9. All the King’s Men: Authority, Kingship, and the Rise of the Elites in Assyria

Pongratz-Leisten, Beate

doi:10.9783/9781934536650.285

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Fragmentary letters of Shalmaneser IV and Esarhaddon have also been found. Some scholars argue that such texts were read or recited aloud in public before being dedicated at the appropriate temple, although this theory remains controversial (Oppenheim , p. 145; Pongratz‐Leisten , pp. 293–301).…”

Section: Triumphant Returnmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Rituals in Warfare during the Neo‐Assyrian Period

Melville

2016

Religion Compass

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In imperial Assyria during the first millennium BCE, ritual pervaded every aspect of life. As the link between the divine realm and the earthly one, the king's primary duty was to discover the gods' will and enact it. To this end, an array of ritual experts in the art of reading and reacting to divine signs aided the king. Due to the risk involved, warfare required particular attention from the experts during every phase of operations. Based on evidence from cuneiform sources (ritual texts, royal inscriptions, and letters) and monumental art (narrative sculptured reliefs), this article focuses on how ritual activity at each campaign stage affected different audiences, including the enemy, the king's officials, and the Assyrian army. Introduction: Warfare as a Ritual ActivityLike many other cultures, those of the ancient Near East turned to myth and religion to come to terms with the violent contradictions inherent in war, which brought benefit to some and disaster to others, according to the will of the gods. On the positive side, the creation myth, Enuma Elish, taught that the god, Marduk, established order over chaos by killing the primordial monster, Tiamat, in combat (Foster 2005, pp. 436-86;Noegel 2007). By contrast, Erra and Ishum, the story of an angry god run amuck, warned against waging war without restraint or a just cause (Foster 2005, pp. 880-913;George 2013). Despite the ambivalent attitude to war, no one seriously questioned its necessity. Rather, the ancients reasoned that when a mortal king waged war correctly and for legitimate reasons, he did so on behalf of his gods in order to defend cosmic order. Nor did people distinguish between the sacred and profane as we do. They believed in a single reality in which political action and religious action coalesced. Hence, the prevailing understanding of the cosmos, coupled with associated royal ideology, justified and gave meaning to all the king's political activities, especially warfare.At the height of their power from the 9th to the 7th centuries BCE, the Assyrians held similarly that a divinely appointed king, the 'viceroy of Ashur', acted as the intermediary between the cosmic realm and the earthly one, which encompassed both civilized lands under Assyrian sovereignty and dangerous enemy regions that awaited pacification. The king's duty was to enact the gods' will on earth through conquest and just administration. The gods communicated their bidding to him through celestial omina and all kinds of physical signs, whose meaning was revealed to trained professionals through ritual observation and interpretation of the appropriate scholarly compendia (Rochberg 2004, pp. 44-97). For his part, the king fulfilled the divine instructions obtained through divination by maintaining cults and temples, performing rituals, and by waging war. According to this system of thought, victory signaled the gods' approval; setbacks withdrawal of support. Thus imbued with cosmic significance, war becamein the broadest sensea ritualized activity, an 'ordalic procedure' t...

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Section: Triumphant Returnmentioning

confidence: 99%