul is deposited in the lap of Mullissu.”

Here the verb utilized is šaṭāru, “to write,” and the direct connection to the maintenance of Assurbanipal’s legacy through writing—this time via “pleasant winds”—is self-evident. Nabû, as the patron god of writing, was responsible for preserving Assurbanipal’s memory, though of course through the stylus of the scribes.¹⁸⁵ Thus the association between wind and the commemoration of one’s name was introduced already in the Old Babylonian version of the Gilgamesh epic. In the Neo-Assyrian period, the motif experienced a revival from the “wisdom” type, to be used in describing scribal potential (as in the text above), as well as to threaten scribal security (as in Advice to a Prince in Chapter 3).

 The political background for this text is probably the rebellion of Assurbanipal’s brother, Šamaš-šum-ukīn, in Babylon, and would thus present a fitting venue for expressing concerns about legitimacy, royalty, and legacy. See Parpola and Watanabe (1998: lxxi). Atkinson (2013: 66‒74) interprets the phrase la ta-pal-làḫ as a measure of divine reassurance common in the prophetic corpus, mostly based on the arguments of Nissinen (2003: 122‒161).  Atkinson (2013: 89) characterizes the text as “a king’s petitionary prayer accompanied by a prophetic response,” the accumulation of divergent text types into one piece through scribal editing. In this he agrees with the assessment of Pongratz-Leisten (1999a: 74‒75), who sees The Dialogue as a scribal invention.

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Neo-Assyrian renarrations The Cuthaean Legend was not the only text that was revived in the service of defining kingship ideology in the Neo-Assyrian period. In fact, one text that we have identified as an early theo-political indictment of Kassite kingship appears again in this era: Ludlul. This time, the text appears veiled in the “suggestive” style of the Neo-Assyrian scholars, who used this particular mode to make recommendations about the rectification of problematic royal action or policy. Lambert (1998a: 34) has shown that the epithets applied to Marduk in the poem’s initial doxology in obv. i 2 and i 4 (e-ziz mu-ši mu-up-pa-šìr ur-ri, “angry at night but forgiving in the day,” see Chapter 2) are also used to describe Esarhaddon, the father of Assurbanipal, in a Babylonian astronomical report delivered to the king (SAA 8: 333): Obv 5 Bēl(den) re-me-nu-ú qar-rad Marduk(damar.utu) 6 ina mūši(mi) i-zu-uz-ma Rev 1 ina še-e-ri it-tap-šar 2 šar(lugal) kiššati(šú) ṣa-lam Marduk(damar.utu) at-ta 3 a-na libbi(šà)-bi urdānīka(aradmeš)-ni-i-ka 4 ki-i tar-’u-ú-bu ru-ʾu-ub-ti 5 ša šarri(lugal) bēlīni(en)-ni ni-il-ta-da-ad 6 u su-lum-mu-ú šá šarri(lugal) ni-ta-mar Bēl, the merciful warrior Marduk, became angry at night, but his anger dissipated in the morning. You, king of the world, are an image of Marduk; when you turned your heart against your servants, we endured the anger of the king our lord. (But) we (also) saw the peace-making qualities of the king.

Though Lambert is hesitant to directly ascribe an allusion to Ludlul here, he does with confidence point out the similarity in thought in both texts. Indeed, some of the key ailments of the protagonist in Ludlul are those suffered in the milieu of the royal court (SAACT 7): Tablet i 55 56 57 58

šarru(lugal) šīr(uzu) ilāni(dingirmeš) Šamaš(dutu) šá nīšīšu(unmeš)-šú libbuš(šà)-bu-uš ik-ka-ṣir-ma pa-ṭa-ri uš-lem-mìn na-an-za-zu tas-li-tu uš-ta-na-ad-da-nu elī(ugu.mu) paḫ-ru-ma ra-man-šu-nu ú-šaḫ-ḫa-zu nu-ul-la-a-ti

The king, the flesh of the gods, the sun of his people, His heart hardened and became malevolent in its dispersal (from me).

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Courtiers kept making appeals to me, They gathered themselves, they were slandering.

And he suffered all of this, even though he had always been faithful to the court of the king: Tablet ii 29 30 31 32

ú-šá-ri a-na mātī(kur)-ia me-e ili(dingir) na-ṣa-ri šu-mi diš-ta-ri šu-qu-ru nīsī(unmeš)-ia uš-ta-ḫi-iz ta-na-da-a-ti šarri(lugal) i-liš ú-maš-šil ù pu-luḫ-ti ekalli(é.gal) um-man ú-šal-mid

I gave orders to my land to observe the cultic order of the god, I instructed my people to swear in the name of the goddess. I made praises of the king equal to those of a god, And taught the crowds fear for the palace.

Though Ludlul is a Babylonian poem and was not originally intended to be a direct commentary on Assyrian kingship, the conflation of Marduk and Esarhaddon in this poem and in the astronomical report underlines the primacy of the king. But even in underlining the primacy of the Assyrian king, Marduk is never far from the forefront. The recollection of Marduk brings this text into the realm of protreptic,¹⁸⁶ in that it also provides suggestive resonances as to how the Assyrian king should behave towards the god Marduk. Thus, Spieckerman (1988: 341) argues, much as the people expected the king’s rule to be stable and constant, so “um die Lebensordnung zu gewährleisten, müssen die Götter Babyloniens nicht gerecht sein, aber im wesentlichen verläßlich und durch Kult und Ritus ‘berechenbar.’” Furthermore, very similar themes appear in the so-called Righteous Sufferer’s Prayer to Nabû, with whom, in one extant text, Assurbanipal himself has a literary dialogue.¹⁸⁷ All of this suggests a Neo-Assyrian reading of Ludlul as important to the precepts of proper rulership, where criticism—but also appreciation for—the king can be obliquely mapped onto a theo-

 For a description of this type of text in another context, see Braund (2012: 85‒108) and the discussion in Chapter 1.  For the former, see SAA 3: 12, and the latter, SAA 3: 13. One portion of the prayer to Nabû reads (SAA 3: 12 rev. 4‒5): Nabû(dag) al-e-e nap-šur-ka mār(dumu) Bēl([de]n) al-e-e te-ra-tu-u-ka al-e-e šārka(tu₁₅)-ka ṭabu(dùg) ša iz-zi-[qa] il-la-ka ina muḫḫi(ugu)-ḫi an-šu-u-te-ka “Nabû, where is the dissolution of your anger? Son of Bēl, where are your instructions? Where is your pleasant wind which blows and goes over the weak who are (devoted) to you?”

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logical canvas.¹⁸⁸ The god-based orderly existence—which is unknowable to the layman—can easily be conflated with the king-based orderly existence, which in itself is equally unknowable, unpredictable, and far more immediate, itself inherently transcendental under the maxims of monarchy in the Ancient Near East (even called uzu dingirmeš in this text!).¹⁸⁹ Another type of renarration can be found in a text called The Creation of Kingship, a Neo-Assyrian reworking of the cosmic order that had first appeared in Enūma Eliš. Though until recently only one copy was known (VAT 17019, from Babylon and betraying a Neo-Babylonian script),¹⁹⁰ there now exists a partial duplicate from the Sargonid period.¹⁹¹ The first portion of the text, in which the creation of man is described, recalls early Mesopotamian texts like Atraḫasis and Enūma Eliš: ¹⁹² d

Be-let-īlī(dingirmeš) ik-te-ri-iṣ ṭi-ṭa-a-šú [xxxx] x ik-ki-il nik-la-a-tu₄ (VAT 17019 obv. 14‒15) Bēlet-ilī pinched off its clay, [ ] she made artful things.¹⁹³

 For a different reading of the text, see Lenzi (2012). Here he argues that Ludlul, especially in its dream sequence of Tablet iii, is meant to be a veiled apology for the occasional failures of the art of the specialist, providing a literary “salve” to mollify the consequences—both for the expert’s clients and the crowd of the experts themselves—of those failures. The poem does this, he argues, by underlining the inevitability of the rule of Marduk, who will ultimately be kind, if one is patient enough. This is simply a different reading of the text that is neither contrary to nor mutually exclusive from mine.  As per Michalowski (2008: 41): “Mesopotamian kings, similar to monarchs in many other times and cultures, were, first and foremost, mediators between the mundane and transcendent orders. Brute force aside, all other royal attributes derived from this function. Kings were beyond category; they did not combine human and divine aspects, rather they existed above and beyond this fundamental classificatory distinction.”  This is edited in Mayer (1987).  The new text is edited in Jiménez (2013: 235‒254). Jiménez (2013: 242‒243) reinterprets the text based on a tablet recently recognized as the first duplicate of the myth, found in the collection of Qurdī-Nergal at Sultantepe. George (2003: xli) argues that the text is from the middle or late first millennium but may be even older. Notwithstanding the discovery of the new text, Livingstone (1989: xxiv) points out that the existence of the Neo-Babylonian copy betrays “one of the unusual examples of transmission of literature from Assyria to Babylonia.”  The first lines of this text echo both Atraḫasis i 192‒248 and Enuma Eliš vi 3 ff., (“the creation of mankind”). For comparisons between the two texts, see for example Maul (1999: 208‒ 209).  Text edition from Mayer (1987: 55 ff).

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Following that portion of the text is a novel addition, in which a new creature is formed: the king. The existence of the duplicate tablet, and the presence of stock phrases from Neo-Assyrian inscriptions within the body of the myth (Jiménez 2013: 243‒244), enhances the argument of Radner (2010: 27) that the creation of the king as separate from the creation of man is a proven maxim of a unique Assyrian ideology that first appeared in the seventh century BC.¹⁹⁴ Thus we have a new Neo-Assyrian text that responds to and supplements older traditions, placing the Neo-Assyrian king in the longuee duree of myths about the creation of humankind. The same Neo-Assyrian ideology that places so much emphasis on the king also took a strong interest in connecting that kingship to the gods. Such ideas inform the character of the protagonist of the Gilgamesh epic, encapsulating the notion that the king is “…a man of perfect beauty, ready for battle but guided by divinely inspired counsel” (George 2003: xlii). The Neo-Assyrian monarch’s connection to the divinities and his primacy in the world order are also emphasized in the second portion of The Creation of Kingship, in which the king is given his royal accoutrement by the gods and curses against traitors are invoked (38’ ff.)—a passage which appears almost verbatim in several Neo-Assyrian texts, including SAA 3: 11, The Coronation Hymn of Assurbanipal (Jiménez 2013: 237; see Chapter 4). Ideas about the divine nature of the Neo-Assyrian king became fully developed in the later Neo-Assyrian period, as shown by a letter from a royal advisor to Esarhaddon (SAA 10: 207), which quotes a proverb: Rev. 9 10 11 12 13

[š]a qa-bu-u-ni am-me-ú [m]a-a ṣilli(giš.mi) ili(dingir) a-me-lu [u] ṣilli(giš.mi) lúa-me-le-e [a]-me-lu : šarru(lugal) : šu-ú [k]al! mu-uš-šu-li šá ili(dingir)

There is an expression that says: “Man is a shadow of god.” [But] is man a shadow of man (too)? The king: it is he who is the total likeness of the god.

Machinist reads this proverb as based on wordplays, with the two couplets presenting similar syntactic structure. In the first couplet, he argues, amēlu repre-

 As opposed to the stance of Jiménez (2013: 246‒247), who argues, using comparative textual examples, that the text given here describes only the creation of the king, and not of two separate creatures.

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sents both “man” as “human being” but also as “ruler/king.” The word ṣillu carries the double meaning of both “shadow” and “protection/protector.” Given this, amēlu, as the predicate of each statement, should be understood as “king,” making the king the “shadow” of the god. The last line, in the calculation of Machinist (2011: 418‒419), reiterates the point: the king is the “shadow/protection” of “humanity,” because he receives this power from the god, in whose likeness he himself functions. The Creation of Kingship suggests a novel textual representation of kingship in the reign of Assurbanipal,¹⁹⁵ one that is a reflective amalgamation of and addition to several texts from earlier periods that themselves defined principles for proper kingship. Here Assyrian scribes took control of their own heritage and used it to impose a suggestive framework upon the kingship of their own era. As Diakonoff (1965: 343) has argued, “In Ancient Near Eastern literature new moral and political ideas are often presented in the guise of traditional literature or ascribed to revered personages of the past.” But as Ataç (2010: 169‒170) suggests, these “protreptic texts” could also be subversive: the King-Man topos, identified in The Creation of Kingship, he argues, is simply a “self-referential apparatus pertaining to the spiritual privileges of a scribal-sacerdotal elite…[T]his image and royal rhetoric in general are produced by the elite for the expression of both their own and the king’s authority, with the priority, however, possessed by the former.” The reception and implementation of “renarrated” literature towards a new paradigm of kingship could only have been possible at the dawn of the reign of a controversial—and literate—king. Here, especially in the reign of Assurbanipal, we are in the rarest kind of environment, in which both the scholars and the king himself can claim access to the “secret knowledge” of Adapa, of the scholarly tradition (see Chapter 3). The veiled critiques of an intertextual literature—and the resultant shaping of a new type of kingship—may well have been understandable to the king. The tensions could be high, but the ideological categorizations potentially mutually reinforcing.¹⁹⁶ The emphasis on devising new literary modes of defining kingship was a natural side-effect of the unique character of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Liverani (1979: 305), in his attempt to describe the “ideological grammar” of this empire,

 See Mayer (1987: 67‒68), who cannot decide whether The Creation of Kingship or The Coronation Hymn (also paradigmatic of Assyrian kingship; see Chapter 4) was created first, though he does suggest the possibility that both could have been a part of “die Ideologie des Königstum” in a previously established tradition.  In fact, Carr (2008: 31‒32), citing Sweet (1990: 99‒107), argues that one central goal of scribal education was to “inculcate in prospective scribes a portion of the wisdom of the king, to whom they in turn were to be devoted.”

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concludes that it was “a closed and coherent system of ‘rules’” which operated under “a theory of diversity as justification of unbalance and exploitation.” The success of such an ideology required a conscious (or unconscious) affirmation of the system’s benefits by both the king and his subordinates—whether they were foreign peoples or those within the royal court itself.¹⁹⁷ The acceptance of subordination, however, did not render Assyrian subjects powerless; it also allowed for people of lesser status to take some semblance of agency in defining their superiors.¹⁹⁸ This would have been especially true within the boundaries of the Neo-Assyrian royal elite, where the power of the cultic specialist/scholar was becoming more exaggerated than ever before. Thus, in this Assyrian political system, “suggestive” literature was of great importance to developing the public character of the king. Herein the words of the scribe were an influential spur to royal policy as well as literature closely associated with the king. Those intellectual scribes who were heavily active in court life and politics—providing fodder for royal pronouncements, and producing royal inscriptions and hymns—had a significant effect on the king through suggestive writing: “The image of the king created in such inscriptions was bound deeply to affect royal decisions; it also guided the ruler in dilemmas between traditional attitudes and personal ambitions” (Oppenheim 1975: 43). Perhaps most importantly, in renarrations of older texts, the scholar began to assert himself as an agent responsible for the definition of Neo-Assyrian kingship—and hence as a potentially subversive force.

 Matthiae (2016: 15) argues that the Assyrian king took on a new ideology in representing his (especially military) deeds within the palaces as a way to impose, in his own residence, “a completely secular communication, directed only to the human world,” a great majority of whom would be among the royal (and scholarly) entourage. These representations were an important part of formulating elite identity, conjuring “recollections, expectations and knowledge of participating in the political and sacral events portrayed.” See Gansell (2016: 87).  Thus Liverani (1979: 303): “The main evidence of the difficulties met with by the imperialistic ideology to have these unnatural imbalances absorbed, is the very same hammering propaganda rigged for this purpose: evidence of people to be convinced, but who resist; evidence of people to be involved, but not to their advantage.”

Chapter 3 The Library of Assurbanipal and the Counterdiscursive Landscape The Library of Assurbanipal The transformation in scribal self-awareness in the late second and first millennia was possible largely because the Mesopotamian literary heritage was being gathered, and preserved, in more specific library contexts. We have already discussed briefly the libraries present in Babylonia and Assur, and their significance as venues for both canonization and scribal creativity. Because the ancient library was an institution in and of itself, literally constructed out of texts, it functioned as a “textual representative of a social and political reality” (Too 2010: 7). And since, generally, libraries were situated in centers of cultural and political importance, by default they became the source of discourses on important issues of cultural/national awareness, memory, and power (Too 2010: 8). Therefore it is no accident that one of the richest archaeological finds comes from Nineveh, the capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire during one of the most culturally sensitive and ideologically charged periods in Mesopotamian history. We will now turn to this Neo-Assyrian capital, where the library collection served as a hotbed of counterdiscursive activity for an emergent scholarly class. The finds at Nineveh (often referred to as “the royal archives at Nineveh”¹⁹⁹) constitute an extremely valuable resource for learning about the Neo-Assyrian period; here were discovered about 30,000 fragments of texts. Primarily, the contents of these texts are non-literary (letters, legal and administrative texts, reports, etc.). In fact, the majority pertain to issues of Mesopotamian scientific and religious lore, with only a small number of fragments from what we might

 On the difficulties with defining this particular “archive,” see Parpola (1986: 224‒225) and Pedersén (1998: 158‒164). On the more administrative nature of the archive at Nineveh, see Fales (2003: esp. 201‒212). See also du Toit (1998: 389‒395) for the difficulty of defining ancient archives by modern standards, and even the suggestion that the library at Nineveh is a “product of imagination.” For the use of the terms “archive” and “library” in the Ancient Near East in general, see Pedersén (1998: 2‒5), who defines an “archive” as a collection of texts meant to relay a message, where many of the texts exist only in one copy; the term “library” denotes a collection of texts that exist in multiple copies for use in different places at different times, and—distinct from “archives,” where most of the texts are of an administrative nature—are composed of literary, historical, and religious texts. For the use of the term “library” at Nineveh in particular, see Parpola (1986: 234). DOI 10.1515/9781501504969-003

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consider literary pieces (Parpola 1983b: 6). But Nineveh (Kuyunjik) was a large Assyrian capital city, and the surviving texts were not distributed equally. The site contained two major palaces in which texts were found; the first, the South-West palace, primarily contained scholarly texts, official documents, and private archives;²⁰⁰ the North Palace, built by Assurbanipal in the 640s (apparently on the site of a previous royal palace),²⁰¹ contained an archive of documents mostly stamped with seals, and scholarly texts on clay tablets of a more Babylonian provenance, containing long colophons (Reade 1986: 219‒221). The difference in their contents causes Parpola (1986: 232 n. 42) to eschew the term “Assurbanipal’s libraries” in favor of a distinction between the actual library of Assurbanipal in the North Palace and the collection in the South Palace, which had existed since the reign of Sennacherib. Given the presence of the colophons of Assurbanipal on the North Palace texts,²⁰² Reade (1986: 221) surmises that “it may be…that the North Palace tablets really reflect the kind of literature he thought he should have around him.” The collection of tablets for the library had begun in the reigns of his predecessors,²⁰³ but the project saw its greatest elaboration in the reign of Assurbanipal. Assurbanipal is perhaps the most famous Mesopotamian king to claim personal literacy; he is in the prestigious company of only a few others, including the Ur III king Šulgi and the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus.²⁰⁴ The most famous passage in which Assurbanipal extols his own abilities is from a royal inscription, K 2694+3050, known as L4 in modern scholarship.²⁰⁵

 Parpola finds that the Southwest Palace (built during the reign of Sennacherib) contained a royal library and “archival” texts from the reigns of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, and Assurbanipal. See Parpola (1986: 232).  See Streck (1916, II: 86 no. 1 obv. 75), in which Assurbanipal claims to have razed the previous building to its foundations (ana siḫirtīšu).  The colophons in the library of Assurbanipal are of twenty-three standard varieties. Much like Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions, they would often contain curse or blessing formulae. See Leichty (1964: esp. 153). The “Assurbanipal colophons” provided the most common way of rendering ownership in the Ninevite library, showing that the tablets acquired were specifically designed to be part of the royal library. See Frahm (2004: 47‒48.)  See Frame and George (2005: 279), in which they argue that the process of collecting tablets for the library was well underway before Assurbanipal’s accession to the throne (though it is unclear if this was by default or by royal command).  See Michalowski (2003b: 105‒129), for kings who claimed literacy and were keen on collecting.  Zamazalová (2011: 314) places the date of the inscription at 668 BC, “shortly after Assurbanipal’s accession to the throne.”

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Marduk, the sage of the gods, gave me wide understanding and broad perceptions as a gift. Nabû, the scribe of the universe, bestowed on me the acquisition of all his wisdom (né-meqi-šú) as a present. Ninurta and Nergal gave me physical fitness, manhood, and unparalleled strength. I learnt the lore of the wise sage Adapa ([š]i-pir ap-kal-li a-da-pà), the hidden secret, the whole of the scribal craft (ni-ṣir-tú ka-tim-tú kul-lat ṭup-šar-ru-tú). I can discern celestial and terrestrial portents and deliberate in the assembly of the experts (ina puḫri (ukkin) um-ma-a-ni). I am able to discuss the series “If the liver is a mirror image of the sky” with capable scholars. I can solve convoluted reciprocals and calculations that do not come out evenly. I have read cunningly written text in Sumerian, dark Akkadian, the interpretation of which is difficult. I have examined stone inscriptions from before the flood (la-am a-bu-bi), which are sealed, stopped up, mixed up.²⁰⁶

We know that Assurbanipal had incurred some controversy on his succession to the throne; he was not the eldest son (as was typical in royal appointments), and after the death of the eldest son, Sîn-nādin-apli, Šamaš-šum-ukīn should have been assigned crown prince of Assyria. However, the latter had already been appointed to the Babylonian throne, so the kingship was divided, with Assurbanipal becoming crown prince of Assyria. This was bound to cause insurrection, and Assurbanipal was forced to find ways to express the legitimacy of his rule. Unlike other Assyrian royal inscriptions, in which divine election is identified as the decisive factor in a king’s succession, in L4—his “apology”—Assurbanipal instead highlights his education as playing a key role in his elevation to the kingship. Tadmor suggests that this autobiographical apology—one among a type of texts which, he argues, are written not at the beginning of a new king’s reign but rather at the time his successor is elected—is unique. Though he does not go so far as to claim that the apology was written by Assurbanipal himself, such a conclusion is implied, as Assurbanipal is likely to have received a scribal education early in his teenage years, when he was still crown prince.²⁰⁷ Livingstone (2007: 105‒107) even surmises based on orthography and simplicity in verbiage that a clumsily written text, published as CT 53: 147—which professes to be a salutation from Assurbanipal to the king—was indeed penned by the crown

 I utilize here the translation of Livingstone (2007: 100). His own translation considers differences present in the works of other scholars, including Fincke, Villard, and Pongratz-Leisten (100‒101). One of the first editions of the text was Streck (1916: 252‒271, no. 9); see now also the new edition in SAACT 10: 18.  The influence of Mesopotamian scribes was indeed significant—it was not infrequent that a king would have experienced the same educational system as a royal scholar (Frahm 2011: 510), at least in the Neo-Assyrian period; Villard (1996: 139) argues that “La formation intellectuelle des princes…est peut-être une innovation de la période sargonide.”

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prince himself.²⁰⁸ Though many of the so-called “Assurbanipal colophons” proclaim “I am Assurbanipal,” there is some controversy over whether the king wrote them himself.²⁰⁹ At any rate, the emphasis on the education of the king is novel in Assyrian royal inscriptions (Tadmor 1983: 48). It reveals Assurbanipal’s commitment to the collection of learned tablets and his own knowledge of the scribal tradition; “This of course,” claims Livingstone (2007: 114), “has important implications for how the formation and content of the Assurbanipal libraries should be understood: they represent his personal interests.” Assurbanipal’s library collection was drawn primarily from three avenues. Parpola (1983b: 10) suggests that the main (perhaps original) core of the libraries at Nineveh came from the libraries of active professionals in Babylon.²¹⁰ Tablets were also acquired through the production of the palace itself, as evidenced by those which exhibited Assurbanipal colophons (Streck 1916: lxv ff.). A third mode of collection involved pillaging. Parpola (1983b: 11) argues that many of these texts would have been brought to Nineveh from Babylonia as spoils of war, or as part of a royal edict declaring that private libraries had to be emptied for this purpose.²¹¹ Assurbanipal resorted to “booknapping” only after the fallout with his brother Šamaš-šum-ukīn, king of Babylon, with whom he shared joint rule.²¹² In 647 BC, there was a massive confiscation of library materials from Babylon to Nineveh (Fincke 2003‒2004: 111‒149). However, it appears that copies of texts were ordered much before that, perhaps even as early as 664 BC, as evidenced by BM 28825, a Babylonian letter addressed to King Assurbanipal in which a collective of Babylonian scholars promises to carry out a massive transmission operation, with some allusion to payment by the crown (Frame

 Also to be noted is the fact that Assurbanipal was the only Mesopotamian king to have images produced of himself that included writing utensils. See Frahm (2011: 514).  Livingstone (2007: 114) argues that no scholar would have dared to proclaim “I am Assurbanipal” on a text, thus proving the king’s composition of the colophons. As potential proof for this, Zamalová cites Kataja (1987: 65‒68), which refers to a provincial official whose attempt to name his son Assurbanipal resulted in punishment by river ordeal.  See Frame and George (2005: 265‒284) and below for two examples of Assyrian royal orders from tablets, one from Babylon and one from Borsippa.  An earlier example of this behavior is during the reign of Assurbanipal’s father, Esarhaddon, in which he captured Babylonian dignitaries in 675 BC, forcing them (when not in chains) to copy exorcistic cuneiform texts. See Frahm (2011: 513), citing Fales and Postgate (1995: no. 156).  Parpola (1983b: 12) wonders: “[M]ay one conclude that by focusing his attention on literary matters, Assurbanipal tried to forget his tragic feud with his brother; or is this interest in library matters, so soon after his brother’s death, rather an illustration of the cynical disposition of this last great Assyrian ruler?”

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and George 2005: 270‒272, 282). The order calls for the entire Sumero-Babylonian scribal tradition in Esagil to be copied. This text is much like another letter to Assurbanipal, this time from a collective of scholars in Borsippa (BM 45642), which requests that all the scribal texts in the temple of Nabû be copied and sent to Nineveh (Frame and George 2005: 265‒266).²¹³ These hints are important, because texts gathered through acts of imperialism not only situate the new library within a much more ancient context, but also manifestly express the power of the collector himself.²¹⁴ Such a “universal collection,” argues du Toit (2005: 96), is “the ultimate physical embodiment …of the collective memory and thus the model instrument in the perpetual resistance to forgetfulness and the establishment of group identity.” It counterbalanced Assyria against a dominated—and now culturally subjugated—Babylonia, allowing royal control over the retention and dissemination of texts in both kingdoms. This act of cultural hegemony will, as we will see, simply be a symptom of an earlier movement in Assyria, precipitated especially by events in the reign of Assurbanipal’s grandfather, Sennacherib. To be read together with these texts²¹⁵ is an edict of Assurbanipal to the governor of Borsippa, ordering the confiscation of private and temple libraries for inclusion in the Ninevite library (CT 22: 1). This tablet, written to Šadûnu of Borsippa, orders the transmission of a very specific corpus of tablets, particularly those of exorcistic lore, spells, and amulets. Most interesting (and perhaps controversial) is the request for tablets that are “good for kingship” (ša ana šarrūti ṭābi, CT 22: 1 rev. 25). This text is cited by Oppenheim (1964: 224) as proof that Assurbanipal personally chose tablets he considered to be fitting for his library. Lieberman, however, thought it impossible for this tablet to have been written by (or on behalf of) Assurbanipal because he “surely had no need for texts of this nature.”²¹⁶ Frame and George (2005: 281‒282) tentatively argue that the specific tablets ordered—meant in many cases to prevent or cure illness—are more representative of the interests of Assurbanipal’s father, Esarhaddon, who is known to have suffered from a systemic illness. Given the productivity of tablet collection

 The authors point out that some phraseology in the letter indicates a rivalry between Babylonian scholars (who have attempted to “shirk” these duties) and those of Borsippa, discord which presented a potential point of exploitation for Assurbanipal.  There is no better example of this than the library at Alexandria, the outcome of an attempt by Ptolemy I Soter to collect all of ancient Greek literature in a foreign library in Egypt.  All of these letters exist in later Achaemenid or Hellenistic copies, indicating the importance of this correspondence within the scribal schools of Babylonia.  Lieberman (1990: 312‒314), arguing that a tablet would not become part of an “official” collection unless it was chosen by an ummânu.

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in the time of Assurbanipal and the fact that we have no similar edicts from his father, I believe that this letter is most likely to have been written by (or for) Assurbanipal.²¹⁷ The focus on texts related to good kingship may be corroborated by their collection in the North Palace. This structure, completed no earlier than 646/645 BC,²¹⁸ primarily served not as a Palace of Assurbanipal, but as a bīt rēdûti “Succession Palace,” where the concepts of Assyrian kingship were imparted to future kings by their fathers.²¹⁹ Though we cannot be certain of their placement in the North Palace,²²⁰ some important texts appear in this area, including Ludlul, The Babylonian Theodicy, and Advice to a Prince (see below). Their presence here indicates that these texts may have been known by the king himself.²²¹ This is evident in several of Assurbanipal’s own works, including the so-called Lament of Assurbanipal (K 891, now in the British Museum), given first by Luckenbill (1926: 377‒378) and then by Foster (2007: 43): “Since… I have done good to god and man, to the dead and the living, why is it that disease, heartache, distress, and destruction attach themselves to me? Enmity in the land, strife in the house never leave me alone. Disturbances and evil words are ever arrayed against me. Sickness of heart and body have bent me over. I pass my time in wailing and ruing. I am even unhappy on the days of the city god and holidays. Death is making an end of me and bringing me low. In grief and anguish, lamenting day and night, I sigh ‘Oh god, bestow the one without reverence, let me see your light. How long, O god, will you do this to me? I am treated like one who reverences neither god nor goddess!’”

This text exhibits clear thematic parallels with the sufferer in Ludlul. Further compelling evidence of Assurbanipal’s familiarity with Ludlul is an intertextual

 This accords with the opinion of Fincke (2003‒2004: 123).  This is the date given in two of the Assurbanipal prisms (AA and F) for the completion of the palace. See Parpola (1986: 233 n. 48).  It had served as such for the long princehood of Sennacherib, Assurbanipal’s grandfather, and his father Esarhaddon. Parpola (1986: 233 and 233 n.50).  Because of the early excavation history of Kuyunjik, the findspots of many of the texts are confused, and some texts with K numbers do not even originate from Kuyunjik. However, we can make sweeping assumptions. The DT group, from which Advice to a Prince comes (see below), was found in the North Palace, and those with especially high K numbers could have come from either palace. All that we know for certain is that none of the literary texts mentioned above have S or Sm numbers, indicating texts that have come from the Southwest Palace. See Reade (1986: 213‒214).  Annus and Lenzi (2010: ix) argue that the fact that Ludlul was discovered in the libraries of “scholars and kings” (namely, the library of Assurbanipal) confirms “the poem’s learned origins and social capital for cultural and political elites.” It was also mentioned in an ancient philological commentary. See Foster (2007: 32) and Frahm (2011b: 102‒103).

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allusion when Assurbanipal describes his own learnedness (L4 obv. i. 14).²²² The most pertinent lexical parallelism, defined by Annus and Lenzi (2010: xxxiii) as focusing “on the conventional association between paralleled words,” occurs in Tablet i of Ludlul: 89 šu-piš ina puḫri(ukkin) i-ru-ra-ni ar-di 90 amtu(géme) ina ⸢pa⸣-an um-ma-ni ṭa-pil-ti iq-bi My slave openly cursed me in the assembly, A slave girl committed slander against me in front of the crowd.

The authors point out the pairing of puḫru (“assembly”) and ummānu (“crowd”). The two words appear in military contexts (mostly notably in Enūma Eliš i 149, ii 35, iii 39, and iii 97), but beyond this, the combination appears to be a play on the idiom puḫur ummânī, “assembly of scholars.” For the sake of comparison, I quote L4 again: 14 [it]tī[(gis]kimmeš) šamê(an)-e u erṣeti(ki)-tì am-ra-ku šu-ta-du-na-ku ina puhri(ukkin) um-ma-a-ni I can discern celestial and terrestrial portents and deliberate in the assembly of the experts.

The terminology in Ludlul appears to be a deliberate homophonic play on ummânu, and demonstrates a high standard of textual awareness on the part of the king, if he did in fact produce his own “apology.” Another sign that these texts influenced Assurbanipal in particular is the composition of his own acrostic hymn to Marduk and Zarpanitu (SAA 3: 2), in the style of the acrostic signature of The Babylonian Theodicy. Interestingly, this acrostic combines knowledge of both this text and Ludlul. It reads: a-naku aš-[šur-ba-ni]-ap-li šá il-su-ka bu-u[l-li-ṭ]a-[ni-m]a ma-[r]u-du-uk da-li-li-ka luud-lul “I am Assurbanipal, who has called to you: Grant me life, Marduk, and I will sing your praises!”²²³ Clearly the addressee both of this acrostic and of Ludlul is Marduk; furthermore, the last line of this acrostic and the first line of the latter work are the same. Though the praise of Marduk in this hymn is of a more standard variety—mimicking in many ways the first lines of the fourth tablet of Enūma Eliš ²²⁴—here too Marduk is attributed with “all wisdom” (kullat nēmeqi,

 In SAACT 10: 18, it is obv. i 19.  On the acrostic, see Livingstone (1989: xxv).  Foster (2007: 84) argues that the allusions to Enuma Eliš are notable for citing the Babylonian version of the epic. He implies that this was done because “[Assurbanipal] would have learned already at his father Esarhaddon’s court the policies and techniques of a successful As-

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iv. 4). Though we can make no certain claims that Assurbanipal wrote this text himself, his signature indicates the possibility. It further buttresses the arguments for his rather sophisticated degree of learnedness, both in the complexity of the acrostic and in the intertextual allusions. Most significantly, the presence of these allusions to texts about Marduk indicate a deep awareness of Babylonian cultural and national heritage, in a place both physically and ideologically proximate to the Neo-Assyrian king.

Advice to a Prince For our purposes, one of the most significant belles lettres collected in the North Palace goes by the title Advice to a Prince (also known as The Babylonian Fürstenspiegel). The work has been the object of intense scholarly study in recent years, since it is a rare example of decidedly political maneuvering, which apparently refers directly to actions of a particular Mesopotamian king. The text utilizes conditional statements (“If the king should fail to do X, the consequence will be Y”) matching actions with potential “punishments,” especially with relation to the treatment of the important cities of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon. The text is unusual for being one of the first pieces from the period to provide specific examples of reprehensible behavior by the king and to threaten repercussions for mistreatment of the king’s people (a “warning” text). We have clear evidence that Advice to a Prince was one text contained in Assurbanipal’s royal library, because of the presence of an “Assurbanipal colophon.” Lines 65‒67 read: né-me-qí Nabû(dag) ti-kip sa-an-tak-ki ma-la ba-áš-mu ina ṭuppāti(dubmeš) áš-ṭur as-niq ab-re-e-ma a-na ta-mar-ti ši-ta-as-si-ia qé-reb ekallī(é.gal)-ia ú-kin The wisdom of Nabû, cuneiform writing, as much as there was, I wrote down on tablets, checked, collated, and placed in my palace, as a gift for my perusal.²²⁵

Besides this text from Nineveh,²²⁶ Advice to a Prince also appears in a late manuscript from Nippur.²²⁷ The Nippur text comes from an archive that Cole (1996: 5‒

syrian rule over Babylonia, which required that the Assyrian king present himself to Babylonians in Babylonian terms.”  Text edition from Böhl (1937: 7). See Hunger (1968: no. 319 l. 6‒8).  Discovered in a cache of 128 tablets “used as packing around a large pottery jar containing the skeleton of a child.” The group contained 113 letters, rosters, and scribal exercise tablets. See Hurowitz (1998: 40).

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6) dates to some time in the decade before 745 to approximately 732 BC, placing it in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria and the reign of Mukīn-zēri in Babylon. In another instance, Advice to a Prince is quoted as part of a letter to Esarhaddon. The letter quotation differs from the Nineveh copy in only minor details, transposing two lines and using slightly varied spelling, leading Reiner (1982: 321) to argue that Advice to a Prince was quoted by the letter’s author from memory. Thus, says Foster (2005: 867): “[Advice to a Prince] was evidently studied as a literary work, whatever its original political purpose may have been.”²²⁸ Most of the interest in Advice to a Prince has emerged in two areas: identifying the subject of the warning in the text, and identifying intertextual allusions and generic characteristics. Using lexicographical evidence, Diakonoff (1965: 343‒346) has argued that the text refers to events in the reign of Marduk-apla-iddina (ca. 700 BC) but was written in the reign of Sennacherib (r. 705‒681), wherein the text uses as a paradigmatic king a foreigner who was inimical to the interests of Babylon. His analysis shows several points of idiomatic terminology relevant to details of political administration in the Assyrian period,²²⁹ with the insinuation that inscriptions, kudurrus, annals, and other documents of the Kassite and Assyrian period were terminological fodder for the maxims presented in this text.²³⁰ Hurowitz (1998: 39 n. 4) suggests that the text is meant to be a warning from an advisor to the incumbent monarch “who has abused his position and committed political as well as social indiscretions” rather than an admonishment of a reigning ruler to his crown prince. Lambert (1996: 111) further suggests that the subject of the text may not have been historically important and may even have been a weak leader, who, in practicing extortion and trying to buy foreign aid, was attempting to gain more power. Biggs (2004: 1‒5) argues that the text was not an invocation to a particular king but rather an effort

 See Reiner (1982: 320‒336), with an appendix by Miguel Civil, who gives a transliteration of 12 N 110, a complete text of Advice to a Prince found at Nippur. For a more recent edition of the Nippur text, that makes corrections to the readings of Lambert and Civil, see Cole (1996: 268‒ 274).  Tadmor (1986: 219) finds the text to be an example of royal accountability in the social-religious sphere, “invoking divine protection for the immunities of the temple city elite as against the authority of the crown.”  However, some of his suggestions are erroneous. For instance, he claims that bušâšu makkūrašu (níg. níg.ga) was exclusively used in the reign of Sargon, but this term is actually quite common in Kassite period tax documents. Lambert concurs, claiming that many of Diakonoff’s associations are either forced or are much older than the Neo-Assyrian inscriptions he cites as being their origin. See Lambert (1968: 124 n. 2).  For the influence of kudurrus in Assyrian administration, see Paulus (2014: 290‒291); for the formulae of kudurru inscriptions, see Paulus (2014: 71‒75).

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to advance a particular political agenda (namely, reaffirming the special protection and exemptions of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon). With the discovery of the Nippur tablet, the suggestion of Biggs must be the correct one. Advice to a Prince may have been written much earlier than the eighth century BC; the form that survives to us may be a vestige of the original, whose applicability was much wider than a single political environment. With its later citation by Neo-Assyrian scholars, Advice to a Prince emerges as a Text A par excellence, especially in relation to the precepts of kingship as they pertained to Babylonia and its cities. Its manipulation in various iterations of Text B for the next several centuries attest to its critical position in defining the precepts of royalty in the first millennium. Equally controversial is the generic designation of the text. As early as 1937, Böhl (1937: 49) argued that it is heavily dependent on omen literature. We know that that the first line of the text, šarru ana dīni lā iqūl “If a king does not attend to justice,” mirrors the first protasis of Tablet 53 of the well-known omen series Šumma ālu, differing only because it is formulated in the positive (Freedman 1998: 337).²³¹ Motifs of revolt were common in omen texts in general, and the subversive acts described therein could easily be applied to any period in Mesopotamian history.²³² Additionally, Hurowitz (1998: 39‒53) has argued that Advice to a Prince contains prophetic elements, even comparing it to prophecies in the Hebrew Bible. He argues that Ea is relatively prominent in the text (being named as šarru, a designation given to no other god in the text). Hurowitz highlights lines 7‒8, which read: a-na ši-pir dé-a i-qúl ilāni(dingirmeš) rabûti(galmeš) ina ši-tul-ti ù ṭú-da-at mi-šá-ri irteneddûšu(uš.me)-šú (Advice to a Prince, 7‒8) (If) one heeds the work of Ea, the great gods, in consultation and in their ways of justice, will continually pursue him.²³³

 The tablet of Šumma ālu begins (according to the Assur Catalogue iii 21, which is similar to our text) šumma(diš) šarru(lugal) ana di-ni₇ i-qul. It has been noted, however, that Advice to a Prince departs from the standard style of omen literature in not using the word šumma to begin each clause.  However, the frequency of such subjects, especially during the entire Neo-Assyrian period, indicates that such concerns were of great importance in contemporary political discourse (Frahm 2016: 78).  The transliteration is my own, adopted from that of Reiner (1982: 320‒326); Lambert (1996: 110‒115); OIP 114: 128; and Paulus (2014: 245‒247). Foster (2005: 867) translates: “If he has regard for a clever trick, the great gods will hound him in right counsel and the cause of justice.” Hurowitz (1998: 49) translates: “(If the king) listened to a message/messenger from Ea—the great gods, in counsel and paths of righteousness will constantly accompany him.”

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The term šipru, meaning “message” or “messenger,” is interpreted by Hurowitz as being a reference to the text itself: Advice to a Prince is a message from the god Ea. Through further textual analysis,²³⁴ he suggests that Ea is not only the chief subject but also the author of the text, shifting the category of the text into the realm of prophecy (Hurowitz 1998: 41‒44). Hallo (1963: 167‒176) long ago argued that Mesopotamian texts can be loosely divided into categories, but that these distinctions are fluid enough that texts can adopt characteristics from several types;²³⁵ Advice to a Prince is an experiment in literary hybridity, diverging from and combining typical forms. The character of the text, then, makes it nearly impossible to accurately guess a historical king to which the text is addressed; rather, the warning in Advice to a Prince is a generally applicable, paradigmatic one, aimed at kingship as an institution. The admonishment of a ruler is more overtly addressed in this text than in any piece of literature from the Kassite or Isin II periods, even if we cannot articulate a specific subject for the warning. One particularly striking phrase reads thus (Advice to a Prince, 23‒30):²³⁶ (If) one raised Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon all at once, and imposes a corvée (tup-ši-ik-ka) on the people, and he fixes a corvée (il-ki) on them at the herald’s announcement, Marduk, sage of the gods, the prince, the prudent one, his land will go over to the enemy, and the troops of his land will deliver corvée to his enemy. (But) Anu, Enlil, and Ea, the great gods who live in heaven and on earth, confirmed in their assembly their freedom (šu-ba-ra-šú-nu) for those people.

The šubarû, or “freedom” of the people, is probably a reference to the liberation from corvée labor that was often imposed on Mesopotamian cities by their

 For instance, the number of lines in the text is 60, Ea’s number, etc. A parallel to this type of textual game is found in the 50 names of Marduk in Enūma Eliš. See Hurowitz (1998: 46).  For instance, he finds parallels in the text to the code of Hammurapi; the perquisites of kingship in that code remain influential—perhaps, here, directly so—in the composition of Advice to a Prince. For the endurance of the Code of Hammurapi and copies/citations of the text after its first appearance, see Maul (2012: esp. 97‒99), for its legacy in the Neo-Assyrian period and later first millennium. A piece of corroborating evidence that these texts may have been imagined as propagating similar causes is an Assyrian library catalogue text published in Lambert (1989: 95‒98). It appears to list texts acquired for Assurbanipal’s library; Advice to a Prince and The Code of Hammurapi are mentioned within four lines of one another. Whether or not this is circumstantial evidence, it does prove at the very least that Assurbanipal had copies of both texts in his library, and that they were potentially linked thematically within the collection.  My line numbers are based on the text of DT 1 (Lambert 1996: 110‒115), which differ slightly from that of OIP 114: 128. For a score with both texts, see OIP 114: 128.

