In 689 BC, the Assyrian king Sennacherib destroyed Babylon and deported the statues of the Babylonian gods to Assyria. In order to restore the political and religious relations between Assyria and Babylonia, Esarhaddon undertakes to renovate the Babylonian statues and relocate them in their temples in southern Mesopotamia. This paper aims to provide an analysis of some royal inscriptions dealing with the (re)creation of the divine effigies and offer an interpretation of their salient passages.

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