History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia: Three Essays

270 Pages·2017·4.554 MB·English

by  Piotr Steinkeller

Piotr Steinkeller
History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia
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 15
Piotr Steinkeller
History, Texts and Art
in Early Babylonia
Three Essays
ISBN 978-1-5015-1330-5
e-ISBN (PDF) 978-1-5015-0477-8
e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-1-5015-0475-4
ISSN 2161-4415
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detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
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ToJenai,whomadeitpossible

Contents
Preface 1
Essay 1
Writing, Kingship and Political Discourse in Early Babylonia: Reflections on
the Nature and Function of Third Millennium Historical Sources 7
 Preface 7
 Early Historical Sources of Southern Babylonia 8
 Historical Sources of Egypt, Mesoamerica, and Ancient China 15
. Introductory Remarks 15
. Egypt 16
. Mesoamerica 18
. China 21
. Summary 24
 Archaic Cuneiform Script and the History of Late Uruk Times 24
 Early Southern Babylonian Kingship 28
. Distinctive Characteristics of Southern Babylonian Kingship 28
. The Cult of the Former Rulers and Priestly Officials 30
. Gudea of Lagaš and His Ideology 32
. Kingship of Early Northern Babylonia 35
. Kingship of the Sargonic Period 36
. Kingship of the Ur III Period 37
 The Poverty of Historical Tradition in Early Babylonia 39
 The Importance of Scribal Lore in Babylonia and Its Relevance for the
Question of Early Historical Tradition 46
. Introductory Remarks 46
. The Archaic Lu A and Ad-gi₄ Lists 47
. Why Lexical Sources? 50
. The Antediluvian King List 58
. The Antediluvian Kings 61
. The Figure of abgal, apkallu 65
. The “Story about the Seven Sages” 70
. Summary and Conclusions 74
VIII Contents
Appendix 1: The Priest-King of Uruk Times 82
 Introductory Remarks 82
 Priest-King Iconography 82
. The Warka Vase 83
. Five Uruk Seals Depicting the Priest-King and Inana 88
. Summation 89
. Further Remarks and Final Conclusion 90
 The en Official in Uruk III tablets 94
 The Question of nam₂-šita₂ 96
 Later Data Bearing on the Archaic Kingship of Uruk 100
 The Priest-King of Late Uruk Times and the Early History of the
En 103
Essay 2
The Divine Rulers of Akkade and Ur: Toward a Definition of the Deification of
Kings in Babylonia 107
 Preface 107
 The Question of the Alleged Divinity of Pre-Sargonic Rulers 110
 Historical Context of the Divination of Kings in Babylonia 117
 Specifics of the Divination of Sargonic and Ur III Kings 129
 The Titulary of the Divine Kings and Their Familial Connections with
the Divine Realm 135
 Was Naram-Suen’s Deification Inspired bya Foreign Example? 154
 Final Thoughts 156
Appendix 2: The Roundlet of Naram-Suen 158
Essay 3
Mythical Realities of the Early Babylonian History (or the Modern Historian
and the Native Uses of History Past) 167
List of Abbreviations 198
Bibliography 199
Index 220
List and Sources of Illustrations 229
Preface
Thisvolumepresentsthreeessays,whichareexpandedversionsofunpublished
papers I gave, invarious forms and on different occasions, over the last fifteen
years.¹ Since these papers are thematically related, and since they represent
whatis,inmanyrespects,asummationofdecadesworthofthinkingandwriting
abouttheshapeanddynamicsofthehistoryofthirdmillenniumBabyloniaand
the waysinwhich that history is reflected in ancient written sources and art, it
occurredtomethatitmightbeusefultopublishthemtogether.Thatishowthis
book came about.
Among the leitmotifs that weave their way through these three essays, the
following two are especially prominent. The first of them is the proposition
that, as I have repeatedly strived to demonstrate in my work,the course of the
thirdmillenniumhistoryofBabyloniawastoalargeextentshapedbythediffer-
encesthatoriginallydistinguishedthesocietyandcultureofsouthernBabylonia
from those existing in Babylonia’s northern half. Such differences can be dis-
cerned in the political, social, and economic organization of both regions and,
evenmoreclearly,intheareasoflanguageandreligion.Inmyview,theprocess