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kings.²³⁷ Here the text presents the effects of a hypothetical “breach of contract,” should the king impose labor—which was explicitly prohibited by the great gods —upon the people of these cities. Diakonoff (1965: 345) notes that the word šubarû is a Sumerian loan, first used in this sense by Sargon II, then Esarhaddon; it also appears in the Neo-Babylonian akītu ritual in the context of “political freedom.” Slanski (2003: 279‒281) cites this text (along with an “entitlement” narû of Melišipak, MDP II 99, in which citizens are granted reprieve from work and tax obligations) as proof that the citizenry could forcibly exercise their rights, and further that limitations on royal power did indeed exist. Though the nârus studied by Slanski originate by and large from the Kassite period, she argues that this text, taken together with the similar language in Advice to a Prince, indicates the “broader social changes taking place in Babylonia and throughout the Ancient Near East.” In addition to protecting the rights of his people (as expressed in 23‒30), the king is admonished to protect his royal advisors: a-na ummâni(um.me.a) la i-qúl māssu(kur)-su ibbalakkissu(bal)-sú (Advice to a Prince, 5) (If) one does not attend to his scholars, his land will revolt against him.

The ummânus were important advisors to the king (see Chapters 1 and 2); the term often refers to the scribes who accompanied the king in court. Parpola (1987b: 257) describes the king’s most prominent advisor as a “Chief scribe,” “an influential and highly prestigious court official, comparable to the legendary sages (apkallu) of the ‘antediluvian’ times.” Thus, the text hints at a potentially tumultuous relationship between the scribe and the king. The literary structure of Advice to a Prince indicates that in fact the scholar is a main subject of the text. I would suggest that we divide the text into three sections, as such: – Lines 1‒8: deal generally with concerns of the scribe and officials in the royal court – Lines 9‒44: the main portion of the text, setting out maxims for kingship of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon – Lines 45‒end: deal, again, with general concerns of the scholar and officials in the royal court

 The same privileges are mentioned in a text of Sargon II, as well as one of Esarhaddon. See Frame and Grayson (1994: 7).

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Those lines that I have designated as interested in “scholarly concerns” are marked as such by their invocation of different gods, namely Ea (lines 2 and 7) and Nabû (line 53), the god of the scribal art. Furthermore, both the first and third sections deal with consequences of the prince’s mistakes, not just in relation to the prince himself, but also in regard to his advisors. They frame the middle part of the text, which I suggest may be the “original” text.²³⁸ This portion is anchored in continuous references to Marduk; the triplicate city designation of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon at the beginning of what we can demarcate as separate paragraphs; and verbal forms in ‐ū, especially in the protases of the couplets. This 3rd. pl. ‐ū (e. g., l. 21 innendū; l. 25 ukannū; l. 30 ukinnū; l. 33 ikulū; l. 38 upaṭṭarū; l. 39 ušannū; l. 41 iṣabbatū) can be read as a generalizing “one” (equivalent to German “man”), meant to apply to any royal figure who disregards the privileges of these cities. This part of the text contains the “new theology” associated with the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I onward, with its emphasis on Marduk. These pieces of evidence suggest that Advice to a Prince—or its “original” recension—may have been written earlier than the first millennium. Indeed, in an unpublished article, Paulus focuses on the role of administrators in Advice to a Prince, arguing that it shares its language with private Fluchinschriften on kudurrus of the Kassite period, which concentrate on land ownership in the royal sphere and the consequences of abusing royal privilege and the legal system.²³⁹ These private oaths, the terminus post quem of which she dates to the middle of the fifteenth century BC, were a forerunner to the text, she argues. Thus, the original text of Advice to a Prince can likely be located much earlier than the first millennium, though the first and last portions, I suggest, are later additions, which correspond to a greater sense of scribal identity that was beginning to emerge in the Neo-Assyrian period, at the latest. The emerging self-importance of the scribe in the Neo-Assyrian era is further evidenced by some subtle differences between the Ninevite and Nippurian ver-

 The retention of the “middle,” or main part of a text, was a common phenomenon in Akkadian literature, especially as exemplified by the Standard Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, which contains changes to the beginning and the end of the text that transformed it into “a sombre meditation on the doom of man.” See George (2003: 28‒33) and Chapter 2.  The unpublished article, “‘Wenn der (babylonische) König die Rechtsprechung missachtet,’” was kindly provided to me in March 2016. The author reaches similar conclusions in Paulus (2014) with composite text and translation on pages 245‒247. In this article, she argues that while the kudurru inscriptions are concerned with the protection of individual proprietors, this text has a similar function in checking the authority of the king, namely by serving as a normative text that protects individual royal officers from royal abuse.

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sions of Advice to a Prince, the former of which maintains a close association between the apkallu and the ummânu: a-na apkallīšu(nun.me)-šú la i-qúl ūmīšu(udmeš)-šú ikarrû(lúgud.dameš) a-na ummâni(um.me.a) i-qúl māssu(kur)-su ibbalakkissu(bal)-sú (Advice to a Prince 4‒5) (If) one does not attend to his nobles, his days will be cut short. (If) one does not attend to his scholars, his land will revolt against him.

Importantly, the Nippur version of the text reads nunmeš-šu,²⁴⁰ which must be read as rubêšu in lieu of apkallīšu (nun.me). As Lenzi (2008a: 114‒116) argues, this is an important change that suggests ideological motivation on the part of the Ninevite scribe. First, a direct connection is made (whether intentionally or not) between the apkallu and the ummânu, as in the king lists mentioned in Chapter 2. Second, there is only one apkallu/ummânu listed, suggesting that there may indeed have been just one chief scribe attending the king. This is in line with the potential aims of a Neo-Assyrian scholar who sought to use of the “mythology of scribal succession” that had begun to concretize during the Kassite period. There are two important implications here: one that the Neo-Assyrian texts in Assurbanipal’s libraries contained more than just “mindless” copies of other texts; the other that the scribes themselves could alter the texts to reflect current and personal attitudes. The effect would be to remind the king of the scribe’s importance within his own society, specifically within the context of royal advising (Lenzi 2008a: 115‒116); as Pongratz-Leisten (2013: 293) argues, this confidence came from the elite’s appropriation of “certain fields of discourse, symbols of power and prestige [which constitute] themselves as agents in the machinery of empire.” In this vein, it is worth noting that in lines 45‒50, a critical reversal of the warning to the king is made in the direction of the advisor: 45 46 47 48 49 50

um-ma-an u šu-ut rēši(sag) man-za-az pa-an šarri(lugal) a-mat-sun ú-lam-man ṭa-as-sun i-maḫ-ḫar ina qí-bit dé-a šàr apsî(ab.zu) um-ma-an u šu-ut rēši(sag) ina [gi]škakki(giš.tukul) imuttū(úšmeš) a-šar-šú-nu a-na na-me-⸢e⸣ [i]k-ka-am-mar ar-kat₅!-sun šá-a-ru i-tab-bal ep-šet-sun za-⸢qí-qí⸣-iš im-man-ni

(If) the scholar and the eunuch standing before the king denounces them or accepts a bribe, at the command of Ea, king of the Apsû, the advisor and eunuch will die by the sword. Their place will be piled up into ruins. The wind will carry away their legacy, their deeds will be delivered to the winds.

 It is otherwise the same, minus the full transliteration of ummânu.

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Of greatest interest in this passage is the “wind” motif, this time used metaphorically to threaten the legacy of the court scholars if they speak poorly of the king.²⁴¹ This motif, directed against royal scholars, was used in contemporaneous periods to highlight their importance in memorializing a king’s rule (Chapter 2). In the current text, it is the scholar’s reputation that is threatened; in later periods, the “wind” motif will be reversed by those same scribes—and later, another king—to threaten the legacy of a monarch’s reign (epilogue). This reversal emphasizes the crucial role of the scholar, for if a king’s deeds were not recorded in writing, there would simply be no way to recite his accomplishments in the years to come; they would be remembered only in oral form, which is transient and inconsistent. Therefore the king could be threatened by the words of the scholar, but he might also fear the scholar’s silence. Furthermore, the gravity of the “wind” theme, its connection to the scribal art, and the topos of “breach of contract” are tied together at the end of the text, where we read: 51 rik-si-šu-un ú-paṭ-ṭar-ú-ma narî(na4na.rú.a)-šú-nu ⸢ú⸣-šá-an-nu-ú 52 a-na ḫarrāni(kaskal) ú-še-eṣ-ṣu-šú-tì a-na a-de-e i-[ ]-⸢šú⸣-nu-ti 53 Nabû(dag) ṭupšarru(dub.sar) É.sag.íl sa-níq šār(šár) šamê(an) u erṣeti(ki) mu-ma-’i-[ir] gim-ri 54 mu-ad-du-ú šarrūtu(lugal)-tú rik-sat mātīšu(kur.kur)-šú ú-paṭ-ṭar-ma(!) a-⸢ḫi-ta⸣ i-šam (If) one dismantles treaties with them or changes their steles, (if) one sends them on campaign or consigns them to tasks, Nabû, the scribe of Esagil, who controls all of heaven and earth, ruler of everything, who assigns kingship, will break the contracts of his land and will decree misfortune.

The interdependence of the king and scholar is notable, and underlies an acute sense of scribal self-identification in this period. The literary structure of Advice to a Prince—with scribal concerns framing the portion directly referring to Babylonian kingship—is a measure of scholarly control over the text, and by extension, the king. The posture associated with the “wind” motif is carried further with the emphasis on Nippur, Sippar, and Babylon in the main body of Advice to a Prince. Landsberger (1935‒1936: 142) has previously described a Middle Babylonian letter (BM 1912– 5 – 13, 2) that pre-dates the received version of Advice to a Prince by at least 500 years, wherein a scribe cites ancient tablets that threaten any king who abuses these three cities;²⁴² he goes on to argue that the reference to  Examples of the use of the wind metaphor in derogatory contexts are helpfully collected in a recent article by Mayer (2013: 207‒271, esp. 251‒252).  He identifies the text as a quotation or a paraphrase from a piece similar to Advice to a Prince, though this does not indicate an earlier date for its composition, as argued by Biggs

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these cities in Advice to a Prince is meant to evoke their connection to learnedness and the scribal art. The cities were ancient religious centers, whose elite included scholars. They were the heirs of knowledge in the art of exstipicy, revealed by Šamaš and Adad and relayed by Enmeduranki, king of Sippar.²⁴³ On the frontier between Sumer and Akkad, Nippur was the sacred home of the Ekur, temple to Enlil, and long served as the site of royal legitimation in Babylonia.²⁴⁴ Sippar maintained an equally strategic position, at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates, and was the home of the Sun god Šamaš, who, as we have seen, was the divine arbiter of justice. Finally, Babylon, “The Bond of the Lands,” was not only the cosmic center of the Mesopotamian universe, but, as Tablet I of Tintir records, was also the city of kingship (44), which establishes kingship (34) (George 1997a: 126). Thus these three cities were connected to the scribal art and also, specifically, to royal and religious legitimation. Thus the threats leveled against offending kings in Advice to a Prince amounted to “a longstanding tradition of invoking divine protection for the immunities of the temple city elite against the authority of the crown” (Tadmor 1986: 219), while latently connecting the arts of the scribal body with the guarantee—or lack thereof—of rulership. In such a way, the “framing” portions of the text form a coherent message with the body of Advice to a Prince, one of the first true exercises in scribal defiance. Advice to a Prince is an important text in many ways, but its novelty is as an exemplary piece of “warning” literature written approximately in the same period as the collection of texts for Assurbanipal’s library. In it, important issues relating to the scribal craft and the formation of paradigms for ideal kingship are combined into a schema that is readily representative of contemporary Neo-Assyrian thought. This text is perhaps the most enduring of all such texts in both form and function, with vestiges of its influence surviving until the Achaemenid period (see epilogue). But even in the Neo-Assyrian period, references to this Babylonian text were used to evoke contemporary political and social concerns, as can be seen in a letter to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon (K 8681: CT 54, 212, mentioned above, first given by Reiner), discovered at Nineveh:

(2004: 2). The Neo-Assyrian kings actively endorsed the freedom of this triad in their inscriptions as well, especially in the reigns of Sargon II and Esarhaddon. For a useful collection of these instances, see Holloway (2002: 294, table 10).  Lambert (1967: esp.127). See also Lambert (1998b: esp. 141‒142), in which he argues that lines 10‒15 of the Enmeduranki text require that barû priests must originate from families in these three cities.  Gibson, “Nippur-Sacred City of Enlil,” to be accessed online at https://oi.uchicago.edu/re search/projects/nippur-sacred-city-enlil-0.

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Rev. 2 …šarru(lugal) dan-nu le-‘u-ú ù [ki-i-nu at-ta] 3 [Nippuru(en.líl]ki) ki-ma Bābilu(tin.tirki)-ma bēl(en) šarrī(lugalmeš) lid-gul ṭup-pi šu-⸢ú šarru(lugal) ana⸣ di-i-ni la i-q[u-ul] 4 [x x i]q-ta-bi um-ma lu-ú šarru(lugal) lu-ú guennakku(lúgú.en.na) lu-ú lúak-lum lu-ú lú[šápi-ru] 5 [šá il-ku eli(ugu) Sippari(ud.ki]b.nunki) Nippuri(en.lílki) ù Bābili(tin.tirki) iš-šak-kan-úma tup-šik-ku bītāt(émeš) ilāni(dingirmeš) [im-mi-du] 6 [an-n]u-tu ilāni(dingirmeš) rabûti(galmeš) ig-ga-gu-ma ul ir-ru-bu a-na ki-iṣ-ṣi-šú-nu i-néep-pi[š X] 7 [šarru(lugal) be-lí] liš-šá-al ù ṭup-pi liš-šu-nim-ma ina pa-an šarri(lugal) lil!-su-⸢ú⸣ [X] [You are] a strong, capable, and [truthful] king. May the lord of kings show reverence to [Nippu]r in the same way as to Babylon. The tablet, ‘If a king does not h[eed] justice’ [… s]ays: “(If) either a king, a governor, an overseer, or an [administrator], [who] establishes corvée [for Si]ppar, Nippur and Babylon, and [imposes] labor on the houses of the gods, [the]se great gods will become angry and will not enter their shrines.” It will happe[n. May the king, my lord], inquire (about it) and let them bring the tablet and read it in the king’s presence.²⁴⁵

This particular letter was written by Bēl-ušezib, who served in the courts of Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, and was well-known for his interest in Babylonian politics and court intrigue. As an example of Text B par excellence, Advice to a Prince is used by Bēl-ušezib to remind Esarhaddon that Nippur is free from state service (obv. 10 a-na il-ki ul id-de-ek-ku-ú), much as it is in Advice to a Prince. He asks the king to bestow the same restoration privileges on Nippur as have been given to Babylon (after its destruction by Sennacherib). It is likely no accident that the quoted section in lines 2‒7 contains admonishments from the last five lines of Advice to a Prince, which, as I have indicated, was associated with the importance of scribes and scholars at the court. Babylon’s privileged status as it appears in Advice to a Prince sees further allusions in SAA 17: 158, another letter of Babylonian provenance, but also from the Neo-Assyrian period.²⁴⁶ As these contemporary references are in letters from the south to the later Neo-Assyrian kings, it is clear that not only was Advice to a Prince in wide circulation, but the Neo-Assyrian rulers were well aware of its importance in a political context, especially its capacity to provide a framework for how the king should treat Babylonian citizens. The proper approach to Babylon and its main god Marduk was now being couched in a Neo-Assyrian context, in one

 Text edition (with translation only slightly adapted) from SAA 18: 124.  See Dietrich (2003: 141‒142).

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of the first known texts to explicitly warn a king of the consequences of his potential transgressions. With the stage now set, the themes and modes thus introduced, the battle for defining kings—and their limits—would reach new proportions in the Neo-Assyrian period.

Chapter 4 The “Babylonian Problem” and Scribal Dialogues of Counterdiscursiveness In Chapters 2 and 3, we witnessed the emergence of the Kassite, and later, NeoAssyrian scribe. In conjunction with the rise in scribal identity and their increasing power as collectors and keepers of texts in Neo-Assyrian libraries came the beginnings of literary types that could be used to undermine or question the power of the king: in Ludlul, a “theology as politics” approach was tried; in Advice to a Prince, the “warning” theme made an appearance in a different guise. Both pieces were direct responses to the massive shift that began when the Isin II king Nebuchadnezzar I reinstalled the statue of Marduk in Babylon; additionally, both texts were copied frequently and are conspicuous in the manuscript tradition, indicating the importance of this cultural moment. Both The Cuthaean Legend (Chapter 2) and Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3) were remarkably malleable and could be re-cast to comment on the immediate concerns of the Neo-Assyrian period. The “frame” that was bookended onto the original recension of both texts makes clear that in the Neo-Assyrian period, the nature of a king—and the scribe’s place within the realm of the royal court—was of great importance. But these discourses were not always so visible. In this era we have evidence for remarkable textual experimentation, in which discourses on power appear in literature that was clearly not meant for public circulation, but nonetheless mirrored a larger societal problematization of power relationships that had begun to occur after the Kassite literary renaissance. Presented below are the rare counterdiscourses from this significant period, emerging from a scholarly milieu whose social—and also personal—lives were greatly affected by the upheavals of their time. Notably, the texts below elaborate upon the more generalizing themes of the pieces presented in Chapters 2 and 3, with specific kings now the target of critical political discourse. All of these texts are unique in that they survive in only one copy, and adopt several modes of criticism (e. g., outright, constructive, and revisionist). They are representative of a period of counterdiscursiveness in which the scholars, Marduk, and the Assyro-Babylonian conflict are never far from the forefront.

DOI 10.1515/9781501504969-004

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The Sin of Sargon Let us begin with a text termed The Sin of Sargon by Tadmor (1958: 150‒162). Because it is a K text (4730), we are unable to say much about its provenance except to assume that it was discovered at Nineveh. The text, written in the voice of Sennacherib (grandfather of Assurbanipal, r. 705‒681 BC), presents his piety in relation to the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheons. It has a secondary goal of identifying what caused the death of Sennacherib’s father, Sargon II, and ultimately places the onus on an unidentified “sin” committed by the latter. The text was first published in Winckler (1893, II: pl. 25 no. 52). The Sin of Sargon was written at a pivotal moment in the creation of Assyrian imperial identity. After the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I, Marduk’s name began to appear in official Assyrian inscriptions as the national deity of Babylonia (Sommerfeld 1982: 193‒195), and the cult of Marduk was most certainly present in Assyria by the fourteenth century BC (Frame 1999: 13‒14). But the favor (or at the very least, ambiguity) with which the Assyrians dealt with the Babylonians and their national god was completely overturned in the reign of Sennacherib, who by all accounts brutally destroyed the city of Babylon in 689 BC. This king had had more difficulty than his predecessors in accommodating the “Babylonian problem,” and tried various strategies before (reportedly) laying waste to the city (Brinkman 1973: 90‒93).²⁴⁷ The destruction is most famously recorded in the so-called Bavian Inscription, which is related to fourteen rock reliefs on a western cliff at Bavian in modern-day Kurdistan. Though initially the main focus of the inscription is Sennacherib’s construction of hydraulic systems (Ur 2003: 317‒ 345), it quickly moves into a description of the devastation of Babylon: On my second campaign, I marched quickly to Babylon, which I planned to conquer, and (then) I blew like [the onset] of a storm and enveloped it like a (dense) fog. I besieged the city; then, by means of sapping and ladders, I [captured (it)] (and) plundered [the city]. Its people, young and old, I did not spare, and I filled the city squares with their corpses. I carried off alive to my land Šūzubu (Mušēzib-Marduk), the king of Babylon, together with his family (and) his […]s…I destroyed, devastated, (and) burned with fire the city, and (its) buildings, from its foundations to its crenellations. I removed the brick(s) and earth, as much as there was, from the (inner) wall and outer wall, the temples, (and) the ziggurat, (and) I threw (it) into the Araḫtu river. I dug canals into the center of that city and (thus) leveled their site with water. I destroyed the outline of its foundations and

 These included ruling over Babylon himself, installing a Babylonian official loyal to Assyria as ruler, and launching a two-year protracted offensive. Sennacherib was the first king of the Sargonid period to refrain from adopting the title “king of Babylon”; none of his successors referred to him as such in their inscriptions, either. See Frame (1992: 54).

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(thereby) made its destruction surpass that of the Deluge. So that in the future, the site of that city and (its) temples will be unrecognizable, I dissolved it (Babylon) in water and annihilated (it), (making it) like a meadow.²⁴⁸

Van De Mieroop (2003: 3) emphasizes the unique literary character of this passage, whose detail is exceptional in Assyrian royal annals, likening it to a “revenge tragedy” that would be played out over the course of several generations.²⁴⁹ Babylon was given “special” literary treatment here due to its longstanding influence on Assyrian culture, religion, and politics: it was not like any other city subjugated under the Assyrian empire (van de Mieroop 2003: 7). Also of note is the iconography of the reliefs to which the inscription is connected; they depict the king gesturing in front of human-shaped deities, instead of divine symbols, which were more common, even in the reign of Sennacherib himself. Ornan (2007: 163‒165, 171‒172) argues that this artistic choice was meant to elevate the king by evoking both human and divine symbols and their relationship to the royal person. In this reading, the king and the god exhibit similar characteristics; Sennacherib’s unusual command over water—especially in the destruction of Babylon—is reminiscent of divine powers of a similar type, most vividly evoked in the attempted elimination of mankind through flooding in the Atraḫasis epic. The destruction via water is the negative mirror image of typical perquisites of Assyrian kings, who are expected to construct and supply cities with aquatic resources—as Sennacherib in fact does in the same inscription.²⁵⁰ But the king is not alone in wreaking destruction; in the inscription he shifts some of the responsibility, especially as it relates to religious matters (e. g., “The gods dwelling therein,–the hands of my people took them, and they smashed them”). This change of agency evokes the king’s ambiguity towards Babylon and its gods, even during his own reign.²⁵¹

 Translation from RINAP 3/2: Sennacherib 223. The Akkadian text may also be found there.  On 6‒7, he argues that whether or not these events actually occurred is immaterial; it was the creation of the account—and the reactions it triggered—that is of most interest, especially when dealing with Assyrian royal ideology.  For a textual analysis of the inscription, see Galter (1984: 161‒173); see also van de Mieroop (2004: 1‒2).  Sennacherib had not always had a penchant for the mistreatment of Babylon; early in his reign he restored a processional road in the city, and even referred to Marduk (the main Babylonian god) as a patron deity of his kingship. See Frahm (1997: 283‒284). Between 699 and 694 BC, Sennacherib’s son Assur-nādin-šumi was the Assyrian king of Babylon, at his father’s appointment. Sennacherib’s naval attack on the Elamites in 694 led to a retaliatory attack on Babylon, resulting in the seizure (and probably death) of his son by the Elamites. Machinist (1984‒ 1985: 355) juxtaposes The Bavian Inscription with Sennacherib’s claims that he brought the stat-

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Most importantly, the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib is placed in exact negative mirror image to his construction of the new Assyrian capital at Nineveh, as shown by the king’s building accounts for the latter city; many other actions described in the inscription (such as the looting of the temple treasury) can be viewed as acts of revenge for previous Babylonian slights against Assyria or Assyrian domination. However, this “eye for an eye” mentality, wherein the punishment was equal to the crime, necessitated that both parties be considered of equal status (Van de Mieroop 2003: 7‒15). It is in this context that we can now look to our text, The Sin of Sargon. As previously mentioned, The Sin of Sargon presents a pious Sennacherib, concerned about the reason for his father’s ill fate. The king calls together several groups of haruspices, who presumably will offer independent interpretations of Sargon’s cause of death: Obv 10 um-ma ḫi-ṭu šá Šarru-kīn(mlugal-gin) abī(ad)-ia ina bi-r[i lu-ub-re-e-ma ar-ka-ta] 11 lu-up-ru-sa-am-ma a-na-ku lu-u[l-mad X X X X X X X X X] 12 ḫi-ṭu a-na ili(dingir) iḫ-ṭu-u a-na ik-k[i-bi-ia lu-uš-kun-ma…] Thus [let me perform divination] regarding the sin of Sargon, my father, (so that) I can determine […] and le[arn…..]; the sin he committed against the god I will then establish as forbid[den to myself…²⁵²

Sennacherib inquires of the experts: Obv 17 um-ma a-na muḫḫi(ugu) šá ilāni(dingirmeš) š[á māt(kur) Aš-šurki ma-a’-diš ú-kab-bi-tuma] 18 a-na muḫḫi(ugu) ilāni(dingirmeš) šá māt(kur) Urim(uriK[I) iš-ku-nu X X X X X a-na muḫḫi(ugu)] 19 šá a-de-e šar(lugal) ilāni(dingirmeš) u l[a iṣ-ṣu-ru Šarru-kīn(mlugal-gin) abūya(ad)-u-a ina māt(kur) na-ki-ri] 20 de-ke-e-ma ina bītīšu(é)-šú la q[é-be-e-re X X X X X X X X X]

ue of Marduk out from the Babylonian temple and rebuilt the bīt akītī in Assur in a Babylonian fashion. For this, see Landsberger (1965: 25‒26).  All text editions for The Sin of Sargon from Tadmor et al. (1989: 10‒17). The aforementioned article was written in separate parts by different authors. Therefore, when necessary, I will refer to the author responsible for the portion being referenced (bibliographical information, however, will be found under Tadmor’s name). This text is supplemented by the edition of SAA 3: 33.

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Was it because with respect to the gods o[f Assyria, he honored them too much, placing them] above the gods of Babylonia [….., or because with respect to] the treaty of the king of the gods [….], [it was not kept by Sargon my father], who was killed [in the enemy country and] was not b[uried] in his house?

To his question he receives a positive answer. After repeated attempts at extispicy, he is told that order will return when the cultic ordinances of Assyria and Babylonia are restored. Obv (broken, but given in rev. 13‒14) 25 [ki-i šá a-na-ku ṣa-la]m Assur(an.šár) bēli(en) rabî(gal)-i u ṣa-lam ⸢d⸣[Marduk(amar.utu) bēl(en) rabî(gal)-i] 26 a-n[a] e-pe-ši-ia parṣī(⸢garza!⸣meš) u simāt(me.temeš) šá māt(kur)-aš-šurki ⸢u!⸣ [māt(kur) Urim(uriki)] 27 a-na šu-te-šu-ri-ia…. [Just as I], when I set to making [the statu]e of Assur, the great lord, and the statue of [Marduk, the great lord], and to correcting the rites and proper customs of Assyria and [Babylonia]…

The reverse of the tablet is addressed to an unknown listener, who Tadmor et al. (1989: 9) argue could be no one but the king’s own son (Esarhaddon). Procedures for divination in the creation of the statues are laid out in the text. We are told that the king set to making the mandated statues of Assur and Marduk (rev. 13‒ 14), but upon the completion of the statue of Assur, he was prevented from creating the planned statue of Marduk by none other than the Assyrian scribes: Rev 21 a-na-ku ul-tu ṣa-lam Assur(an.šár) bēlī(en)-ia i-pu-šu dul!-l[u šá ṣa-lam Marduk (damar.utu)] 22 (ṭupšarrī(lúdub.sarmeš) aš-šur-a-a up-tar-ri-ku-in-ni-ma ṣ[a!-lam Marduk(damar.utu) bēli (en) rabî(gal)-i] 23 a-na e-pe-ši ul id-di-nu-in-ni-ma ba-l[a?-ṭi ú-qat-tu-ú X X X X X] As for me, after he made the statue of Assur my lord, Assyrian scribes thwarted me from wor[king on the statue of Marduk]. They did not allow me to make [the statue of Marduk, the great lord], and (thus) [brought an end to my li]fe.

The text ends with a prayer for his son that the gods of Babylonia and Assyria be reconciled, a task which had failed to materialize in the reigns of any of his predecessors.

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Rev 24 nik-lat libbī(šà)-bi-ia šá ul-tu pa-na-a-ma ina šarrī(lug[al!meš) a-li-kut maḫ-ri-ia] 25 a-a-am-ma la i-pu-šu ka-a-ta ú-še-⸢di⸣-[ka X X X X X X X X X] 26 šu-ut ú-šáḫ-ki-mu-ka ina qātīka(šuii)-ka ⸢ṣa⸣-[bat-ma ilāni(dingirmeš) māt(kur) Urim (uriki)] 27 it-ti ilānīka(dingirmeš)-ka sul-lim (However), of the craftiness in my heart, which from time immemorial, among the k[ings who came before me], none had accomplished, I have made you aware; […..]. Let this be comprehensible to you. Take hold of [the gods of Babylonia] and make peace (among them) with your gods!

This very difficult text leaves one with more questions than answers. What was the sin of Sargon? Who authored this text (put another way, who was the beneficiary of the production of this text)? What should one make of the sensational claim against Assyrian scribes on the reverse of the tablet?

Authorship and Intention in The Sin of Sargon As is the case with any literary piece, the author and a work’s intended purpose are in close relationship with one another. In the case of The Sin of Sargon, neither is clear, though several suggestions have been made. Weaver confidently places the text at the end of the reign of Esarhaddon, son of Sennacherib,²⁵³ who sought to reverse his father’s apparently anti-Babylonian policies.²⁵⁴ In his Babylon inscriptions, Esarhaddon portrays the destruction of Babylon as a result of divine abandonment, “interpreting history as the product of divine desires and decisions,” which essentially served as a literary acquittal of his father.²⁵⁵ The text, then, could serve as a tool for reviving Sennacherib’s image,

 Frame (1992: 71) presents a similar chronology. For the accession of Esarhaddon, see Šašková (2010: 147‒177).  Esarhaddon’s Babylonian inscriptions depict him as a “proper” Babylonian king, restoring and constructing several temples in Babylonia, while similar simultaneous projects in Assyria presented a typically Assyrian royal image. See Porter (1996: 164‒174) and Frame (1992: 68‒ 69). In Babylonia, Esarhaddon adopted titles and epithets in his inscriptions that emphasized his focus on his kingship in Babylonia and the Babylonian pantheon, while also acknowledging his kingship of Assyria; as Porter argues, these titles are meant for an Assyro-Babylonian audience rather than a more divided Assyrian and Babylonian audience, as we might expect. See van de Mieroop (1999: 50‒52) and Porter (1993: 122‒123).  See especially the inscription in Borger (1956: 14‒15, Bab. A Episodes 7‒9) and Weaver (2004: 62‒63). See also the interesting argument of Talon (2005: 109‒110), who claims that

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who—necessarily—could not have succeeded in destroying Babylon if it were not the will of the gods. Rather than a brutal conqueror, he is instead a pious follower of divine determination.²⁵⁶ In this reading, the “sin” was not Sargon’s (who was not known to have mistreated Babylon in any way), but Sennacherib’s, and the pursuit of atonement and reconciliation was of foremost importance. Tadmor presents a different suggestion. First he notes that it is unclear whether the text was meant to be addressed (especially in the reverse) to Sennacherib’s son Assur-nādin-šumi, who ruled in Babylon from 700‒694 BC, or alternatively (as most take for granted), to Esarhaddon. Though he remains noncommittal, Tadmor appears to favor the opinion that the text was written in an Assyrian milieu, likely at the end of the reign of Sennacherib or the beginning of the reign of Esarhaddon. Here, the potentially unpopular pro-Babylonian stance of Esarhaddon would have served as a spur to the production of the text,²⁵⁷ which would function as a warning to that king to avoid committing the same “sin” as Sargon, who had a similar political policy (Tadmor in Tadmor et al. 1989: 32). Because the text is unfortunately broken in the portions where the true ḫīṭu (“sin”) of Sargon might be revealed, modern scholars are left to conjecture about its nature. The initial instinct of von Soden (1954: 103‒105), upheld in his later scholarship, was that the construction of Dūr-Šarrukin (Khorasabad)—a new capital built entirely in the reign of Sargon to replace the old Assyrian capital of Kalḫu—was the unspecified crime. He cites the immediate abandonment and transfer of the capital to Nineveh upon Sargon’s death as proof for his theory. Though Weaver (2004: 63) hesitates to fill the lacunae provided by Parpola in

the phrase šiṭir burūmê (“celestial writings”), used as the representation of his own name in the Babylon inscriptions, is a turn on the destruction and re-creation of the lumāšu star by Marduk in Enūma Eliš. In taking this representation for himself, Esarhaddon makes himself the tool that Marduk uses for recreating Babylon, “as his father was the god’s tool of destruction.” On these lumāšu stars, see Roaf and Zgoll (2001: 264‒295), and Finkel and Reade (1996: 244‒268).  See also Tadmor (1989: 31). For a further study of this “revisionist history” sponsored by Esarhaddon, noting especially the divine role in both the “destruction” and “reconstruction” of Babylon and the role of the scribes in reflecting the interests of their patron, see Brinkman (1983: 35‒42) and Oded (1991: 223‒230), the latter of whom argues that it was a basic Mesopotamian theological view that the gods had absolute authority to declare war, with the Assyrian king as their weapon of destruction (kašūš ilāni). Thus we have an ideal of the combatant Assyrian king, but one who is religiously motivated.  See Frame (1992: 70‒72) for a discussion of Esarhaddon as a pro-Babylonian ruler. He suggests that if such was the case, Sennacherib would not have chosen Esarhaddon as his heir. Contrary to the expressed argument of this book, he imagines that the existence of Assyrian factions in disagreement over the treatment of Babylon is overstated and lacking in evidence.

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obv. 17‒20, she nonetheless finds that the “sin” dealt in some way with Sargon’s treatment of the gods of Assyria with relationship to those of Babylonia.²⁵⁸ According to Landsberger (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 33), an “anatomical dissection” of the text reads thus: My father (Sargon) was punished for a neglect of Assur, I (Sennacherib) have been punished for a neglect of Marduk.

Thus the “sin” of Sargon was the failure to venerate Babylonian gods alongside those of Assyria; Sennacherib’s “sin,” in this reading, was in failing to complete the promised statue of Marduk, which maintained the inequality of the two pantheons. The creation of statues of the gods of both empires would, theoretically, have nullified the “sin.”²⁵⁹ Parpola (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 45) argues, then, that the text was produced by Esarhaddon to create an appearance of Assyro-Babylonian “cosmetic consistency,” serving as counterpropaganda to Sennacherib’s harsh attitudes towards Babylon.²⁶⁰ Further, the Sennacherib reenvisioned in this text, argues Weaver (2004: 64‒65), is really a self-representation of Esarhaddon, who was interested in religious tolerance and reversing the wrongs of his predecessor (here, his father). The text may be relatively contemporaneous with early inscriptions of Esarhaddon, which detail similar divinatory processes for fashioning a new statue of Marduk.²⁶¹ The thematic treatments of Weaver and

 She argues that the context does not give enough information as to whether or not the mistreatment was directed toward the gods of Assyria, or Babylonia, or both. I would argue that the general tone of the text indicates a neglect of the Babylonian gods.  Sargon and Sennacherib are not easily differentiated, especially in their ultimate fate; Sennacherib also suffered an untimely death. For the conspiracy against Sennacherib and his assassination, see Zawadzki (1990: 69‒72) and Parpola (1980: 171‒182). For the reception of the death of Sennacherib in Israelite Judah and Babylon, see Cogan (2009: 164‒174). The Sin of Sargon is paradigmatic of the problems associated with the death of kings, especially of the unexpected or unceremonious type. Here the comments of Hallo (1991: 163) are especially helpful: “The death of kings is a fact of life, but a problem for ideology. If kingship in general is divinely sanctioned, and a particular king follows the divine behest, then he should die at a ripe old age and enjoy burial with his royal ancestors. But to the extent that kingship is an affront to the theocratic order, or if a particular king transgresses the divine norms, or even presumes to rival the gods, then he should meet an early or untoward end, and his departed spirit should know neither rest nor reverence.”  Holloway (2002: 369‒371) agrees, arguing that Esarhaddon’s resurrection of Babylon was a way to establish Assyrian imperialism through divine mandate.  See the inscription in Borger (1956: 82‒83, AsBbA rev. 20‒26). Parpola even suggests that The Sin of Sargon was written as a justification for those procedures laid out in the inscription group. See Parpola in Tadmor et al. (1989: 47).

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Parpola place The Sin of Sargon within the difficult Neo-Assyrian inner-imperial dialogue that sought an answer to the “Babylonian problem.” It is in this vein that Landsberger (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 33‒44) begins to draw previous arguments of authorship into the realm of doubt. He treats the text with great skepticism, questioning vehemently that it is the production of a self-confessing Sennacherib late in his reign, meant for consumption by his son Esarhaddon. He draws on the apparent impossibility that Sennacherib, who spent a lifetime desecrating Babylonian statues and thoughtlessly deposing Marduk from his throne as ruler of the world, would confess to such a minor crime as failing to complete a statue of that god. He interprets the text as a “post-mortem fake” produced by the scribes of Esarhaddon, a pseudo-narû text loosely based on the style of The Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin (see Chapter 2).²⁶² Importantly, Landsberger also notes that, as narû literature, The Sin of Sargon qualifies as “propaganda,” given that the text 1) serves the cult of personality of the king and/or 2) the text propagates certain political ideas or tendencies. But whose political ideas did the text mean to propagate, exactly? This issue can be clarified by examining another text, about the same king, from a different perspective.

The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown-Prince Scholarly disagreements have also been prompted by our next text, The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince. The text exists in only a single copy from a library in a private house in Assur (VAT 10057), written by a scribe (likely a specialist priest) who claims to report the exact words of an Assyrian crown prince (Foster 2005: 832). In this library were discovered texts mostly of a literary nature, though there do exist omen texts, incantations, and lexical lists (Pedersén 1985: 81‒82, N6). Sanders (2009: 156) has commented on the unique nature of this piece and its departure from known genres; fifty years earlier, von Soden (1936: 2) saw the text as a prophetic piece, though he conceded that it does exhibit some qualities from the epic type. Most importantly, Alster (2008: 51) categorizes this particular text as one “critical towards the palace,” indicating the possibility for scribal independence.

 Originally the suggestion of Tadmor, Landsberger is skeptical of the direct thematic relationships, though Parpola returns to the discussion to argue that the two texts are indeed stylistically similar. See Landsberger in Tadmor et al. (1989: 37‒39) and Parpola in Tadmor et al. (1989: 46).

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The text begins with an introduction of about fifteen lines, which enumerates the deeds of a previous king. This king encounters some sort of misfortune that causes him great distress.²⁶³ In line 27 we are introduced to a certain Kumaya, who dreams about asking questions to Ereškigal, queen of the Netherworld, perhaps to find out when he will die. This, as Foster (2005: 832) suggests, may indicate some uncertainty about the succession. In a second dream, he is almost eliminated by Nergal, king of the Netherworld, until the god Išum intercedes, and then prophecies difficulties and rebellion for the former’s kingship (rev. 60‒61). Following this unfavorable portent, Nergal elaborates on his threat, by citing the piety and sins of the visionary’s predecessors. First we are introduced to the “ideal king,” indeed with the same ideology as is present in the Assyrian coronation ritual (ii 30‒36) (Müller 937: 13): Rev 22 šalamtu([lú.úš]) an-nu-ú šá ina erṣetim(ki)-tim ta-am-ru ša re’-e-e šit-ra-ḫi ša abī(ad)-ia Assur(⸢an⸣.šár) šar(lugal) ilāni(dingirmeš) ú-šam-ṣu-u ma-la lib-bu-š[ú?] 23 [šarru(lugal) š]á ul-tu a-ṣe-e dšam-ši a-di e-reb šamši(dutu)-ši ma-ta-a-ti nap-ḫar-ši-na ki-ma qé!-e! uš-tab-ru-ú-ma i-b[e]-lu gi-im-r[u]²⁶⁴ 24 [šarru(lugal) š]á? Assur(an.šár) i-na pa-an sa-an-gu-ti-šú e-peš a-ki-it ṣēri(edin) el-le-ti ša kirî(gišsar) nuḫši(ḫé.nun) tam-šil kurLab-na-na x[x]xxx gap?-ša? ṣa?-lim ṣa-na du-ur da-r[i] 25 [i-ši]-mu-šú-ma dIa-ab-ru ⸢d⸣Ḫum-ba dNap-ru-šú zu-mur-šú na-aṣ-ru ú-šal-la-mu zēršu (numun)-šú um-man-šú karassu(ki.kal)-šú ú-še-za-bu [i-n]a tam-ḫa-ri lúnar?-ka?-ba-ti la iq-ru-ba?-á[š?-š]ú? This [corpse] which (lies) buried in the underworld, is that of the proud shepherd who revealed what was in the heart of my father [Assur], the king of the gods; [the king wh]o from east to west made all the lands come to be considered as a cord?, who ruled everything; [The king for wh]om Assur, at the beginning of his priesthood, [dec]reed the building of Akitu House of the holy plain, which is a garden of abundance, the likeness of Mount Lebanon,…? for ever and ever; whose body Yabru, Humba, and Naprušu protect, whose progeny they keep healthy, and whose army and camp they rescued, so that no charioteer could come near him in battle.²⁶⁵

 The fragmentary nature of the text in this portion makes citation futile.  The translation of the noun qû in this sentence is uncertain. Importantly, an almost identical phrase is given in the CAD (qû A 3’), this time appearing in the so-called Letter of Gilgamesh, discussed in Chapter 5 as another rare text that takes liberties in critiquing Neo-Assyrian kingship. The affinities provide confirmation for the identification of this text as a similarly counterdiscursive piece.  For this text I utilize the edition of SAA 3: 32.

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Kvanvig recognizes this king as Sennacherib. The description of this king focuses on the bestowal of kingship by the gods, the sacerdotal nature of kingship, the wide expanse of the ruler’s empire, and protection by the gods. His shepherding of the people is emphasized, and his command over the New Year’s festival is reminiscent of the priestly responsibilities displayed by Sennacherib, who was known during his reign to have restored the akītu houses at Nineveh (Ahmad and Grayson 1999: 187‒189) and at Assur (Pongratz-Leisten 1994: 207‒209). Here the issue at hand is still Marduk. Sennacherib is known to have exalted the supremacy of the god Assur over the Babylonian Marduk (Kvanvig 1988: 433‒434); furthermore, the Ubshu-ukinna in the Esagil at Babylon, which contained the throne-dais of Destinies and was integral to the confirmation of Marduk’s supremacy, appears to have informed Sennacherib’s work on the temple of the Assyrian god Assur (George 1999: 72‒79). The next king described in the text is a striking antithesis:²⁶⁶ Rev 26 [ù? šu]-ú za-r[u]-ú-ka š[i?-e]-ḫu mu-de-e a-ma-ti ra-pa-áš uz-ni pal-ku-u ka-ra-áš ta-šim-ti ša uṣurāti(giš.ḫurmeš) šá mar-k[as] qaq-qa-ri ḫi-i-[ṭu] 27 [š]a?-a ina(aš) qa-[bé‐]e-šú ip-ḫ-ú ḫa-si-sa-šú a-sak-ku i-ku-la an-zil-la ú-kab-bi-sa ḫa-antiš me-lam-me šarrūtīšu(lugal)-ti-šú gal-tu-ti e-saḫ-ḫap-ku-nu a-di šá-a-[ri] [And that king], he is your father, the lofty one, knowledgeable in matters, wide of understanding, comprehensive in his mind in the discernment (both) of divine ordinances (and) of the bonds of the earth. The sin (of the one) who closed his ear to speech, enjoyed the taboo, infringed on the forbidden. The splendor of his great kingship will overwhelm you, until (you are but) wind!

The ruler here is warned not to participate in the devious religious behavior of his father (i. e., Esarhaddon, who had attempted to appease the Babylonians

 This portion presents some difficulties; neither SAA 3: 32 nor Foster (2005: 715‒722) distinguishes—as Kvanvig does—between the referent in rev. 22‒25 and that in rev. 26‒27, thus assuming that the king mentioned is Esarhaddon throughout all of these lines. Kvanvig (1988: 398) recognizes a different subject, following von Soden’s reconstructed [ù šu]?-ú at the beginning of rev. 26. This construction is paralleled in rev. 33, which also begins with a legible ù šu-ú and introduces a new person (the scribe of the text). Similarly, while Livingstone finds the referent of ša that begins rev. 27 to be generalizing, I consider it to be a qualifier of the subject of the previous sentence. In his translation he has given ḫītu as a stative form of the verb ḫiātu, in a relative clause. But nowhere else in the text is a relative ša used that way (only with finite verbs); further, in the glossary he gives the reference to ḫītu in this line as the noun form. Thus my translation, while generally following Livingstone, will reflect my understanding of the grammar of the sentences involved.

