Between Cognition and Culture: Theorizing the Materiality of Divine Agency in Cross- Cultural Perspective

The Materiality of Assyrian Sacred Kingship

“…Yet he was marked as exceptional, as chosen by the gods and especially the head of the Assyrian pantheon, Aššurto be their vice regent (iššakku) and to rule the earthly realm (Ambos 2014). In life, he was the closest thing to the gods on earth, and in some cases, his qualities and behaviors rose to the level of god-likeness (Ornan 2013), but he was never considered equal to the gods with respect to omnipotence, omniscience, or immortality (Frankfort 1947;Machinist 2006;Ataç 2007;Scurlock 2013;Brisch 2013, Pongratz-Leisten 2015. This notion of kingship was also ref lected in royal inscriptions, in which the kings acquired elaborate titles involving divine names, but only at the behest of the gods, who created the kings in their 'likeness' (tamšilu) (Ornan 2013, p. 588).…”

“…As elevated as they were above all other humans, the kings of Assyria had to constantly remind their courts, and visitors to their palaces, as well as possibly the greater population in the Assyrian capital cities and beyond, of their legitimacy as the sole earthly beings chosen by the gods to rule the realm. Many scholars have proposed that the main threat to the king's physical and existential existence would have been those most close to him, and more indirectly, the enemies of his realm (Russell 1991;Cifarelli 1998;Fales 2009;Pongratz-Leisten 2015;Collins 2014). Much of the kings' royal activities and material productions therefore focused on demonstrating to the gods, their court, palatial visitors, and perhaps others, that they were adequately fulfilling the tasks given to them as identified and decreed by the gods.…”

“…2 Of course, scholars have long acknowledged that the kings of Assyria relied on a number of specialists and scholars to help with their royal duties in adherence to the gods' wishes. This cadre of royal officials probably also were both the chief producers and targets or audience of these royal messages (Pongratz-Leisten 2015;Cifarelli 1998;Fales 2009). They consisted of a number of courtly advisors, scholars, priests, and logistics administrators who certainly worked in the palace in the Assyrian heartland and its provincial extensions and carried out the king's (really the gods') activities as his designees.…”

“…Perhaps the most direct way to access concepts of sacred kingship in Assyria is through an examination of the material objects used in ceremonies investing the king with his power. These investiture and coronation ceremonies took place at least once during the king's reign but were also performed regularly, most often during the annual New Year's festivals (Akitu) dedicated to Aššur, when the king was reinvested as the god's chosen vice-regent (Ambos 2014;Pongratz-Leisten 2015). The ceremonies, known from texts, involved ritual libations with special vessels, and proclamations of 'Assur is king!…”

“…Thus, the concept of materiality emphasizes the ‘mutuality’ or dialectic nature of material culture, where humans, through their cognitive processes and their daily practices, construct things as much as things construct people (Pongratz‐Leisten and Sonik , p. 27). With regard to Mesopotamian kings and their material world, the concept of materiality allows that the representations of kings and their royal paraphernalia made from and experienced as the material world ‘effectively permitted the viewer's cognitive recognition of embodied kingship, an institution handed down from the gods and properly held by one who, being divinely favored, had been also been divinely (physically) perfected’ (Pongratz‐Leisten and Sonik , p. 27; Winter ). To summarize the complex phenomenological arguments advanced by Mesopotamian scholars, objects, the office of kingship, and the cognitive worlds of Assyrians were mutually informed and constitutive.…”