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after their mistreatment by Sennacherib) (Kvanvig 1988: 434). He is described as having committed a sin (ḫi-i-[ṭu]) as well as a forbidden act (ú-kab-bi-sa).²⁶⁷ Also notable here is the reference to “wind.” In this instance, however, the “threat” of deeds being thrown to the wind is no longer directed at the scholarly circle (as, for instance, in Advice to a Prince), but this time at the king himself, presumably if he is to repeat the “sin” of his father. At the end of the text, upon waking from this dream, the crown prince announces his revelations to the public, praising Nergal and Ereškigal. Kvanvig’s ascription of the visionary to Assurbanipal is generally accepted in modern scholarship, which sees the evil deeds (ḫiṭu) of the dreamer’s father referenced in the text as allusions to Esarhaddon’s choice of Šamaš-šum-ukīn, Assurbanipal’s brother, as his successor. Indeed, Sanders (2009: 164) has argued that The Netherworld Vision was written during the reign of Assurbanipal, and is meant to be reminiscent of the political unrest caused by the removal of his brother to Babylon.²⁶⁸ Kvanvig (1988: 425‒427) argues that the scribe of The Netherworld Vision “modelled” the description of the “sinning” king (Esarhaddon) after the tradition about the sages. In line 9 of The Etiological Myth of the Seven Sages, the apkallus are said to muš-te-ši-ru ú-ṣu-rat šamê(an)-e ù erṣetim (ki)-tim “ensure the correct functioning of the plans of heaven and earth”; in line 31 they are described as having been endowed by Ea with “wide understanding” ([u]z-na ra-pa-áš-ta). Given that Esarhaddon is presented in a negative light in The Netherworld Vision, this comparison is surprising. Such an attribution, in turn, indicts the visionary, who, according to Kvanvig’s schema, is Assurbanipal, and the veiled attack on his father may in fact be a commentary on Assurbanipal’s own claims in L₄.²⁶⁹ As further testimony to the correlation between Assurbanipal and Kumaya, Foster (2005: 833) notes that the crown prince’s visit to the

 For further discussion of the “sin” motif in this text, see below with reference to The Sin of Sargon.  Contra von Soden (1936: 3), who argues that it was written while Assurbanipal was crown prince.  Such claims were indeed fodder for oppositional attacks, as is evidenced by a similar scribal complaint against a bombastically literate Nabonidus in The Persian Verse Account (epilogue). Ataç (2010: 167) argues that the topoi present in this text should be read “as self-referential on the part of the philosophical poets who composed them; the latter as in fact describing their own development as spiritual adepts, just as when Assurbanipal declares that he can read very difficult texts of antediluvian origin, it is again as if the scribes made this declaration from the mouth of the king.”

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Netherworld serves to raise him—like Gilgamesh—into the company of those who harbor special knowledge, “matters before the flood and after death.”²⁷⁰ Foster suggests that this strange piece should be read in tandem with another text, Assurbanipal’s Hymn to Assur (SAA 3: 1). This text implicates the elevation of Assur (called an.šár, the father of Anu in Enūma Eliš) to precedence over the Babylonian god Marduk, who is proclaimed sovereign over all of the gods. In doing so, Assurbanipal’s kingship of Assyria can be seen as superior to the Babylonian kingship of his brother Šamaš-šum-ukīn. This hymn, then, had a particular political aim, specifically associated with defining the dominance of the Assyrian kingship of Assurbanipal (Foster 2007a: 83‒84). In that vein, it is not unlike Assurbanipal’s Coronation Hymn (SAA 3: 11). One important passage reads: Rev (SAA 3: 11) 9 šá it-ti šarri(lugal) i-da-bu-bu su-le-e u sur-ra-a-ti 10 šum-ma kab-tu ina kakki(gištukul) idâk(gaz) šum-ma šarû(lúníg.tuk) ilapp[i]n(lál.du)[i]n 11 šá a-na šarri(lugal) ina libbīšu(šà)-bi-šú i-kap-pu-du lemutta(mí.ḫul) 12 Erra(dìr.ra) ina šib-ṭi šag-gaš-ti ú-qa-’a-a qaqqassu(sag)-su 13 ša a-na šarri(lugal) ina libbīšu(šà)-bi-šú i-ta-mu-ú nu-ul-la-a-ti 14 i-šid-su me-hu-ú si-si[k-t]a-šú ḫa-a-m[u?]²⁷¹ 15 pu-uḫ-ra-ma ilāni(dingirmeš) šá šamê(an)-e u erṣetim(ki)-tim ka-li-šú-un 16 kur-ba-ma Assur-ban-apli(massur.dù.a) šarru(lugal) ma-li-ku a-me-lu 17 ka-ak qabli(murub₄) u tāḫāzi(mè) mul-la-a qa-tuš-šú 18 in-na-niš-šu-ma nišī(unmeš) ṣal-mat qaqqadi(sag.du) le-pu-šá re-’u-ú-sin He who speaks with the king in deception and lies—if he is an important person, he will die by the sword; if he is a rich man, he will become poor. Whoever in his heart schemes evil against the king—Erra will call him to account with plague and murder. He who in his heart utters slander against the king—his foundation is (but) wind, the hem of his garment is

 Ataç (2004: 70‒71) takes a similar line, arguing that the text is meant to be a self-referential game, in bringing to the forefront those who know the secrets of the underworld—the scribes. Foster (2005: 832‒833) even speculates that given what we know about the author of this text (he says that the author was a highly regarded scribe at the Assyrian court who, together with his son, fell into disfavor under Assurbanipal, causing him to be dismissed but later reinstated), we may be dealing with a composition by Arad-Gula (for which, see Chapter 5).  Mayer (1987: 66) reads si-kil-ta-šú ⸢šá⸣-a-⸢ru⸣: “his acquisition is wind.” The reading of the last two words is uncertain. See Livingstone (1989: no 11 r.13 ff.). Upon examining the copy of Weidner (1939‒1941b: Tafel XIII), I cannot read the sign in the first word as ‐kil. Though admittedly I am not entirely convinced of it as a -sik- either, I have no better solution. It is clear to me, however, that the first two signs of the final word should read ḫa-a-x, with my preference being for a ag/k/q or a mè as the third sign. The latter would yield the most sense as a form of ḫāmū, “valueless property,” but itself is not without grammatical problems.

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(but) litter. Gather, all the gods of heaven and earth, bless king Assurbanipal, the advisor man! Entrust to him the weapon of war and battle, give him the black-headed people, so that he may perform his function as their shepherd!

In addition to the use of the wind theme to warn potential slanderers of the king, here are applied to Assurbanipal all of the perquisites of kingship attributed to Sennacherib in The Netherworld Vision—his shepherdship, military prowess, and favor of the gods. In The Netherworld Vision, Assurbanipal is the object of criticism, while to Sennacherib are ascribed all of the qualities applied to Assurbanipal in The Coronation Hymn. Assuming that The Coronation Hymn was written first (upon Assurbanipal’s accession to the throne), the attribution of these qualities for proper Assyrian kingship is now reversed: the same terminology used initially to praise Assurbanipal (Text A) is now used in The Netherworld Vision (Text B) to exalt his grandfather Sennacherib, while Assurbanipal is no longer portrayed in positive terms. This reversal indicates that The Netherworld Vision can be seen as a type of “protreptic” work, wherein constructive criticism is presented as a reversal of praise, providing suggestions for improvement, and as a sort of “reminder” of the most important tenets of Assyrian kingship. Reade connects the two texts (The Netherworld Vision and The Coronation Hymn) due to the fact that they are both examples of Assyrian scholars projecting their own spiritual sagas to royal characters, “serving, on the one hand, exoteric royal ideology with all its historical and political concerns, and, on the other, their own purposes of preserving an internal dialogue regarding the mysteries” (Ataç 2010: 194). This type of dialogue assumes that there was some perceived need to rectify problems during the reign of Assurbanipal, and provides evidence that within the Assyrian scribal (textual) circle, discourses on—and disagreements about— kings happened during their own lifetimes, right under their noses.²⁷²

Political Critique in Context Due to its affinities to other clearly Assyrian texts (and contexts), it is safe to attribute Assyrian authorship to The Netherworld Vision. With the Assyrian “view” of Sennacherib expressed as such in The Netherworld Vision, it is now appropriate to return to an equally unparalleled text that adheres to the same principles: The Sin of Sargon. Both texts, posing as narrative reports from the king and each

 See especially below on dialogues among the Assyro-Babylonian scribal circles. Foster (2007: 98) also recognizes the unusual nature of this piece, citing the rarity of overt literary criticism of the reigning sovereign.

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in only one copy, give every indication that they were created for the purpose of expressing the respective scribal qualms about Neo-Assyrian kings (though namely here, Sennacherib). Traditionally, scholars have taken for granted an Assyrian origin for The Sin of Sargon. Yet given the suggestions of Tadmor and Landsberger, and the study of The Netherworld Vision (above), Babylonian—or at least, pro-Babylonian—authorship becomes more probable. First, The Sin of Sargon is relatively inconsistent with Assyrian apologetic literature regarding the destruction of Babylon. Esarhaddon’s own explanation for his father’s misdeeds, as mentioned above —especially as seen in his inscriptions at Babylon—is not so much concerned with creating equality between the gods Assur and Marduk. Rather, he seeks to blame the destruction of Babylon on an impious Babylonian population and an angry Marduk, who had to be appeased to ensure that normalcy would return. Whereas The Netherworld Vision uses terminology associated more with the protreptic resonances of Assyrian pieces such as The Coronation Hymn, The Sin of Sargon performs the same function—even with a shared lexicon of counterdiscursiveness. But this work takes into account specific Babylonian concerns, wherein the reimagined Sargon (Sennacherib) has broken an oath to the gods that eventually incites enmity between the Assyrian and Babylonian pantheons.²⁷³ In light of this broken oath, a discussion of the adê treaty is important. Fales (2012: 134 and passim) has recently argued that such treaties were common especially in the reign of Esarhaddon, when they became specifically associated with loyalty to newly crowned Assyrian kings who had succeeded to the throne in difficult political circumstances.²⁷⁴ If The Sin of Sargon was written late in the reign of Esarhaddon, as has been suggested by many, I would argue that we view it as a direct mirror to The Netherworld Vision, which served as a legitimation of Sennacherib (and by that means a de-legitimation of Assurbanipal, who faced an Assyro-Babylonian conflict with his brother, and may not have enjoyed unanimous support in Assyria, as insurrections recorded in 651 BC indicate).²⁷⁵ In view of this, The Sin of Sargon can be viewed as a de-legitimation

 See Parpola in Tadmor et al. (1989: 48‒49) for the argument that the treaty mentioned was between Sargon and Merodach-Baladan. Even though Sargon was likely incited to break the treaty by making war against Merodach-Baladan, who was a Chaldean king disliked by the clergy of Marduk in Babylon, nonetheless breaking a treaty sworn by all of the gods broke the “divine harmony” that had previously existed.  Also on this fairly recent find see Ponchia (2014: 501‒525). On the adê treaty in the Neo-Assyrian period in general, see Baker and Groß (2015: 78‒79).  It was under these very circumstances that Esarhaddon had been moved to reinforce his succession decisions via the establishment of an adê treaty of loyalty to Assurbanipal. See

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of Sennacherib, from a pro-Babylonian (though still likely Assyrian) source. This text also utilizes the same terminology of royal fealty that was coming into practice during the reign of Esarhaddon. A shared lexicon of counterdiscursiveness is corroboration for viewing these two pieces as in dialogue with one another. The terminology used in The Sin of Sargon to represent Sennacherib—especially that of the ḫīṭu—²⁷⁶ is also used in The Netherworld Vision, but is this time applied to Esarhaddon. Thus we have a mirror in which to view the respective reactions to these policies: the pro-Babylonian Sin of Sargon represented an Assyrian king through a Babylo-centric lens, viewing the demotion of Marduk as a sin committed by Sennacherib. In The Netherworld Vision, the same king is venerated—this time using typical Assyrian royal ideological terms—in direct opposition to the ḫīṭu of Esarhaddon, who is vilified in opposition to the suggestive paradigm of his father Sennacherib, because of his attempt to equalize Marduk with Assur. Thus, accounts of the social and religious conflicts between Assyria and Babylonia are reflected in literature which shows different ways of expressing political critique, but which demonstrates that a shared vocabulary circulated through their cultural and intellectual veins. The recognition that both of these texts refer to the same king—albeit with separate and conflicting viewpoints—is reminiscent of the argument of Richardson (2014: esp. 464‒473), who identifies a “Sennacherib complex” in literature about the king’s destruction of Jerusalem. These writings combined modes of expression from Arabic, Egyptian, Syriac, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Assyrian cultures to create an anti-imperialist voice for the subaltern colonial peoples under Sennacherib’s rule. Richardson also notes in this literature the prevalence of the ummânu (“wise counselor”) as protagonist, who plays dual roles as collaborator with and critic of the imperial system.²⁷⁷ He even suggests that the appearance of a literary “Sennacherib complex” was an indictment not of a king, but rather of the institution of kingship in general—a force oppressing an automonous group of elite scholars (Richardson 2014: 487). What I am identifying here is a “local” Frame (1992: 188); for the recording of insurrections in Assyria during the revolt, see Grayson (1975a: no. 16).  In this context, it is important to note that the terminology associated with “lying” or “sinning” against the Assyrian king, such as is used here (with ḫīṭu), is usually only utilized in Assyrian inscriptions or letters to denote vassals kings or others who may be perpetrators of misdeeds against the Assyrian king. See Pongratz-Leisten (2002: 227).  Richardson (2014: 466‒467) notes that the character of the wise man, or ummânu, in these texts appears to represent some sort of apologia for the great power they held in their respective colonial governances, while at the same time de-emphasizing the role of the king in world historical events.

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version of this more global phenomenon of the “Sennacherib complex,” where post mortem reactions to the king are a fitting microcosm for the greater Assyro-Babylonian conflict of the period, and where the “archipelago” of literature within the Assyrian court represents discussions of the same event that are internal to the environment, rather than being collected from around an empire. It is with these ideas in mind that we can more fully understand that most shocking element of The Sin of Sargon: the open vilification of Assyrian scribes.

The Counterdiscursive Scholar (again) Of utmost importance for understanding the denigration of scribes is the contextualization of these pieces within contemporary historical evidence. Von Soden (1936: 6‒7) interpreted The Netherworld Vision as a production of the active discourse about Babylon among divided parties in Assyria; likewise, Tadmor (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 5) rightly noted that The Sin of Sargon should be read in the context of the dynamic struggles between Assyria and Babylonia during the Neo-Assyrian period. Furthermore, much as for the former text, all scholars agree that The Sin of Sargon was likely not intended for mass consumption or transmission, and that several features within the text indicate a scribal or elite origin (Weaver 2004: 64), which would in itself imply also a scribal or elite audience. This observation naturally leads us to the startling statement in The Sin of Sargon, wherein Assyrian scribes are blamed for Sennacherib’s failure to complete the Marduk statue. It is worth repeating here: Rev 21 a-na-ku ul-tu ṣa-lam Assur(an.šár) bēlī(en)-ia i-pu-šu dul!-l[u šá ṣa-lam Marduk (damar.utu)] 22 (ṭupšarrī(lúdub.sarmeš) aš-šur-a-a up-tar-ri-ku-in-ni-ma ṣ[a!-lam Marduk(damar.utu) bēli (en) rabî(gal)-i] 23 a-na e-pe-ši ul id-di-nu-in-ni-ma ba-l[a?-ṭi ú-qat-tu-ú X X X X X] As for me, after he made the statue of Assur my lord, Assyrian scribes thwarted me from wor[king on the statue of Marduk]. They did not allow me to make [the statue of Marduk, the great lord], and (thus) [brought an end to my li]fe.

Tadmor et al. (1989: 24) read these lines merely as an indication that the Assyrian “scribes” were more stubbornly opposed to Marduk and Babylon than was Sennacherib himself. But does it make sense for Sennacherib—whether or not he is a literary manifestation of the king—to openly blame his scribes for such a failure of policy? What purpose would such an allegation have served? I will argue that

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this claim reveals the text’s most important value: it allows a glimpse into the more general Assyrian/Babylonian conflict through the lens of a scholarly discourse about kings at the Neo-Assyrian court.²⁷⁸ Especially during the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I (r. 1243‒1207 BC), when Babylonia became subject to Assyria for the first time in its long history, feuds between the two greatest Mesopotamian powers were at a fever pitch. To maintain the security of his territory, the Assyrian king had to preserve control over Babylonia (Machinist 1984‒1985: 355); but Babylonia itself was strong, both militarily and culturally, the latter of which was perhaps more important. The Assyrians respected the Babylonian cultural tradition and went to great lengths to place themselves within it by utilizing the same language and adopting the same literary heritage (Frame 2008: 24); furthermore, they actively tried to assimilate many aspects of the Babylonian god Marduk into those of the Assyrian national god, Assur (Frame 1999: 5‒22). During the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta, Assur was referred to as the “Assyrian Enlil,” and was held up as the supreme god for all of Mesopotamia, which brought him into direct conflict with Marduk, who was described as the “Enlil of the gods” in Enūma Eliš (Galter 2007: 537). Thus, the political and cultural identity of the Babylonians, even during the Kassite and Isin II periods, was tied up with—and parallel to—a similar cultural struggle that was occurring during the same period in Assyrian territory. Machinist describes this negotiation with Babylonian cultural history as a serious problem of Assyrian national identity, which must be understood within the political and religious contexts of the Middle Assyrian period. The supremacy of their respective national gods and the primacy of Babylonian cultural heritage would continue to be an important issue through the end of the Assyrian imperial era, seguing into what Machinist (1976: 16) calls a Kulturkampf, of which the scholarly struggle seen in these Neo-Assyrian texts would be a witness. The reign of Esarhaddon saw a reworking of the traditional makeup of the Assyrian court, not only in political but also in cultural terms. A few extant texts point to the coexistence of Assyrian and Babylonian scribes at the Assyrian

 Lanfranchi (2003: 102‒104) argues that the blame is not, in fact, placed on the Assyrian scribes but rather on the king himself, much as is done for the King of Šubria in the “Letter to the God” of Esarhaddon. He finds these, however, to be anomalous cases, based on the unique political character of the Sargonid Empire. While such tension did indeed stem from a novel political situation, as I will argue below, I find unconvincing his claim that “[s]tressing royal responsibility counterbalances the effects of the images of the ‘wise and dynastic legitimate king’” (106), as the two do not appear to me to be logically connected. See Tadmor (1986: esp. 223), who argues that the traditional elite of the literati indeed held the monarchy in check, as is evidenced by such texts as The Sin of Sargon.

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court. One is a unique text of two short inscriptions (K 6177+8869), written in Neo-Babylonian script. The second inscription, of Sennacherib, describes the Tablet of Destinies with a representation of Assur depicted on it (presumably by means of a seal impression). George (1986: 137) notes the shape and size of the tablet is rather irregular, and its southern script is remarkable in the context of an Assyrian inscription, especially from a notoriously anti-Babylonian king. From this evidence he argues that the text “confirms the impression gained from a significant number of Kuyunjik tablets in Babylonian script (not all of which were necessarily imported), that the later Assyrian kings had in their employ at least a few Babylonian scribes.” The exchange was mutual; there were also in the employ of the Neo-Babylonian kings scribes who were trained in Assyria and knew well their cultural tradition.²⁷⁹ Regardless, the skill of the Babylonian scribes was valued in the Assyrian court, and individuals were brought there specifically to be trained as scholars, in hopes that one day they might prove loyal to Assyria (Brinkman 1982: 16). One of the most evocative pieces in dissecting the Assyro-Babylonian scholarly/political conflict is Enūma Eliš, a literary attempt to exalt the Babylonian national god Marduk over all other gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon (described in Chapter 2). Under Sennacherib, there was a conscious attempt to manipulate Enūma Eliš in order to turn its message toward Assyrian interests. Lambert has shown that in two texts from Assur, the old Assyrian capital, and one from Nineveh, is Marduk substituted for the Assyrian god Assur, who is amalgamated with Anshar, already present in the text. Michalowski draws attention to the clever turn of the Babylonian scribes in writing Enūma Eliš, wherein an Assyrian “answer” was anticipated and an opening, as it were, was provided for such substitutions. It should be noted, however, that this change was made by the scribes at Assur and Nineveh but not by those at other cities such as Nimrud, who respected the Babylonian tradition (Michalowski 1990: 392, 396). Radner (2010: 30) argues that the re-working of Enūma Eliš during the reign of Sennacherib is not just indicative of the massive cultural debt which Assyria apparently owed its Babylonian neighbors. It reflects an Assyrian ideological framework, in which the continuing existence of a king of “Akkad,” an alternative moniker for Babylon, was a “prerequisite for the Assyrian worldview as necessitated by the traditional omen literature.” Thus Sennacherib’s reinterpretation of the Enūma Eliš—in tandem with the attempted destruction of Babylon—must be seen not only as an at See Parpola (2010: 40‒41). In fact, Parpola shows that copies from the Nineveh library were made for Babylon’s main temple during Assurbanipal’s reign, showing that the contents and coverage of Assurbanipal’s library was not terribly differentiated from those unearthed in Babylon and other late first-millennium sites.

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tempt to dethrone Marduk as king of the gods and include him in the Assyrian pantheon, but also as an effort to completely undo Babylon’s existence.²⁸⁰ The new iterations of Enūma eliš indicate that conflicts about Marduk and his place (or lack thereof) in Assyria were hot (and not always consistent) in scholarly circles, ground-zero for the “ideological work” of the Neo-Assyrian empire. Now, then, to return to The Sin of Sargon: Parpola (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 49) argues that the broken treaty alluded to in this text re-ignited an already difficult relationship between Babylonia and Assyria during the Neo-Assyrian period. We know, for instance, that the repatriation of Marduk and the rebuilding of the Esagila at Babylon were matters of utmost concern to the Babylonian scholars who wrote to the Assyrian kings. From the period when Esarhaddon was still the crown prince, we have correspondence from Bēl-ušēzib, a Babylonian scholar active at the court of Nineveh, whose very first letter to the king highlights this prerogative. In the letter (SAA 10: 109), Bēl-ušēzib reports an omen, presumably from Marduk himself. The scholar had, he reports to Esarhaddon, given the words of the prophecy to the queen mother Naqi’a and to the exorcist Dadâ, which read: ….m⸢d⸣aš-šur-šeš-sum-na tin.tirki ep-pu-uš é.sag.íl ú-šak-lal ù ia-a-[ši x x x x] (obv. 14’‒15’) “Esarhaddon will rebuild Babylon and restore the Esagila, and he will [….] me”

Nissinen and Parpola (2004: 214) use this letter as evidence that scholars and prophets—unsurprisingly, Babylonian ones—were directly goading Esarhaddon into restoring Babylon and rejuvenating its gods from an early date in his reign. These men would have been engaged in scholarly enterprises at Nineveh in close connection with Assyrian scholars, and tensions would have been high, especially as it related to Babylonian theological matters and the treatment of Marduk’s cult.

 See also Maul (1997: esp. 122‒124), who locates the beginning of the attempt to “break” Babylonia’s claim to cultural tradition in the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I, who removed the cult statue of Marduk from Babylon and placed it in the temple in Assur. Sennacherib’s policies, he argues, were a continuation of Tukulti-Ninurta’s actions, whose attempts were later reversed by Esarhaddon. Tadmor (1986: 214) identifies this elevation of Assur to the status of Babylon as an example of “ideological politics” in a pre-axial age society. For more on Assyro-Babylonian relations during the Sargonid era, see Brinkman (1979: 223‒250). Brinkman suggests an atmosphere of political instability and a perpetual Assyrian inability to properly control affairs in Babylonia, though not for a significant lack of attempt in that arena.

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Parpola (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 47‒48) notes that the sentiments expressed in The Sin of Sargon may reflect the variety of reactions to the “pro-Babylonian” measure of creating a new Marduk statue in the reign of Esarhaddon: “It is not difficult to imagine with what sort of feelings national-minded Assyrians watched the spending of huge sums of money on a ‘Babylonian Recovery Project,’ or the feelings of national-minded Babylonians toward a statue of Marduk ‘made in Assyria.’” That a Babylonian “party” existed at the Assyrian court was long ago astutely recognized by Landsberger (1965: 15‒16), who noted its strength of influence, especially among the scribal class.²⁸¹ Though it is certainly conceivable that a Babylonian within the Assyrian court milieu could have written this text, it is important to note that the text appears in Assyrian script.²⁸² Thus it is more likely to have been penned by an Assyrian scribe with Babylonian sympathies (who could, in turn, have been highly influenced by interaction with local Babylonian scholars). The complaint that the Assyrian scribes intervened, which we find in The Sin of Sargon, may be a rare literary representation of the intellectual conflicts which both plagued and enriched the cultural situation at the NeoAssyrian court.²⁸³ This text, then, may be an artifact of extreme tensions between Assyrian scholars about the so-called “Babylonian problem,” an indication of divisiveness that would have been extremely corrosive; the scholars, after all, were the ones who created the image of the king, and disagreements within the court about the fidelity of that image are both a product of and a producer of internal breakdown. Indeed, there is another possible example that may indicate further competing discourses surrounding the same environment as The Sin of Sargon. The text in question is the fragmentary tablet K 4732+Sm 1081, a copy of an inscription of Sennacherib. It mentions the very situation outlined in The Sin of Sargon (i. e., the construction of a statue of Assur), but in the surviving context no allusion whatsoever is made to a statue of Marduk, or Babylon: Obv. 1‒11

 See now the arguments of Verderame (2014: 713‒728), who also describes separate Assyrian lobbies of scribes at the court, though not in the context of the conflict with Babylonia. For a good overview of Assyrian/Babylonian relations in the first millennium, see Frame (2008: 21‒31).  Several attempts have been made to challenge the assumption that Assyrian scholars robotically copied Babylonian texts and lacked creativity in composition. See, for instance, Veldhuis (2012) and Lanfranchi (1989).  By “enriched” I mean the influx of Babylonian ideas and texts into the fabric of Assyrian society, not least exhibited by the proliferation of Babylonian themes in Assyrian royal paradigmatic texts.

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“[…,] who completed (Assyria’s) cult-centres, [who forced the enemy lands into obedience,] who destroyed their settlements, [….] When I had renewed(?) the statue of Assur (ṣa-lam an.šár), [my lord…,] and restored the cultic rites of E-šarra, I […] my father as did Sargon, king [of Assyria,] my father. Where…[…] my…[…] Assur [….]”²⁸⁴

Though this text is extremely fragmentary, it perhaps gives evidence for a representation of the same events as The Sin of Sargon, but this time through the eyes of a scribe responsible for producing a positive image of Neo-Assyrian kingship for a traditional Assyrian audience; here, Marduk is nowhere to be found, in the context in which we would expect him. This would indicate the existence of two conflicting versions of events—written by two competing scholarly bodies—in one and the same political environment. The coexistence of Babylonian and Assyrian scholars at the Assyrian court was a matter of course in the Sargonid era, and its consequence was the production of literature reflecting a much deeper cultural and political relationship that may have created divisions even within the Assyrian scholarly community. The themes and outrageous accusations in The Sin of Sargon can be viewed anew as a microcosmic representation of this unusual situation at the Assyrian court. It is a document that “lived” a dichotomous cultural conflict, occurring in a single space.²⁸⁵

The Crimes and Sacrileges of Nabû-šuma-iškun One final text that has affinities to other texts in this chapter (i. e., it criticizes a particular king, potentially in the context of an Assyro-Babylonian conflict and

 Text and translation can be found in George (1986: 144‒145).  Another example exists in the variant recensions of Esarhaddon’s Babylon inscription. The text comes down to us in a remarkable twelve copies, one of which—Recension E—stands out for the complete absence of references to divination. This recension also neglects completely (as opposed to the other recensions) the unique focus on the return by Esarhaddon of Babylonian rights and privileges (kidinnu), often a grappling point in anti-Assyrian propaganda (such as Advice to a Prince). For the text, see Borger (1956: 25, Ep. 37a) and Brinkman (1979: 228). Cogan (1984: 83‒84) argues that this text, unique in its emphasis on Babylonian interests, is not random but rather representative of a distinct ideological view in the debate over Babylon at the Assyrian court. Contra Porter (1996: 168‒174), who argues that the variant recensions of this inscription were deliberately altered based on their intended audience, with those meant to be read by Babylonians presenting a more moderate version of the “Babylonian blame” for the fall of their city. As evidence for her argument, she claims that those texts with more “moderate” descriptions of the destruction of Babylon are all found outside Assyria, and thus represent distinct commissions by Esarhaddon based on their eventual geographical placement. Regardless, the varying recensions may allow a rare opportunity to view the case from both sides.

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using a similar counterdiscursive lexicon) is SpTU 3: 58, labeled by Cole (1994: 220‒252) as The Crimes and Sacrileges of Nabû-šuma-iškun. ²⁸⁶ The text was discovered in Uruk, in what appears to have been the library of Anu-ikṣur, a professional exorcist of the Šangu-Ninurta family. This man lived during the Seleucid period and was most likely quite powerful; we know that his son was a šaknu of Uruk.²⁸⁷ Crimes catalogues the offenses of this single ruler, perpetrated over the course of a seven-year period (Cole 1994: 220‒221).²⁸⁸ As the last member of Babylon’s Eighth Dynasty, Nabû-šuma-iškun was of the Chaldaean Bīt-Dakkūri tribe²⁸⁹ and reigned from 760‒748 B.C.²⁹⁰ During his tenure as Babylonian king, neighboring Assyria was in a state of stagnation, suffering through several misfortunes in quick succession.²⁹¹ Babylonia experienced similar troubles, as is evident from the external military situation in the reign of Nabû-šuma-iškun’s predecessor, Erība-Marduk.²⁹² Cole (1994: 221) posits that the text was written by a Babylonian author, a few decades after the expulsion of this king, who appears to have perpetrated his most severe crimes against the shrines and inhabitants of Babylon. While its Fundort is in the Seleucid period, the dating is uncertain. However, the tablet is indicative of a copy (due to the scribal notation of ḫepí, “broken,” several times throughout the text). Additionally, as will be argued  The text was first published by von Weiher (1984: 197‒224); it can be found in the English edition in Cole (1994: 227‒237) and in Glassner (2004: 300‒313, no. 52).  As per YOS 1: 52, in which we are told of the rebuilding of the sanctuaries of Anu and Antum by Anu-uballiṭ, son of Anu-ikṣur. He was awarded the name Nikarchos by Antiochus II; this was one of the strategies for assimilating people outside of the ruling elite, according to Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993: 150).  On 221 fn. 5 Cole notes the dim possibility that other rulers were mentioned in the body of the text, but dismisses the likelihood of this based on semantic concerns.  For more on the Aramaean and Chaldaean tribes of Babylonia, see Brinkman (1982: esp. 7‒ 10). He characterizes the Chaldaeans as more unified than the Aramaeans, whose regulatory control of the trade regions along the course of the Euphrates and at the head of the Persian Gulf made them influential at Babylon. See also Brinkman (1984: 45‒65) for the Chaldean-led struggle for Babylonian independence, especially during the reign of Sennacherib.  For a list of the very few surviving documents to mention this king, see Brinkman (1962: 100, no. 37).  Namely, during the reigns of Assur-dān III (r. 772‒754 BC) and Assur-nīrāri V (r.754‒745 BC). The period was one of weakness, wherein the Assyrians were beset by both internal rebellion and external threats (namely Urartu). Assur-nīrāri did experience one victory against Matilu of Arrapḫa, but there was no conquest of Babylonia at this time, and his reign saw an outbreak of plague, in addition to internal rebellion. The latter king participated little in external affairs and was deposed by the more successful Tiglath-Pileser III (Grayson 1975a: 33 n. 39).  Cole cites Grayson (1975a: 180‒183, no. 24 rev. 9‒13), in which there is mention of the need to postpone Erība-Marduk’s accession rites because of the forceful expulsion of Aramaean tribesmen from the neighborhoods of Babylon and Borsippa.

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below, its programmatic affinities with texts that appear in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II point to a date closer to his assumption of the throne at Babylon. Crimes presents an interesting study in eighth century BC imperial politics. We are told in this document as well as in The Šamaš-šum-ukīn Chronicle that there was an interruption in the celebration of the akītu festival during the kingship of Nabû-šuma-iškun.²⁹³ SpTU 3: 58 appears to place the blame for this, as well as other cultic stoppages, on Nabû-šuma-iškun himself; “[the text] may therefore be an attempt to attribute to him also the general upheaval of the age” (Cole 1994: 227). In iii 8‒11 of Crimes, we hear that Nabû-šuma-iškun, upon making sacrifices at Babylon, Borsippa, and Cutha, thereafter “made unbearable (their burden) of slaughter, robbery, murder, corvée (il-ki), and forced labor (tup-šik-ki).”²⁹⁴ These same transgressions were also present in Advice to a Prince (23‒30), with respect to the people of Sippar, Nippur, and Babylon. While both are anonymous texts whose composition date is uncertain, Cole (1994: 252) rightly places this text in the same categorical milieu as Advice to a Prince; both participated in a dialogue about kingship that culminated in a proliferation of counterdiscursive literature during this period. Indeed, the text stands at a crossroads of the relationships between the king and elites; as Pongratz-Leisten (2014b: 536) notes, “The gravity of [Nabû-šuma-iškun]’s transgressions can only be fully understood by taking into account the Mesopotamian notion of these cities [Babylonian cultural centers mentioned in the text] as the traditional centers of learning responsible for collecting and producing the body of knowledge that shaped the cultural memory of the ancients in Mesopotamia.” Several motifs from texts in previous chapters appear in The Crimes of Nabûšuma-iškun. Now the “hypothetical” breach of contract presented by the various conditional šumma clauses in Advice to a Prince is presented in terms of truly broken treaties between Nabû-šuma-iškun and other kings, as well as between Nabû-šuma-iškun and the gods.²⁹⁵ In the first instance, he is said to have violated a sworn treaty with Iltagab-il: Col iii

 The Šamaš-šum-ukīn Chronicle gives the cessation of the festival during the fifth and sixth years of his reign. Text and commentary for this chronicle in Grayson (1975a: 128‒130, no. 15).  Glassner (2004: 300‒313, no. 52). Borsippa, Dilbat, and Cutha are also mentioned (iv 30), but the passage is too broken to discern in what context.  In fact, he has no regard for agreements at all, as exemplified in iii 55: a-na a-de-e u ma-mit la ip-làḫ-ma “he felt no fear with regard to the sworn agreements and oaths.”

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30 mIl-ta-gab-ìl šá āl Dūr-ša-Karbi(uru.bàd) šá mKar-bi šá kišād(gú) nār(íd) Pu-rat-ti 31 ina a-de-e u ma-mit ana pa-ni-šú ú-ṣa-am-ma 32 ik-kib ru-be-e pa-ru-ti pi-šat la qa-bé-e 33 īpussu(dù)-su ù ālšu(uru)-šú ana šá-la-li im-ni The man Iltagab-il of the town Dūr-ša-Karbi, which is on the bank of the Euphrates, and with treaties and oath came into his presence. But he [Nabû-šuma-iškun], in a manner forbidden of princes, committed unspeakable, abusive slander, and counted his town as plunder.²⁹⁶

He equally disrespects treaties sworn by the gods: Col iii 48 49 50 51

ár-ka-nu Nabû-šuma-iškun(mdpa.mu.gar)-un mār(dumu) mDa-ku-ri a-de-e u ma-mit ilāni(dingirmeš) rabûti(galmeš) sīsî(anše.kur.rameš) ṣābī(erínmeš) u narkabāti(gišgigirmeš) ušēṣi(é)-ma a-na a-lak ḫarrāni(kaskal) it-ti-šú iš-pur

Afterward, Nabû-šuma-iškun, the Dakkurean, (in violation of) the treaties and the oath taken (in the name) of the great gods, made the horses, troops, and chariots to go out and ordered them to go on campaign with him.²⁹⁷

The context of Crimes is relatively contemporaneous with the oldest surviving Assyrian adê treaty,²⁹⁸ providing evidence that “rulers of the Babylonian plain began to employ this instrument of diplomacy at about the same time that the kings of Assyria began to use it to expand their empire” (Cole 1994: 222). As has been identified in Chapter 1, the language of the adê treaties—especially that of broken adê’s—was a signifying marker in subversive literature of the late period. Parpola (in Tadmor et al. 1989: 49) even draws connections between The Sin of Sargon and Crimes, by suggesting that it is the broken treaty in The Sin of Sargon that causes Sargon’s punishment; this gives the treaty the same central role that it plays in Crimes. ²⁹⁹ Here we have an active—and, I argue, intentional— use of the “breach of contract” topos first introduced in Advice to a Prince. The text accuses Nabû-šuma-iškun of several acts of sacrilege, including the expulsion of Babylonian citizens and their families to the countryside (iii 16‒17), and the abuse of Esagil and its ancient property for personal consumption and

 Text editions from Glassner (2004: 300‒313, no. 52) and Cole (1994: 227‒237).  See also iv 36 for a similar mention of treaties with the gods, though the context is unknown.  For this text, see SAA 2: 2 (between Mati-ilu and Assur-nirāri V).  On (broken) Assyrian treaties, see Parpola and Watanabe (1988: xxii‒xxiii).

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sacrifices to the gods of the Sealand, Chaldaea, and Aram (iii 36‒43). Twice the text informs us that Nabû-šuma-iškun has committed a crime: one in a religious context, in ii 17 where we are told that he brought a leek into the Ezida temple, a “thing forbidden” (ik-kib É-zi-da); and once in a diplomatic context (iii 32), in speaking evil against the abovementioned king Iltagab-il, an action “forbidden of princes” (ik-kib ru-be-e). The fragmentary col ii relates an additional crime: Col ii 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

[………………………..] ⸢a⸣-ši-bat kussâ(gišgu.za) [………………………….] 7 la-ab-bi [………………………….] ⸢ip⸣-ṭur-ma [………………………….] ⸢ú⸣-šak-bi-is [………………………….ú]-šat!-mi-iḫ-ši ⸢xxx⸣ [………………….] ú]-⸢šá⸣-aṣ-mi-is-si ⸢xx⸣ [………………………] Ištar(dinnin) Uruk(u[nug?ki?) […] ⸢x⸣ […………………..] ⸢x⸣ ú-šap-ṭir

]

[….] She who sits on a throne [….] 7 lions. [….] he let loose and […] he allowed them to roam about […] he had her grasped […] he caused her to be hitched up. […] Ištar-[of-Uruk…] he caused someone to release.³⁰⁰

As part of a study in Babylonian construction of memory and historiography, Beaulieu (2001: 29‒40) has argued that this text implicates Nabû-šuma-iškun in the desecration of the cult of Ištar at Uruk. This incident appears in a surprising number of texts from Mesopotamia, including an inscription of the later Babylonian king Nabonidus, The Uruk Prophecy, and the Epic of Erra and Išum (Cagni 1977). In the Istanbul Nabonidus Stele, the cultic crime is attributed to the predecessor of Nabû-šuma-iškun, Erība-Marduk, but it parallels our text closely enough to provide for the lacunae in the text: 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Ištar(dinnin) Uruk(unugki) ru-ba-a-ti ṣir-ti a-ši-bat at-ma-nu ḫurāṣu(kù.sig₁₇) ša ṣa-an-da-ti 7 la-ab-bu ša ina palê(bala)-e m eri₄-ba-Marduk(damar.utu) šarri(lugal) Uruk(lúunugki)-a-a šu-luḫ-ḫi-šu uš-pe-el-lu

 Text edition from Beaulieu (2001: 36).

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21 22 23 24 25 26

at-ma-an-šu id-ku-ma ip-ṭù-ru ṣi-mi-it-tuš i-na uz-zi iš-tu qé-reb é.an.na tu-ṣu-ma tu-ši-bu la šu-bat-su

(As for) Ištar-of-Uruk, the lofty princess who dwells in a golden shrine, to whom are hitched seven lions, during the reign of Erība-Marduk the citizens of Uruk caused the purification rites to become abased, removing her shrine and releasing her team, (who) left Eanna in anger to dwell in a place not her dwelling…³⁰¹

Notable here is the blame placed on the citizens of Uruk for displacing the goddess’ cult. The epic Erra and Išum also ascribes blame for this incident to the citizens of Uruk and their neglect of the Ištar cult, but does not implicate any specific king. But earlier, in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, argues Beaulieu, the account had exonerated the citizens of Uruk and placed all the blame on Nabû-šuma-iškun.³⁰² In I R 65‒66 (iii 52),³⁰³ Nebuchadnezzar designates himself as the king who has repatriated Ištar-of-Uruk (also described in such specific terms in The Nabonidus Stele). This claim, Beaulieu (2001: 32) argues, was used by the scribes of Nebuchadnezzar to insinuate that he had returned the authentic manifestation of the goddess—which had in the meantime been replaced by a “false” goddess—to its place in Uruk, the numen loci. Ištar is described with the same eponym as having been violated by Nabû-šuma-iškun in Crimes (ii 37). Such affinities between this “official Uruk” version of events and the inscriptions

 Text edition from Beaulieu (2001: 32‒33). Beaulieu (2001: 36) and Cole (1994: 243) both argue that the Uruk Prophecy, though it does not name a specific king in relation to this crime, also refers to Nabû-šuma-iškun. This late Achaemenid/early Seleucid text places the act egir-šú (“after him”) in a context that clearly follows the reign of Erība-Marduk. Scurlock (2006: esp. 457‒458) contends that Nabû-šuma-iškun is indeed the evil king named as the abductor of Ishtar (king II in the prophecy), with Assurbanipal (king X in the prophecy) as the righteous deliverer of the goddess back into the hands of the Urukians. Neujahr (2012: 56) finds this argument unconvincing. See also his discussion of the text on 57‒58, where he maintains that the text is clearly propagandistic, though it takes a peculiar view of Mesopotamian history of the first millennium, namely regarding the difficulties between Babylon and Assur as seen through the eyes of Uruk in the far south.  Though little is known about Nabû-šuma-iškun, an inscription from a governor in Borsippa relates similar disturbances as those depicted in Uruk and Borsippa in Crimes (Frame 1995: 123‒ 126, B.6.14.2001, i 15’b‒21’). This inscription says only that these events occurred during the reign of Nabû-šuma-iškun; it may be a general indication of his weakness as a ruler (Beaulieu 2001: 39).  Edited in Langdon (1912: 98‒101, Nebukadnezzar 9).

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of Nebuchadnezzar indicate that the text is probably a remnant of revisionist history written in the reign of this king. This position is strengthened by the fact that the multiple versions of the abduction of Ištar appear in still more iterations. The failure in the “official” Uruk account (represented in Crimes) to consider a theological explanation—instead blaming one man—runs contrary to a very similar account in The Nabonidus Stele, contributing to the confusion over who bears responsibility for the course of events. Here, in The Nabonidus Stele,³⁰⁴ Nabonidus indicts the cities of Uruk for the expulsion of the goddess. This turn leads Beaulieu (2001: 38‒40) to argue that The Nabonidus Stele represents a type of “countertext” in the historical memory of the incident, with the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus “being no doubt motivated by some personal grudge against the southern metropolis.” The shifting of blame lends new focus to the attribution of the cult’s desecration by Nabû-šuma-iškun, as described in Crimes. To understand the development of the text, it is well to turn to Grayson’s suggestion that Nabû-šuma-iškun may have been of Assyrian origin. This assumption is made based on his inclusion in The Šamaš-šum-ukīn Chronicle, in which only four Babylonian kings are mentioned. Two of these, Šamaš-šumukīn (brother of Assurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon) and Assur-nādin-šumi (son of Sennacherib), are known to have been of obvious Assyrian origin and placed on the throne of Babylonia by their fathers. Although there is no obvious connection between the kings mentioned, Grayson posits a favorable disposition to Assyria as a common thread; he cites the high number of native Assyrians in official capacities in Babylonia at the time, dismissing the possibility that Nabûšuma-iškun was a vassal to Assyria because of the latter’s political turmoil during the period in question.³⁰⁵ If indeed what we have in Crimes is the official “Uruk” version of events written in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign, we should consider the possible vilification of Nabû-šuma-iškun based not only on a general state of

 Edition in Langdon (1912: 270‒289, Nabonid 8).  Grayson (1975a: 32‒34). However, the unusual division of the tablet, with the two AssyroBabylonian kings separated from the earlier Babylonian kings (which includes Nabû-šumaiškun and Širikti-šuqamuna), may argue against this theory. Because so little is known of the earlier kings, it is impossible to be certain about why these four kings (out of a possible thirty-nine Babylonian kings) were chosen as subjects for this tablet. Scurlock (2006: 465) argues rather that the text exhibits the pattern: first king who met his end at the hands of the Elamites (Assur-nādin-šumi and Širiqti-Šuqamuna); second king who was not a native of Babylon but who ruled there and came to a bad end (Šamaš-šum-ukīn the Assyrian and Nabû-šuma-iškun the Chaldaean). Regardless of their point of reference, the foreign nature of Nabû-šuma-iškun is of foremost concern to the author of this text; furthermore, there is a linkage by association to the Assyrian king, Šamaš-šum-ukīn.

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weakness, but also on his potential Assyrian sympathies. Nebuchadnezzar had to be especially sensitive to this issue, as he concretized the native Babylonian dynasty that arose in Babylon following the Medo-Babylonian subjugation of Assyria led by his father, Nabopolassar. By taking credit for saving Ištar-of-Uruk from being desecrated by a previous Babylonian king who had Assyrian sympathies, Nebuchadnezzar contraposed himself to the Assyrians using a revisionist account of events. The subsequent revision in the reign of Nabonidus may confirm this presumption (especially given Nabonidus’ potential Assyrian sympathies, as delineated in the epilogue). With this understanding, we can turn to one of the more interesting passages in the “official” Uruk account: a description of Nabû-šuma-iškun’s abuse of his personal scribes and of Ea: Col ii 15 pe-er-tú šá-kin šamallēšu(šab.tur)-e-šú ú-gaṣ-ṣiṣ ni-is-qa ḫurāṣa(kù.gi₁₇) 16 šá-kin ù pa-paḫ Bēl(den) i-ru-um-ma Unshaven, he mutilated his apprentice scribe, and wearing fine gold, he entered into Bēl’s shrine… 19 20 21 22

⸢d⸣É-a Bēl(en) né-me-qí šá šu-bat-su it-ti šamû(an)-ú elli(kù!) u erṣeti(ki)-tì šur-šu-da-tu ina šu-bat si-mat ilūtīšu(dingir)-ti-šú rabûti(gal)-ti ú-šat-bi-ma ina bāb ṣīr(ká.maḫ) Bēl(den?) ú-šeš-šib

Ea, the lord of wisdom, whose dwelling place was founded with pure heaven and earth, from his dwelling place, appropriate to his great divinity, he made him get up and made him sit in the exalted gateway of Bēl.³⁰⁶

Once again, Marduk becomes central to the criticism leveled at the king. Cole (1994: 240) cites Nabû-šuma-iškun’s abundance of hair as he enters into the shrine of Marduk (Bēl) as a violation of cultic practice; officials and functionaries of first-millennium Assyrian and Babylonian temples were not consecrated for service until their heads were shaved.³⁰⁷ The king’s bodily manner is only one of the many offenses to Bēl’s sanctuary listed in the text. In this case, the temple milieu appears to be directly connected to a scribal environment. The grapheme šab.tur, used to describe the “apprentice scribes” (šamallû) in the same line, is

 Text edition and translation from Glassner (2004: 300‒313, no. 52).  On the shaving of the head as a stage of consecration in first-millennium priestly rights, see Löhnert (2010: 185‒186).

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attested only in colophons,³⁰⁸ suggesting the unique mark of a scholar on this iteration of the crimes attributed to Nabû-šuma-iškun. Important here as well is the mention of Ea, who—paralleling his primary function in earlier counterdiscursive texts, such as Advice to a Prince—is directly referred to as the god of wisdom. Given that the sacrilegious removal of Ea from his sanctuary is mentioned in close proximity to the king’s abuse of his scribes, it is possible that the author viewed the mistreatment of this particular god as a further intentional slight against the scholars. Considering the central role scholars play in this text, as in The Sin of Sargon, The Crimes of Nabû-šuma-iškun illuminates further possibilities for the creation of productive dialogue about Assyro-Babylonian relationships, not only at the end of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, but also in its aftermath. These texts are extraordinary for being new productions of the period, clearly located within a unique scholarly milieu; they are rare representations of creative scholarly independence, which departed from the generalizing nature of subversive texts from the end of the second millenium. This piece, like The Sin of Sargon and The Netherworld Vision, demonstrates how counterdiscursive reading can help us discover the factors that led to competing versions of the same events.

 References in Cole (1994: 240 n. 40). See CAD Š vol 1, šamallû 2’. Gesche (2001: 213‒216) shows that full texts of different genres were being copied by these “novice” scribes, probably in their third stage of Fachausbildung.

Chapter 5 Counterdiscursiveness beyond belles lettres in and out of Nineveh In Chapter 4, we saw the ways in which literature produced during the Neo-Assyrian period (described in great part by Livingstone as “propaganda”) could be used for both counterdiscursive dialogue about the Neo-Assyrian king and to express scholarly tensions that often mirrored sociopolitical issues. In this chapter, the focus will be on texts both in and outside of Nineveh, and with documents that can be more properly categorized within the realm of epistolography. While many of these texts can (and should) also be classified as belles lettres, their contrived or original format as epistolary documents requires a distinct interpretative angle. Yet, like belles lettres, these texts also respond to a paradigmatic type associated with royalty in the Neo-Assyrian empire: there was a standard form when epistolary was addressed to royalty, and thus this type must also be considered as a member of Text A (the “body” of Neo-Assyrian ideology as laid out in Chapter 1). The authors and copiers of these letters would have been similar to those writing the more literary texts discussed in Chapters 2, 3, and 4. Likewise, the manipulation of the epistolary format to problematize kingship should be seen in a similar light as those texts described in Chapter 4, which more obviously played upon the exemplars available in texts like hymns or inscriptions. Below there are examples of both newly created, “fictional” letters, as well as—and perhaps more interestingly—seemingly quotidian letters that were copied out of context, but still for the same purpose: to problematize individual kings and their rule. One of the reasons that letters are so important to our study is because—unlike our generic and more literary Text A, which in Frahm’s terminology is “cold” and “generate[s] fictions of coherence”—letters can be categorized as “hot,” dealing in a real way with real issues within the empire. The correspondence of the Neo-Assyrian kings is impressively abundant. The corpus contains approximately 3,000 letters; 2,800 of those were discovered at Nineveh (Radner 2015: 61). Letters were transferred between the king and his officials in the provinces; between the king and his scholars; and between the king and unfamiliar people (predictably, most of this correspondence appears to have been one-sided) (Radner 2015: 61‒72). ³⁰⁹ Radner suggests that correspondence between royal officials

 For topics of letters typical of Babylonian correspondence with the later Assyrian kings, see Reynolds (2003: xv). Issues include the loyalty/disloyalty of individuals in connection to the AsDOI 10.1515/9781501504969-005

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and the Neo-Assyrian king tended to proffer two suggestions for resolving problems; this approach was favored, she argues, because it allowed imperial officials to influence the decision-making process, rather than yielding to the king’s own proposal (Radner 2015: 63).³¹⁰ Thus, letters are one of our most important pieces of evidence for the way in which the officials of the empire could maintain a semblance of control over the monarch. The greeting formulae in letters from administrators to the king is of a fairly programmatic nature, rarely diverging from such phrases as: a-na šarri(lugal) bēlīya(en)-ia aradka(arad)ka PN lu šulmu(ti)-mu a-na šarri(lugal) bēlīya(en)-ia, “To the king, my lord, your servant PN, good health to the king, my lord!”³¹¹ But Radner has recognized a dramatic difference in language that is applied to the greeting formulae when the king received a letter from one of his scholars. After the typical address, a blessing is added: Nabû(dag) Marduk(damar.utu) a-na šarri(man) bēlīya(en)-ia lik-ru-bu, “May Nabû and Marduk bless the king, my lord!”³¹² The contrast exists because the scholars work for the king under a patronage system, whereas magnates are officials who have been appointed by the king himself (Radner 2015: 67). The addition of the blessing is a reminder of the social division between king and scholar, drawing clearer the distinction between the image and the image-maker, even though the latter is crucial to the proper functioning of the empire.

The Letter of Arad-Gula Scholar’s letters are also differentiated by the inclusion of lengthy quotations and paraphrases from famous works from the “stream of tradition”; perhaps the most famous example of a stylized entreaty to the king can be found in

syrian king and purported conspiracies against the king. As Parpola (1983a: xii) relates, a great majority of the surviving scholarly correspondence originates from the reign of Esarhaddon, almost half of which concerns medical or exorcistic matters.  This view is completely opposite that of Parpola (1983a: xviii-xix), who sees the letter-writing by the scholars at the Sargonid court as “robotic,” only responding to external pressures exerted on them by the king or by emergency circumstances. Their answers, he argues, were solely dictated by available scholarly literature rather than personal views or ambitions. Ponchia (1989), however, demonstrates the ways that scholars at the court could manipulate epistolary formulae using the precepts of traditional Neo-Assyrian kingship in order to influence decisionmaking processes.  The example is taken from SAA 5: 1, but is representative of the whole corpus of royal correspondence.  This letter is SAA 10: 185, from Adad-šumu-uṣur, the king’s exorcist.

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ABL 1285, a letter (presumably) addressed to Assurbanipal, aptly titled by Parpola (1987b: 257‒278) “The Forlorn Scholar.” The letter-writer, Arad-Gula, had enjoyed a long and prosperous career as the “Chief Physician” under Sennacherib and then as an exorcist under the patronage of Esarhaddon,³¹³ but then lost his post upon the accession of Assurbanipal.³¹⁴ The letter enumerates his financial woes in great detail, only after a lengthy salutation to the king. This scholar is a rare figure in that he appears in the royal correspondence several times, and there are even letters addressed to him from the king.³¹⁵ Additionally, there are several extant petitions on behalf of Arad-Gula, beseeching the king to “revive” (muballiṭū) this scholar, as he had done previously for others³¹⁶ who are shown in a similar predicament (“Why now must I and Arad-Gula, amongst them, both be lowly and depressed?”) (Parpola 1993: no. 226 r. 4‒7). The complaints of AradGula are echoed in several other texts written from scholars to the king. One reads: Edge 17 a-na mār(dumu) šarri(lugal) 18 be-lí-a Rev. 1 2 3 4 5

a-na muḫḫi(ugu)-ḫi lu-šá-aḫ-si-is-ma bītu(é) šá šarri(lugal) iq-bu-ú lid-di-nu-ni ina ku-ṣu la a-ma-a-ti

Let me remind the crown prince, my lord, about it, and let them give to me the house to which the king had agreed, lest I die of cold.³¹⁷

Of greater importance than the universal nature of these complaints is the way in which they are expressed. In his accusations against the wrongs of Assurbanipal, Arad-Gula makes conscious allusions to several texts that I have labeled

 Parpola (1987b: 269). He even suggests (271) that a long-standing grudge existed between Assurbanipal and Arad-Gula, the latter of whom may have been partially blamed for a miscarriage suffered by Assurbanipal’s wife.  For this, see SAA 10: 120 and 121.  SAA 10: 295. Seeing as the tenor of this letter is of a more positive and productive nature, I assume its author to have been Esarhaddon.  As in SAA 10: 224 rev.7.  Text edition is from SAA 10: 180.

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as counterdiscursive. Besides being reminiscent of typical epistolary convention, the transposition of the first two words of the letter are a play on the first line of Advice to a Prince: šarru(lugal) be-lí a-na di-ni ša aradšu(arad)-šu li-qu-la (ABL 1285 obv. 13) May the king, my lord, attend to the justice of his servant…³¹⁸

Compare: šarru(lugal) a-na di-ni la i-qúl… (Advice to a Prince obv. 1) (If) a king does not attend to justice…

Parpola (1987b: 272‒273), using this text to prove that Advice to a Prince was wellknown in royal literary circles, claims: “The writer of course does not elaborate on the point of the allusion, as done here: he didn’t have to.”³¹⁹ Additionally, Hurowitz has identified strict parallels between this text and that of Ludlul, in which one line is nearly identical: …ka-na-a-šú ka-da-a-ru ù pu-luḫ-tu ša ekalli(É.GAL) ⸢ard!⸣ū(lúaradmeš) ša ⸢ziq-!ni!⸣ ù ša rēši(lúsagmeš) us-sa-am-mid mi-i-nu ina libbi(š[à)-b]i aḫ-⸢za!⸣-ku… (ABL 1285 obv. 29‒31) Submission, labor and fear of the palace: I taught these to the slaves—both non-eunuchs and eunuchs—and what did I acquire in exchange?

Compare: ù pu-luḫ-ti ekalli(É.GAL) um-man ú-šal-mid (Ludlul ii 32) and I taught the people {advisors} fear of the palace…

Hurowitz (2002‒2005: 130) notes that the lines are dissimilar only in the latter’s replacement of “people,”³²⁰ from “servants” and “eunuchs,” also pointing out that the expression puluḫti ekalli is found only in these two texts. In using this allusion, argues Hurowitz (2008: 82), Arad-Gula identifies the king as the cause of his own suffering, but also the potential salve for it. This obliquely pla-

 Text edition for ABL 1285 from Parpola (1987b: 258‒265).  Hurowitz (1993: 11) points out an even closer allusion in a famous judicial plea from the Hebrew Bible.  A similar parallelism was seen between Advice to a Prince and Assurbanipal’s L4.

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ces Arad-Gula in the position of the “righteous sufferer,” the protagonist of Ludlul,³²¹ with Assurbanipal in the place of Marduk, as a savior.³²² As in literature, in Neo-Assyrian epistolary authors purposefully manipulate —or even subvert—the Babylonian literary tradition to their own advantage, to shape the current discourse about kingship. But since these letters go directly to the king, their function is of a more “suggestive” nature, utilizing older and familiar texts as a veiled protreptic about the proper way a monarch should behave towards his scholarly officials. Like those narratives already studied, the scholars’ letters, Radner (2015: 67) argues, “…offer unmitigated expressions of their author’s desires, hopes and anxieties.” As we have seen, a reaction to the power gap between king and scholar was the creation of a “mythology of scribal succession” and the production of counterdiscursive literature. Whether they were new, fictional letters, or copies of older letters, epistles written in and outside of Nineveh are further examples of the ways that scribes challenged concepts about the ideal Neo-Assyrian monarch, problematizing kingship using a familiar and quotidian form of communication.

The Weidner Chronicle As was discussed in Chapter 2 (The Cuthaean Legend), during the Neo-Assyrian period, the creation of new texts was paired with a reformulation of older traditions. Herein new texts contained unfamiliar commentary about Old Akkadian kings, which reflect the booming interest during this period in exploring avenues for royal criticism. The Weidner Chronicle is one such piece. This text, which survives in seven manuscripts of Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian date (van de Mieroop 1999b: 334), presents a different view of Sargon, focusing on his negative treatment of—and hence negative reception by—Marduk and his cult. Weidner announced its discovery in 1926; other copies have since been identified, including an almost complete version from Sippar.³²³ It is unique in its composition, being in the form of a literary letter written from the last king of Isin to a contemporary king of Babylon (or Larsa).³²⁴ It addresses a period of

 Himself an ideal servant of both the king (ii 27‒32) and the gods (ii 23‒26).  See also the similar argument of Lenzi (2015: 97).  Al-Rawi (1990: 1‒13). For other editions and translations of the text, see Millard (1997: 468). Other copies include an Akkadian/Sumerian bilingual version (BM 39202=80.11.12, 325), presented in Finkel (1980: 65‒80). He argues that the Sumerian was not original but a later scholarly addition (back-translation) to give the piece “hoary antiquity” (72).  Recognized by al-Rawi (1990: 2).

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time much earlier than most Babylonian chronicles, and is exceptional in its use of direct speech (Grayson 1975a: 43). Al-Rawi (1990) divides the text into three parts: one section of advice, with a description of a nocturnal vision of the goddess Gula experienced by the letterwriter; a strictly historical section in the style of a chronicle, from Akka of Kish down to Sumu-la-el of Babylon (1880‒1845 BC); and a brief ending pronouncing the letter as a source of health (šul-lu-mu, rev. 39) to the addressee, to remain in his hands for eternity (a-di udmeš bala da-a-ti ina qa-ti-ka, rev. 40).³²⁵ Lewis (1980: 130) has noted that The Weidner Chronicle imposes a certain interpretation on historical traditions, explaining the rise and fall of various figures as a function of their piety to Marduk and the cult of Esagila,³²⁶ a theme which has already assumed center stage in our study. The patent concern for the wellbeing of Babylon in this text will remind the astute reader of both Advice to a Prince and The Sin of Sargon. In fact, the prologue to the letter is strikingly reminiscent of the former: Say to King [Apil-S]în, ki[ng of Babylo]n(?), thus speaks Damiq-ilišu, king of Isin: […] as […] his reign. [I mys]elf have written propitious words for you to think about, words of […], but you, you have never paid any attention to them! You have neither listened nor lent an ear to the instructions that I sent you. The valuable advice that I have […] you, you have not heeded, and you have not ceased to pursue other ideas. For your own well-being I have advised you to increase discipline in your army for the future, but you have not taken things in hand (Obv. 1‒7).³²⁷

While not explicitly stating it, Evans ties The Weidner Chronicle to Advice to a Prince, by characterizing its purpose as “to show that those rulers who did not show proper regard for Babylon…experienced great misfortunes, whereas those who did attend properly to such matters fared well.”³²⁸ However, most noteworthy is the introduction of Sargon in the letter. We encounter him in a wholly unaccustomed manner; for the first time, the reader is introduced to the “Unheilsherrscher.” The term, introduced by Güterbock (1934: 75‒76), describes the motif of the “calamitous ruler,” normally used in reference to the development

 All text editions of The Weidner Chronicle will derive from Al-Rawi, unless otherwise noted.  Evans (1983: 108) calls the whole text an anachronism, given that Marduk’s cult did not become prominent until much later than the third-millennium rulers discussed in the text. In fact, I would argue, it is a patently first-millennium concern, tied up with the rise of Assyria.  Translation is that of Glassner (2004: 263‒269, no. 38). I will utilize Text S in al-Rawi’s matrix unless otherwise noted.  Evans (1983: 107), and see also van der Spek (2003: 324‒326). In this way, the text has something of a didactic function, but it cannot be classified as a narû.

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of Narām-Sîn’s character (especially in The Cuthaean Legend, Chapter 2), but also identified with the Babylonian interpretation of Sargon in this text.³²⁹ Rev.  S: A:  S:

šu-ú a-mat Bēl(d⸢en) iq⸣-bu-⸢šú⸣ [XXXX] e-pir šat pi-šú is-su-uḫ-ma mi-iḫ-ra-at a-gadèki āla(uru) i-pu-uš ina maḫ-rat [Akkadî(uri(ki)(?))] āla(uru) i-pu-uš-ma Bābila(ká.dingir.ra(ki)) a-na šumšu(mu)-šú i[m-bi] Enlil(den.líl) ša i[q!-bu-šu ik-kir-m]a ul-tu ṣi-it Šamši(dutu)-ši a-di e-reb Šamši (dutu)-ši ik-ki-ru B: Šamši(dutu)-ši ik-ki-ru-šú la ṣa-la-lu imid-s[u]

He (Sargon) [?] the word which Bēl(?) spoke; he tore out earth from his pit and he built a city opposite Akkad (A: opposite Akkad he built a city and called it Babylon). Enlil changed what he had said, and from east to west they rebelled (B: from east to west they rebelled and he no longer had rest).³³⁰

Sargon’s rise to power, as depicted in The Sargon Birth Legend, is taken from traditional literature.³³¹ But the vilification of his character—by and large viewed positively throughout the Mesopotamian tradition—is of great note in this text, and certainly reflects the text’s date of composition and the scholarly milieu in which it originated. The puzzle becomes yet more complicated when we consider another Late Babylonian text that presents Sargon’s “crime” in a slightly different—but significant—wording. The Chronicle of Early Kings gives this version: e-pe-er e-se-e šá Bābili(ká.dingir.raki) is-suḫ-ma i-te-e A-kà-dèki meḫra(gaba.ri) Bābili(ká.dingir.raki) i-pu-uš (obv. 18‒19)

 See Evans (1983: 99‒109). Michalowski (1977: 156) also identifies The Weidner Chronicle as a fully developed manifestation of this motif.  For a textual matrix, see al-Rawi (1990: 2‒8). In Glassner (2004: 263‒269, no. 38), this section is given as lines 60‒61.  See Lewis (1980: 130‒142) for a useful inventory of previous texts dealing with this king, including an Old Babylonian Sargon Epic (AO 6702). See also Westenholz (1979: 36‒49). Similar references to Ur-Zababa and Sargon’s status as a cupbearer are present in Sumerian accounts. See Cooper and Heimpel (1983: 67‒82). Besides these anecdotal facts, Grayson (1975a: 44) stresses the uncertainty related to the author’s sources for information about any of the rulers in The Weidner Chronicle.

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He tore out earth from the clay pit of Babylon and made, neighboring Akkad, a replica of Babylon.³³²

The difference in wording here is complicated by the fact that the beginning of the chronicle presents Sargon in a positive light, as do most accounts of his reign: Šarru-kīn(mlugal.gin) šàr A-kà-dèki ina pale(bala) dIš-tar i-lam-ma šá-ni-ma u ma-ḫi-ri ul i-ši šá-lum-mat-su eli(ugu) mātāti(kurmeš) it-bu-uk tâmta(a.ab.ba) ina ṣīt dŠamši(dutu.è) i-bi-ir-ma (obv. 1‒3) Sargon king of Akkad came to power during the reign of Ištar. He had neither rival nor opponent, his radiance poured out over the lands, (and) he crossed over the sea in the East.

Here we would seem to have two competing Babylonian versions of events, all within the same text. Compared to Ur-Zababa, Sargon’s character is vilified in The Weidner Chronicle, while The Chronicle of Early Kings appears ambivalent about the same king. Grayson (1975a: 45‒46) noted this contradiction; he suggests a potential solution through analysis of the two known copies of the text, A and B (of which A is significantly better preserved). Texts A and B partially duplicate each other, but only (as far as can be understood) in a latter portion of five lines (31‒36) describing the reign of Erra-imittī; after this, Text A adds two lines about Ilu-šūma, an Assyrian king of the twentieth century BC. This leads Grayson to suggest that text A may betray Assyrian influences. There were clearly several sources being utilized in the composition of this text;³³³ though ultimately it is impossible to be certain, we can look to scribal practice to explain this inconsistency. Various theories have been put forth regarding who is the “real” object of criticism in this part of the text. As Van De Mieroop (1999b: 335) notes, there were only a few builder-kings who could have acted as analogues for Sargon here: the Babylonian Kurigalzu (Dūr-Kurigalzu, fourteenth century); and the Assyrians Tukulti-Ninurta I (Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, thirteenth century), Assurnasirpal II (Assur, ninth century), Sargon II (Khorsabad, eighth century), and Sennacherib (Nineveh, seventh century). Van de Mieroop argues in favor of Sargon of Akkad as a stand-in for Sargon II, noting that the Assyrian Sargon’s inscriptions represented the project in a hubristic light; he assumes that the general uprising in

 Text edition for The Chronicle of Early Kings from Glassner (2004: 268‒271, no. 39).  He adds that the early part of the text was informed by omen collections (one copy of which was found in Assurbanipal’s library) and The Weidner Chronicle.

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The Weidner Chronicle, associated with Sargon of Akkad’s construction projects, was a back-handed way of expressing contemporary Assyrian discontent about the building of Khorsabad, since it was based on lofty measurements,³³⁴ therefore beyond the capacity of mankind (Van de Mieroop 1999: 334‒338). The majority of scholars have dated this letter to the Kassite period;³³⁵ Grayson (1975a: 43) considers the text “a blatant piece of propaganda” for Babylonian interests. With van de Mieroop, I favor a Neo-Assyrian date for the text. Though The Weidner Chronicle exists in several copies from the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian period, its best-preserved copy is from Assur, discovered in a private house with a large library and archive of a family of exorcists (Pedersén 1985: N 4, no. 184). There were found 631 texts, most of which Pedersén identifies as “literary.” Pedersén’s dating of the central persons associated with this library (Kiṣir-Assur, Nabû-bessunu, and Kiṣir-Nabû, who were exorcists of the Assur temple, maš.maš bīt Assur) places it sometime in the reign of Assurbanipal.³³⁶ Literary texts pertaining to the ideological machinery of the Neo-Assyrian kings appear in this library, together with the incantations, rituals, and lexical lists that we might expect from the collection of a family of exorcists. Of special note is The Eighth Campaign of Sargon; The Sargon Geography;³³⁷ a synchronistic king list; The Marduk Prophecy (discussed in Chapter 1); and a cultic commentary, again concerning the capture and deprivation of Marduk, probably used to justify Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon and the transfer of the statue of Marduk to Assur.³³⁸ Thus we have several texts concerned with Neo-Assyrian royal legitimation.

 The dimensions of the city gates, for instance, are described in Sargon’s inscriptions in the same terms as the gates of the universe in the epic text Enūma Eliš. For this, see Parpola (1995: 69 n. 1).  For example, Grayson (1975a: 278‒279); Arnold (1994: 131) dates it to the late second millennium “on the basis of internal content and ideological perspective.” Evans (1983: 107‒108) concurs.  Its presumed contemporaneity with the library of Assurbanipal leads Pedersén (1985: N4, p. 45 n. 21) to argue “that the present library probably did not represent the last step before canonization in the library of Assurbanipal, but rather the use of uncanonized and canonized works, often from other libraries, in order to create a library for the special needs of the exorcists.”  See Liverani (1999‒2001: 57‒85) and Grayson (1974‒1977: esp. 57) for the dating of the text and transliteration, translation, and commentary. See also Tadmor (1999: 55‒62) and Liverani (1993c: 64‒67), who represents the text as a sort of “scribal experiment,” whereby an attempt is made to use Assyrian technical measurements to describe the campaigns of an Old Akkadian king.  Notably, the latter text is written not in Standard Babylonian, but in the Neo-Assyrian dialect. See Pedersén (1985: N4, p. 56).

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Yet, even though The Weidner Chronicle is part of a library at Assur that contains several new Assyrian compositions, it betrays Babylonian sympathies, just as The Sin of Sargon does (Chapter 4). For one, the construction of this “counterpart to Babylon” is criticized in Babylonian terms, associated with the neglect of the Marduk cult. But the Babylonians would have little reason to worry about the construction of a new capital to replace Assur (in the case of Sargon II, Khorsabad); this would be a patently Assyrian concern, but it is not expressed in Assyrian terms.³³⁹ This deduction leaves us with only one appealing option: Sennacherib. Babylonian texts—most notably The Sin of Sargon—were already using Sargon, the father of Sennacherib, as a foil for his son’s misdeeds. It may well be that the removal of earth in The Weidner Chronicle is an allusion to Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon. Furthermore, the construction of Nineveh— what I am assuming is the “counterpart” (gaba.ri) referred to in the text—was roughly contemporary to Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon in 689 BC. Sure enough, Nineveh was the only Assyrian city to approximate the size of Babylon in this period (750 hectares to 890 hectares). Already in The Sin of Sargon, the equality of Assyria and Babylonia is broached in religious terms (Assur: Marduk); here we see the same schematic given in a geographical formulation (Nineveh: Babylon).³⁴⁰ The Chronicle of Early Kings would seem to corroborate this assumption: we are now told that the transgressor’s people rebelled against him, and were later inflicted with famine (a-na ikkib(nì.gig) i-pu-šu bēlu(en) rabûtu (galú) Marduk(damar.utu) i-gu-ug-ma i-na ḫu-šaḫ-ḫu nišīšu(unmeš)-šu ig-mu-ur obv. 20‒21). This may be a post facto version of events, this time with an allusion to the fall of that rival capital, Nineveh.³⁴¹ I would further suggest a correlation with Sennacherib in the final line of each text’s discussion of Sargon. In each, we read that Marduk caused Sargon to be inflicted with la ṣa-la-la (in The Chronicle of Early Kings obv. 23; la ṣa-la-lu in The Weidner Chronicle obv. 52). Most scholars have translated this term as “insomnia.” However, the CAD gives an appropriate alternative meaning, having to do with the restlessness of dead spirits (ṣalālu 2b,  The style of The Weidner Chronicle, as discussed above, is strikingly similar to other pieces studied in this book, such as Advice to a Prince (Chapter 3) and The Dynastic Prophecy (epilogue).  In fact, these two cities were often so conflated in the ancient textual tradition that there was confusion about which was being referenced. See van de Mieroop (2004: 1‒5) and Dalley (2008: 25‒34) on how other cities could become “Babylons,” especially during the Neo-Assyrian period.  Van de Mieroop (2004: 5) notes: “In the case of Nineveh and Babylon, the fates of the two cities were considered so closely tied together that they became each other’s substitute. Ultimately, the two cities became one.” On the elaboration of Nineveh in the Neo-Assyrian period, see Frahm (2008: 13‒20).

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Ṣ pg. 69). The dictionary cites Gilgamesh XII 152,³⁴² which reads: e-ṭem-ma-šú i-na erṣeti(ki)-ti ul ṣa-lil, translated by the CAD as “his spirit is not at rest in the netherworld.” This, I argue, refers to the murder of Sennacherib by his sons, an inglorious end that may have caused his posthumous transformation into a malevolent, restless ghost or spirit, in accord with Mesopotamian ideas about death. Indeed, the Neo-Babylonian Stele of Nabonidus implies a linkage between the destruction of Babylon, Marduk’s wrath, and Sennacherib’s murder (Parpola 1980: 176 n. 2).³⁴³ As Larsen (1979: 78) argues, “Some of the fundamental ideological features of the Akkadian period are directly connected with imperialist aspirations [of the Neo-Assyrian period]—the claim to universal rule or world domination, a very strong emphasis on the individual strength and dynamism of the king, and a new set of titles expressing these concepts.”³⁴⁴ The issues faced by the kings of these respective empires were also of a strikingly similar nature; Sargon was confronted with a “Sumerian dilemma,” almost directly comparable to that of the “Babylonian problem” faced by the Neo-Assyrian kings. Indeed, even the outcomes were the same: “[Sargon] did his very best to avoid offending Sumerian sensibilities and to appear as following ancient Sumerian tradition, and still they fought bitterly against him.”³⁴⁵ Ultimately what we have in The Weidner Chronicle is a new composition, exploiting Old Akkadian personages as a foil for contemporary criticism,³⁴⁶ in complete concordance (both in their

 SAACT 1 obv. xii 151.  As further corroborating evidence for the Babylonian authorship of this text, I would note the presentation of Sennacherib in the Assyrian-authored Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince, which presents Sennacherib as the “ideal king.” See Kvanvig (1988: 433‒434), and the discussion in Chapter 4.  Pongratz-Leisten (2014a: 42‒44) notes that Assurbanipal seemed to be especially interested in such matters, as his library included a compilation of historical omens specifically relating to the Old Akkadian kings Sargon and Narām-Sîn.  See A. Westenholz (1979: 108‒109 and 114‒115) on the escalation and complications associated with Sumero-Akkadian relationships during Sargonic rule and the later dissolution of previous tensions between the two parties.  While The Weidner Chronicle clearly represents a negative commentary on the Old Akkadian kings, another text, The Sargon Birth Legend, may reflect the last throes of a heroic kingship model, of which Sargon had often been a subject in previous eras. Lewis (1980: 130‒142) gives a useful inventory of previous texts dealing with the king, including an Old Babylonian Sargon Epic (AO 6702), treated by Nougayrol (1951: 169‒180); “The King of Battle (šar tamḫāri),” discovered at El Amarna, with other fragments from Assur and Nineveh; the Old Babylonian Sumerian text described in the above section; and king lists and various omens. The dissertation published by Brian Lewis in 1980 is still the major edition of The Sargon Birth Legend. See also J. Westenholz (1979: 36‒49). Though he is hesitant to categorize The Sargon Birth Legend with a generic

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subject matter and manner of complaint) with the other texts examined in Chapter 4.³⁴⁷ Perhaps most significantly, the presence of a similar counterdiscursive dialogue (representing both Assyrian and pro-Babylonian viewpoints) at this private library in Assur indicates that the competing scholarly discourses that appeared at Nineveh in Chapter 4 could also occur in other important Assyrian capitals.³⁴⁸ The appearance of such texts in other areas of the Assyrian imperial

distinction, Lewis (1980: 92) identifies this work within the context of a discussion about narû literature, as was briefly described with relation to The Cuthaean Legend. “The entire work,” he argues, “may have been a composite text whose opening section took the form of a miniature narû.” This text type—so called from its putative origins from stele on which were inscribed honorific inscriptions—has been the subject of debate as to its defining characteristics and appropriate generic labeling. See the discussions of Longman (1991: 43‒48) and J. Westenholz (1979: 16‒21). See also the excellent review of Haul (2009: 95‒130). Jonker (1995: 95) broadens the categorization by helpfully distinguishing between the narû monuments and their derivative texts, differentiating them by their audience (the narû were meant for communication between god and man; the literature between the speaker and other humans) and their medium (on a narû the text was written on an object; in narû literature, the writer merely pretends that the text is written on an object). In general terms, she describes the goal of this variety of literature as focusing on the retention of memory: the endurance of the name of the “sender” was a primary objective, with the corollary that it would then serve as a practical source of information for generations to come. See also the classificatory discussion of Lewis (1980: 87‒88). Perhaps most importantly, Grayson (1975a: 2) reminds us that narû literature was never written at the behest of the royal party, but rather that the impetus came from the scribal order; it is thus important to recognize that this genre—and the counterdiscursive literature from which it springs— should be considered as a scribal construct.  In fact, there may be some speculative evidence that contrary to the Assyrian tendency to venerate Sargon, he was a special source of criticism for the Babylonians around the time of the fall of Nineveh. Nylander (1980: 329‒333) argues that the unique damnatio memoriae received by the copper head of an Akkadian king at Nineveh was in accordance with a Babylo-Median political agenda on the occasion of the capitulation of Nineveh in 612 BC.  In this context should be mentioned the so-called Synchronistic History, which is compared by Grayson to The Weidner Chronicle because of its biased approach to reporting of events, this time from the reign of Puzur-Assur III (first half of the fifteenth century BC) to Adad-Nirari III (810‒783 BC). For the text, see Grayson (1975a: 157‒170, no. 21, with introductory commentary pp. 51‒56) and Glassner (2004: 176‒183, no. 10). For commentary on its uniqueness (mostly as per provenance), also in relation to The Weidner Chronicle, see Waerzeggers (2012: 289). The text re-creates Assyro-Babylonian relations in this period, often failing to record Assyrian defeats where there is historical evidence for such an outcome. The tense nature of the relationship is couched in familiar terms. Babylon has committed a ṣiliptu, “crime”; this Grayson interprets as their repeated violation of an adê treaty. For a masterful study of Assyro-Babylonian relationships in the later periods of Mesopotamian history through the lens of the adê, see Brinkman (1990: 86‒89) on The Synchronistic History. On the other side of the coin, there is plenty of Babylonian material that seeks to repress painful events. For an interesting study of “historical forgetting” about the fall of Babylon and the “mental repackaging” of material related to it, see

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enterprise shows that the disagreements about and the subversion of Assyrian royalty that they implied were widespread, at least in Assyrian court circles. Another—though perhaps more obvious—conclusion is that the epistolary form was also utilized as a medium for counterdiscursive narratives about Neo-Assyrian royalty.

The Letter of Gilgamesh There was, in fact, a precedent for problematizing Assyrian kingship in the form of literary letters. Of interest here is the so-called Letter of Gilgamesh, in which the guise of Gilgamesh is used to represent the overly imperialistic ambitions of the Assyrian Empire. The text was discovered in “no less than three copies” at the Assyrian outpost of Sultantepe,³⁴⁹ at which a hoard of cuneiform tablets was unearthed that date from 700 BC (the beginning of the reign of Sennacherib) to 612 BC (the fall of the Assyrian Empire) (Gurney 1952: 25‒26). George mentions an additional Late Babylonian fragment from Sippar (Ni 2869), causing him to categorize the Letter of Gilgamesh within a “growing corpus of bogus royal missives” (2003: 118). Gurney surmises that the library at Sultantepe in which the copies of this text were found resembles a temple school; its contents included prayers and incantations, ritual texts, and literary texts, such as fragments of The Gilgamesh Epic, Enūma Eliš, Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, and the unique tale of The Poor Man of Nippur. ³⁵⁰ Gurney (1952: 26) notes the similarities between this collection and the voluminous library of the exorcist at Assur (Pedersén’s N4), where The Weidner Chronicle was discovered, citing not just the contents of both collections but also the style employed in the colophons of the texts at both sites. In this letter, Gilgamesh makes rather burdensome requests for goods from a foreign king.³⁵¹ The addressee of the letter, Ash-ra-nunna, is otherwise unknown.

Richardson (2016: 101‒142). Such texts are further indication that the literary dialogue between Assyria and Babylonia was directly affected by their political relationships with one another; that new and biased texts were being created to reflect this state of affairs; and that both parties participated in such behavior in equivalent fashion.  Published in Gurney and Finkelstein (1957, I: pls. liv-lvii, nos. 40‒42).  Gurney (1956: 145‒164). For the last text, see also the new edition and text commentary of Ottervanger (2016), who collates the text found in Sultantepe with the small fragment discovered in Nippur.  For a real foreign complaint about Assyrian imperialistic endeavors, see Oppenheim (1979: 111‒144). Here he gives a letter from Esarhaddon to the god Assur, which shows discontent—and

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The letter implies that Gilgamesh had previously asked this king for precious materials with which to outfit his friend Enkidu (9‒10); the failure of these materials to arrive was apparently the catalyst for the present missive. Gilgamesh thereby makes outrageous demands; for example, he claims to desire 70,000 black horses with white manes, 100,000 mares, 90,000 talents of iron, and of course, a block of gold to fashion a breastplate for Enkidu. Should Ash-ra-nunna fail to provide these items, Gilgamesh threatens him with military action and presumably the obliteration of his children, possessions, and offspring (39: mārīka(dumumeš)-ka bu-šá-ka u li-da-ni-ka. ³⁵² While most view Gilgamesh as a model in Babylonian literature, some have interpreted anti-heroic strands within the broader Gilgamesh narrative,³⁵³ of which this exemplar may be a vestige. This letter, however, is in a rare class of more explicit critique, and should be considered in the context of counterdiscourses about royalty in the Neo-Assyrian period. Given the “specifically Assyrian grammatical forms” in The Gilgamesh Letter, Gurney originally suggested that the text was a product of the Sultantepe school, but did not rule out the possibility that the text was representative of “traditional Babylonian literature,” since Colophon A indicates that the tablet was copied from an older original: libir.ra.bi.gim. The latter presumption may be confirmed with the discovery of the fragment from Sippar, but its late Babylonian date should be taken into account. Though few extensive studies of the letter have been undertaken and its date of composition is yet to be determined, there are several indications that The Gilgamesh Letter is of first millennium—and specifically, Assyrian—origin. First, George notes that the foreign conquests of the kings of Akkad are reflected in second- and first-millennium literary formulations of Gilgamesh as “he without any equal,” ul i-ši šá-ni-nam-ma (i 62).³⁵⁴ More specifically, Gurney (1957: 127) points to the phrase “from the horizon to the zenith” in l.4, which is only paralleled in the annals of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III. The epithet applied to Gilgamesh, “product of Anu, [Enlil] and Ea,” bi-nu-ut dA-n[u dEnlil] u dÉ-a, is, according to the CAD (B pg. 244 binûtu) a moniker that first appears in Assyria (Kraus 1980: 117). Additionally, several support for that discontent—in regions ruled by Assyria (most notably, the king of Šubriya). For the letter, see Bauer (1931: 255‒259).  Text edition of the letter from Gurney (1957: 128‒132).  Davenport (2007: 1‒23), who even compares this letter to sentiments against kingship expressed in Advice to a Prince.  Line 45 of The Gilgamesh Letter: šarru(lugal) dan-nu x maḫira(gab!.ri!) la i-šu-ú. George (2003: 118), however, does not connect this letter to an Assyrian milieu, and assumes that the Sippar fragment confirms that the text is a remnant of traditional Babylonian literature. He views its contents as reflecting a Babylonian ideology that “the kings of Babylonia were owed by right the submission and tribute of foreign lands.”

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other specifically Assyrian forms (ú-še-rab-ka obv. 40 and e-rab-am-ma obv. 37‒ 38) appear within the body of the letter (Gurney 1957: 135). In more general terms, Kraus points out that the basic groundwork for the letter contains themes “…eins wie das andere Gemeingut assyrischer Annalen und historischer Königsinschriften” (Kraus 1980: 118). These themes include its diplomatic nature and its detailed tribute-lists; its solemn oath at 33 ff.: ⸢at?-ma⸣ ilī(dingirmeš) rabûti(galmeš); its threats for reprisal of rebellious behavior 36 ff: a-šap-pa-rak-kam-ma ālānīka (urumeš)-ka i-mar-raq [ēkallā]tīka(é.galmeš)-ka i-maš-šá-ʼ kirâtīka(giš.kiri₆meš)-ka x x x, “I will send a message to you and he will pulverize your cities, pillage your palaces, and ….your orchards”; and its short description of the fate of the conquered people and its royal court. These pieces of evidence cause both Foster and Kraus to argue that the letter is a “parody on Assyrian royal style” (Foster 1995: 368). Fictitious letters are now known to have been something of a novelty in other periods of Mesopotamian literature. Kraus identifies a possible exemplar in an Old Babylonian school tablet from Ur;³⁵⁵ another letter of Kurigalzu with a probable provenance at Babylon appears to make similarly grandiose demands;³⁵⁶ and two additional letters, one from Ur and one from Nippur, adopt Sargon as a fictive sender (J. Westenholz 1979: 141‒169).³⁵⁷ Westenholz assumes these letters to have been a production of a scholarly milieu, and Foster (2016: 269) concurs, arguing that these compositions are illustrations of “school-day whimsy, in which an assignment was packaged as a letter from a king of old, humorously combining epistolary style with heroic tradition and lists of words.” He provides parallel examples in similar “school-boy” missives which also feature demands for outrageous figures, tentatively suggesting two examples discovered at Sargonic Girsu (Foster 1982: 43‒44). But these letters are different. Though previous fictive letters exist—many of Babylonian origin—most of them were in single copies and used as school exercises. The ones studied here are being copied —or even possibly produced, like The Weidner Chronicle—at Assyrian capitals (Sultantepe, Nineveh, Assur). It is important to note that settlements such as Sultantepe and Assur were in direct contact with the imperial capital at Nineveh; nothing makes this clearer than the fragments of The Gilgamesh Epic found at Sultantepe, which contain columns I and II of the Nineveh recension (Gurney 1952: 26).

 Kraus (1980: 115), citing UET 7: 73 obv. 1‒16, published by Gurney in 1974.  Though Wiseman, its editor, was not able to pinpoint a date for its composition. See Wiseman (1967: 495‒504).  See also the fictitious letter of Samsu-iluna to Enlil-nādin-šumi, most likely written in the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (Chapter 2).

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Furthermore, both The Gilgamesh Letter and The Weidner Chronicle focus specifically on the primacy of Babylonian kingship, often combined with an emphasis on the primacy of Marduk. Thus The Gilgamesh Letter could represent another example of fictitious epistolary that was copied for the same purpose as The Weidner Chronicle, with an older king’s flaws seeing contemporary relevance in the Neo-Assyrian conversation. Much like the subversion of Text A—the body of literature produced in service of royal ideology—at Nineveh, scholars and their apprentices at Sultantepe undertook similar counterdiscursive activities. This time, Assyrian scribal apprentices were copying the paradigmatic exemplar of Babylonian kingship represented by The Gilgamesh Epic (a Babylonian Text A), and combining it with knowledge of widely disseminated Neo-Assyrian royal ideological assertions (another Text A);³⁵⁸ Text B, in this case, manipulated both Babylonian and Assyrian text genres as a way to problematize Neo-Assyrian kingship. It uses historical revisionism to cast the king—represented by an older personage—in a bad light. Thus, while not specifically related to the kingship of Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, or Assurbanipal, as many of our counterdiscursive narratives have been thus far, The Gilgamesh Letter still represents an effort to undermine kingship ideology. Such an exercise—even if it was pedagogic in nature—reinforces the idea that apprentice scribes had literary opportunities for counterdiscursiveness from the very beginning of their education. Such parodies are more evidence that scholars were actively engaged in internal counterdiscursive dialogues about the king and kingship, in important imperial cultural and political centers outside of Nineveh;³⁵⁹ and further, that epistolary was another literary means with which to experiment in problematizing Neo-Assyrian kingship.

Middle Babylonian Letters in the Library at Nineveh The manipulation of historical and semi-mythological kings for such purposes did not end with the creation and copying of fictitious literary letters. Of great interest in this arena are two texts³⁶⁰ from Nineveh that contain copies of quoti-

 At Sultantepe, two fragments of The Gilgamesh Epic were discovered. Both represent the Nineveh recension of the epic. See Gurney (1954: 87‒95).  See also Davenport (2007: 20).  The dissertation of Mary Frazer, completed at Yale University in 2015 and entitled “Akkadian Royal Letters in Later Mesopotamian Tradition,” presents new editions of these texts and others yet unpublished that may add to our knowledge about this category. As the text of

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dian epistolary that would have had no obvious relevance in their context, since they were letters to Middle Babylonian kings. Because these are copies of older correspondence and not necessarily new creations of the Neo-Assyrian period, we cannot necessarily expect the same type of counterdiscursive vocabularies to appear. But at the very least they help to contextualize such literary dialogues during the Neo-Assyrian period, presenting another “exciting antidote to the stability-oriented, one-sided texts that otherwise dominate ancient Mesopotamian historiography” (Frahm 2005: 44). The first text, discovered in three copies ((K 212+4448, Sm 2116+BM 104727, BM 55498+55499), was from an unidentified Isin II king to the Assyrian king Mutakkil-Nusku. It expresses the Babylonian monarch’s anger with his Assyrian counterpart for failing to arrive on time for a prescheduled meeting at the border fortress of Zaqqu.³⁶¹ He writes: […..]x-⸢ka⸣ ta-ku-šu tak-tu-uš ul-tu tak-[tu-šu x x]x ana x[…] […..]x [a]m-me-ni la te-bi-ram-ma mi-nu-ú š[a …..] (Ms. A₁ rev. 59’‒60’)³⁶² You were late, you delayed. After you delayed…to… Why did you not cross over? What…?

Two manuscripts of the text are from the library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh, and are written in “eine übliche ninivitische Handschrift” (manuscripts A₁ and A₂), whereas the third manuscript (manuscript B) betrays a “sehr feinen, winzigen babylonischen Schrift”; its provenance is unclear. Llop and George (2003: 2) place the text somewhere between the twelfth and seventh centuries BC. They recognize its rarity as a copy of a diplomatic letter, since in regular circumstances, these “…wurden abgeschickt und dann nicht mehr weiter kopiert und tradiert” (Llop and George 2003: 9). Its evolution from standard royal missive to something more like a literary text is attested by the fact that the Ninevite scribe had a damaged copy from which to work.³⁶³ The letter can be tentatively placed in the context of fraternal strife over the Assyrian throne. In 1133 BC, Ninurta-tukulti-Assur had briefly ascended to the kingship of Assyria, only to be ousted by his brother, Muttakil-Nusku. The ascripthe thesis was not available to me at the time of writing, I will use the editions of Llop and George (2003: 1‒23), and refrain from discussing texts that are in a more fragmentary state.  Brinkman (1968: 101 n. 555) suggests that Zaqqu may have been a town along the Middle Euphrates and hence an appropriately neutral meeting point for Assyrian and Babylonian kings.  Text edition from Llop and George (2003: 2‒8). See also the translation of Grayson (1972: 143‒146).  Llop and George (2003: 9 and fn. 42). This is indicated by the Akkadian annotation ḫepi, “broken,” at line 58’ of Ms. A₁, Rs. l. 16.

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tion of the letter to Muttakil-Nusku seems likely because of several lines towards the end of the letter hinting at a hostile relationship between the brothers, which seems to have spilled into their correspondence with the Babylonian king: […dnin-urta]-gištukulti(tukul)-daš-šur šá taq-bu-ú um-ma ku-lu-ʼ-ú la zi-ka-ru šu-⸢ú⸣ (Ms. A₁ rev. 21) Ninurta-tukulti-Assur, about whom you spoke in the following way: “He is a catamite, not a man.”

In the missive, the Babylonian monarch accuses the Assyrian king (presumably Muttakil-Nusku) of lacking courage and direction: ⸢a⸣-na-ku ul ak-ru-bak-kam-ma šá qur-ru-bi-ia uq-tar-ri-bak-kam-ma a-na ṣu-ḫe-e-ti šá šarrī (lugalmeš) šá li-mi-ti-ka il-tak-nu-ka-ma (A₁ rev. 1) Did I not greet you? And regarding my gift, it wasn’t delivered to you. They made you as an object of amusement for the kings in your surrounding area.

It appears that the Babylonian king even denigrates Assyrian kingship as an institution, when he proclaims towards the end of the letter: [x x]x šarrū(lugalmeš)-ma abbūka(admeš)-ka la x[…..]x-du-ti am-man-na-a i nu-ḫas-si-sa dibbi šá m[…] [x x x]+še-ma-ka lu-uš-pu-rak-ka […..]-⸢lu⸣ a-na Nippur(nibruki) urusi-par u bābi[li(ká.dingir.raki) (Ms. A₂ rev. 13’‒14’)

Llop and George translate these lines as such: […] …die Könige, deine Väter, haben nicht…[…]…Wir wollen uns an jemandem erinnern, die Worte von [PN… […]…will ich dir schreiben […] …nach Nippur, Sippar und Babylon

I would suggest a slightly different translation: The kings, your fathers, did not…Let any of us remember the words of…[PN] Let me write to you…regarding Nippur, Sippar, and Babylon…

While the portion in question is unfortunately broken, I would suggest that with the statement “let us remember the words,” the Babylonian sender of this letter is subtly reminding Muttakil-Nusku of the precepts for proper kingship outlined in Advice to a Prince. Whether the mention of the three cities would simply recall that text, or whether their evocation was short-hand for the text itself is open to

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question.³⁶⁴ Additionally, Ms. A₂ rev. 6’‒7’ references an incident regarding Enlilkudurrī-uṣur, a man who served as an emissary between the Assyrian and Babylonian kings during this period. The letter mentions the rabûtu(galmeš) šá māt (kur) aš-šur “the nobles of the land of Assyria” (Ms. A2 rev. 6’) in close connection to Enlil-kudurrī-uṣur. We know from Chronicle 25³⁶⁵ that the rabûtu had detained Enlil-kudurrī-uṣur and delivered him to Adad-šuma-uṣur, his Babylonian adversary. Llop and George (2003: 17) conjecture that this incident directly threatened the kingship of Mutakkil-Nusku, and together with the assertion of his incompetency as a ruler, the recollection is “ein Aufruf an den assyrischen Adel, seinen unfähigen König Mutakkil-Nusku oder einen späteren regierenden assyrischen Monarchen zu stürzen.”³⁶⁶ Not only is the Assyrian kingship criticized, but the nobles within the royal court are described as dangerous to its stability. While the contents of this letter clearly reflect the specific historical circumstances in which it was written, nevertheless its discourse about Assyrian and Babylonian kings (and their relationships to one another) could have been aptly applied in almost any era after its original composition until the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. More evidence for the timeless nature of this epistle is its rather extensive reference to Marduk in Ms. B obv. 19 ‒ rev. 5. Llop and George (2003: 12) presume that these lines reference the return of Marduk’s cult statue to Babylon, in the reign of Ninurta-tukulti-Assur. Though the text is quite fragmentary, such a proposition appears probable given what content is remaining: …] x x-ti áš-bu māt(kur) aš-šur ki-i i-dal-ḫu šarru(lugal) […..] …a-na lìb-b]i māti(kur) la i-tur-ru-ma ⸢la?⸣ mu-x[…ḫ]a-x[…] …qā]t(šu) bēli(den) rabî(gal)-i iṣ-ba-tu-⸢ma⸣ a-na māti(kur) x[…] nun ma […] (Ms. B obv. 28’rev. 2) …they lived. When the Land of Assyria was disturbed, the king… …who did not return into the heart of the land and did not… He seized the hand of the great lord Bēl and…to the land…

This event is mentioned in The Chronicle of the Kassite Kings,³⁶⁷ which relates the removal of Marduk from Babylon in the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I (iv 3‒6); later in the same column, the chronicle says that Marduk was repatriated to Babylon during the reign of Ninurta-tukulti-Assur:

   

Landsberger (1935‒1936: 142) had also suggested this connection. Published in Walker (1982: 398‒417). Italics mine. Grayson (1975a: 22, pp. 170‒177), Glassner (2004: 45, pp. 278‒281).

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[7]6? šattū(mumeš) a-di mtukul-ti-an.šár den ina kurAš-šurki a-šib ana tar-ṣi mtukul-ti-an.šár en a-na bābili([tin].tirki) it-tal-kám (iv. 12‒13)

d

For 76 years,³⁶⁸ until (Ninurta)-Tukulti-Assur, Bēl resided in Assyria. In the time of (Ninurta)Tukulti-Assur, Bēl went to Babylon.

Llop and George (2003: 9) argue that, in its Ninevite context, this letter had lost its “propagandistische Funktion,” and was rather copied for pedagogical purposes and for historical study, its contents no longer a subject of controversy. Yet, the older content of these letters could be used in later periods to reflect upon contemporary events, using a pre-existing counterdiscursive dialogue. While we cannot determine when exactly the letter was copied, a fragment of another copied letter from Adad-šuma-uṣur to Assur-nīrāri and the high Assyrian official, Ilīpadâ—which also denigrates the Assyrian king—contains an Assurbanipal colophon.³⁶⁹ The contents of this correspondence has remarkable relevance to the situation of the Neo-Assyrian court in that same period: palace intrigues, doubts about the competency of the Assyrian king, the endless dialogue about the whereabouts of the statue of Marduk, even fraternal strife. In the reign of Assurbanipal, the empire experienced the difficult years of turmoil between himself and Šamaš-šum-ukīn; there had been increasing fear of conspiracy since the uneasy reign of his father, Esarhaddon; and, finally, the Marduk statue was repatriated to Babylon (see Chapter 1).³⁷⁰ All of these parallels help explain why this Middle Babylonian letter was copied during the Neo-Assyrian period,³⁷¹ and further contextualize both the depth and the generic scope of the counterdiscursive environment at Nineveh. The copying of (real or fictional) older letters as a way to understand contemporary political events sees an analogue in a rare pairing of missives related

 Glassner conjectures a number of seventy-six. If the sack of Babylon took place in 1225 BC, the years between Marduk’s absence and repatriation would be something closer to ninety-six. But a number of seventy-six is probable if the capture of Marduk is not dated until the death of Tukulti-Ninurta in 1204 BC.  This last, short letter is also given by Llop and George (2003: 10). See also Grayson (1972: 137‒138).  These are, to some extent, also the conclusions of Llop and George, as well as those of an unpublished paper delivered by Mary Frazer at the annual meeting of the American Oriental Society in March 2016.  Grayson (1972: 137) wonders instead whether these letters were preserved to goad the Assyrians into seeking vengeance for their debilitated position with respect to Babylon towards the end of the Neo-Assyrian imperial period.

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to the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. The first text, first published by Gerardi in her 1986 article, “Declaring War in Mesopotamia,” seems to be a letter from the former Assyrian official-turned-Babylonian-king Nabopolassar to Sîn-šarru-iškun, son of Assurbanipal. Sîn-šarru-iškun had captured the throne of Assyria after the deposition of his brother, Assur-etel-ilāni. Though the chronology of the last years of the Neo-Assyrian Empire is shrouded by scarce, inconsistent textual records, Reade (1970: 1‒9) concludes that the reign of Sîn-šarru-iškun as Assyrian king lasted from 623 BC to 612 BC. A letter from Sîn-šarru-iškun to Nabopolassar would, in theory, date to shortly before Nineveh fell to a coalition of Medo-Babylonian forces. The text in question, BM 55467, is believed to have come from Babylon.³⁷² Its contents accuse the current (and former) Assyrian king(s) of improprieties towards Babylon (“you were hostile towards Babylon” tu-⸢na⸣-⸢ki⸣[ra-a])³⁷³, and contextualize the current Babylonian king, Nabopolassar, as Marduk’s legitimate chosen successor for the throne at Babylon. The letter also mentions previous communication between the two kings, and explicitly vowes revenge upon Nineveh for the wrongs previously done to Babylon and the cult of Marduk. Some of the primary accusations against the Assyrian king addressed in the letter are similar to those against Sennacherib in Neo-Assyrian texts such as The Sin of Sargon: [ar]-⸢ni⸣ ḫi-ṭu u gíl-la-tum te-mi-da-ʼ tu-šá-ḫi-za-a ma-ru-⸢uš⸣-[ti] ⸢bar⸣-tum ina māti(kur) taš-ku-na-ʼ (BM 55467 obv. 8‒9) You imposed³⁷⁴ wrongdoing, sin, and sacrilege; you fostered evil. You fomented rebellion in the land.

Specifically noted are the crimes committed by the Assyrian king against Babylon and its temple, the Esagila, whose property is described as “made visible and sent to Nineveh” (obv. 4: tu-šáṭ-ṭì-la-a-ma tu-še-ri-bi [ana ni-ná-a]). Gerardi (1986: 31) argues that this commentary most likely refers to either the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC or the defeat of Babylon by Assurbanipal

 Da Riva (2014: 109) labels it “The Revenge of Akkad,” as it presents retaliation for Assyria’s past crimes, namely the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib and the removal of Marduk from Babylon.  For the Akkadian text of the letter, I utilize the edition of Gerardi (1986: 30‒38).  Frahm (2015: 11) tentatively proposes “introduce” for a translation of emēdu here. The CAD emēdu 6b and f (pp. 141‒142) give arna emēdu and ḫita emēdu as a special phrases, both using emēdu as a verbal form of imposition. Noticeable here is arna emēdu, the same phrase as is given in l. 19 of Advice to a Prince: dumu en.lílki uru Sip-par tin.tirki ar-na e-me-da, “If one imposes punishment on the citizens of Nippur, Sippar, or Babylon…”

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in 648 BC. The author of the letter then threatens to obliterate the perpetrator’s family from Assyria for the rest of time (rev. 9), and warns that he will be called to account by Marduk and the other great gods for the crimes (lem-né-e-tú rev. 10) that he had committed against the land of Akkad. A striking feature of this text is the problematization of Sennacherib’s legitimacy as Assyrian king. Line 7 of the tablet’s reverse refers to Nineveh as “the city of Sennacherib,” and describes the king in these words: Sîn-aḫḫē-erība(md30-šeš.meš-su) mār(dumu) Šarru-kīn(mlugal.gi.na) i-lit-tum du-uš-mu-ú Sennacherib, son of Sargon, offspring of the house of a slave

The express purpose of the letter, then, is to exact revenge “specifically in retaliation for Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon” (Gerardi 1986: 31). Like The Weidner Chronicle, the letter directly connects the destruction of Babylon to the eventual fate of Nineveh, which is identified as the city of Sennacherib, the “conqueror [of Babylon]” (rev. 7). The correlation of the content and verbiage of this letter to that of The Weidner Chronicle leads one directly into the debate regarding the dating (and authenticity) of the letter. Because the author mentions that the “property of Esagil and Babylon” is in enemy territory (rev. 4: māti(kur) na-ki-ri), Gerardi (1986: 37‒ 38) positions the letter between the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the fall of Nineveh in 612 BC. She considers the most likely date to have been around 614‒612 BC, since the author claims to be ready to make an attack on Assyria, and until 615 BC, military action between Assyria and Babylonia had been limited to Babylonian territory.³⁷⁵ The picture can be increasingly narrowed when one takes into account another letter from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum (CTMMA 2: 44), published by Lambert (2005: 203‒210). Lambert (2005: 206) reads this letter, a missive from Sîn-šarru-iškun to Nabopolassar, as a direct response to BM 55467.³⁷⁶ Like BM 55467, the tablet on which this letter is written is Late Babylonian (Lambert 2005: 205). While the tablet is very fragmentary, we can determine that the complimentary close of the letter indicates that it was written by Sîn-šarru-iškun to Nabopolassar, “his lord” (bēlīšu, rev. 31). The text’s colophon is also interesting. Contrary to Lambert’s original reading, which placed the text in the Esagil at Babylon, Frahm has suggested that the colophon should read:

 Frahm (2015: 11) concurs.  Line 2 of the obverse even parallels lines 10‒12 of the obverse of BM 55467.

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g[im] ⸢sumun?⸣-⸢šú?⸣ ⸢sar?⸣ [giṭṭu/ṭuppu? mdBēl(?)-x(‐x)] ⸢a?⸣ šá mumun-ina-é-sag-gil-igi [qāt/ṣupur mdBēl-ku(?)-ṣu]r-šú dumu.a.ni (CTMMA 2: 4 rev. 32‒33)

Frahm’s translation reads: “Written according to its original, [tablet of Bel-…], son of Bel-ina-Esaggil-lumur, [hand of] Bel-kuṣuršu, his son.” By means of prosopography, he places the tablet in the Hellenistic period, in the reign of Alexander Balas (150 BC). The latter’s siege of Antioch after defeating his predecessor Demetrius I caused serious famine and upheaval in Hellenistic Syria (Frahm 2005: 44‒45). Based on Lambert’s assertion (2005: 205) that both BM 55467 and this letter—its probable response—betray a similar hand, Frahm (2015: 11) suggests that they may share the same scribal background. As copies of real letters sent during the height of the Assyro-Babylonian conflict, this correspondence maintained its currency when events with similar political implications (with the siege of Antioch being reminiscent to the siege of Nineveh) occurred in later periods of Mesopotamian history. So it is that this late epistolary remnant of the tumultuous period at the end of the Neo-Assyrian period can contextualize the retention and copying of Middle Babylonian letters at Nineveh, which served the same purpose: to propagate counterdiscursive dialogues about expectations of kingship and its relation to Babylon and the cult of Marduk. In the letters presented in this chapter, both Assyrian and Babylonian scholars are critical of Assyrian kings, both in the royal environment at Nineveh and outside of it, in the further reaches of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Whether they were new letters or copies of older missives, the epistolary format proved useful, and provides us with different examples of the manipulation of Text A with similar aims and effect as those belles lettres discussed in previous chapters. The letters reinforce our vision of the Assyrian royal court as a malleable scholarly environment, in which individuals from different and competing backgrounds preserved and recycled each other’s texts to better understand their contemporary surroundings with reference to the past.³⁷⁷ Strikingly, there are late Babylonian copies of almost all of the letters discussed in this chapter, from The Weid-

 In his study of third and second millennium compositions, Michalowski (2014b: 165) highlights the potential for Mesopotamian literature to use the past as a counterdiscursive vehicle: “It is therefore difficult to establish,” he says with respect to Old Babylonian literature, “whether the past, used as a vessel for questioning contemporary norms, functioned as a locus of subversive discourse and as a canvas for questioning the established worldview. It is equally possible that for the small number of people who could read and write, the present and the past worked in tandem in a more complex dialectical manner, providing opportunities for communication that escape us, as we search for apparent contradictions detected by modern sensibilities.”

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ner Chronicle to The Letter of Gilgamesh (both late copies are from Sippar). Like The Creation of Kingship, which also survives in a Neo-Babylonian environment (in Babylon, see Chapter 2), copies of older letters and new Neo-Assyrian epistolary maintained their socio-political relevance, even after the fall of the Assyrian Empire. These examples provide more evidence that discourses about the legitimacy of Assyrian kingship were widespread and prevalent across genres, while sharing a common vocabulary of counterdiscursiveness. Their survival indicates that Oppenheim’s “stream of tradition” is more complicated than we may have imagined, and that new texts were transmitted from Assyria to Babylonia in the final stages of Mesopotamian history.³⁷⁸ Finally, the letters reflect the shift in attitudes towards Assyrian kingship in its waning periods, and Assyria’s relationship with Babylon—and especially Marduk—as a nucleus of that dialogue, long after Neo-Assyrian kings had become only a distant memory.

 Da Riva (2014: 112‒115) notes the various Assyrianisms present in Neo-Babylonian inscriptions, which strongly indicate an Assyrian scholarly presence in Babylonia long after the fall of Nineveh. Furthermore, Beaulieu (2010) demonstrates that Assyrian knowledge was carried into later periods of Babylonian history. Thus, transplanted Assyrian scholars—together with their texts and ideas—cannot be underestimated in this period.

Chapter 6 Textual Hegemony and the Counterdiscursive Public In the previous chapters, we have seen that during the Neo-Assyrian period and its immediate aftermath, several issues led scribes within the king’s elite circle to produce a counterdiscourse on royalty. These tensions resulted from a centurieslong, increasingly sophisticated “myth of scribal succession,” combined with an Assyrian desire to establish identity in relation to their Babylonian neighbors to the south—a cultural complex that peaked in the reign of Sennacherib. In this chapter, I will continue to explore that cultural discourse, this time revealing the ways in which scholars imposed limits on kings through those texts that would have been culturally relevant (i. e., those texts that exist in multiple copies and show clear evidence of public accessibility or wide circulation). Here, the range of scholarly influence is indicated by their capacity to “repackage” texts (much as was discussed in Chapter 2), so that legitimacy could be maintained within the collective consciousness (as represented by my study of Sennacherib’s inscriptions at Halulê). As keepers of Mesopotamian heritage and purveyors of contemporary cultural attitudes, scholars controlled the publicly transmitted message, and hence the main subject of their texts: the king. The far-reaching relevance of the counterdiscursive paradigm will be noted especially at the end of this chapter, where I will explore the ways in which standard public rituals—such as the New Year’s (akītu) and bīt rimki festivals—can themselves become part of the discourse about kingship. This transformation of a publicly accessible, performative Text A into a widely known and potentially corrosive Text B was just one of the ways that scholarly discourse, as outlined in previous chapters, reflected a much larger issue in the Neo-Assyian period.

Neo-Assyrian Royal Inscriptions and Textual Hegemony in the Public Sphere To fully understand the new scholarly independence and creativity in the NeoAssyrian period, we now turn to two important examples of textual hegemony. In the first text, LKA 62, we will see the scribes producing a very private Text B based on a very public literary formulation (LKA 63), promoting elite interests much in the same way as we discussed in Chapter 4. The second text, The Chicago Prism, describing Sennacherib’s encounter with an enemy coalition at HaDOI 10.1515/9781501504969-006

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lulê, will take a very “public transcript” (represented by Enūma Eliš and the Assyrian Tukulti-Ninurta Epic), and produce an entirely new “public transcript,” this time in the form of a new royal inscription. Here, the text will serve to represent an “intentional history” invoked by the interests of the Assyrian populace, a symptom of a wider discontent with Sennacherib’s reign that was first explored in Chapter 4. In both cases, the scribes exhibit their control over the text (“textual hegemony”), and hence over the behavior of the king. LKA 62 (VAT 13833) is a unique text found in a private house in Assur (Pedersén 1985: 34‒41, N3). It is a report of an Assyrian king (styled as a hunter) fighting his recalcitrant enemies (styled as a pack of wild donkeys). The text has typically been dated to the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I, and exhibits many parallels with his royal annals as well as LKA 63, a poem discovered at Assur, honoring the same king.³⁷⁹ The hunter is introduced in the manner of a typical royal titulary, and the insubordination of the asses even resembles the description of the enemy in LKA 63. Edzard (2004: 81‒87) has argued that the text was a purposeful parody of an Assyrian campaign report. I present some of the more interesting correlations between the two texts: LKA  (honorary poem for Tiglath-Pileser LKA  (parody of LKA ) I) i[k-pu-du] i+na libbīšunu(šà)-šu-⸢nu⸣ tuqunta (giš.lá) mārū(dumumeš) [ ] t[a-ḫa-za] ik-[ṣ]u-ru i-še-lu kakkīšun(gištu[kul])-šu-un ’‒’ …the sons of the [mountains(?)] d[evised] warfare in their hearts. They prepared for b[attle], they sharpened their weapons.

ba-a-a-ru a-na i-me-ri i-ka-pu-da qab-l[u] a-na qi-it na-piš-ti-šu-nu ú-sa-ḫa-na pa-tar-šu ‒

k[i-m]a u₄-me nin-du-ru a-ši-ta šak-nu x[ ]-li/ ša kit-pu-tu ṣa-bur-ta še-e-[‘u(?)⸣-[x(?)]’‒’ Like a storm they raged, instituting anarchy. Plotting …, seek[ing] sedition.

šá qe-ri-ib-ni la i-mu-ru ú-pa-ra-du pu-ḫu-ur-⸢ne⸣  Donkeys: “have our mannerisms not yet been recognized, so that he might hunt out our gathering?”

…the hunter was eager to fight the donkeys; he sharpened his knife to cut their throats.

[a-na š]a-ga-áš nakrī(kúrmeš) ú-šar-riḫ ila(din- a-na qu-ra-de-e šá e-li šadî([kur])-⸢di⸣ pu-tu-ú igir) [iš-m]u-nim-ma kúl-lat ilāni(dingirmeš) si- zaq-qa-ar ni-i-li-ik šá bu-li šadî(kur)-di ⸢ša⸣-gaqir-šu ’‒’ al-ta-šú-nu ni-iš-kun ‒

 The history of scholarship of the text is nicely summarized in Hurowitz and J. Westenholz (1990: 46). See ibid. 47 for parallelisms with LKA 62.

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…for the purpose of slaughtering the enemy he …to the warriors, who are in the mountains, he made a god pre-eminent. All the gods heard his [the king] gave warning: ‘we will go and preutterance.³⁸⁰ pare the mountain animals for their slaughter.’³⁸¹

On the tablets found in the archive together with LKA 62, the most frequently attested “persons in central function” have the title nargallu, “chief singer or musician.” As one would expect in the library of a chief singer, found here are hymns (some of them royal), prayers (one of them royal), a lyric concerning the divine love between Ištar of Babylon and Marduk, a Dumuzi-Ištar myth, The Anzu myth, The Etana myth, lexical lists, a royal inscription of Esarhaddon, school tablets, and an assortment of administrative documents. Of most interest in our context is Ištar’s Descent to the Netherworld, found on the same tablet as our royal parody, and the presence of the altered (i. e., Assyrian) recension of Enūma Eliš. Pedersén (1985: 34‒41, N3) describes the library as having “a tendency towards theological elaboration with some concentration around Ištar and related gods.” Based on their similar thematic and linguistic content, Hurowitz and Westenholz (1990: 48) conclude that LKA 62 and 63 “are somehow related and most likely derive from the same scribal circles.” Though I agree that the protagonist of LKA 63 (i. e., Tiglath-pileser I) is meant to be the same as LKA 62, this does not prove they were composed at the same time. The texts in LKA 62’s Fundort date as late as the reigns of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal; the presence of the Assyrian recension of Enūma Eliš—commissioned during the reign of Sennacherib (Lambert 1997: 77‒79)—is of special note here. Regardless, the person who owned this house or worked in its library maintained close proximity to the royal court; the term lúnar.gal (nargallu) is attested twice in SAA 13: 195, wherein we find that the chief singer directly corresponded with the king (in this case, Esarhaddon or Assurbanipal). It has already been noted that Ištar’s Descent appears on the same tablet as LKA 62, which leads Hurowitz and Westenholz to conclude that the piece was a scribal exercise. Thus I would argue that though the protagonist of LKA 62 is the same as that of LKA 63 (written in the reign of Tiglath-pileser I), we are dealing here with a Neo-Assyrian scribal experiment in counterdiscursiveness, not unlike The Letter of Gilgamesh discussed in Chapter 5.³⁸² In

 Text edition and translation after Hurowitz and Westenholz (1990: 3‒6).  Text edition from Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 468), with translation adapted from the German from Edzard (2004: 82‒85).  Based on paleography, Edzard (2004: 84) also dates the text to the Neo-Assyrian period, though Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 252), disagrees, placing it in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I based on the same considerations of orthography and paleography.

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this context it is especially noteworthy that the entirety of LKA 62 focuses on the subjugation of a rebellious faction (represented by donkeys). In the textual sphere, the author utilized a prototypical, very public royal text and turned it on its head, not just to represent scribal dexterity but also as a kind of catharsis, for consumption only within his own circle. He was a member of the scribal elite closely associated with the king, participating in the production of “hidden transcripts” (Text B) about royalty that were developing especially in the Neo-Assyrian period. The final lines of LKA 62 further highlight a Neo-Assyrian context of this scribal exercise, as well as its place in a context of textual hegemony first explored above. The last lines read thus: Rev 7 la-za-ma-ru li-it Aš-šur da-ʼa-na ša i-tal-la-ka a-na sal 8 il-la-ta kib-ra-ti i-ša-at-ka-na li-i-t[ú] 9 li-iš-me ma-ḫi-ru-u a-na ar-ki-i lu-šá-a[n-ni] So let me sing the song of Assur, the power, who has come once again to… The host of the entire world: he has achieved victory after victory. Let the predecessors hear it, and tell it to those who come afterwards!³⁸³

This invocation to future leaders is similar to other texts written or re-narrated in the Neo-Assyrian period, such as the epilogue of The Cuthaean Legend (Chapter 2): 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

at-ta man-nu lu-u iššakku(lúpa.te.si) u rubû(nun) lu mim-ma šá-na-ma ša ilānu(dingir) i-nam-bu-šú šarrūta(lugal)-ta ippuš(du)-uš ṭup-šin-na e-pu-uš-k[a narâ(n]a.rú.a) áš-ṭur-ka i-na Kutî(du₈.aki) ina Emeslam(é.mes.lam) i-na pa-paḫ Nergal(du.gur) e-zi-bak-ka narâ(na4na.rú.a) an-na-a a-mur-ma šá pi-i narê(na4na.rú.a) an-na-a ši-me-ma

You, whoever you are, be it a governor or prince or anyone else, whom the gods nominate to perform kingship, I made a tablet-box for you and inscribed a stela for you. In Kutha, in the Emeslam, in the shrine of Nergal, I left (it) for you. Read this stele! Listen to the words of this stele!³⁸⁴

 Text edition (with translation adapted from the German) from Edzard (2004: 82‒85).  Text edition from J. Westenholz (1979: 300‒368).

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as well as The Synchronistic History: Col iv 23 24 25 26 27 28

rubû(nun) arkû(egir)-ú šá ina kurAk-ka-di-[i] ú-šá--ka-nu šu-ma šá li-ti ki-šit-ti-[šú] lil-ṭu-ur-ma a-na narî(na4na.rú.a) an-n[i-ma…] ka-a-a-ma-nu-ma a-na la ma-še-e lid […] um-ma-a-nu e-ḫa-zu liš-me ma-la šá ḫi…[…] ta-na-ti kurAš-šur lid-lu-lu a-na u₄-me [ṣa-a-ti]

May (any) future prince who wants to make a name in Akkad be able to record his victories and achievements on this stela and regularly […] so that it is not forgotten! May the expert (?) adviser hear everything that […] (and) may praise forever be given to (the glory of) Assyria!³⁸⁵

The latter text, briefly discussed in Chapter 5 for its representations of AssyroBabylonian relations in the Neo-Assyrian period, often fails to record historical Assyrian defeats. The tense nature of the relationship is couched in terms familiar to royal critique. Babylon has committed a ṣiliptu, “crime;” this Grayson (1975a: 52) interprets as their repeated violation of an adê treaty. The colophon of The Synchronistic History indicates that it was kept in the Palace of Assurbanipal. We have seen this type of epilogue, which originated in royal foundation inscriptions, proliferate during the Neo-Assyrian period, in literary texts that deal quite seriously with kingship and expected paradigms. LKA 63 (the original royal hymn to Tiglath-pileser I) lacks such an ending. Liverani (2010: 241‒242) noticed the irony of the epilogue’s inclusion at the end of LKA 62, where “the chain of memory of the heroic deeds… is here transformed into a spoken chain from comrade to comrade (e. g., in a soldier’s line): ‘Let the first one hear, and tell it to the later ones!’” This parodic ending further underscores its place in a Neo-Assyrian environment, as a serious attempt at literary subversion of a royal hymn to an Assyrian king. The deliberate, satirical imitation of recognizably royal annals and other texts like it reflect growing discontent within the royal court, as it became more liberal—and creative—in offering criticism in the first millennium,³⁸⁶ and especially during the reign of Sennacherib. The creation of this Text B clearly demonstrates scribal awareness of their “ownership” of the literary formulation of the royal image, in both positive and negative terms.

 Text edition from Glassner (2004: 176‒183, no. 10).  See also Frahm (1998: 147‒162), for the argument that Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions contain their own variety of humor.

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My next example presents a different method of manipulating Text A, as represented by a Neo-Assyrian royal inscription; this time, instead of depending on an existing royal inscription, the actual creation of a royal inscription will depend on a scribal construct. This text, The Chicago Prism, more clearly reveals the interplay between the people’s desire for a coherent cultural identity and the construction of the king’s image, which is controlled by the scribe. The Chicago Prism of Sennacherib, which describes a clash with a Babylonian-Elamite coalition, presents a critical moment in this king’s reign. In 691 BC, Sennacherib had his back to the proverbial wall: though the position of the rebellious Elamites had weakened in the twelve months before the battle, they had not been fully subdued. Furthermore, the Babylonians had bribed the Elamites to combine their forces against the inevitable Assyrian onslaught of a new campaigning season. The might of these two recalcitrant foes was too much for Sennacherib, and the outcome at Halulê was, in every respect, a drawn battle. Thereafter the political situation remained uncomfortably unresolved; Luckenbill (1924: 17) rightly calls Sennacherib’s description of the battle “the finest rhetorical smokescreen that has ever been thrown around a monarch retiring with dignity from a situation that proved to be too much for him.” It was following this skirmish and the death of the Elamite leader (through natural causes) that the famous destruction of Babylon took place at Sennacherib’s hands, in 689 BC. The account of the battle at Halulê is a masterpiece in using literary heritage to describe a novel situation. It borrows from a variety of texts deeply embedded in both Assyrian and Babylonian cultural tradition to construct a biased version of events. I am indebted to the coherent discussion of this piece by PongratzLeisten (2015: 320), who argues that its sophisticated intertextuality “aimed to make sense of reality and represented a cultural strategy for sanctioning the king’s actions and guiding the reception of the texts by their audience.” Though ultimately we agree that this manipulation of text and genre—what I refer to as “textual hegemony”—produces the same ends (i. e., defining royal ideology in Assyria), I want to highlight the different ways we arrive at these conclusions. I view the impetus for this text not only as a construction of kingship, but as an expression of an “intentional history,” necessitated in a more public sphere because of the perceived limits of Sennacherib’s authority during this period. Weissert (1997: 191‒202) long ago recognized that The Chicago Prism (OIP 2: H2) exhibits affinities to Enūma Eliš. Though Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 311‒319) has collected these more fully, I want to highlight a few examples below: Ex. 1) Chicago Prism v 28‒29: …Bābilāya(lúká.dingir.raki.meš) a-na la si-ma-ti-šú i-na kussî (gišgu.za) ú-še-ši-bu-šú

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“The Babylonians seated him [the Babylonian king Mušēzib-Marduk] on the throne, inappropriately for him.” En. El. iv 82: a-na la si-ma-ti-šu taš-ku-ni-iš a-na pa-ra-aṣ de-nu-ti Marduk to Tiamat: “Inappropriately for him [Kingu], you have installed him in the highest divine office.” Ex. 2) Chicago Prism v 71‒73:…qaštu(gišban) dan-na-tú ša dAš-šur ú-šat-li-ma i-na qātīya(šuii)-ia aṣbat giššil-ta-ḫu pa-ri-i’ nap-ša-ti at-muḫ rit-tu-u-a “I [Sennacherib] seized the mighty bow with which Assur endowed me, I grasped in my hands an arrow—the slicer of throats.” En. El. iv 30‒31: id-di-nu-šu ka-ak la maḫ-ra da-’i-i-pu za-a-a-ri a-lik-ma ša ti-amat nap-šátuš pu-ru-u’-ma “They [the assembly] gave him [Marduk] an unrivalled weapon which repulses the enemy, saying ‘Go and pierce Tiamat’s throat.’”

In the first instance, the illegitimacy of the current ruler is emphasized (the Babylonian king is equated to Kingu, the ward of Tiamat chosen for the throne of the gods). Kingu is ultimately overtaken by Marduk; thus, the overthrow of the Babylonian Mušēzib-Marduk by Sennacherib is not only mythologically justified, but it sees Sennacherib actually commandeering Marduk’s role. This reversal is emphasized even more in the second example, in which Sennacherib receives a weapon through the divine mandate of Assur. It is expressed through direct allusion to Marduk’s endowment with a weapon which he uses to kill Tiamat, and ultimately to become king of the gods. Here Sennacherib has taken on Marduk’s role yet again, but this time the role of the Assyrian national god Assur is highlighted. The adoption of this phraseology corresponds with Sennacherib’s policy of usurping the Babylonians not only militarily, but especially with respect to their literary heritage (another notable example is the Assyrian recension of Enūma Eliš, see Chapter 4). These allusions to previous important Babylonian texts may not seem surprising. However, The Chicago Prism reveals commonalities with Assyrian texts, especially the royal narratives presented in The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic. The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic is perhaps one of our first examples of a direct political critique, as one king (Tukulti-Ninurta I) directly names another monarch (Kaštiliaš IV, the Kassite king of Babylonia) and expresses “righteous indignation” based on one of our well-worn themes, that of treaty violation (Foster 2007: 69). The epic survives in at least six extant texts of Middle and Neo-Assyrian date, appearing in library collections from Assur and Nineveh (Machinist 1978: 7‒38). Machinist (1978: 432) concludes, based on orthography and the date of the oldest sur-

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viving copies, that the epic must have been composed in the Middle Assyrian period. In the poem, Kaštiliaš is condemned by the gods for his treachery against Assyria (“[The king of the Kassites] broke the pledge of the gods and flouted the oath,”…ni-iš ilāni(dingirmeš) i-né-e’ ma-mi-ta i A obv. 25’).³⁸⁷ Kaštiliaš is described several times using the language we have identified as common to literature of a critical variety (e. g., he has committed sacrilege against Šamaš, gi-la-ti-šu maḫ-⸢ra⸣-ka DŠá-maš, ii A obv. 21’; his land is oppressed by crime and sin, arnumeš, iii A/E obv. 27’). Tukulti-Ninurta is the agent of the gods who will carry out Kaštiliaš’s punishment. Several battles take place; ultimately Babylon is sacked by the Assyrians (though this is never mentioned in the extant fragments of the epic) (Machinist 1976: 457). It is during the ensuing ransacking that entire Babylonian literary collections are plundered and relocated to Assyria (see Chapter 2), to be dedicated to the Assyrian gods. The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic focuses, argues Machinist, on two major accomplishments of the Assyrian king: the end to Babylonian political and military prowess, and the solution to the “cultural issue” (Machinist 1976: 471). This latter point is manifest especially with the previously mentioned “book-napping,” as Assyria could now replace Babylon as a center of Mesopotamian cultural life. The epic even shows the Babylonian gods as legitimating Tukulti-Ninurta’s destruction of Babylon; perhaps most importantly, it is for the first time in this epic that we hear of an “Assyrian Enlil” (vi rev. B20’), allowing Assur to usurp Marduk’s role in the Babylonian pantheon. The composition of the epic itself adapts and manipulates southern literary forms and motifs, while also incorporating native Assyrian ones. This hybrid literary formulation was a way for Tukulti-Ninurta to earn himself a place in Assyrian collective memory, while also constructing an image of empire that was steeped in both Assyrian and Babylonian traditions (Galter 2007: 530). Machinist argues that the production of the epic was a response to the “pro-Babylonian” parties in Assyria who would have disapproved of the destruction of Babylon and the importation and manipulation of southern heritage (the “native” culture) into Assyria (see also Chapter 4).³⁸⁸ Evidence of opposition to this policy can be found in widespread revolts within Assyria and the actual assassination of Tukulti-Ninurta by his own son (Machinist 1976: 475‒477). The similarities between this political and literary situation and Sennacherib’s own struggles should by now be quite obvious.

 All text editions and line numbers are taken from Machinist (1978).  The destruction of Babylon by Tukulti-Ninurta, the deportation of the Marduk statue, and the slaughter of the Babylonian population is also recounted in Chronicle P (Grayson 1975a: 170‒ 177, no. 22). Galter (2007: 528) connects Chronicle P and The Synchronistic History with this text as signs of Assyro-Babylonian conflict as per literature.

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It is doubtless because of these parallels that The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic plays a prominent role in shaping The Chicago Prism. I highlight below just a few of the most obvious intertextual allusions: Ex. 1) Chicago Prism v 75: u₄-mì-iš ṣar-piš al-sa-a gin₇ diškur áš-gu-um “I roared loudly like a storm and thundered like the god Adad.” TNE i A/F 14’: ki-ma dAd-di a-na ša-gi-im-me-šu it-tar-ra-ru šadû(kurmeš)-ú “When he [Tukulti-Ninurta] roars like Addu, mountains tremble.”³⁸⁹ Ex. 2) Chicago Prism v 80‒81: …i-na uṣ-ṣi mul-mul-li ú-šá-qir-ma gim-ri pagrīšunu(addameš)-šú-nu ú-pal-li-šá “I pierced them with uṣṣu- and mulmullu-arrows, and drilled them through like corpses…” TNE v A 42’: is-⸢sùk⸣ ⸢mal⸣-⸢mal⸣- kakki(gištukul) dA-šur ti-ba dáp-na muš-ḫar-mi-ṭa šálam-da id-di “He [Tukulti-Ninurta] shot (an arrow) once, the weapon of Assur: insurgent, aggressive, and enveloping. He felled a corpse.” Ex. 3) Chicago Prism vi 26‒27: ḫur-ba-šú tāḫāzī(mè)-ia ki-ma a-le-e zu-mur-šú-un is-ḫu-up “Terror of doing battle with me overwhelmed their bodies like bulls/alû demons.” TNE iii A/E 24’: u’-ur-ti šarri(man) dan-ni ki-ma a-le-e zu-mur-šu ik-si “The command of the mighty king bound his [Kaštiliaš’s] body like bulls/alû demons.”

Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 311) argues that the numerous affinities of The Chicago Prism to other literary texts impose a certain interpretation on the text, linking it with other works that establish royal norms. She envisions this as a “cultural strategy deliberately chosen by the scholar,” which might present an authoritative statement on Sennacherib’s kingship and justify the harsh treatment meted out to the Babylonians and Elamites following the confrontation at Halulê (Pongratz-Leisten 2015: 321). In Chapter 4 we have seen how controversial Sennacherib was during his own time, causing a counterdiscursive dialogue within the scribal circle surrounding the king. In The Chicago Prism, I suggest that this same discourse is expanded, and popular discontent is represented in the creation

 This first example is not mentioned by Pongratz-Leisten, and rather comes via private correspondence with Eckart Frahm.

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of a new royal inscription that itself borrows from prior literary traditions. Because this text is a novel creation (and not the manipulation of an existing one), it can better represent contemporary, common attitudes about the reign of Sennacherib.³⁹⁰ In order to understand this text, an interdisciplinary approach is useful. I turn to Gehrke’s concept of “intentional history,” an updated version of what Hobsbawm (1983: 1) calls “inventing tradition,” which the latter describes as such: ‘Invented tradition’ is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.

Tied closely with ideas surrounding conceptualizations of ancient ethnic identity, “intentional history” argues that narratives or events can be retooled or manipulated to take on new meanings to create accounts that are more suitable to present narratives, power structures, or prevalent ideologies. This rehashing of past narratives for present purpose, argues Gehrke, is most popular in the context of major realignments of community identity, most often experienced following a time of acute crisis.³⁹¹ The “acute crisis,” in this case, was the factionalism and general upheaval triggered by Sennacherib’s controversial treatment of Babylon, and especially of Marduk. These were all issues which, as we have seen in the last two chapters, were at the forefront of the Neo-Assyrian experience. The factionalism created by this discord, however, presented a problem for Sennacherib’s kingship far beyond the scribal circle: there was a wider societal threat posed by the possibility of rebellion, and it is no surprise that Sennacherib suffered the same murderous fate (ironically?) as Tukulti-Ninurta I (see Chapter 4). This greater danger demanded a reappraisal of Sennacherib’s kingship that showed him not only usurping a Babylonian literary heritage, but also an Assyrian one. The latter is especially important, as adopting a narrative of another Assyrian king who was, historically, successful against the Babylonian threat, created an artificial sense of continuity—“invented tradition”—between Sennacherib and a previously established Assyrian kingship ideology. This artificial continuity, in  Frahm (2014: 211 and 219) suggests that Sennacherib may have actively imitated the kingship model of Tukulti-Ninurta I (even suffering a similar fate at the hands of his sons), making this text a remnant of a sort of melodramatic reenactment of the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic.  Particularly exemplary of his argument is Gehkre (2009), but see in addition Gehkre (2001). The continual and generational reimagination of national identity is a constituent part of what Smith (2000: 16) describes as “ethno-history,” defined as “the ethnic members’ memories and understanding of their communal past or pasts.”

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fact, is not terribly different from the trend utilized in Ludlul (Chapter 2), where a broader sense of community was represented by a condemnation of the prior dynasty’s religious affiliations and the usurping of a previously existing ideology, applied in a new text.³⁹² Using principles of political theory, Smith (2000: 67‒68), describes these recollections of the past as “Myths of Regeneration, or How to Restore the Golden Age and Renew Our Community as ‘in the Days of Old.’” These invented traditions represent ideal states, and, importantly, may never be attainable. But they are important as inductions to community solidarity, and as “rationales of collective mobilization.” Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 14) stresses the role of scholars in shaping the body politic (essentially analogous to what I term “Text A”) associated with Neo-Assyrian kingship ideology. As distinguished from their measurable effect on political decision-making,³⁹³ a focal category of scribal responsibility was to create a “cultural memory.” Carr (2008: 11) argues that this “cultural memory” consists of an organized transmission of “behavioral norms and visions of the future” to participants in a given group, usually embedded in memories of the distant past. This transmission, for the most part, occurred through the erection of royal monuments on which inscriptions and reliefs were more widely accessible. The “cultivation” of this cultural memory always depends on specialists (here, the scribes) and their capacity to “reconstruct” common knowledge so as to map it onto contemporary issues, “…sometimes by appropriation, sometimes by criticism, sometimes by preservation or by transformation.”³⁹⁴ The general public in Mesopotamia can be defined in terms of what Assmann (1995: 130‒ 131) labels a “memory community,” where memory is central and integral to the group’s identity and image of itself (Assmann 2011: 16).³⁹⁵ Importantly, cultur-

 Nielsen (forthcoming: 18) identifies an analogous trend (though on a smaller scale) amongst the urban elite at Babylon during the Neo-Babylonian period, in which the maintenance of old family names became an important marker of differentiation, a way in which the “traditional cultural identity” could be maintained. This behavior indicates a greater societal need for unity when there is a perceived threat to social identity.  The seminal study on elites’ effect on royal policy can be found in Tadmor (1986: 203‒224).  Such is essentially the argument of Andersen (2006), who views the introduction of print capitalism as a turning point in the invention and concretization of national identity politics.  Assmann (2011: 2‒3) describes the ability of every community to have a connective structure, binding people together on both the social and temporal planes. It brings a commonality to people’s experiences and customs, while also giving form and presence to influential experiences and memories (which underlie myths and histories). The normative and narrative elements of these (instruction combined with storytelling) create a basis of belonging, or identity, “so that the individual can then talk of ‘we.’”

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al memory has to be thoroughly prepared and vetted: its distribution is controlled, and it is subject to restrictions that are more or less rigid. Yet though cultural memory is passed down through the scribes, its initial dictation comes through and by the popular memory community; otherwise, the elements of cultural memory invoked by Mesopotamian kings (in inscriptions and law codes, among many other things) would carry no currency amongst the people. In other words, the creation and dissemination of a text would have no effect without community-wide knowledge of its literary and ideological background. This mutuality is what makes the people both integral to the success of royal ideology and also a threat to it: when traditional memories no longer support the existing situation, but call it into question, memory then turns into expectations, and the “mythomotored” time takes on a different character, which can pose dangers to the present in the form of total change or revolution (Assmann 2011: 63). So it is that cultural memory handed down through a community can also entail “infringements, conflicts, innovations, restorations, [and] revolutions,” when there is a recollection of the forgotten, the revival of tradition, or the resurfacing of what has been suppressed (Assmann 2011: 6‒8). From this we can get the idea of a “cultural discourse,” which Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 21) defines as “the constant reformulation and re-conceptualization of tradition, as enacted by the ancient scholars in the entourage of the king.” These considerations allow the people—an oft-forgotten element of political power, especially in monarchical situations—a sort of control over the behavior of the Mesopotamian king. Without the recognition of their “memory community,” the king will not be able to maintain popular support; conversely, the people reserve the ability to alter the cultural memory to provide new definitions of proper kingship. Because ancient Assyria was a society in which the authority of written communication was acknowledged, scribal control of the past also meant control of the future. Stock, a scholar of medieval literature, argues that in these circumstances, “the act of writing up a society’s past is tantamount to recreating its culture” (1997: 162). So it is that the scholar is intimately intertwined with not only the production of royal texts, but also with the way they are registered within the greater social milieu. This is highlighted by the complex intertextual plays in inscriptions like the one of Sennacherib at Halulê. Yet, I argue, the need for an “intentional history” and community continuity emerges not only from scholars, but also, as this example shows, from the popular constituencies of royalty. The “trauma” (itself culturally constructed; see Alexander 2004: 2) caused by national and political uncertainty may pose serious threats to the stability of kingship if established community identity (here: a usurpation of Babylonian cultural heritage and continuity with a militarily successful Assyrian

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heritage) is not reified. Thus the inscription at Halulê creates not just literary continuity, but historical continuity, with real consequences for defining ethnic identity. In this sense, the allusion to Babylonian narratives in Sennacherib’s inscriptions was also important. While it was necessary for the scribal-elite to be defined with respect to (or in spite of) the identity of “the Other” (as in the texts studied in Chapters 4 and 5), it was perhaps more important for the community to be able to do so: this identification is the basis of what we call “culture” (Rivaroli and Verderame (2005: 290‒291), and was also one of the catalysts for the collection of Assurbanipal’s library (as argued in Chapter 3). Nielsen (forthcoming: 20) even suggests that a Babylonian identity as such may not have emerged until the infiltration of Assyrian power into southern Mesopotamia. Thus it is very plausible that both Babylonia and Assyria were formulating an opposing set of distinct national identities in response to one another, and that what we are witnessing here is an Assyrian royal acknowledgment of the social distinctions so important to the Assyrian public constituency in this period of cultural crisis. As in Sennacherib’s inscription at Halulê, renarrations of known pasts (both Assyrian and Babylonian) are constituent of collective (or cultural) memory, in this case the formation of an “intentional history,” of which the scribes and elite classes are the purveyors. These texts, when they enter the “public transcript,” can in turn be used by royals to confirm that they recognize communal identity. This recognition would, theoretically, neutralize the threat of rebellions, because it reifies and legitimizes the identity which the community has ascribed to itself. Finally, a recognized communal history, in turn, legitimizes popular appreciation for royal authority, and hence the authority itself. This represents a self-perpetuating, mutually reinforcing cycle that can be possible only in complex societies where communities can dictate legitimacy of power structures through the exercise of their own agency. Each party is legitimized by the other, but this model allows the community much more agency, as both recipients and producers, as dictators of the contents and the production of royal texts, than has previously been recognized. Thus, while it is generally true that “written Akkadian literature tended to reflect the interests and tastes of the elite rather than those of the general population” (Foster 2007: 102), here is an instance in which the people, too, could exert literary influence on the first millennium king, and reveal potential limitations to his absolute power.³⁹⁶  Indeed, threats to royal power could arise not just from the elite sphere, as is evident e. g., in letters from a diviner to Šamaš on behalf of Esarhaddon (SAA 4: 139) and Assurbanipal (SAA 4: 142), but also from “any human being, whether male or female” (as in SAA 4: 140 obv. 1’: [xxxxxxx mál rabû(gál)-ú lu zikaru(nita) u sinništu(mí)], also SAA 4: 142 obv. 16).

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Cultural Memory and Challenges to Kingship: Ritual Parallels to Textual Hegemony The Akītu Festival The influence of the populace, though always mediated through the elites, was expressed not only in textual form during the Neo-Assyrian period, but also in the performance of public rituals which were meant to check the king’s power. One ritual, the akītu, took place semi-annually (therefore it is often referred to, somewhat erroneously, as the New Year’s Festival); another, the bīt rimki ritual, will be the focus of the next section, as it was performed only when the kingship was thought to have been polluted (and hence, in the face of a threat to royal power). Both ceremonies proved to concretize the relationship between the Assyrian people and their king, a connection that had been particularly strong in their empire.³⁹⁷ At the same time, these rituals reveal the people’s ability to deconstruct and challenge Assyrian authority, as both were meant to mollify a potential threat to the stability of royal power. The akītu festival is one of the oldest recorded Mesopotamian festivals, with the earliest reference to it originating in the Fara period (third millennium BC) (Cohen 1993: 401).³⁹⁸ While its earliest attestation is likely from Nippur, we find akītī being celebrated in other cities as well, such as Uruk and Assur; we have the most information on its performance, however, from the city of Babylon. Originally, this semi-annual ceremony marked the beginning of the equinox year and may have been associated with the harvest (Black 1981: 41). Our most in-depth knowledge of the akītu festival arises from a late Babylonian tablet, and thus represents a later (and perhaps much altered) iteration of the ceremonial events involved.³⁹⁹ This tablet describes a festival of eleven days; the ritual included varied elements of communal presentation, private confession, and ritual procedures related to the cult statue of Marduk. At Babylon, one of the most important days of the festival was the fourth of Nisan, during which Enūma Eliš was recited. Lambert (1963: 189‒190) has suggested that this epic was recited as a ritual reenactment of the battle between Marduk and Tiamat for hegemony over

 Upon the accession of a new king or the election of a crown prince, the people were obliged to take a loyalty oath, which tied them personally to the king and his policy. The performance of the oath included drinking water, which was thought to physically internalize the vow in the bodies of the citizens (Radner 2003: 166).  It is probably based on a Sumerian ritual. See Linssen (2004: 71 and 71 n. 346).  See Thureau-Dangin (1921: 129 ff). The most comprehensive scholarly overview of the festival proceedings can be found in Bidmead (2014).

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the cosmos.⁴⁰⁰ On the fifth day, at the Esagila in Babylon, there was a “negative confession” where the king was struck across the face by Babylonian priests before reciting several desiderata relating to the safety of Babylon and its temples. The king was then struck again, and if tears flowed, the god was understood to have been favorably disposed (Black 1981: 45). In Babylon, the events of both days took place inside the city, at the Esagil, temple of Marduk (Cohen 1993: 403). On day eight, Marduk’s statue was escorted to the akītu house, a structure outside the city walls that was to be a temporary residence for Marduk, until the point in which he was to make his celebrated reentry into the city (Cohen 1993: 404). Here he was enthroned before all of the other gods, and the priest presented purified water for Marduk in a fingerbowl. Importantly, this water was symbolically sprinkled as a form of purification over the king and the people (Huber 2005: 148). On the eleventh and final day of the festival, the statue of Marduk was brought by the king (who had now been confirmed by the gathered divinities as the legitimate human ruler) from the akītu house, and a procession in his honor was attended by the entire community. This procession was an opportunity for the king to make a statement about his wealth and his piety (van der Toorn 1999b: 333). Now order was reestablished, after having been threatened, temporarily and symbolically, by the absence of Marduk’s statue.⁴⁰¹ In Babylon, the festival affirmed Marduk’s choice of ruler of Babylon and the legitimacy of the king as priest of Marduk and provider for the Babylonian people (Linssen 2004: 71). Because of the turmoil of the first millennium and the instability of an unpredictable political situation, the “choice” of Marduk created a dynastic line where the legitimacy of a king was based not on heredity but on “[the king’s] claims to authority on the fact that they had been chosen to continue and bring to completion the beneficial acts initiated by a series of divinely approved earlier kings” (Kuhrt 1987: 44). The Babylonian king was intimately involved in many parts of the festival, and his duties to the god Marduk as king and high priest were reified during the ceremonies (Black 1981: 54). The observance of this festival during the Neo-Assyrian period is of critical importance. While the akītu had been celebrated at Assur in the nineteenth century (during the reign of Šamšī-Adad I), we have no evidence for it again until the reign of Sennacherib, who reintroduced it at Assur following his destruction of Babylon in 689 BC. The reemergence of this rite at Assur required a reconfigura-

 Van der Toorn (1991: 331‒344) argues that there is no textual basis for such an assumption.  Pongratz-Leisten (1994: 75), who envisions the akītu house as a realm of liminality; similarly, Sommer (2000: 87‒89) argues that the second day of the festival is occupied with the symbolic destruction and then resurrection of Marduk’s temple of Esagila, during which period the cosmic (and real) worlds were annihilated and then reinvigorated.

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tion of the city’s cultic topography,⁴⁰² and changes were made to the temple of the god Assur in order to accommodate its performance (Pongratz-Leisten 2015: 416‒417). In Assyrian versions of the ritual, during his tenure at the akītu house Marduk was understood to have been held prisoner, undergoing trial (known as The Marduk Ordeal). Though the text has often been assumed to be an Assyrian cultic commentary with the goal of vilifying Marduk (over the god Assur),⁴⁰³ Frymer-Kensky (1983: esp. 140‒141) suggests that The Marduk Ordeal does not refer to the destruction of Babylon in 689 BC but rather the return of the Marduk statue to Babylon in 669 BC, coinciding with the succession of Assurbanipal and Šamaš-šum-ukīn. The return of the statue, she argues, required the Assyrians to “explain” the captivity of Marduk to their Babylonian subjects, while vindicating themselves of a national “sin” for having captured the statue twenty years earlier (much as The Marduk Prophecy would have done).⁴⁰⁴ This text, argues Porter (1993: 140), is “evidence of resistance to the worship of Marduk among certain literate and theologically sophisticated people in both Assur and Nineveh.” There is reference to Marduk as a criminal (ḫīṭṭi, SAA 3: 34, 45‒46) who has perpetrated some sort of crime (ḫīṭu, SAA 3: 34, 56) against Assur.⁴⁰⁵ One of the issues under dispute appears to have been Marduk’s “wearing of the water” (SAA 3: 34, 55‒56 and SAA 3: 35, 44‒47), which Cohen plausibly connects to the defeat of Tiamat described in Enūma Eliš. “Perhaps,” he argues, “Aššur is claiming that he, not Marduk, had defeated Tiamat and that Bēl [Marduk] was pretending to that victory, draping himself with waters…which rightfully should have been worn by the true vanquisher of Tiamat, Aššur” (Cohen 1993: 421). This reimagination of Assur’s role in the creation of the cosmos accords well with Sennacherib’s introduction of Assur (an.šár) as the protagonist (in place of Marduk) in the Assyrian recension of Enūma Eliš. Importantly, in the Assyrian version of the ritual, the recitation of Enūma Eliš may not have occurred until both the king and Marduk had reentered the city and were safely interred inside the city walls (Cohen 1993: 422). This part of the procession, a “Triumphzug,” is

 OIP 2: 136, I2 26 ff.  See, most notably, the study of von Soden (1955: 130‒166). Frymer-Kensky (1983: 141), however, does not view the text as manifestly “anti-Marduk,” but part of an ongoing reinterpretation of Marduk’s historical travails.  Livingstone (1986: 205‒253) views the text as a piece written under the influence of Sennacherib’s religious reforms, wherein there was an attempted Assyrianization of Marduk. This would then place the text in an earlier period, upon the removal of the statue from Babylon in 689 BC.  This is the version of the text found at Assur; the text is given in Frymer-Kensky (1983). These terms are also given in the Nineveh version, SAA 3: 35 obv. 29, 35, 46.

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one of the most significant ways (together with “Kriegsritual”) that the Assyrians pronounced the public legitimation of their kings (Pongratz-Leisten 1994: 147 ff). The festival allowed that the cosmic (royal) order, temporarily threatened, was reinstituted upon the return of both the cultic statue and the king (Eliade 2005: 111). Thus, the festival in Assyria was also one of a “rite of return,”⁴⁰⁶ with both Marduk and the king exonerated of their “crimes.” It can be considered a performative version (Text B) of the literary manipulation of the past that we saw above with relation to Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions; that is, it represents very well an example of “invented tradition” (Ristvet 2014: 157, 209‒210). Like the manipulation of Enūma Eliš, the reinstitution of this festival highlighted Assyrian domination over Babylonian cultural and religious life; indeed, as Pongratz-Leisten (2015: 419) argues, the festival was used in the Neo-Assyrian period to underline “changed political arrangements.” The trend was continued by Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon, who took advantage of the festival’s public nature to confirm with loyalty oaths the legitimacy of his appointed successor, Assurbanipal. This confirmation was very important, given that his other (perfectly adequate) son, Šamaš-šum-ukīn, had been passed over and appointed as co-king, but only of the Babylonian territories of the Assyrian empire. The akītu in the Neo-Assyrian period, then, was tightly bound ideologically with the legitimacy of kingship, and especially so within the context of Assyro-Babylonian relationships.⁴⁰⁷ In this period and thereafter, the (non)performance of the akītu festival would be an ever-important gauge by which to judge the legitimacy of kingship in Mesopotamia. Importantly, this was the only time of the year when the people were so intimately involved in divine affairs. Huber (2005: 144) even characterizes the akītu ritual as an expression of collective crisis; for the population, the positive outcomes of the ritual were a reaffirmation of community identity and a cosmic sign of approval for the current regime (Huber 2005: 150). In rituals of this kind, the concretization of the status quo is always precipitated by a semblance

 See below with respect to the bīt rimki ritual.  Baruchi-Unna (2013: 263) even argues that a prayer to Marduk, attached to the famous inscription L4, was meant to be recited upon the king’s return of the statue of the god to its seat in Babylon (from the bīt mummi in Assur). The author suggests that this prayer was meant to invoke Nebuchadnezzar I’s return of the Marduk statue, and hence to provide a logical and continuous connection between Assurbanipal and Nebuchadnezzar I at the commencement of the former’s reign. The ritual context of the prayer and its associations indicate that the audience for this inscription may not have simply been those living in Assyrian territory, and gave the impression that Assurbanipal would act as a legitimate ruler for the Babylonians and their god, despite the dual kingship installed by his father.

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of disorder, anarchy, or a threat to stability. It is for that reason that Ristvet (2014: 206) considers the akītu festival a space “in which to debate the current political order,” a type of event that could also “sometimes contribute to its overthrow.” The very public nature of these performances indicates that the king’s constituency demanded a reaffirmation of his political legitimacy. But in Assyria, political legitimacy was closely linked with a cultural legitimacy. This legitimacy required public reaffirmation,⁴⁰⁸ suggesting strongly that an invented national tradition was both a popular demand and a possible tool for undermining political authority.

Bīt rimki Another ritual of the Neo-Assyrian period, which is perhaps more pertinent to our discussion, was called bīt rimki. Most studies of the series bīt rimki have been based on the ritual tablet BBR 26 (the joined fragments K 3227+3245 +6944+7813+8925+11149+10131), containing complete instructions for participants and a list of incantations to be recited during the performance of the ritual.⁴⁰⁹ Exemplars of the ritual tablet exist from Nineveh and late Babylonian Uruk. It is a matter of scholarly controversy whether or not the bīt rimki ritual is of Assyrian origin. Læssøe (1955: 89‒90) argues, based on circumstantial evidence, that the ritual was a custom specific to the Assyrians, and especially in the Sargonic period. Farber (1997: 41‒45), on the other hand, argues that the late example from Uruk (SpTU II 12) should be considered a copy of an early Babylonian original, on which the Nineveh copy depends (BBR 26, with which Læssøe’s study is primarily engaged). During the ritual, the king was led away to the open country by his ritual experts, where they would enter the bīt rimki (“house of ritual bath”), a structure of reeds in which temporary shrines were housed. The king was asked to recite a series of šu.íl.lá prayers to the major gods of the Mesopotamian pantheon, in which he sought their support and mercy. The next morning he would pass through seven ritual “houses,” performing purification rites and reciting prayers in each.⁴¹⁰ At each house, before the

 Nielsen (forthcoming: 12) argues that the akītu at Babylon would also have the function of affirming the special identities of local elites.  The seminal (and yet most complete) study of this tablet was done by Læssøe (1955).  “The Šamaš Cycle,” Kh. 338, though also partly reserved in the Nineveh corpus, may be intercalated with BBR 26. For this, see Læssøe (1955: 83). Farber (1997: 44) concedes that the portion of the ritual related to the seven houses may well be an original Assyrian contribution to the ritual cycle, but that this portion too was most likely written by a Babylonian scribe in the em-

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rising sun (Šamaš, the divine judge), the king washed various parts of his body over several figurines, representing the threat or “enemy” to the kingship. In doing so, he not only rid himself of the threat to the kingship but also symbolically turned that threat against the enemy (Ambos 2013: 42). After completion of the purification associated with each house, the king was reinvested with his royal accoutrement. The removal of the threat allowed the king to return to his former, powerful status (Ambos 2013: 44). For this reason, Ambos (2013: 48) prefers to identify this ritual not as a “rite of passage” but rather as a “rite of return,” the same way as I have characterized the akītu ritual (above). Constitutive of the bīt rimki ritual was its performance both before and after the completion of the substitute king ritual.⁴¹¹ The completion of the Ersatzkönigsritual (šar pūḫi, “the substitute king ritual”) was always necessitated by the presence of evil omens (most specifically, eclipses) that portended the death of the king (Parpola 1993: xxii). In this rite, there was a temporary replacement of the ruling king with a doppelgänger whose purpose was to absorb any potential dangers to the current ruler. The “dispensable person”⁴¹² would sit on the king’s throne and don the royal accoutrement. The evil omens were recited to the substitute king, while the reigning king was now called “the farmer” (lúengar).⁴¹³ It is during this period as a “farmer” that the real king existed in a state of liminality, awaiting the change of state that would occur when he was allowed to come back to the throne.⁴¹⁴ While the substitute was on the throne (for a period of up to 100 days, after which the danger would have passed), he reigned as king, though the real monarch would remain in contact with his bureaucracy and continue to issue edicts. Upon his return, the king would question the stranger and consult the soothsayers regarding this event.

ploy of the Assyrian kings (which would make this text perfectly coherent with the ones being written as critiques of kingship during the same period, analyzed in Chapter 4). Being conceived in Assyria, he argues, does not make the text (or ritual) Assyrian per se.  Good evidence for this procedure can be found in SAA 10: 352, in which it is said that bīt rimki and bīt salā’ mê rituals have been performed before the suggestion is made later in the letter that a substitute should be enthroned. See also Nissinen (1998: 68‒73).  The choices might include a prisoner of war, a prisoner, a criminal condemned to death, a political enemy of the king, a gardener, or a simpleton—“a person whose life did not matter much or who would have deserved death anyway.” See Parpola (1993: xxiv).  The designation of the king as a “farmer” is important here. Both Sargon of Akkad and Cyrus the Great were gardeners, accordingly to legend, and were both eventually elevated to the kingship. A popular motif in Mesopotamian folk tales, Drews (1974: 390) argues that “the possibility that such a thing [a gardener coming to the throne] might happen undoubtedly stirred the hopes and fears of the populace…”  The tripartite order of ritual is well established in the famous work of van Gennep (1960).

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The substitute would be killed (in replacement for the “real” king, whom the omens predicted to die) and sacrifices would be made.⁴¹⁵ If the 100 days passed, and no noble substitute had died for the king, the Ersatz would be killed. After purification, the “real” king would be placed back on his throne. Such rituals were not meant to “lead the gods astray” per se, but to come as close as possible to satisfying their wishes, without real harm to the political order (Bottéro 1992: 143). Attestations of this ritual exist from a broad span of Mesopotamian geographical areas and temporal periods,⁴¹⁶ and in various iterations. It is probably not an accident of discovery that most of our information about the substitute king ritual comes from the Neo-Assyrian period. The ritual was reintroduced in a Neo-Assyrian context in the reign of Esarhaddon, during which it was performed with unusual frequency.⁴¹⁷ Twice in two years the ceremony was performed, meaning that over the course of 24 months, Esarhaddon was away from the throne—at least physically—for almost a year (Radner 2003: 171‒172). It was during this period that there was a significant threat to Esarhaddon’s kingship. The second of these rituals occurred when a high-ranking noble named Sasî—who was perhaps a member of the royal family—conspired against Esarhaddon after a woman in the northern city of Ḫarrān (SAA 16:59 rev. 4’‒5’) prophesied that he would be king (670 BC; see Chapter 1). Upon learning of this conspiracy, the substitute king ritual was performed, the second of the above-mentioned nearly consecutive occurrences of this rite (670 BC). Upon returning to the throne, Esarhaddon carried out mass executions of the conspirators (presumably also of elite status). This indicates that threats to the kingship—and their mollification—were mediated through the elites. But it was not just the inner circles of the royal court that were affected by this upheaval; archaeological evidence reveals the destruction of private homes from Til Bar-

 There remain some elements that have caused confusion, especially the ritual’s connection to an eclipse. See Ambos (2005: 96‒101).  For instance, we have evidence of the ritual already in early chronicles, beginning with Enlil-Bani (Bel-ibni) in the reign of Erra-imitti of Isin (1868‒1861 BC; the only substitute king we know of to eschew abdication of the throne after his tenure as substitute) (Ambos 2005: 97). The ritual is known from Hittite sources as well (e. g., KBo 17.17+), and is known to have been performed by Chaldean priests on behalf of Alexander the Great. Presented differently in almost every source, Arrian (Anab. 7.42.1) describes the stranger as an obscure person; Diodorus (17.116.2) as a native who had been chained; Plutarch (Alex. 73.7‒9) as a Messenian who had come to Babylon under charge but was later freed. All are alike in characterizing the stranger as mentally deranged (Smelik: 1978‒1979: 107).  In the reign of Esarhaddon, we are aware of at least four performances of the ritual. Indeed, we have at least thirty related pieces of correspondence between scholars and the kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, many of which can be found in SAA 10.

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sip and Sam’al (both situated in the area of Ḫarrān) in the same year, indicating that official reaction to the scheme had wide-ranging consequences also for the more common citizens of the Assyrian empire. Radner (2003: 172‒175) argues that the razing of private homes in the area where the plot originated is a strong sign of common cause with the conspirators. The reinvigoration of the substitute king ritual had strong currency for the Neo-Assyrian monarchs. Indeed, we also know that the ritual was performed during the reign of Assurbanipal, on the 15th of Nisan, 666 BC (as given in the epistle found in SAA 10: 90). In this letter, we learn that Assurbanipal acts too hastily and enthrones a substitute in Akkad, based on a misunderstood recommendation from his advisor Akkullanu, who in another letter (SAA 10: 89) counsels the king to “give a person’s substitute to Ereškigal” and remain in his palace in Nineveh while the rituals are performed elsewhere (ina ba-at-ti šá-ni-tim-ma, rev. 8). During the Neo-Assyrian period, the king had to be concerned with the throne of Assyria and of Babylonia, since he was technically ruler over both areas.⁴¹⁸ This of course became very complicated during the reign of Assurbanipal, who shared rule with his brother Šamaš-šum-ukīn (responsible at Babylon), at the behest of their father, Esarhaddon. But the location for the ritual depended on the totality of the eclipse; the eclipsed disc was divided into four quadrants (Amurru, Elam, Subartu, and Akkad, representing the “four corners” of the Mesopotamian universe), with the darkening of a certain quadrant representing the necessity for a substitute king in that respective area (Parpola 1993: xxiii). In this particular instance, however, the eclipse portended evil for Assyria, not for Babylonia (Akkad): thus, Assurbanipal had unwittingly protected his brother, but had taken no precautions for himself!⁴¹⁹ Perhaps, as Parpola (1993: 305) argues, the king thought he had enough expertise to decide about these important scientific matters (for these assertions, see Chapter 3). Though this is the only recorded instance of the ritual being performed in the reign of Assurbanipal, the evidence indicates that the need for a substitute king was current, especially at the end of the Neo-Assyrian period. During the Neo-Assyrian period, the king himself could never independently suggest the performance of this ritual; it always came at the recommendation of his highest counselors, who might include the chief scribe (Parpola 1993: xxiv). Parpola (1993: xxiv) points out that the substitute king ritual was not performed frivolously or in relation to just any Mesopotamian king; rather, it was used to atone for the ill conduct of a particular king, with the substitute functioning

 Parpola (1993: xxiii) and Ambos (2013: 46‒47).  See also Ambos (2005: 98‒100).

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as a scapegoat. The resurrection of this ancient Mesopotamian ritual in the reign of Esarhaddon is likely no accident; as stated above, Sennacherib was murdered by one of his sons, and the social and political turmoil associated with his reign (not least as evidenced by the texts in Chapter 4) likely made the ceremony a prerequisite for the remainder of the Neo-Assyrian period. Major threats to the power of the Neo-Assyrian kings peaked in his reign, and, together with the textual record, the reemergence of these “rites of return” suggests that their rule was a source of turmoil for the populace. It is for that reason that I propose to extend the argument of Ristvet (2014: 206), who asserts that “events (addition: and texts) that re-present always contain the possibility of anarchy, by providing spaces in which to debate the current political order and sometimes to contribute to its overthrow.” As shown in this chapter, the very public nature of rituals of royal rectification, and of the renarrated texts mediated by the elites on behalf of the people, indicates that the kings were keenly aware of popular discontent, and its potential to harm Assyrian royal stability.

Epilogue The Legacy of Late Akkadian Countertexts The last chapters have borne witness to a literary trend in Mesopotamia, where different themes and methodologies contributed to counterdiscourses about kingship in the late second and early first millenia. In this epilogue, we will look at several more texts that demonstrate the legacy of the literature already studied. These pieces, discovered in later (i. e., Achaemenid or Hellenistic) contexts, exhibit the same characteristics we identified for Kassite/Isin II and NeoAssyrian literature, yet they are a product of their own periods, expanding and combining several aspects of earlier themes and degrees of specificity. Though these texts were written in a later period, they maintain the same interest in Babylon and the cult of Marduk, and consciously hearken back to the examples of our earlier texts to express contemporary concerns. One king, the Neo-Babylonian Nabonidus, finds himself an object of criticism because of his personal association with the Assyrian Sennacherib, who had set such a violent precedent for the treatment of Marduk and his cult. Ultimately, the texts in this chapter form a fitting conclusion to the world view first exuded in Advice to a Prince.

The Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus Our first text brings us forward in time to an entirely new political dynasty in Babylonia, typically referred to as the Neo-Babylonian Empire (though on this period see again The Crimes of Nabû-šuma-iškun in Chapter 4). The intermediate period requires an introduction, though my comments are necessarily overly simplified.⁴²⁰ The downfall of the Assyrian empire was precipitated by a combination of political events; though the cause of its collapse is not entirely clear, Van De Mieroop suggests that a major factor lies in the structure of the Assyrian state itself. Late in the reign of Assurbanipal, peripheral areas began to slip from the grasp of the empire. Especially notable is the rise of Nabopolassar, an appointed official of Assurbanipal in Babylonia, who in 626 BC founded a native dynasty that would be the precursor to the Neo-Babylonian Empire. In 612 BC, Nineveh was captured by a coalition of Elamites and Medes from western

 For general information, see Saggs (1984); Oates (1982); Oppenheim (1964); several contributions in Finkel and Seymour (2009); Frame (1992); several contributions in Leick (2009); Dandamaev (1982) and Beaulieu (1989). DOI 10.1515/9781501504969-007

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Iran, and the Babylonians laid claim to all Assyrian territories.⁴²¹ This Neo-Babylonian dynasty saw success for approximately eighty years, before it was itself captured by an Anshanite up-and-comer, later to be known as Cyrus the Great, who captured Babylon in 539 BC. The only barrier to Cyrus’ total control was the last Neo-Babylonian king, Nabonidus (r. 555‒539), a controversial figure himself. The interaction between these two kings yielded an enormous amount of propagandistic literature for posterity, the most famous of which, The Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus, will be the subject of this section. The consequence of Nabonidus’ surrender was the rise of Cyrus and the foundation of the Persian Empire, the last native Near Eastern dynasty to exercise great power before its final defeat by Alexander the Great in 331 BC. As a major source for the reign of Nabonidus, The Persian Verse Account is a damning invective that is clearly meant to vilify the last Neo-Babylonian king. The text (BM 38299), part of a collection originating from Sippar and Babylon (Schaudig 2001: 563),⁴²² was lauded by Smith (1924: 83) as “one of the most important documents of the Neo-Babylonian period,” largely based on its potential use for studying the development of political and religious subversion within the context of historical narrative. The text lists several “crimes” of Nabonidus, including, most famously, his ten-year-long absence from Babylon (to establish a residence in the Teima oasis, in northwestern Arabia), his disruption of Babylonian cultic matters (in favor, allegedly, of the moon-god Sîn), and the start of construction at the Eḫulḫul (temple to Sîn) at Ḫarrān. The last is formulated in familiar terms (ii 16‒17): iš-tu ni-iz-mat-su ik-šu-du šip-ri s[ur-ra-a]-tú/ibnû (dù)-ú ik-ki-bi šip-ri la me-e-su “After he had achieved his wishes, a work of deceit, after he had built this forbidden and contemptible work [the temple]…” Once again, the “sin” of the offending king is perpetrated against the gods, and most specifically, against the cultic ordinances of Babylon. The text begins with a change of Nabonidus’ personal deity, whose predisposition towards the ruler shifts from a positive to a negative stance. This reversal, according to the text, influences Nabonidus to create a sanctuary and set up a statue to the god Sîn: Col i

 Van De Mieroop (2007: 266‒268). See also the discussion of letters relating to the downfall of Nineveh in Chapter 6.  Schaudig (2001: 565‒578) gives a text edition and translation. I will utilize his text edition in the following discussion. Though English translations are my own, several others can be found, including that Oppenheim, which be accessed via http://www.livius.org/ct-cz/cyrus_I/bab ylon03.html. The text was first published in Smith (1924: pls. v-x and 83 ff.).

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18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

[X X X]-šú it-te-ki-ir-šú še-e-du [X X X ilāni(din]girmeš) ṣa-bit a-ḫi-ti [X X X ilāni(din]girmeš) ip-pu-uš la me-e-su [X X X]-na ib-ta-ni za-qí-qí [ilu(dingir) šá pa-na]-ma ina māti(kur) la i-mu-ru-uš mam-ma-an [X X X]-⸢ú⸣ kigalla(ki.gal)-la ú-šar-me [X X X] Sîn(dnanna) it-ta-bi zi-kir-šú [šá ḫuraṣu(kù.si₂₂) u uqnû(na4]za.gìn) a-pi-ir a-gu-šú [X X X] ši-kin-šú Sîn(d30) antalû(an.gi₆)

[As to Nabonidus], his protective deity revolted against him. […of the gods], is now seized by misfortunes. […of the gods] he performed an impure deed, what […] he accomplished is wind: [the god which previously] no one had [ever] seen in this country, [he…and] he placed it on a pedestal; he called it by the name of Sîn. Its head is covered with a band [of gold and] lapis lazuli; its appearance is that of an eclipsed moon.

As previously mentioned, Nabonidus was accused by the author of The Persian Verse Account of having committed several crimes, most notably his absence from the capital to sojourn to Teima, and the concomitant establishment of a temple there, dedicated to the god Sîn. We are told in ii 27‒29 that Nabonidus took up residence in Teima, and furthermore that he built there a palace for himself to rival the one in Babylon (ki-ma ⸢ekal(é.gal)⸣ Bābili(šu.an.naki) i-te-pu-⸢su X šá⸣ [X X]). The construction of the Eḫulḫul is given in ii 4‒11, contrived as a speech of Nabonidus. In it we are told that all cultic festivals—including the New Year’s festival—ceased to exist until the building of the temple was completed. Read against Nabonidus’ “crimes” are the activities of Cyrus, who went to great lengths to eradicate the memory of the former: Col vi 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

[šá Nabû-na’id(mdnà-n]í.tuku) ib-šim-mu gi-mir eš-re-e-tú [zi-kir šarrūtīšu(lu]gal)-ti-šú šá ina pî(ka) it-ta-sa-aḫ [X X ep-š]e-ti-šú ub-ba-at za-qí-qí [X X X] uṣ-rat-su it-tas-ḫu [ina gi-mir eš-r]e-e-ti pa-šiṭ ni-bi-is-su [mim-mu-ú i]b-nu-ú gīra(dgíra) ul-taq-mu [X X X šá ib-n]u-ú ul-ta-kil i-šá-a-tú

All of the shrines [which Nabonidus] had created, [the mere utterance of his kingship], he [Cyrus] tore out; also his deeds […] the wind completely destroyed. [Nabonidus’] groundplans he ripped out, [in all the shr]ines the invocations of his name were erased. [Whatever Nabonidus had cre]ated, [Cyrus] caused fire to burn; [whatever Nabonidus built, Cyrus] caused flames to consume.

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Of great interest here is the recurrence of the “wind” theme, first witnessed in Advice to a Prince and The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince. It is used both in i 21 and here in iv 20 to describe the deeds of Nabonidus, but in two different forms. The former describes his accomplishments simply as “windy,”⁴²³ much as in this Neo-Assyrian letter from a Babylonian king or crown-prince to an Assyrian king: ṭup-pu šārū(TU₁₅.MEŠ) ù me-ḫa-na-ti-ku-nu šá taš-pu-ra-a-ni ina kunnukīša(na4kišib.meš)-šá ki-i ú-te-ru ul-te-bil-ak-ku-nu-ši (SAA 18: 1 obv. 16‒18) Your tablet [full of] winds and storms that you sent to me, I’ve had taken away and returned to you with its seals intact.

The second instance of the theme claims that the legacy of Nabonidus was erased, using the metaphor that his “deeds were carried away in the wind.” In both Advice to a Prince and The Netherworld Vision, this theme was variously employed—in the former as a threat to the scribes, if they were to jeopardize the reputation of the king; in the latter as a threat to the king via a dream image. We saw also in Chapter 2 the importance of this theme for expressing the scribe’s importance to the maintenance of the royal memory. Here, for the first time, we have a reported and blatant demolition of a king’s legacy (that of Nabonidus) by another king (Cyrus). The “deeds” carried away by the wind may well refer to a defacement of Nabonidus’ inscriptions, a damnatio memoriae executed by Cyrus. The association between wind and writing thus remained, and its weight likely understood, employed as a threat in a battle between a dying empire and a burgeoning one. The projects attributed to Cyrus in The Persian Verse Account are similar in theme and terminology to what appears in BM 90920, otherwise known as The Cyrus Cylinder. Found in 1879 by H. Rassam at Qumran (the location of the Marduk temple at Babylon), the document is in a long tradition of foundation/building texts, and has typically been read as such (Kuhrt 1983: 84), though that is not to diminish its unique nature.⁴²⁴ The Cyrus Cylinder is concerned mostly with three major areas of interest: the slander of the previous king, Nabonidus; the  With respect to his construction of an image of Sîn: [XXX]-na ib-ta-ni za-qí-qí “he made something worthless/windy.”  The existence of two new fragments, recently discovered in the British Museum, are an indication of the extent of its reach. The fragments are written on tablet pieces, perhaps from Babylon, or even Dilbat or Borsippa, and have added hitherto unknown elements to the reading of the text. For this, see Finkel (2013: 18‒26). The bibliography on the Cylinder is extensive. For a brief overview, see Michalowski (2014a: 203‒205); Harmatta (1974); and Beaulieu (1993).

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rejuvenation by Cyrus of the normal “order” of things, namely the Babylonian temple cult; and the legitimization of Cyrus as king of Babylon through appeal to Assyrian precedent.⁴²⁵ In The Cyrus Cylinder, Nabonidus is described this way:⁴²⁶ 5 ta-am-ši-li é.sag.íl i-te-[pu-uš-ma X X X ‐t]ì? a-na Urim(úriki) ù si-it-ta-a-tì ma-ḫa-za 6 pa-ra-aṣ la si-ma-a-ti-šu-nu ta-[ak-li-im la me-si X X X la] pa-liḫ u₄-mi-ša-am-ma id-de-néeb-bu-ub ù ⸢a-na ma-ag⸣-ri-tì 7 sat-tuk-ku ú-šab-ṭi-li ú-l[a-ap-pi-it pél-lu-de-e X X X iš]-tak-ka-an qé-reb ma-ḫa-zi pa-la-ḫa Marduk(damar.utu) šar(lugal) ilāni(dingirmeš) i[g-m]ur kar-šu-uš-šu 8 le-mu-ut-ti ālīšu(uru)-šu [i-t]e-né-ep-pu-⸢uš⸣ u₄-mi-ša-am-⸢ma X X⸣ [X X X nīšīšu(ùg]meš)šú i-na ab-ša-a-ni la ta-ap-šu-úḫ-tì ú-ḫal-li-iq kul-lat-si-in A replica of Esagila he ma[de, and…]… for Ur and the remaining cultic centers, a ritual which was improper to them, an [impure] of[fering x x x without] fear he recited daily. With malice he interrupted the regular offerings (and) up[set the cultic rites… x x x he] established in the cultic centers. Through his own desire, he did away with the worship of Marduk, the king of the gods, and he continually cultivated evil against the city of Marduk. Daily and unrelentingly he […] its inhabitants under the yoke, and destroyed them all.

After Cyrus was “chosen” by Marduk as the proper successor to the kingship at Babylon, he is described as a liberator, again much in the same way as he is described in The Persian Verse Account (vi 25‒28): 25 āl(⸢uruki⸣) Babīli(ká.dingir.ra) ù kul-lat ma-ḫa-zi-šu i-na ša-li-im-tì áš-te-’e-e mārī(dumumeš) Babīli(tin.tir[ki) X X X š]a ki-ma la libbībi(šà)-[bi ili(ding]ir)-ma ab-šá-a-ni la sima-ti-šú-nu šu-ziz-⸢zu!⸣ 26 an-ḫu-ut-su-un ú-pa-áš-ši-ḫa ú-ša-ap-ṭi-ir sa-ar-ma-šu-nu a-na ep-še-e-ti-[ia dam-qa-a-ti] Marduk(damar.utu) bēlu(en) rabû(ga[l)]-ú iḫ-de-e-ma For the city of Babylon and all its sacred centers, I sought welfare. As for the citizens of Babylon, [x x x upon wh]om he [i. e., Nabonidus] imposed a yoke which was not the will of the gods and not befitting them, I relieved their weariness and caused them to be freed from their [meaning uncertain].⁴²⁷ Marduk, the great lord, rejoiced over [my good] deeds.

 Adapted from Kuhrt (1983: 85‒86).  My text edition of The Cyrus Cylinder comes from Schaudig (2001: 550‒556).  The CAD S (178) gives this line as an example of this rare word, from sarma’u, but is not able to render a translation of the word. Though the verbiage is different, compare these lines to Advice to a Prince 24‒28, in which the consequences for imposing corvée labor on the Babylonians are enumerated, including the surrender of the offending king’s people to enemy forces (a-na lúnakri-šú; here, Nabonidus is the offending king and Cyrus is the “enemy” liberator).

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The corvée labor (ab-šá-a-ni) imposed by Nabonidus is reversed by Cyrus; the sacred centers (māḫāzū) and city of Babylon, abused by Nabonidus (le-mu-ut-ti), are brought back to health (i-na ša-li-im-tì) by Cyrus. We are also told that Cyrus ensures the welfare not only of the inhabitants of Babylon, but also, importantly, of their gods, who are returned to their homes in Sumer and Akkad after their capture and confinement in Babylon by Nabonidus (The Cyrus Cylinder 32‒33, to be compared to Persian Verse Account vi 12‒15). Still, as always, Marduk is front and center. These two texts give a fairly uniform picture of the reign of Nabonidus, though it is important to recognize that they are not the only sources for these events. Two others are the so-called Nabonidus Chronicle,⁴²⁸ a piece in a traditional corpus of apolitical texts that concern astronomical observations for the management of future events,⁴²⁹ and the inscriptions of Nabonidus himself, which will be discussed in more detail below. We will take all of these texts into consideration to understand the place of The Persian Verse Account within the context of other counterdiscursive texts of the first millennium. Though it is impossible to definitively name an author for either The Persian Verse Account or The Cyrus Cylinder, both clearly originate from a hostile tradition sympathetic to the anti-Nabonidic claims of Cyrus, utilizing the same propagandistic motifs. Both texts are striking for their reflection of contemporaneous events.⁴³⁰ As regards The Persian Verse Account, the emphasis on Nabonidus’ religious sacrileges has led some to argue that the text was written by the Babylonian priesthood, who strongly opposed Nabonidus’ elevation of the moon-god Sîn over Marduk, and took this opportunity to express their disapproval.⁴³¹ Kuhrt (1990a: 139) argues, however, that it was rather the building project at

 See Glassner (2004: 232‒239, no. 26). For astronomical texts as a historiographical source, see for instance van der Spek (2003: esp. 289‒296).  Waerzeggers (205: 104‒106) suggests ways in which the Nabonidus Chronicle may be read as a document criticizing Persian imperialism in the context of the (non)performance of the New Year’s festival.  Von Soden (1983: 64) argues that the propaganda inherent in The Persian Verse Account is understandable only as an attack against a still-powerful Nabonidus; thus the text is not a posthumous assessment but was written shortly after the assumption of Cyrus to the throne at Babylon.  A widely held view, espoused by (among others) Cook (1985: 212) and Sack (1977: 466‒467). If read in this way, the text would serve as a parallel to Ludlul (Chapter 2), in which the elevation of Marduk over Enlil was the prime concern. In both texts, the failure to recognize Marduk’s supremacy is at the fore of a critique in the form of “theology as politics.”

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Ḫarrān—and not Nabonidus’ religious proclivities—that was at issue.⁴³² Regardless, an active opposition by the priesthood against the king cannot be verifiably documented, and it is even possible that the temple officials (whom we would expect to produce such a document) were thriving in the reign of Nabonidus.⁴³³ Similarly, Fried (2004: 24‒31) shows that the Marduk priesthood at Babylon did not in fact throw open their gates to Cyrus, but rather resisted his approach.⁴³⁴ Although new officials (who would have included the leadership of the Esagil temple, the šākin ṭēmi) were indeed appointed by Cyrus,⁴³⁵ they appear to be the exception rather than the rule.⁴³⁶

Continuity and(?) Change; Ḫarrān Reconsidered Some scholars have already questioned the truth of the accusations leveled against Nabonidus by Cyrus. Though I am less interested in whether or not

 Weisberg (1977: 554) points out that in normal circumstances, a ruler who had spent as much time away from the capital as Nabonidus is purported to have done would not have been able to maintain political security and popularity among the elites.  Kuhrt (1990a: 146‒154) argues that there may even be evidence for excessive wealth among the temple elite in Nabonidus’ reign, and that the Achaemenid maintenance of his temple policies is evidence of his effective relationship with them.  However, Beaulieu (1989: 232) argues that the absence of any record of real disturbance after Cyrus’ conquest should not be taken as de facto evidence that he was openly accepted. There would have been no need for such a propagandistic document like The Cyrus Cylinder if that indeed were the case. He further makes the interesting observation that after the death of the Persian Cambyses, two usurpers arose who took the programmatic names of Nebuchadnezzar, claiming to be sons of Nabonidus. This adoption of royal titulary is an indication that the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire was still remembered as a major and influential figure in Babylonian political history.  The Nabonidus Chronicle ii 20 indeed gives evidence for Cyrus’ appointment of new officials in Babylon: mGu-ba-ru lúnam-šú lúnammeš ina eki ip-te-qid (“he appointed Gubaru governor of all of the governors in Babylon”).  See the argument of Jursa (2007: 77‒78), who shows that temple personnel were essentially de facto royal employees, making it unlikely that royal policy could ever meet with much resistance in their circles. Further he notes that there appears to have been great continuity in the appointment of officials from the Neo-Babylonian to Achaemenid periods, indicating a “stable state” under Nabonidus that was probably not as disliked as is sometimes believed. A similar argument is presented by Waerzeggers (2011), who views a substantive break in policy in the year 484 BC, at the beginning of the reign of Xerxes. Contra Dandamaev (1979: 589‒596), who argues that the “cash-boxes” instituted in the reign of Nabonidus were meant to serve the royal coffers. In addition, he argues for reforms instituted by Nabonidus that sought to limit temple property and income.

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Cyrus was truly a “liberator,”⁴³⁷ it is important to consider both the novelty of Cyrus’ claims and the extent to which the actions of Nabonidus were contrary to the perquisites of Neo-Babylonian kingship.⁴³⁸ Indubitably, it behooved Cyrus to harshly criticize Nabonidus, as Cyrus had taken Babylon by force as a usurper.⁴³⁹ But we still must seek an origin for the themes presented in the text. Though Sack (1983: 66) argues that The Persian Verse Account is representative of historical truth about Nabonidus’ reign, the text appears to a great extent to be a reaction to the king’s own propaganda. One very fragmentary portion of The Persian Verse Account may allude to Nabonidus’ claims to command over the written word. Column iv 5‒6 gives: agu-ug šarru(lu[gal) xxx]/bēl(en) qan ṭuppi(gi.dub)-[pi xxx] “The king was angry/the lord of the reed stylus.” Smith (1924: 96) combines this fragmentary passage with an oft-cited passage in column v, which reads: 8 9 10 11 12 13

izuzzu(gub)-zu ina puḫri(ukkin) ú-šar-ra-ḫu r[a-man-šú] en-qé-ek mu-da-a-ka a-ta-mar k[a-ti-im-tú] mi-ḫi-iṣ qan ṭuppu(gi.dub)-pu ul i-di a-ta-mar n[i-ṣir-tú] ú-šab-ra-an dil-te-ri kul-lat ú-ta-[ad-da-a] u₄.sakar da.nú den.líl.lá šá ik-ṣu-ru a.da.p[à] muḫḫīšu(ugu)-šú šu-tu-qa-ak kal né-me-q[u]

He would stand in the assembly (and) glorify him[self] (as follows): “I am wise. I am knowledgeable. I have seen sec[ret things]. I do not know a tablet (made by) a cut-reed stylus, (but) I have seen se[cret things]. Ilteri has given me revelations; he has [made known to me] everything. As for (the series) u₄.sakar dA-num dEn.lil.la, which Adapa compiled, I surpass it in all wisdo[m].⁴⁴⁰

Beaulieu (2007c: 161) places this claim in the context of current issues of scholarship and wisdom in the first millennium, many of which were discussed in Chapter 2. In a formative article, Machinist and Tadmor argue that besides being re-

 This topic has been dealt with at length. For a good representative piece, see Kuhrt (1983: esp. 178‒181). Kuhrt argues that the sources (including Biblical testimony, The Nabonidus Chronicle, and The Cyrus Cylinder) all indicate that Cyrus was interested in accommodating local customs and interests, but ultimately was motivated by political expediency, being willing to bend only so far (as it were). This is indicated by the last few lines of The Nabonidus Chronicle (esp. iii 26), in which Cyrus is shown taking part in the traditional New Year’s festival, though he is prevented from “taking the hand of Nabû” because of his Elamite garb (George 1996: 379‒381).  These questions have been taken up in detail by Beaulieu (2007c).  Interestingly, neither king was considered a legitimate heir to the throne, so The Persian Verse Account represents a rare accusatory dialogue from one usurper to another.  My translation for this passage is only slightly modified from Machinist and Tadmor (1993: 146).

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markably close to the claims of Assurbanipal in L₄, the polemic in The Persian Verse Account is a reaction to Nabonidus’ own beliefs about his literacy and erudition; importantly, once revered in Neo-Assyrian kingship ideology, the gift of literacy is now a source for mockery.⁴⁴¹ Their argument is based on an inscription of Nabonidus, first given in Lambert (1968‒1969: 4‒8), wherein the author reads (iii obv. 2‒5): 2 […] X [X] X ṭup-pimeš iškar(éš.gàr) enūma(ud) Anu(an) Enlil(den.líl.lá) 3 gipi-sa-an ul-tu bābili(tin.tirki) a-na nap-lu-su 4 ṭupšarrū([l]údub.sarmeš) ú-bil-lu-nu ma-ḫar-šu la še-mu 5 [l]a i-di lib-bu-uš ma-la qa-bé-e-šu […].[.]. tablets of the series, “When Anu, Enlil,” The scribes brought the basket (of tablets) from Babylon to look at, but they were not heard (read) before him So that he did not know its instructions.

Machinist and Tadmor (1993: 149‒150) propose that the passage should instead be read with the translation: 2 The tablets of the series Enūma Anu Enlil 3‒4 The scribes brought before him in a box from Babylon for (him) to peruse. 4‒5 (But) they were not read; no one understood them without (ba-la) his (= Nabonidus) telling (them).

The translation provided by Machinist and Tadmor displays an exact counterpoint to the accusation leveled in The Persian Verse Account. His pretensions to literacy are mocked further when The Verse Account names Nabonidus’ expertise as being in the text u₄-sakar da-nu₃ den-lil₃-la₂, when everyone would know that the famous series Enūma Anu Enlil was meant. But Michalowski (2003a: esp. 144‒145) has argued that the change in the title of this famous series—ridiculed by the Babylonian scribes in The Verse Account—was a deliberate emendation by Nabonidus in order to associate it with Sîn. This literary dialogue between Nabonidus and the Babylonian scribes only continues with regard to religious and political issues, as we will see. Much has been made of Nabonidus’ ten-year-long residence at Teima and his concomitant elevation of the moon-god Sîn, whose temple was housed there. The

 See Machinist and Tadmor (1993: esp. 149) and Schaudig (2002: 622‒625). Beaulieu (1989: 79) suggests that Nabonidus may have been a courtier at the palace of Babylon before he assumed the kingship, given his documented knowledge of writing and his apparent quarrels with priests and scholars.

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sojourn serves as one of the major criticisms leveled by Cyrus against Nabonidus (The Persian Verse Account ii 4‒11, 23‒29; Cyrus Cylinder 5‒8). Yet contemporary evidence does not necessarily provide the same view of the incident as is portrayed in Cyrus’ propaganda. Another source for Nabonidus’ reign, The Nabonidus Chronicle, also mentions the cancellation of the New Year’s festival.⁴⁴² Nabonidus Chronicle ii 5‒8 The seventh year, the king stayed in Teima. The prince, his officers, and his troops stayed in Akkad. [In the month of Nisan, the king] did not go to Babylon. Nabû did not go to Babylon. Bēl [Marduk] did not go out. The fes[tival of the New Year was not celebrated]. The sacrifices to the gods of Babylon and Borsippa were offered in the Esagila and the Ezida a[s in normal times]. The šešgallu-priest made a libation and inspected the temple.⁴⁴³

Though it bears mentions that the Chronicle appears to specifically note the disturbance of the New Year’s festival,⁴⁴⁴ Zawadzki (2010: 150‒152) has shown that the text was subject to later editing from scribal circles, and, since it was produced around the same time as The Verse Account, was wont to represent Nabonidus in an unsympathetic manner. In fact, he argues, information for the sixth, seventh, eighth, tenth, eleventh, and maybe even twelfth years of Nabonidus’ reign does not appear in the original version of the Nabonidus Chronicle. It is hard to determine, then, the actual impact of Nabonidus’ alleged neglect of certain Babylonian religious obligations during this period.⁴⁴⁵ Nabonidus himself did not deny his long stay at Teima, or that it forced the suspension of regular festivals at Babylon. But in his own inscription on the socalled Ḫarrān Stele,⁴⁴⁶ Nabonidus explains his controversial choice by claiming that Sîn had given him orders:

 Waerzeggers (2015: 103‒104) provides bibliography on previous arguments regarding the date of the Chronicle, while the author herself favors a date in the Achaemenid, Seleucid, or Parthian period.  For The Nabonidus Chronicle, I utilize the text edition (and here, translation) of Glassner (2004: 232‒239, no. 26).  Long ago Grayson (1970: 160‒170) proved that the disturbance of the New Year’s festival did not affect the legitimacy of a king.  Waerzeggers (2015: 109‒117) discusses the environment in which this text was found, determining that copies of other texts current to this political environment—including The Persian Verse Account and The Cyrus Cylinder—would have been available to its author. This coexistence of politically relevant texts reveals an active dialogue about power and kingship (especially amongst scholars of the Esagil) during this period of Mesopotamian history, “a product of creative engagement,” and not of passive copying (118).  For the text edition, see Beaulieu (2007c: 144‒145) and Schaudig (2001: 486‒499).

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Col i 11 12 13 14

…ina šá-at mu-ši šutta(máš.gi₆) ú-šab-ra-an um-ma é.ḫul.ḫul bīt(é) Sîn(d30) šá Ḫarrān(urukaskal) ḫa-an-ṭiš e-pu-uš mātātī(kur.kurmeš) ka-la-ši-na a-na qātīka(šuii)-ka lu-mál-la

He [Sîn] revealed to me in a night dream thusly: “Build quickly Eḫulḫul, the temple of Sîn in Ḫarrān, and I will deliver all lands into your hands.”

We are then told (obv. 14‒20) that the citizens of Babylon, Borsippa, Ur, Uruk, and Larsa had misbehaved and sinned against the king of the gods, who is named as dnanna. It was for this reason that the citizens and temple administrators were punished: Col i 21 a-ḫa-míš di-’u u ḫušaḫḫu(su.gu₇)-ú ina libbīšunu(šà)-bi-šú-nu 22 ú-šab-šu-ú ú-ṣa-aḫ-ḫi-ir nīšī(unmeš) māti(kur) At the same time, disease and famine appeared among them, and he [Sîn] turned away from the people of the land.

One immediately notices the divine justification given for the otherwise inexplicable attention Nabonidus pays to the city of Ḫarrān and its god Sîn. Even more striking, as will be discussed below, is the overt blame he places on the people of his empire for hardships allegedly caused by their ignorance of Sîn. Though these pronouncements are unsurprising in an apologetic royal inscription, their origin may indicate something about Nabonidus’ allegiances. Beaulieu also emphasizes the iconography on The Ḫarrān Stele, where Nabonidus is seen paying homage to Sîn, Šamaš, and Ištar, holding a staff adorned with the symbol of the god Nabû and representing the stylus of a scribe. He notes that The Babylon Stele, which carries a local recension of the same inscription as The Ḫarrān Stele, includes not this symbol but rather the lunar crescent representative of Sîn. Considering the local pantheons of both cities, this is an obvious reversal of our expectations; Beaulieu (2007c: 148‒149) argues that the placement was intentional, subtly conflating Babylon and Ḫarrān. This implies a syncretism of Sîn and Nabû, both of whom were recognized as gods who conferred kingship. Now Babylon and Ḫarrān could both be viewed as “cit-

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ies of kingship,”⁴⁴⁷ perhaps lessening the blow of Nabonidus’ absence for the New Year’s festival in Babylon and Sîn’s recognition of his kingship. Another important source about the reign of Nabonidus is the fragmentary work of the Greek author Berossus. He was a third-century BC Marduk priest living in Babylon, which was now ruled by the Seleucid Antiochus I. His Babyloniaca was a work nominally intended to transmit the whole of Babylonian history to the Greeks; but since it was likely a gift to Antiochus on his accession to the throne, the text—which survives only in excerpts and distant quotations—was certainly not without ideological underpinnings and various embellishments.⁴⁴⁸ Agreeing with Burstein’s original commentary, Beaulieu argues that the account of Nabonidus’ rise to power in Berossus’ Babyloniaca is similar to an inscription of Nabonidus himself, The Istanbul Stele, which Berossus could have seen because of its proximate findspot in the North Palace at Babylon. The account of Berossus completely ignores Nabonidus’ stay in Teima (Burstein 1978: 28 n. 113). Because of his ambivalent portrait of Nabonidus, Beaulieu (2007b: 141) contends that Berossus was following a tradition that originated in the chancery of Nabonidus—a strand of tradition which did not view the king in a negative way (Burstein 1978: 28 n.111). Kratz (2002: 152), through a slightly different means, characterizes Greek sources as inherently pro-Nabonidic. He conjectures that the common source for all Greek literature about Nabonidus was Berossus, whose prerogative, he argues, was to mediate Babylonian wisdom to the Greeks, which was pro-Nabonidic because it was inherently anti-Cyrus. One more text, The Dynastic Prophecy (to be studied below), also comes into play in this complicated dialogue regarding later appraisals of the reigns of Nabonidus and Cyrus. Another source about the reign of Nabonidus is known as 4QPrNab (“4Q Prière de Nabonide”). The text is an Aramaic fragment found at Qumran Cave 4, which describes Nabonidus’ time away from the capital, at Ḫarrān.⁴⁴⁹ In the text, Nabonidus is afflicted with an inflammation (presumably of the skin), until he is finally visited by a Jew, who cures him and thereby pardons the

 See George (1997a: 128) for Babylon’s position as a city of kingship.  For instance, see Bichler (2004: 499‒518) for the argument that Berossus’ account of Babylonian history was highly influenced by the art of story-telling. For a good overview of the transmission history of the text, see Beaulieu (2007b: esp. 116‒118); for the ideological motives of Berossus see Beaulieu (2007b: 125‒126). A very current bibliography on Berossus is given by Gufler and Madreiter (2013: 309‒323).  Lemaire (2003: 285‒298) also discusses this text. Though it primarily serves as a recapitulation of previous scholarship, he does attempt to argue that Nabonidus’ elevation of Sîn proves “a clear affirmation of monotheism” (293).

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“sin” which made him ill in the first place.⁴⁵⁰ Martinez (1992: 116, 129, 135) describes the text as a “wisdom and apologetic story stemming from historical fact.” There is a wide consensus that the story of Nebuchadnezzar II’s madness is a distorted recollection of Nabonidus’ self-imposed exile at Teima due to illness, as described in this text. Additionally, an argument exists—which has attracted a growing number of adherents—that the traditions about Nabonidus underlie the fourth chapter of Daniel. It is only at a later stage, with the name of the monarch changed, that Nebuchadnezzar becomes the true protagonist of the biblical story, and Nabonidus’ skin disease morphs into a full-blown mental illness (Henze 1999: 63‒64). Alternatively, Martinez (1992: 130‒131) compares this text more broadly with The Ḫarrān Stele of Nabonidus, saying that in both texts Nabonidus is portrayed as a pious king; is away from his capital for a long period; is stationed in Teima during that time; and is allowed to return to his kingdom due to the favorable intervention of his god. Providing a non-critical explanation of Nabonidus’ exile, the text is an interesting commentary on later traditions about the king, as well as a case study in the conflation of history and story-telling in Ancient Near Eastern environments. As for the supposed elevation of the moon-god Sîn, it has long been recognized that the interest in this god began well before the period of Nabonidus. His influence became especially intense in the later Assyrian period, during the reigns of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal. A barrel inscription of Assurbanipal even indicates that Ḫarrān represented a seat of kingship, with Assurbanipal himself being crowned there, and adds the claim that he and his father Esarhaddon ruled the world “by the grace of Sîn, king of the gods”—an epithet usually reserved for Assur or Marduk (Lewy 1946: 417, 418 n. 72). According to official texts of the Neo-Assyrian period, there was a conflation between the gods Assur and Sîn, and even between Enlil and Sîn (Schaudig 2002: 619‒645). Furthermore, the city of Ḫarrān enjoyed a status associated with “high antiquity,” leading Lewy to argue that Nabonidus’ interest in the city lay in his hope to reestablish “the good old days” at important sanctuaries throughout the empire (not just in Ḫarrān), with the goal of protecting the Neo-Babylonian empire from the kind of disaster which had befallen the Assyrian state. Interest in Ḫarrān may have stemmed, he believes, from the early designation of the “Era of the Moon-God,” a period which saw the rise of the first great empires of Akkad and Ur, whom the Assyrians often imitated in political practice. From this, Lewy (1946: 446‒447, 452‒452, 462‒464) suggests that Nabonidus’ revitalization of Ḫar-

 Hommel (1902: 145‒150) suggests that this illness was the main cause of Nabonidus’ journey to Teima.

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rān can be likened to Sargon’s foundation of Khorsabad as a new capital for the empire. Nabonidus’ interest in Ḫarrān and its god, then, can perhaps be profitably understood in terms of the maintenance of religio-political practice and imperial propagandistic continuity.⁴⁵¹ It is reasonable to ask, then, how much Nabonidus truly strayed from traditional Babylonian royal mores and attitudes. Nabonidus is known to have restored or reinstated cultic ordinances for Marduk in other places of the empire, including Uruk and Sippar, which connected him to the “antiquarian interests” of his predecessors (Sack 1998: 458). As Sack argues, “Nabonidus [can] not only be credited with a number of significant achievements but he also acted in a way that fit the role of a traditional Babylonian monarch.” But how did these active behaviors correspond with Nabonidus’ literary representation of himself? Is The Persian Verse Account to be totally discredited?

The Assyrianization of Nabonidus It should have become clear that Nabonidus was vilified by Cyrus due to almost entirely propagandistic concerns. But one common thread seems to connect Nabonidus’ own self-representative literature with the anti-establishment propaganda leveled against him: his interests appear to be seriously antiquarian, with a heavy dose of Assyrianizing.⁴⁵² We have seen that Nabonidus showed favoritism towards Sîn and the city of Ḫarrān. Assyrian presence there was significant beginning in the ninth century BC; its importance as a trading route was a major cause for its expansion under Assyrian domination (Holloway 2002: 388‒ 425).⁴⁵³ But more than that, Ḫarrān (along with Babylonia) was the center of Assyrian attention to foreign cults during the late period; interestingly, there is no

 This is also the argument of Reiner (1985: 5‒8) and Beaulieu (2000a: 974). Da Riva (2010: 60) calls the exaltation of Sîn a “…‘construct’ which ha[d] been added to the madness and incapability of the king as created by Persian propaganda in order to justify the probably very violent seizure of the throne and the overthrowing of a legitimate ruler.”  For extensive bibliography on this topic, see Beaulieu (1994: 37‒42); Winter (2000); and Rubio (2009: 161‒166). See also Brau-Holzinger and Frahm (1999) for Nabonidus’ view of himself in the light of Assyrian (and earlier) models; and Ehrenberg (1998) and Lambert (1968‒1969) regarding Nabonidus’ respect towards a statue of Sargon of Akkad that was found during the rebuilding work of the Ebabbarra at Sippar.  Ḫarrān had incredible strategic significance during the Neo-Assyrian period as well, and became the center of the Assyrian court after the sack of Nineveh, no doubt because of its central position on trade routes between the Euphrates and the Levant. See Postgate (1972‒1975: 122‒125).

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evidence that the building and reconstruction of temples there were meant to install the cult of Assur at these locations—the native gods were the ones being honored.⁴⁵⁴ Assurbanipal’s building activity in Ḫarrān was unusually extensive; his father Esarhaddon also took great interest in the city and its temple.⁴⁵⁵ We know from royal inscriptions that Assurbanipal completed restoration work on the Eḫulḫul, and he claims to have sacrificed in person at the temple in Ḫarrān.⁴⁵⁶ Assurbanipal is said to have “taken the hands” of the cult statue of Sîn (the same action required during the Babylonian New Year’s festival) in order to guide him into his newly rebuilt cella at the temple in Ḫarrān (Holloway 2002: 272, table 7:10). Perhaps most interestingly, Assurbanipal even had his brother appointed to a priesthood at Ḫarrān, “the only recorded instance of a Neo-Assyrian prince assuming a purely sacerdotal office outside the Assyrian heartland.”⁴⁵⁷ We have already addressed Beaulieu’s argument that Nabonidus attempted to conflate Babylon and Ḫarrān as cities important for conferring kingship; this idea was taken from the Neo-Assyrian fantasy of Sîn, which imagined him as a god of universality. Assyrian connection to him, then, was convenient because of their own desire to rule “the four corners of the universe” (Lewy 1949: 73), which was central to Neo-Assyrian ideology. We know that Nabonidus actively recruited Assurbanipal’s interest in Ḫarrān as a way to justify his own (The Eḫulḫul Cylinder, Schaudig 2001: 409‒440): Col i 38 a-na e-pe-šu é.ḫúl.ḫúl bīt(é) Sîn(den.zu) bēlī(en)-ia a-lik i-di-ia 39 ša qé-reb ālu(uru) Ḫar-ra-nu šá Assur-bān-apli(man.šár-ba-an-ibila) šar(lugal) māt (kur) aš-šurki 40 mār(dumu) Assur-aḫḫe-iddina(man.šár-šeš)-mu šar(lugal) māt(kur) aš-šurki rubû (nun) a-lik maḫ-ri-ia i-pú-šu …to rebuild Eḫulḫul, the temple of Sîn, my master, who marches before me, (located) in the midst of Ḫarrān, which Assurbanipal, king of Assyria, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, a ruler who came before me had built.

Furthermore, Nabonidus, in the opening paragraph of The Nabonidus Cylinder from Sippar, uses the self-descriptor šar kibrāti erbetti. He was the only Neo-Bab-

 See Holloway (2002: 255‒256), citing Brinkman (1985: 110‒112).  See Novotny (2003: 71‒73) and also Radner (2003).  For the text attesting to this work, see Pongratz-Leisten (1995: 549‒557). See also Holloway (2002: 247, table 5:24) and Holloway (2002: 247‒248 n. 83) for bibliography; for Assurbanipal’s personal sacrifice there see Holloway (2002: 267, table 6:22).  Holloway (2002: 420). The text can be found in SAACT 10: 19 obv. 13.

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ylonian king to take on this epithet. The formula was revived from Ur III usage during the Neo-Assyrian period, and mirrored their imperial aspirations, as described above.⁴⁵⁸ According to Lewy (1949: 75), the adoption of this epithet also makes clear that Nabonidus intended to follow the supranational tendencies of his “Assyrian forefathers.” Beaulieu (1989: 109‒111) argues that Nabonidus’ revival of Assyrian governmental procedures and imperial concepts was in the interest of establishing the “true heir” to the Assyrian Empire;⁴⁵⁹ regardless, his actions did turn the “imperial center of gravity” away from Babylon, which Vanderhooft (1999: 56‒58) contends was a major impetus for the composition of The Persian Verse Account. Finally, I would note the observation of Martinez (1992: 121) regarding the text discovered at Qumran: many commentators have interpreted the Aramaic in the first line of the text as reading “Nabonidus, king of Assyria and Babylon…” Though the editor dismisses the possibility, “because the preeminence of Assyria seem[s] out of place,” Martinez suggests that Nabonidus was of Assyrian and Aramaic origin.⁴⁶⁰ As a Chaldean like Nabûšuma-iškun, Nabonidus was likely viewed as a foreigner.⁴⁶¹ With that in mind, I would now like to return to Nabonidus’ own justification for his construction activities at Ḫarrān. Two important motifs stand out in his inscription at Ḫarrān. More prevalent is the divine justification cited for his absence from Babylon: the god Sîn appeared to Nabonidus in a dream and ordered him to journey to Teima to carry out the construction of his temple, the Eḫulḫul. This tactic relieves him of both blame and intentionality for deserting his Babylonian subjects and purportedly elevating the moon-god. As we have seen, divine abandonment is a popular motif in self-justificatory texts, as with Esarhaddon’s reimagination of his father Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon.⁴⁶² Adopting a textual example from Sennacherib’s Bavian Inscription, Nabonidus blames the people of his empire for the offense of the moon-god, which necessitated Nabonidus’ intervention:

 See also Tadmor (1965: 353) for the suggestion that the Sippar Cylinder of Nabonidus may have been modeled on inscriptions of Assurbanipal.  He suggests on 143 that Nabonidus’ inclusion of Assyrian elements in breaking with traditional Neo-Babylonian inscriptions was meant to imply imperial continuity between the empires.  Martinez (1992: 134 n. 47), citing Lewy (1949: 70‒77).  The influence of his mother, Adad-Guppi, who spent most of her developing years in an Assyrianized Ḫarrān, was indubitably profound. See Michalowski (2014a: 205‒208).  On divine abandonment because of the misdeeds of humans (in several texts pertinent to this discussion), see now Johandi (2016: esp. 145‒148).

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Ḫarrān Inscription Col i 14 15 16 17

…nīšī(unmeš) mārī(dumumeš) Babīli(tin.tirki) bár-sipaki Nippuri(nibruki) Urim(úriki) Uruk(unugki) Larsa(larsaki) šangû(lúsangameš) nīšī(unmeš) ma-ḫa-zi māt(kur) Urim(uriki) a-na ilūtīšu(dingir)-ú-ti-šu rabûti(gal)-ti iḫ-ṭu-̕i-i-ma i-še-ti u ú-gal-li-lu-u’

The people, the citizens of Babylon, Borsippa, Nippur, Ur, Uruk (and) Larsa, the temple administrators (and) the people of the cult cities of the land of Akkad committed a sin against his [Sîn’s] great divinity, and they committed sin after sin (against it).⁴⁶³

Interestingly, here we have the same terminology of “sin,” ḫīṭu, associated by Nabonidus with outrages committed by the Babylonian people against his favorite god, Sîn. This same terminology, as we have seen, is applied to offending kings in previous Akkadian texts. Sennacherib had also blamed his own people for the disruption, specifically, of cultic ordinances and offenses to the god: Bavian Inscription (RINAP 3/2: 223) 47 makkūra(níg.ga) ālu(uru) šu-a-tu kaspa(kù.babbar) ḫurāṣa(kù.gi) abnī(na₄.meš) nisiq-ti būša(níg.šu) makkūra(níg.ga) a-na qātī(šuii) [nīšī(un.meš)]-⸢ia⸣ am-ni-i-ma a-na i-di ra-ma-ni-šú-nu ú-ter-ru 48 ilāni(dingir.meš) a-šib lìb-bi-šú qātī(šuII) nīšī(un.meš)-ia ik-šu-su-nu-ti-ma ú-šab-bi-ruma [būšīšunu(níg.šu)-šú-nu] makkūrīšunu(níg.ga)-šú-nu il-qu-ú I handed the property of that city—silver, gold, precious stones, possessions (and) property —over to the hands of my [people]. They considered it their own and brought it over to their own side. My people took control over the [status of the] gods who lived inside it, and broke them. Then they took their [possessions] (and) property.

Thus, in two monumental inscriptions documenting signal events in the reign of each ruler, royal misbehavior—which may require social amends—is justified by blaming the people of each king’s respective nation. Nabonidus’ Ḫarrān Stele consciously borrowed and incorporated this framework from Assyrian propaganda, specifically that of Sennacherib, who similarly faced possible disapproval.⁴⁶⁴ The use of Assyrianizing forms in a Babylonian court-ordered inscription would

 Text edition from Schaudig (2001: 486‒499).  I do not disagree with Beaulieu (2007c: 142‒148), wherein he suggests that the Ḫarrān Stele consciously plays on the Letter of Samsuiluna and the Letter of Nebuchadnezzar. Rather, I would like to draw attention to the additional consequences of utilizing propaganda which was relatively recent—and more importantly, Assyrian.

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in fact corroborate some of the religious claims of The Persian Verse Account. ⁴⁶⁵ The conscious association with an Assyrian king who had abused the cult of Marduk would certainly not have sat well with the local cult personnel, at the very least. The accusations referred to in The Persian Verse Account, as shown above, were leveled against Nabonidus based on his own written account. Here we must differentiate between action and propaganda, deeds and words; though we have seen that Nabonidus acted like a traditional Babylonian monarch, the literary description of his interests may have been to a great extent Assyrianizing, even if anti-Babylonian. Thus Beaulieu (2007c: 160‒163) argues that disillusioned scribes at the Babylonian court may have overseen the production of The Persian Verse Account; its themes of the decentralization of Babylon, reminiscent of their suffering under Sennacherib—and likely inspired by Nabonidus’ own inscriptions—may indeed reflect contemporary (rather than post eventum) attitudes. This displeasure—now expressed more overtly in what Michalowski (2003a: 144) calls “the great revenge text”—looked terribly familiar, echoing developments already taking place during the Neo-Assyrian period. Here we have a real-life controversy between king and scholars in the court; as Machinist and Tadmor (1993: 150) argue, “the tension is not simply one of deeds…but of words and texts through which the deeds are played out and which become, thus, part of the deeds.” The stakes had now been raised: the “hidden transcripts” of the scribal experiments during the Neo-Assyrian period had come to the fore, and the superiority of the king—as royal figure and intellectual— was being openly challenged.⁴⁶⁶ It manifested itself literarily in a court controversy eerily similar to the disagreements instigated by a previously anti-Babylonian king, Sennacherib; this was a parallelism that was perhaps even implicitly endorsed by Nabonidus himself in his inscriptions. The Persian Verse Account indeed appears to be a reliable historical source,⁴⁶⁷ a relatively faithful representation of Nabonidus’ literary testament  For Assyrianizing forms in texts related to Nabonidus, see Schaudig (2001: 307‒309).  Indeed, Machinist and Tadmor (1993: 149) argue, given the common focus on Adapa and wisdom in both Neo-Assyrian scribal texts and The Persian Verse Account, that the Neo-Babylonian polemic was modeled on the Neo-Assyrian one.  Beaulieu (1993: 257 ff.) further argues for the historicity of The Persian Verse Account based on the inclusion of the officials Rīmut and Zēriya (mentioned in The Persian Verse Account) in a letter from the Eanna archive dealing with Nabonidus’ organization of celebrations for the moon-god at Babylon. Contra Kuhrt (1990a: 142‒143), who contends that the accusations leveled at Nabonidus in the text are similar to those made against Sargon of Akkad. This similarity, she argues, is used paradigmatically as a post eventum explanation for the fall of the dynasty, and therefore has no real historical value. The text was written by the priesthood under Cyrus, who

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to his own kingship. At this stage, one may ask how it is possible to reconcile Nabonidus’ “proper Babylonian” behavior with the textual evidence—including his own inscriptions—that imply otherwise. Acting as a proper native king and manipulating foreign propaganda was not a mutually exclusive proposition.⁴⁶⁸ In fact, Nabonidus had the best teacher: in his own activities at Ḫarrān, Assurbanipal had shown him how. Nabonidus’ obsession with Neo-Assyrian examples —and especially those of Sennacherib and Assurbanipal—was influential to the point of distraction. Michalowski (2014a: 210) even argues that Cyrus’ allusion to Assurbanipal at the end of The Cyrus Cylinder was a deliberate attempt to “upend and appropriate” the very essence of Nabonidus’ identity.

Countertexts and a Return to “Justice” In the context of these considerations, it is important to note, as described above, that the legacy of Nabonidus was not entirely negative; in fact, there are several cuneiform sources (including the later Greek traditions based on Berossus) that appear to be unperturbed by Nabonidus’ “behavior,” presenting essentially unbiased accounts of his reign. Yet one surviving text may serve as a more emphatic countertext to the accusations of The Persian Verse Account. The text, first published by Lambert (1965) as The King of Justice, is housed in the British Museum (BM 45690). Though many of the critical portions of the tablet are missing (columns i and vi, which would contain the beginning and the end of the text), substantial portions (parts of columns ii, iii, iv, and v) remain. The text is in standard literary language besides one Late Babylonian form cited by Lambert (lapān ii 14); its orthography is also late, though this betrays only the hand of its copier and not the original form of the text. The content of the tablet is puzzling, appearing at first as an account of unfortunate times of the past, in which justice could not be found. explained the lack of support for Nabonidus as abandonment by the gods in favor for Cyrus. Therefore, “whatever [Nabonidus] had done was, by hindsight, doomed.”  Beaulieu’s (2007c: 159‒160) take on this issue is different. He argues that all of Nabonidus’ claims could be supported, by various means, in the textual traditions of Babylonian scholarship. He contextualizes Nabonidus’ reinterpretation of Babylonian literature as an act of agency in the service of royal propaganda. Michalowki (2003a: 147‒148) concurs, arguing that Nabonidus—much like Assurbanipal—was trying to impose his own interpretation onto Babylonian texts and the scholarly community in Babylon. I do not disagree with this assessment; interestingly, this places Nabonidus in the same creative position as the scholars (in terms of their power for defining paradigms of royalty) in the court of Assurbanipal. Rather, I hope to provide a different—but not necessarily alternative—take on the matter.

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Col ii ……..ki-ma kalbi(ur.gi₇) ikkalū(gu₇meš) a-ḫa-míš dan-nu en-šú i-ḫab-bil a-na di-i-nu la ma-ṣi ma-la-a-šú šá-ru-ú šá dun-na-ma-a i-leq-qu mim-mu-ú-šú šakkanakku(šagina) u rubû(nun) ašar(ki) a-ku-ú u al-mat ul(nu) izzizū(gub)-zu ma-ḫar dayyāni(lúdi.ku₅) 6 dayyāni(lúdi.ku₅) i-maḫ-ḫa-ra u lip-pu-šú di-in-ši-in

2 3 4 5

They used to devour one another like dogs. The strong used to do violence to the weak, who were not as sufficient as the former for a lawsuit. The rich used to take the property of the lowly. Regent and prince would not stand in the place of the powerless and widow before the judge, and if they came before the judge, he would not preside over their case.⁴⁶⁹

Notable here is that the text begins with a pointed series of inverted expectation (e. g., the rich stealing the property of the poor), similar to early texts such as Ludlul (Chapter 2), where Marduk’s dual identity is emphasized. Then into the chaos comes a king—a representative of justice for his people—who reverses the status quo. Col ii 22 23 24 25 26

a-na di-ni₇ kit-tú u mi-šá-ri la ig-gi la is-ku-up mūšu(g[i₆]) u ur-ri di-i-nu u purussâ(eš.bar)-a šá eli(ugu) bēli(en) rabî(gal)-i Marduk(damar.utu) ṭa-a-bi a-na du-muq! -šat nīšī(unmeš) ù šu-šu-bu māt(kur) Urim(uriki) šak-na ina mil-ki u ši-tul-tu iš-ta-aṭ-tár-ma rik-sa-a-tú ālu(uru) a-na damiqtu(sig₅)-tú ú-rak-ki-is bīt(é) di-i-nu eš-šiš ⸢ib⸣-nu

In the prosecution of truth and justice, he was not negligent, and he did not rest night or day, but with counsel and deliberation, what would be pleasing to the great lord Marduk, for the betterment of all of the people and the settling of the land of Akkad, he persisted in writing down judgments and decisions. He prepared regulations for the betterment of the city, and he built anew the law court.

Contextualized within this praise of a law-giving king is a portion of the text which has received much attention in its own right: a description of the Mesopotamian “river ordeal.”⁴⁷⁰

 For the text edition I utilize Schaudig (2001: 579‒588). An English translation can be found in Lambert’s (1965: 4‒11) edition of the text.  For this, see Beaulieu (1992b: 58‒60) and Bottéro (1981: 1048‒1051). See also Kataja (1987: 65‒68), and now the recent study of Barrabee (2011: esp. 14), who argues that the disappearance —and later the divine retribution via battering and burning—of the second participant in the river ordeal is an attempted subversion of justice in a system of faith-based juridical procedures.

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Because the king lauded in this text is never identified (his name may very well appear in the lost portions), debate has ensued in a small scholarly circle as to who is being addressed. Lambert (1965: 2‒3) confidently assigns the text to Nebuchadnezzar II because the named conquests of the king appeared to match areas subjugated by that king; he further noted linguistic similarities to Nebuchadnezzar’s Wadi Brisa inscriptions. Yet both von Soden (1983: 63 ff.) and Schaudig (2001: 579 ff.) attribute the text to Nabonidus. Von Soden (1983: 63) cites a join with a new fragment assigned to col. i, which names Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, including his son Awil-Marduk. The lands listed in v 21 (Ḫumê, Piriddu, and Lydia), which Lambert argues are known to have been controlled by Nebuchadnezzar, are lands understood to have been allied with Nabonidus (von Soden 1983: 64). Though not incontrovertible, strong evidence for Nabonidus as subject of the text appears in iii 17‒18, wherein we are told that the king rejoiced in “Sîn, Šamaš and Ištar, who are Bēl and Bēltiya, and Nabû, who dwell in Esagil and Ezida, his lords.” Though we know much about the popularity of Sîn for Nabonidus’ own religious interests, it is important to keep in mind that Nabonidus worshipped Sîn as part of a triad with Šamaš and Ištar, a grouping which was popular under the last Assyrian rulers (Beaulieu 2000a: 973). Thus textual inquiry appears to favor an attribution of The King of Justice to the reign of Nabonidus. But what are the implications of this, especially in the greater context of literature here discussed? Like Lambert, Beaulieu was also inclined to view the The King of Justice as a text attributable to Nebuchadnezzar, mostly because of the latter’s adoption of the title šar mīšari, “king of justice,” also taken up by Nabopolassar.⁴⁷¹ But whence was the impetus for this revival? Tadmor argues that the terms were first utilized in the Neo-Assyrian period by Sargon, whose publicity was directed towards granting freedom and privileges (šubarrû) to Sippar, Nippur, and especially Babylon, with similar language as that used in Advice to a Prince. Tadmor also contends that Sargon’s titulary was composed in a pro-Babylonian fashion: “king of Assyria, viceroy of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad.” Sargon’s son Sennacherib, however, had taken on a new titulary, as exhibited in historical inscriptions throughout his reign: na-[ṣir kit-ti ra-’-im mi-ša-ri e]-piš ú-sa-a-ti a-lik tap-pu-ut a-ki-i sa-ḫi-ru dam-qa-a-ti

The fate of this victim, she argues, serves as a warning from the royal author of the text, to anyone who attempts to compromise judicial procedure in the land.  Beaulieu (1989: 4‒5), citing Seux (1967: 316 ff.).

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Guardian of truth, lover of justice, one who lends support, Who comes to the aid of the needy, who turns to acts of kindness.⁴⁷²

Tadmor (2004: 390) interprets this new title, nāṣir kitti, rā’im mīšari, as meant to produce a polemic against Sennacherib’s father Sargon, who was seen as presenting privileges not to the entire realm, but only to the people of Babylon.⁴⁷³ Given that this titulary first appears in Sennacherib’s annals describing his first campaign to Babylon—not to mention the events of 689 BC—there is indeed a more ironic tone in this new self-description, which recalls—but reacts against —the productive relationship between Sargon and the city of Babylon. Furthermore, if we consider that Nabonidus and Sennacherib had similar, tenuous relationships with Babylon, and if we believe The King of Justice was composed by a countertextual Nabonidic faction, I would suggest that the inspiration for the chosen language came from a surprising—but perhaps, by now, predictable— source: the titulary of Sennacherib in his historical inscriptions. Once again Sennacherib will have provided a model for negotiating the divide between deeds and words—a fine line which, as we have seen, was also of much interest to Nabonidus’ scholarly circles. Schaudig even suggests that this text and the text of The Ḫarrān Stele had the same composer.⁴⁷⁴ Since I have argued that The Ḫarrān Stele took topoi from Sennacherib’s Bavian Inscription, the influence of that same king on this particular text would be sensical, if indeed they had the same author. Thus Lambert (1965: 4) was unknowingly correct when he proclaimed that The King of Justice gives “a glimpse of the spiritual revival which accompanied the final burst of Babylonian glory before it sank in the sea of Hellenism.”

The Dynastic Prophecy The last text in this study, often called The Dynastic Prophecy (BM 40623), was written much later than the others and presents a different version of the Babylonian worldview (Grayson 1975b: 38‒37, no. 3). Gone are “the misgivings of the Job-like hero in the Babylonian ‘I will Praise the Lord of Wisdom [Ludlul] or the cynicism of the master and servant in the Babylonian ‘Dialogue of Pessimism.’” The world now revolves around Babylonia, its god, and its king. This should not be surprising; in the approximately 300 years between the composi-

 OIP 2: 48, A1 obv. 2.  Also to be noticed is rā’im, which is most certainly a play on the more common rē’û.  See also Schaudig (2001: 72‒74).

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tion of The Persian Verse Account and The Dynastic Prophecy, the Persian Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great, had risen to great heights, only to be toppled by the might of a Greek-speaking Alexander the Great in 331 BC. Upon Alexander’s death, the territories of his vast empire were subject to bloody disputes for political control. Babylonia itself was at the center of these feuds; gone was its heyday of supreme social and cultural influence, and it struggled to maintain a sense of identity in its politically damaged state. It is in this context—in a Babylon often hearkening to the past to understand its current troubles—that The Dynastic Prophecy was composed. The Dynastic Prophecy is in the tradition of Akkadian prophetic texts which contain primarily “a number of ‘predictions’ about past events” (known as ex eventu prophecies), which conclude with either “predictions” about contemporary events or genuine attempts to forecast the future.⁴⁷⁵ Displaying no evidence of oral composition or real prophetic origin, such texts appears to be largely political; they may have been composed to justify a certain idea or institution, or to inculcate hatred for an enemy by forecasting doom (Grayson 1975b: 6). The interest of these texts is almost always with kingship, specifically the concept of the ideal ruler. All of them conceive of history as the rise of a succession of good kings (Neujahr 2006: 43). This attitude, argue Grayson and Lambert (1964: 10), reflects the Babylonian cyclical view of history, especially present in texts of this type, wherein the same natural phenomenon is always accompanied by the same historical event. The Dynastic Prophecy in particular is a review of Mesopotamian history from the Neo-Assyrian period to the onset of the Hellenistic era. When the tablet was first published, Grayson (1975b: 16‒17) maintained that, since the text is primarily interested in the rise and fall of dynasties, it has a format that describes the reign of each ruler as either “good” or “bad”; there is no equivocation about the course of a reign. Van der Spek (2003: 324‒ 326), however, argues that the reigns are generally treated in more neutral terms, with the content dealing mostly with each king’s relationship with Akkad (namely Babylon) and its people; it was the treatment of this city that would, in the main, determine the fate of the king described.⁴⁷⁶ Thus, like virtually every other text in this study, The Dynastic Prophecy takes aim at those who disregard the importance of Babylon and its primary cultic god, Marduk.

 Many different terminologies have been applied to such texts: Hallo (1966: 231‒242) preferred to call them “apocalypses”; Longman (1991) uses the rather verbose “Akkadian fictional autobiography with a prophetic ending”; Neujahr (2006: 42) prefers to simply call them “Akkadian ex eventu prophecies.”  Contra Kuhrt (1990b: 182), who argues that the reign of Nabonidus is unequivocally “bad” in the text.

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Though much of the text is broken, the remaining passages are interesting for their commentary on the reigns of Nabonidus, Cyrus, and a newcomer— Alexander the Great. Column i is largely broken; after about twenty-seven missing lines in Column ii, we are given several lines (11‒24) mentioning the establishment of a dynasty of Ḫarrān by a rebel prince, who will interrupt the festivities at Esagila and later be conquered by Elamite royalty. Scholars have taken it for granted that this passage refers to the reign of Nabonidus, with the next king described—from Elam—being Cyrus.⁴⁷⁷ Thus we have another textual witness to the conflict between Cyrus and Nabonidus. When the text resumes (columns iii and iv are missing), column v describes the reign of another ruler: Col v 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

⸢a⸣-a-um-ma rubû(lúnun)-⸢ú⸣ […] iddakkamma(⸢zi⸣)-am-ma kussâ(aš.t[e) i-ṣab-bat] 5 šanāti(mu.an.nameš) šarrūtu(lugal)-[ú-tu ippuš(dù)-uš] ummānī(lúerínmeš) māt(kur) ḫa-ni-i x[……………..] iddakkū(zimeš) u? [..]-⸢ú?-tú? ú⸣[‐…….] ummānīšu(⸢lúerín⸣[meš)-šú(?)………..] [ḫ]u-bu-ut-su i-ḫab-ba-t[ú šil-lat-su] i-šal-la-lu ár-ka-nu ummānīšu(lúe[rínmeš)-šú (..)] ú-kaṣ-ṣar-ma kakkīšu(gištukulmeš)-šú inašši(Í[L) (….)] Enlil(den.líl) Šamaš(dutu) u Marduk(d[amar.utu)? (…..)] idu(da) ummānīšu(lúerínmeš)-šú illakū(gin[meš)-ma……] su-kup-tu ummānī(lúerínmeš) ḫa-ni-i ⸢i⸣-[šak-kan] šil-lat-su ka-bit-tum i-šal-l[a-al-ma] a-na ekallīšu(é.gal)-šú ú-[še-reb(?)….] nīšī(lúunmeš) šá lum-nu i-[mu-ru(?)] dum-qa [……………….] lìb-bi māti(kur) [iṭâb(dùg.ga)] za-ku-tú [……………………]

A certain prince… will arise and [seize] the thr[one] Five years [he will exercise] king[ship] Troops of the land of Hani![……………] will arise a[nd?…]. ⸢ship?⸣ […] [his] troop[s …] they will rob him of his spoils [and his booty] they will plunder. Later [his] tr[oops…] will gather and his weapons he will ra[ise (….)] Enlil, Šamaš and [Marduk(?)] will go at the side of his army [(….);]

 See for instance, Ringgren (1983: 383).

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the repulse of the Hanaean troops he will [bring about]. The bulk of the booty he will car[ry off and] into his palace he [will bring it]. The people who had [experienced] misfortune […] well-being. The heart of the land [will be happy] Tax exemption […].⁴⁷⁸

After this section, about twenty-five lines of this column are missing, with most of column vi representing gaping lacunae or very fragmentary text. There is controversy over the author’s identity, mainly because of one blaring historical inaccuracy—the defeat of the “Hanean army.” It has long been known that “the land of Hani” could allude to Macedon in later cuneiform texts, and van der Spek (2003: 321) gives one instance from the Astronomical Diaries in which Alexander is referred to as one “who is from the land of Hani.” Yet, the text implies that the Hanean army—that is, Alexander’s army—was defeated by Darius III, which is, of course, contrary to everything we know about the events surrounding Alexander’s Eastern campaigns.⁴⁷⁹ As Ringgren (1983: 383) notes, “were it not for the fact that the last fragmentary columns seem to contain allusions to further rulers…one might suspect that the prophecy was pronounced while there was still hope of defeating Alexander.”⁴⁸⁰ Van der Spek (2003: 322) argues that this interpretation is unlikely, given that Darius III is assigned the correct number of regnal years (five), and the text goes on to name other rulers, leaving the outcome of Alexander’s confrontation with Darius III in little doubt.

 Text edition from Neujahr (2012: 58‒71, who maintains the column enumeration of Grayson 1975b: 38‒37, no.3). Grayson labels the extant columns as i-iv, without assuming a lacuna in the text. Thus in the text of van der Spek (2003: 312‒317), column v represents Grayson’s column iii.  Several rather creative attempts have been made to “fix” the textual problem, perhaps most successfully by van der Spek (2003: 327‒332). He offers two suggestions, one by interpolating a scribal error of Gu-ti-i for Ḫa-ni-i, which would eliminate the ahistoricity and indeed conform to known accounts of Babylonian reception of Alexander. His other suggestion is that the prophecy really “starts” at this contentious point. This interpretation is not unproblematic, however, as the author fully admits. For an assessment of this argument, see Neujahr (2012: 65‒66). Geller (1990: 6) avoids this issue altogether by arguing that the “Hanean” referred to here was Antigonus (the taking of booty, he argues, is “inconsistent with Alexander’s behavior”), and that this portion of the text actually deals with the conflict between Antigonus and Seleucus during the wars of succession. He argues that the rise of Seleucus had a more immediate impact on Babylonian affairs during this time, even overshadowing Alexander’s defeat of Darius, a suggestion I find rather improbable.  For extensive bibliography on this popular theory, or for its variation (that the outcome was known but that the prophecy meant to predict a “fantasy” success over Alexander), see van der Spek (2003: 321).

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Neujahr (2006: 48) suggests that the discrepancies can be solved by viewing the text as a pro-Darius III tract originating in the period of Alexander’s conquests, which later saw additional material appended to it, not uncommon for a prophecy of this type.⁴⁸¹ Many attempts have been made to explain this discrepancy; in turn, various arguments for authorship of the text hinge on a motive for this blatant subversion of historical fact. The original position of Grayson (1975b: 17) was that the text could be located in the Persian or Seleucid control of Babylonia, and was written in Babylon itself. He tentatively suggested that the fragmentary final column may have been concerned with another change of dynasty, probably the Seleucid capture of Babylon. Thus he argued for the text as a “strong expression of anti-Seleucid sentiment”;⁴⁸² prophecy was now the only medium by which scribes could express their hostility.⁴⁸³ Eddy (1961: 115) considered this part of

 See also Neujahr (2005: esp. 105‒107) for a further elaboration of this argument, wherein he compares the text to Daniel 10‒12, where a false prediction is also given, only to be appended with a corrective later. The text would have been considered important enough to continue copying, but was later amended to include the reigns of the Diadochi, which would ultimately allow the long-awaited celebration of Macedonian defeat. Sherwin-White (1987: 11) provides a nuance on this idea when she argues that the text is similar to 2 Maccabees, in which we see a “transformation of defeats into victories.” For a commentary on 2 Maccabees, see Schwartz (2008).  Ringgren (1983: 383‒385) concurs, arguing that the prophecy ends on a “negative note” as a criticism of the Seleucids, though he does revise his theory somewhat in later pages by suggesting that this particular genre was used by omen priests to support a new ruler whom they expected to restore order after a period of time in which “bad” rule presided over their area.  It should be noted that the text ends with a statement that the piece is private knowledge and not to be revealed to the uninitiated: [……….e]n kur kur/ [……..] 1-en ṭup-pi/ [……..m]munnab-tum/ [……..] šá-ṭir igi.tab (vi 15‒18). Though fragmentary, through the recognition of formulaic phrases van der Spek (2003: 317) is able to provide this reconstructed translation: “[It is a secret/taboo of Marduk, lo]rd of the lands./ […in accordance with] one tablet,/ […from the tablet of] Munnabtum,/ [according to the original] written, collated.” This claim to special knowledge is a trademark scholarly conceit of specialized texts like astrologies and omen series, and emphasizes that this text, like many of our other counterdiscursive texts, was probably never disseminated, underscoring its limited audience. This reflects on both the continued power of the king (such that transmission of these types of texts would have been dangerous to the authors) and the question about the effect of such texts outside of scribal circles, which may have been very small beyond the immediate vicinity of the court. In this context see also Scurlock (2006: 464‒465), who argues that The Uruk Prophecy was also a piece of “anti-Seleucid subversive literature dreaming of a king and his son who would come to finally set things aright flourishing under the very noses of Seleucid officials in the clever disguise of the vague language of prophecy.” She argues that the general anti-Chaldaean tone of The Uruk Prophecy, combined with the fact that the text was still being copied in the Seleucid period, indicates that the propagandistic overtures of the Seleucids as the last independent dynasty in Babylon would not have been well

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a general trend of anti-Hellenic sentiment, likely precipitated by the establishment of Seleucia-on-the-Tigris. Kuhrt (1990b: 182) argues, on the other hand, that the text is meant to support a new ruler, perhaps Seleucus, who was “expected to restore order after a period of major disorder (i. e., the wars of the successors) and thus critical of the intial Macedonian impact.”

The Dynastic Prophecy in Context Though most of our extant texts from the period of the end of the Neo-Babylonian Empire are unequivocally negative towards Nabonidus, The Dynastic Prophecy is closer to ambivalent, or at least, indecisive. Interestingly, Kuhrt (1990b: 182) notes that the reigns of both Cyrus and Nabonidus are described in The Dynastic Prophecy using similar terminology (Cyrus’ introduction in ii 22 closely mirrors that of Nabonidus in ii 14). Depending on how one dates the text (e. g., with Neujahr, who assumes an original text with later emendation), this could indicate a vacillating Babylonian attitude toward both kings, or, at the very least, a later tradition which did not take too seriously the propaganda machine of Cyrus. What is important here is that The Dynastic Prophecy is in a long line of similar prophetic texts, especially close to Text A in Grayson and Lambert (1964: 7‒30), which describes successions of reigns in parallel terminology.⁴⁸⁴ Grayson and Lambert rightly argue that The Dynastic Prophecy, Text A, and other prophetic texts of this type should be categorized together with Advice

received by the Urukian population. This is simply another example of the value of the prophetic textual type as a medium for subversive expression.  This article was written before the publication of The Dynastic Prophecy, but Grayson implicitly connects them by utilizing very similar terminology in describing Text A (which survives in a single Neo-Assyrian copy from Assur) and the former text in his 1975b publication. Though Weidner (1939‒1941a: 234‒237) had proposed a Kassite date for Text A, the period meant is difficult to prove definitively. It is tempting to assign a Sargonid date, given the mention of an Elamite king in ii 9‒18, who could represent Cyrus. The verbiage used to describe the Elamite king and his effect on the land of Akkad is entirely negative. Furthermore, the reign of the Elamite king is portrayed in similar fashion as the defeat of Alexander in The Dynastic Prophecy; if Cyrus were indeed the king depicted in Text A, it would indicate at the very least that a certain stock terminology existed with which to describe conquerors and conquered. Furthermore, depending on which text was written first, the similar language presents the possibility for a post facto conflation of the two kings. The utility of that connection, if it indeed existed in ancient times, must remain unknown. Regardless, it is possible, as per Beaulieu (2007b: 140), that The Dynastic Prophecy can be considered a source for Berossus’ account of Neo-Babylonian history, and thus its impact on the later tradition cannot be underestimated. See also Neujahr (2012: 14‒27) for transliteration, translation, and discussion.

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to a Prince. ⁴⁸⁵ Though kings are not specifically named in the prophetic texts (including The Dynastic Prophecy), in many cases the milieu can be securely identified.⁴⁸⁶ All of the texts are similarly ideological, and connect actions with consequences (Grayson and Lambert 1964: 8‒9). The similarities between Advice to a Prince and The Dynastic Prophecy are important, as they represent a continuity of literature that explores the limits of kingship, a trend that lasted for more than 400 years.⁴⁸⁷ Most importantly, The Dynastic Prophecy recycles a theme of sharp dichotomies, one which was first discussed in reference to Ludlul, a text written during the Kassite period in the midst of a theological transition in Babylonia. Here, the ahistoric nature of the prophecy clearly draws out the reality of the situation: the Babylonians had been defeated by Alexander. As Neujahr (2012: 64) notes, “the bald inaccuracy [of the account of Darius’ defeat] is all the more striking in the face of the historically accurate, and occasionally quite specific, accounts contained earlier, most notably the detailed references to the reign of Nabonidus.” In texts such as Ludlul, the duality of Marduk is often associated with a lack of justice, more jarring because the god is the one who is normally depended upon to render it.⁴⁸⁸ This theme is employed to undermine the ideological stability of a particular regime, whether divine or royal, while also being used as a coping mechanism in unpredictable or uncontrollable situations. Here, as originally, it is applied to Babylonian kingship and the expectations of the proper behavior of a Babylonian king, and its goal would be much the same as in these earlier texts (i. e., to cast a dark shadow on those who abuse Marduk’s cult). If The Dynastic Prophecy was written after Alexander’s conquests, its revisionism can be seen in light of other, similar texts that employ the same tactic to spar with the reigning authority, especially in a public sphere (to be compared most notably to Sennacherib’s inscription at Halulê in Chapter 6 or the inscription of Nebuchadnezzar II discussed in Chapter 4). Lastly, though it may be an accident of preservation, the text exists in only one copy (BM 40623), much as some other impor Neujahr (2012: 96‒98) agrees, citing similarities in orthography, vocabulary, phrasing, and functionality (effecting consequences in the present), despite the lack of predictive elements in Advice to a Prince. He hesitates to identify these texts as a single literary type, but emphasizes the influence of omen literature on scribes who composed more literary texts.  The context of Advice to a Prince may elude only the modern audience; the environment of that text may well have been dated securely by ancient readers, however small that audience may have been.  Several of the other prophetic texts studied by Grayson and Lambert (1964: esp. 7) were found in the library at Nineveh, solidifying the genre as well-known and influential.  In the case of the letter of Arad-Gula (Parpola 1987b), the motif is used as a suggestive figure of speech directed towards an Assyrian king, meant to be “Babylonianizing.”

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tant literature already discussed—Crimes, The Sin of Sargon, and The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince (Chapter 4). This combination of factors suggests that The Dynastic Prophecy was as a remnant of counterdiscursive literature, blending revisionism with open criticism. It was likely meant for a very small audience, and its main goal was to explore literary ways to criticize authority as only scholars knew how.⁴⁸⁹

Reconsidering Advice to a Prince Advice to a Prince shares several characteristics with some of our other texts under question, most specifically The Dynastic Prophecy, The Persian Verse Account, and Crimes. The correlations between Advice to a Prince and The Persian Verse Account have previously been recognized by Finkelstein (1962: esp. 471), such as their general and open condemnation of a king who fails to properly care for the cultic concerns of Babylon. In these texts, the improper management of cultic activities was inextricably connected, as per the typical Mesopotamian line of thought, to the downfall of a king or a dynasty. But I would like to suggest a deeper relationship between the dialogue surrounding Nabonidus and Advice to a Prince, specifically by treating the latter as a “living text.” Some of the language in Advice to a Prince is very similar to that presented in The King of Justice. One passage in Advice to a Prince reads thus: 9 10 11 12 13

mār(dumu) Sippari(ud.kib.nun.ki) i-da-aṣ-ma a-ḫa-am i-din Šamaš(dutu) dayyān (di.ku₅) šamê(an) u erṣeti(ki) di-na a-ḫa-am ina mātīšú(kur)-šú išakkan(gar)-ma rubî(NUN.ME) u dayyānī(di.ku₅.me) a-na di-nim ul(nu) iqullu(me.me) mārī(dumumeš) Nippuri(en.lílki) ana di-nim ub-lu-ni-šum-ma kad₅-ra-a ilqē(TI)-ma i-daas-su-nu-tì Enlil(den.líl) bēl(en) mātāti(kur.kur) nakra(lú.kúr) a-ḫa-a-am i-da-kaš-šum-ma ummānātišu(érin.hi.a)-šu ú-šam-qá-ti

 An analogous situation can be found in the Sibylline Oracles. Books I, II, and III of the Sibylline Oracles give a series of prophecies dictating the history of the world from creation to the end of time. For books I-II in their Judeo-Christian context, see the commentary of Waßmuth (2011). In Book III of the oracles, anti-Roman layers are detectable; e. g., see the survey of previous scholarship in the edition of Buitenwerf (2003: 44‒49). Consequently, more than 2,000 prophetic verses in this series were ordered to be destroyed in the reign of Augustus, and more later in the second and third centuries AD. Interestingly, unofficial books of the Sibylline Oracles survive from the later Roman period, several of which also contain subversive ex eventu prophecies. See Harker (2011: 120‒124).

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(If) one treats unjustly a citizen of Sippar, but gave justice to a stranger, Šamaš, judge of heaven and earth, will establish foreign justice in his land, and the princes and judges will not attend to justice. (If) citizens of Nippur brought (themselves) to him for judgment, but he took a bribe and treats them unjustly, Enlil, lord of the lands, will raise a hostile military wing against him, and will cause his army to fall.

The connection between Šamaš and the dispensation of justice is actively utilized, as described above, in The King of Justice. But more importantly, in these lines, Advice to a Prince stresses that a king, fundamentally, must be concerned with due process (ana dīnim). We will remember the lines from The King of Justice, in which we have themes that echo Advice to a Prince: Col ii 5 šakkanakku(šagina) u rubû(NUN) ašar(ki) a-ku-ú u al-mat ul(nu) izzizū(gub)-zu ma-ḫar dayyāni(lúdi.ku₅) 6 dayyāni(lúdi.ku₅) i-maḫ-ḫa-ra u lip-pu-šú di-in-ši-in 7 dayyānu(lúdi.ku₅) ṭa-a-tu u kád-ra-a i-leq-qí-ma ul i-nam-di 8 elīšu(ugu)-šu lēssu(te)-su Regent and prince would not stand in the place of the powerless and widow before the judge, and if they came before the judge, he would not preside over their case. If the judge takes a bribe or a gift he would pay no attention to it…

Themes present in Advice to a Prince had a place in another text within this dialogue. In vi 19‒24 of The Persian Verse Account, we read about Cyrus’ damnatio memoriae of Nabonidus (see above). These actions are similar to the threats leveled against misbehaving royal advisors in Advice to a Prince: 49 a-šar-šú-nu ana na-me-⸢e⸣ [i]k-ka-am-mar 50 ar-kat₅!-sun šá-a-ru i-tab-bal ep-šet-sun za-⸢qí-qí⸣-iš im-man-ni Their place will be piled up into ruins. The wind will carry away their legacy, their deeds will be delivered to the winds.

We know for certain that Advice to a Prince was part of an active Babylonian heritage. Not inconsequentially, some of our greatest evidence to this effect comes from CT 54: 212, containing a letter to Esarhaddon in which lines 55‒59 of Advice to a Prince are quoted (CT 54: 212 rev. 4‒6, as seen in Chapter 3), with very little variation in actual sense (two lines are transposed and the verbiage used to describe the officials who would disregard their privileges contains some changes) (Reiner 1982: 320‒321). The author of the letter encourages Esarhaddon to heed the words of the tablet containing Advice to a Prince (bēl šarrāni lidgul ṭup-pi šu-ú lugal a-na di-i-ni la i-[qul…i]q-ta-bi um-ma), with special attention to the issue of

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Babylonian rights. Not only does this suggest that Advice to a Prince was considered part of the Babylonian literary canon, but it indicates that the text may have been used to provide suggestions for royal behavior. A final example of the influence of Advice to a Prince, and its themes, in later periods of Mesopotamian history is a curious bilingual omen text found at Uruk (SpTU 1: 85). This text clearly took Advice to a Prince as a formulaic precedent, using the šumma šarru introduction in all of its remaining lines (13 on the obverse; 18 extant lines on the reverse). Though the text does not directly quote Advice to a Prince, its contents are also concerned with the role of the king in society, in a form which, as we have seen, was popular for tacit expression of discontent in the later periods. These several examples indicate that Advice to a Prince—whose paradigmatic themes may have served as a model for many texts, including The King of Justice—had the ability to conform to the contemporary dialogue about kingship, even in the context of a particular conflict between two kings, as presented in The King of Justice and The Persian Verse Account. In this way, the themes inherent in Advice to a Prince remained an active part of the literary canon, “participating” in real political debates about kingship well into the later (both Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian) periods of Mesopotamian history.

Conclusion In the course of the last chapters, we have traced the development of a niche body of cuneiform literature from the first millennium BC. Texts from the later periods of the first millennium were directly dependent on previous examples, while the latter were still capable of contributing to contemporary historical debates, even at the end of cuneiform’s existence as a viable mode of expression. Texts were copied, newly composed, and manipulated in later recensions as a way to subvert the public (re)presentation of kings, which manifested itself through literature, epistolography, and ritual. Both Texts A and B (broadly defined) were thus part of an active counterdiscursive dialogue; the production of new texts and the manipulation or purposeful copying of older texts sheds new light on the creative productivity of the later periods of Mesopotamian empires. At no point was Marduk far distant from the conversation, always at the vanguard of important shifts in scribal agency and international politics, and discourses about the limits of Assyrian (and at times, Babylonian) kings. In tandem with these inter-cultural conflicts and the negotiation of ever-larger imperial structures, the concept of royalty necessarily experienced its own evolution. With all of the concomitant issues involved in categorizing the texts, their authors, and their audience, ultimately it is important to keep in mind that his-

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tory does not determine ideology, but rather that ideology determines history. It is the ideology of our sources that comes forward as “[witness to] the history of ideas in the ancient world” (Kratz 2002: 145). A great part of the counterdiscursive dialogue created during this period recalled the past in some guise and used it to understand the present. It is not just Text A, then, from which we can interpret Mesopotamian history, but the reinterpretations that emanate from Text A, which can elucidate the complicated environment of the royal court in the NeoAssyrian period. As our only sources for the collusion between the publicly disseminated Text A and the “reality” presented by Text B, the texts studied here are an invaluable source for reading the transcripts of royalty in the late periods of Mesopotamian history.

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Index 4QPrNab

183‒184

ABL 1285 128‒130 adê (loyalty) treaty 10, 110, 120, 137n348, 154 Advice to a Prince 24, 96, 131, 129, 200‒ 202 – Assurbanipal and 85, 91 – Assyrian kingship 83, 85, 91, 93‒95, 143‒144 – as criticism 31‒32, 68, 119 – The Dynastic Prophecy and 198‒199, 200 – justice 27, 87‒88, 120, 201 – The King of Justice and 200‒201, 202 – Nippur text 85‒86, 87, 90‒91 – as omen literature 87‒88 – scholars and 89‒93 – as warning text 85, 86‒87, 88‒89, 91‒93 – wind motif 69‒70, 91‒92, 175, 201 akītu festival / rituals 119 – Babylonian 89, 163‒164 – Marduk and 40, 45, 52n126 – Neo-Assyrian 106, 164‒167 Akkadian dynasty, Old 58‒60, 184‒185, 189n467 – Assyria and 60‒61 – Ištar 59, 62‒63, 69n180 – Narām-Sîn 58‒59, 60, 61‒66, 69, 132 – Neo-Assyrians and 43‒44, 69n180 – Sargon of Akkad 58‒60, 132‒133, 189n467 Akkadian language 59n148 Akkadian literature 43‒44, 162, 194 Alexander the Great 169n416, 173, 194, 195‒196 Antioch 148 apkallus 56‒57, 68, 89, 91, 107 Arad-Gula 128‒130 Assur, city of 39, 106 – libraries in 43‒44, 134‒135, 138, 151‒52 Assur, the god 10, 100, 105 – Hymn to Assur 108 – Marduk and 103, 106, 108, 110‒111, 112‒ 117, 156‒157, 165‒166

Assurbanipal 18, 80‒81, 83‒85, 108, 166 – Advice to a Prince 85, 91 – The Coronation Hymn of Assurbanipal 75, 108‒109 – The Dialogue between Assurbanipal and Nabû 70‒71 – festivals / rituals 166, 170 – Ḫarrān and 184‒185, 186‒187 – kingship 76‒77, 128‒129, 145 – L4 79‒80, 84, 107, 180 – Lament of Assurbanipal 83‒84 – library 79‒80, 81‒83, 85, 142, 162 – Marduk and 39‒40 – Narām-Sîn and 69n180 Assyria / Assyrians 113‒114 – Akkadian dynasty, Old and 60‒61 – Babylonian scholars and 7, 8, 21‒22, 37 – Enūma Eliš 114‒115, 152 – kingship 83, 85, 91, 93‒95, 143‒144 – Marduk and 39‒40, 72‒73, 84‒85 – Neo-Babylonian Empire and 185‒189 – The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince 104‒105, 175 – tradition 113‒114, 127‒128, 130‒131 – See also Assur, city of; Assur, the god; NeoAssyrian Empire. Athens 13‒14 Atraḫasis 1, 74‒75, 98 Babylonia / Babylonian: – Akkadian literature 43‒44 – The Babylonian Stele 182 – The Babylonian Theodicy 50, 54‒55, 83, 84 – Greeks / Seleucids 194‒198, 199 – literature / literary creativity 43‒45, 46‒ 47, 81‒82 – New Year’s festival 40, 51, 106, 174, 177n429, 179n437, 181, 183 – Old 3‒4, 51‒52, 71, 148n377 – royal ideology 51‒52 – scholars / scribes 7, 8, 21‒22, 37‒41 – wisdom literature 28, 33n86, 49‒50

236

Index

– See also Babylon, city of; Isin II dynasty; Kassite period; Marduk; Neo-Babylonian Empire. Babyloniaca 183 Babylonian, Old 3‒4, 51‒52, 71, 148n377 The Babylon Stele 182 The Babylonian Theodicy 50, 54‒55, 83, 84 Babylon, city of 68, 85‒86, 94‒95, 131‒132 – akītu festival / rituals 89, 163‒164 – as epicenter, theological / political 46, 93, 187 – Ḫarrān and 181‒183 – Kassite period 51‒52 – Marduk and 37‒39, 44‒45, 51‒52 – Marduk statue and 37‒40, 51‒52, 115, 144‒145, 163‒165 – Nebuchadnezzar I 42‒43, 44‒45 – Sennacherib’s destruction of 97‒99, 101‒ 102, 110‒111, 135, 146‒147 The Ballad of Early Rulers 28 Bavian Inscription 97‒99, 187‒188, 193 BBR 26 167 Bēl-ušēzib 7, 94, 115 Berossus 183 bīt rimki festival / rituals 167‒171 BM 28825 70 BM 55467 146‒48 Chronicle 25 144 The Chronicle of Early Kings 132‒133, 135 The Chronicle of the Kassite Kings 144‒145 conspiracy fear 16‒18, 145 contracts 21‒22 – breach of 22, 89, 92, 119‒120 – See also treaties. counterdiscourse 11‒12, 152‒153 – audience 16‒17 – definition 14‒16, 19‒20 – enemies and 10‒11, 22‒24, 168 – scholars 16‒19, 112‒117 – See also criticism; literary subversion. The Creation of Kingship 74‒76 crime 49‒50, 154, 165‒166 – as metaphor 20‒22, 23, 24‒25 – of Nabonidus 173‒174, 177‒178 – sacrilege 118‒121, 124‒125, 146‒147, 156‒157, 173‒174

– See also sin. The Crimes and Sacrileges of Nabû-šumaiškun (SpTU 3: 58) 118‒121, 122‒125 criticism 34‒35 – constructive / suggestive literature 9n22, 33‒34, 72‒73, 77, 128‒130, 199n488 – satire / parody 35n89, 151‒152, 154, 80 Crouch, Carly 14‒15, 16 CTMMA 2: 44 147‒148 cultural legitimacy 166‒167 cultural memory 8‒9, 37, 69, 78, 82, 159‒ 162. See also tradition. The Curse of Akkad 62‒63 The Cuthaean Legend of Narām-Sîn 58‒59, 61‒62, 63‒67, 104 – Babylonian version 64‒67, 69‒70 – Gilgamesh epic and 66‒67 – Neo-Assyrian version 68‒70, 72, 96, 153 Cylinder D 9‒10 Cyrus the Great 35, 173, 194 – The Dynastic Prophecy 195, 198‒199 – Nabonidus and 174‒175, 178‒179 – The Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus 176‒177, 201 The Cyrus Cylinder (BM 90920) 35, 175‒ 178, 190 Darius III 196 Deuteronomy, Book of 14, 30 domination 1‒2, 19, 76‒77, 136 – šubarû 88‒89 The Dynastic Prophecy (BM 40623) 183, 193‒197, 200 – Cyrus and Nabonidus 198‒199

24, 36,

e₂-dub-ba-(a) 3 Ea 46, 56, 87‒88, 124‒125 education, scribal 3‒7, 80‒81, 140‒141 Elam 38‒39, 44‒45, 155, 172‒173, 195 Enlil 45, 51 Enūma Eliš 46‒47, 51, 52, 84, 113 – akītu festival / rituals 89, 163‒164, 165‒ 166 – Assyrian / Babylonian conflict 114‒115, 152 – The Chicago Prism and 155‒156 – The Creation of Kingship and 74‒75

Index

– Marduk and 46‒47, 113 Epic of Erra and Išum 68, 121‒122 epistolography (letters) 126‒127 – ABL 1285 128‒130 – BM 55467 146‒148 – CTMMA 2: 44 147‒148 – Letter of Gilgamesh 138‒141, 149 – literary / fictive 138‒141 – Muttakil-Nusku 142‒144 – quotidian 141‒143 – See also The Weidner Chronicle. Esarhaddon 72‒73, 82‒83, 93‒94 – akītu festival / rituals 166 – Assyrian court 113‒114 – bīt rimki festival / rituals 169‒170, 171 – conspiracy fear 16‒18 – Marduk and 39‒40 – The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince 106‒108 – The Sin of Sargon 101‒102, 103‒104, 110‒111, 115‒116 The Etiological Myth of the Seven Sages 107 Fales, Frederick Mario 20‒21, 22, 24 fictive letters 138‒141 Foucault, Michel 2n3, 7, 10‒11 Gesche, Petra D. 4‒5 Gilgamesh, Epic of 28‒29, 66‒67, 71, 90n238 – Kassite period 53‒54, 69‒70 – Neo-Assyrians and 75‒76, 140 Gilgamesh, Letter of 138‒141 Hammurapi, The Code of 25, 88n235 Ḫarrān 173‒174, 178‒179, 182‒184, 185‒ 186, 187‒188 The Ḫarrān Stele 181‒182, 184, 188‒189, 193 Hellenistic Empire 195‒198 – Alexander the Great 169n416, 173, 194, 195‒196 – Babylonian and 194‒198, 199 – Berossus, Babyloniaca 183 history, intentional 159‒160, 161‒162

237

The Hymn to Ninurta, 70 The Hymn to Šamaš 25 image / ideology of kings 1‒2, 4‒6, 8‒11, 29‒31, 41, 105‒106, 154‒155 Isin II dynasty 42‒43, 44‒47, 142‒143 – Ludlul bēl nēmeqi 51‒52 – Marduk 51‒53 – scholars 56‒57 – See also Nebuchadnezzar I. Ištar 59, 62‒63, 69n180 – of Uruk 121‒123, 124 Ištar’s Descent to the Netherworld 152 The Istanbul Stele 183 justice 24‒27, 33n86, 49, 87‒88, 191‒193 – in Advice to a Prince 27, 87‒88, 120, 201 – The King of Justice (BM 45690) 27, 190‒ 193, 200‒201, 202 – kittu and mīšaru 25‒26, 192‒193 – Neo-Assyrian kingship 25‒27 Kassite period 38, 42‒43 – The Chronicle of the Kassite Kings 144‒ 145 – The Epic of Gilgamesh 53‒54, 69‒70 – kingship 90‒91 – Ludlul bēl nēmeqi 51‒52 – Marduk and 45‒46 – scholars 53‒56, 69‒70 – Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan 47‒48 Khorsabad 133, 134, 185 The King of Justice (BM 45690) 27, 190‒193, 200‒201, 202 kingship 59n147, 90‒91, 179 – of Assurbanipal 76‒77, 128‒129, 145 – The Creation of Kingship 74‒76 – cultural legitimacy 166‒167 – education, scribal 80‒81 – image / ideology 1‒2, 4‒6, 8‒11, 29‒31, 41, 105‒106, 154‒155 – gods and 73‒77, 106‒108, 119‒121, 148 – justice 25‒27 – literature good for 82‒83 – Neo-Assyrian 9‒10, 83, 85, 93‒95, 109, 143‒145 – populace, influence of 161‒162, 163

238

Index

– scholars / scribes and 3, 5‒7, 34‒36, 54, 56‒57, 90‒92 knowledge 6 – secret / protected 30, 55‒56, 76‒77, 179 – special 4‒5, 108 L4 79‒80, 84, 107, 180 Lament of Assurbanipal 83‒84 letters. See epistolography (letters). libraries 78 – in Assur 43‒44, 134‒135, 138, 151‒152 – of Assurbanipal 79‒80, 81‒83, 85, 142, 162 – in Nineveh 43‒44, 68, 78‒79, 81‒83 literary subversion 12‒16, 27 – constructive criticism / suggestive literature 33‒34, 128‒130 – criticism, outright 34‒35 – subversion of known texts 35‒37, 40‒41, 68 – warning literature 31‒33, 85, 86‒87, 88‒ 89, 91‒93, 106‒107 Liverani, Mario 19‒20, 41 LKA 62 35‒36, 150‒154 LKA 63 151‒52, 154 Ludlul bēl nēmeqi 47‒52, 55, 83‒84, 129‒ 130, 199 – Neo-Assyrian Empire and 72‒73, 83‒84, 96, 160 Marduk, 165‒66 – akītu festival / rituals 40, 45, 52n126 – Assur, the god and 103, 106, 108, 110‒ 111, 112‒117, 156‒157, 165‒166 – Assyria and 39‒40, 72‒73, 84‒85 – Babylon and 37‒39, 44‒46, 51‒52, 115, 144‒145, 163‒165 – Enūma Eliš 46‒47, 113 – Ludlul bēl nēmeqi 47‒52 – Nebuchadnezzar I and 37, 38‒40, 44‒47, 90, 97 – Sargon and 135‒136 – Sennacherib and 39, 106 – Sîn, moon god and 173‒174 – statue 37‒40, 51‒52, 115, 144‒145, 163‒ 165 The Marduk Ordeal 165

The Marduk Prophecy 37‒41, 45, 134 memorializing kings 68‒74, 92, 174‒175 Michalowski, Piotr 5, 30n82 Milstein, Sara J. 66‒67 Muttakil-Nusku 142‒144 myth 12n32, 75, 161 – of scribal succession 57, 91, 130, 150 Nabonidus 35, 60, 79, 121, 123, 124 – 4QPrNab 183‒184 – crimes / sin of 173‒174, 177‒178 – The Cyrus Cylinder 175‒178 – Cyrus the Great and 174‒175, 178‒179, 198‒199 – The Dynastic Prophecy 195, 198‒199 – Ḫarrān 173‒174, 178‒179, 182‒184, 185‒ 186, 187‒188 – The Ḫarrān Stele 181‒182, 184, 188‒189, 193 – The King of Justice 190‒93 – The Persian Verse Account of 35, 173‒174, 175‒178, 179‒180, 187, 189‒190 – Sîn, moon god 173, 177‒178, 180‒183, 184‒187 The Nabonidus Chronicle 177 The Nabonidus Cylinder 186‒187 The Nabonidus Stele 121‒122, 123, 136 Nabopolassar 124, 146, 147, 172, 192 Nabû-šuma-iškun 118‒121, 122‒125, 187 Narām-Sîn 58‒59, 60, 61‒66, 69, 132 nargallu 152 narû literature 62n160, 104, 131n328, 137n346 Nebuchadnezzar I 42‒43, 60, 166n407 – Babylon, city of 42‒43, 44‒45 – Marduk / new theology 37, 38‒40, 44‒ 47, 90 Nebuchadnezzar II 119, 122‒124, 184, 192 Neo-Assyrian Empire 76‒77 – akītu festival / rituals 106, 164‒167 – Akkadian dynasty, Old and 43‒44, 69n180 – Babylonian literature and 43‒44, 81‒82 – Babylonians and 113‒117 – justice / kingship 25‒27 – royal ideology 1‒2, 4‒6, 8‒9, 10‒11, 29‒ 31, 105‒106

Index

– Sîn, moon god 185‒186 – See also Assur, city of; Assur, the god; Assurbanipal; Esarhaddon; Nabonidus; Nineveh; Šamaš-šum-ukīn; Sargon II; Sennacherib. Neo-Babylonian Empire 172‒173, 179, 184 – Assyrian Empire and 185‒189 – See also Nabopolassar, Nebuchadnezzar II. The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince 104‒106 – Assurbanipal 107‒109 – Esarhaddon 106‒108 – Sennacherib 106, 109 – The Sin of Sargon and 109‒111 New Year’s, Babylonian 40, 51, 106, 174, 177n429, 179n437, 181, 183 Nineveh 99, 106, 135 – epistolography 126‒127 – fall of 145‒146, 172‒173 – libraries 43‒44, 68, 78‒79, 81‒83 Ninurta-tukulti-Assur 144‒145 Nippur 45, 51, 92‒93, 94 oaths, of loyalty 21‒22 Ober, Josiah 13‒14 omen literature 31‒32, 87‒88, 114‒115 Oshima, Takayoshi 50‒51 Persian Empire 194, 196. See also Cyrus the Great. The Persian Verse Account of Nabonidus 35, 173‒174, 175‒180, 187, 189‒190, 201 perversion metaphor 22‒24 populace, influence of kings 161‒162, 163 power 7, 96 – authority and 11, 162, 164 – structures of 1‒2, 24, 162 prophecy / prophecies 30, 36‒37, 38‒39 – The Dynastic Prophecy (BM 40623) 24, 36, 183, 193‒197, 198‒199, 200 – The Marduk Prophecy 37‒41, 45, 134 – The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince 104‒105, 106‒111, 175 – The Uruk Prophecy 121‒122, 197n483 protreptic literature 34, 69, 73, 76, 109

239

resistance 7‒8 Richardson, Seth 20‒21, 22‒23, 24‒25, 27 Righteous Sufferer’s Prayer to Nabû 73 rituals / festivals – akītu 40, 45, 52n126, 106, 119, 163‒167 – bīt rimki 163, 167‒171 – New Year’s, Babylonian 40, 51, 106, 174, 177n429, 179n437, 181, 183 royal ideology 1‒2, 4‒6, 8‒9, 10‒11, 29‒31, 105‒106 sacrilege 118‒121, 124‒125, 146‒147, 156‒ 157, 173‒174 Saggil-kīnam-ubbib 54‒55 Šamaš-šum-ukīn 39‒40, 71n184, 80, 81, 107‒108, 145, 170 Šamaš-šum-ukīn Chronicle 123 Sargon of Akkad 58‒60, 189n467 – The Chronicle of Early Kings 132‒133 Sargon II 89, 93n242, 97, 133, 192‒193 – The Eighth Campaign of Sargon 10‒11, 134 The Sargon Birth Legend 132, 136n346 Sasî 16‒17, 169 satire / parody 35n89, 151‒152, 154, 80 secret / protected knowledge 30, 55‒56, 76‒77, 179 – special 4‒5, 108 Sennacherib 82, 103‒104, 188‒189, 192‒ 193 – akītu festival / rituals 164‒165 – Babylon, city of 97‒99, 101‒102, 135, 146‒147 – Bavian Inscription 97‒99, 187‒188, 193 – The Chicago Prism 155‒160, 161‒162 – „complex“ 111‒112 – Cylinder D 9‒10 – Marduk and 39, 106 – The Sin of Sargon and 97‒102, 103‒104, 110‒111, 146 – Tablet of Destinies 114 – The Weidner Chronicle 135‒136 scholars / scribes 6‒9, 54‒56, 89‒93 – apkallus 56‒57, 68, 89, 91, 107 – Babylonian in Assyria 7, 8, 21‒22, 37, 114‒117 – conspiracy and 16‒18

240

Index

– construct, scribal 30, 136n346, 155 – counterdiscursive 16‒19, 112‒117 – denigration of 112‒113, 124‒125 – education 3‒7, 80‒81, 140‒141 – kings, relations with 3, 5‒7, 34‒36, 54, 56‒57, 90‒92 – memorializing kings 68‒74, 92, 174‒175 – myth of of succession 57, 91, 130, 150 – royal ideology 1‒2, 4‒6, 8‒9, 10‒11, 29‒ 31, 105‒106 – as sages 54‒57 – self-awareness / identification 68‒70, 78, 90‒91 – ummânus 56‒57, 68, 89, 91, 111 sin 49‒50, 157, 182, 188 – as metaphor 20‒21, 22‒25 – of Nabonidus 177‒178, 183‒184 – of Sargon 99‒101, 102‒103 – of Sennacherib 103‒104 Sîn-lēqi-unninni 53‒54, 69‒70 Sîn, moon god 173, 177‒178, 180‒183, 184‒187 The Sin of Sargon 22, 35, 68, 102, 116‒117, 125 – authorship 101‒102 – Esarhaddon and 101‒102, 103‒104, 110‒ 111, 115‒116 – Sargon and 97, 99‒100, 103, 120 – Sennacherib and 97‒102, 103‒104, 110‒ 111, 112‒113, 135‒136 Sîn-šarru-iškun 146, 147 Sippar 93, 138 šubarû 88‒89 Šubši-mešrê-Šakkan 47‒48 subversion of known texts 35‒37, 40‒41, 68 suggestive literature 9n22, 33‒34, 72‒73, 77, 128‒130, 199n488 Šulgi 3, 79 Sultantepe 138‒139, 140‒141 Sumer / Sumerian 71, 136 – literature 12n32, 28, 43, 59 – tradition 43, 136 The Synchronistic History 21, 154 Tablet of Destinies 114 textual hegemony 37, 150‒155

theology as politics 32‒33, 51‒53, 73‒77 Tiglath-Pileser I 151‒152, 154 Tiglath-Pileser III 86, 118n291, 139 Toorn, Karel van der 29‒30, 55 tradition 33n86, 75 – Assyrian 113‒114, 127‒128, 130‒131 – Babylonian 37, 40, 43, 52, 113‒114, 139 – invented 159‒161, 165‒166 – scribes and 11, 30, 56, 76 – stream of 127‒128, 149 – Sumerian 43, 136 treaties 18, 22n54 – adê (loyalty) 10, 110, 120, 137n348, 154 – violations of 10, 21n50, 22n53, 115, 119‒ 120, 156‒157 Tukulti-Ninurta I 38, 43, 113, 115n280, 133 The Tukulti-Ninurta Epic 21‒22, 151,156‒158 ummânus 56‒57, 68, 89, 91, 111 Ur III 51, 59n147 – scribes 3, 6, 187 – Šulgi 3, 79 Uruk, city of 118, 121‒123 – Ištar of 121‒123, 124 The Uruk List of Kings and Sages 57 Uruk List of Sages and Scholars 54 The Uruk Prophecy 121‒122, 197n483 warning literature 31‒33, 102, 106‒107 – Advice to a Prince 85, 86‒87, 88‒89, 91‒ 93 The Weidner Chronicle 35, 68, 130‒131, 133‒138, 141, 148‒149 – BM 55467 and 147 – Sargon 130, 131‒133, 135‒136 – Sargon II 133‒134 – Sennacherib 135‒136 wind motif 27‒29 – in Advice to a Prince 69‒70, 91‒92, 175, 201 – in Assurbanipal’s Coronation Hymn 108‒ 109 – in Ludlul 48‒49 – in The Netherworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince 106‒107 – in The Persian Verse Account 173‒175 wisdom 55‒56

Index

wisdom literature 28, 32‒33 – Babylonian 28, 33n86, 49‒50

– Neo-Assyrian

71‒72

241