underlyingthe earlyhistoryof Babyloniaisbestdescribed asa creative conver-
sion,throughwhichtwo,originallyquitedistinctivesocietiesandcultures,grad-
ually assimilatedto one another, in the end becominga completely new entity.
Asfaraswecantell,thisprocessofconversionwasgenerallypeacefulandfric-
tion free. It certainly was not enforced in any way or fashion. In the same way
that there came into being, by the end of the third millennium, a single Su-
mero-Akkadian language and a single Sumero-Akkadian religion, the political
and social institutions of Babylonia too were of a hybrid nature. That process
of mutual assimilation had begun extremely early, probably already in Late
 TheoriginalversionofEssay1waspresented,underthetitle“Writing,KingshipandPolitical
DiscourseinEarlyBabylonia,”attheconference“WritingCivilization:LiteracyandSocialTrans-
formationinEarlyMesopotamia,”TheRaymondandBeverlySacklerArtandArchaeologyLec-
tureSeries,UniversityofConnecticut,SchoolofFineArts,Storrs,April16,2004.Theforerunner
ofEssay2wasmykeynoteaddress(sametitle)atthesummerprogram“Ideology,Powerand
ReligiousChangeinAntiquity,3000BC–AD600,”GraduiertenschulefürGeisteswissenschaften
Göttingen,Georg-AugustGöttingenUniversität,July20‒24,2015.Essay3goesbackto“Mythical
RealitiesoftheEarlyBabylonianHistory:ThoughtsabouttheModernStudyofAncientMesopo-
tamianHistory,”readatthe4thInternationalMelammuCongress,“SchoolsofOrientalStudies
andtheDevelopmentofModernHistoriography,”Ravenna,October13‒17,2001.
DOI10.1515/9781501504778-001
2 Preface
Uruktimes.²Inalllikelihood,itscoursewasfarfrombeingsimpleandstraight-
forward. However, due to the near-complete absence of written data from the
earlyphasesoftheEarlyDynasticperiod,onemayonlyguessaboutthespecifics
of this development.
The other central theme of the essays presented here is mycontention that
the kingship of early southern Babylonia had a very peculiar form, and that it
differed significantly from that existing at the time in northern Babylonia.The
characteristics of the southern kingship and its evolution over the course of
the third millennium (and going back into the Late Uruk period, see especially
Appendix 1),especiallyas itconcerns its interactionwith the kingship and cul-
tural institutions of northern Babylonia, are studied in detail, especially in Es-
says 1 and 2. In Essay 2 I also argue that the concept of divine king, which
was introduced by Naram-Suen, was an instrument of that ruler’s unificatory
policies,whosepurpose wastotranscendthelimitations imposedbythetenets
ofthesouthernideologyofkingship.Itisfurthersuggestedthatthedivinationof
Šulgi and his successors was motivated by similar political aims.
Myunderstandingofthenatureofthesouthernkingshipleadsmedevelopa
numberofsecondarypoints.Oneofthemisthepropositionthatthepeculiarity
of the southern ideology of kingship finds a direct reflection in the historical
writings and art. I base this idea mainly on the fact that the other literary civi-
lizations of the ancient world with which such a comparison may be made
(Egypt, Mesoamerica, and China) do indeed demonstrate the existence of such
anexus.Ithenproceedto define (primarily inEssay1)the natureofthe histor-
ical sources surviving from the third-millennium South and contrast them with
those that may be attributed to the northern historical tradition. In conclusion,
Iarguethat,asaconsequenceofthespecialcharacterofthesouthernideology
ofrulership–inparticular,theabsenceinitofadevelopeddynastictradition–
the societyof earlysouthern Babylonia showedaremarkablelackof interest in
things historical. Hence the pronounced absence there of historical narratives,
dynastic histories, and chronographic sources (such as king-lists and a devel-
oped system of dating methods). As I argue, this situation contrasts sharply
with what one encounters later under the Sargonic kings and their successors,
thekingsofUr,whendifferentattitudestowardhistoryand,consequently,differ-
ent forms of history writing and different royal imagery had come into being.
 TheearliestcertainevidenceofSumero-SemiticcontactinBabyloniaisprovidedbytheoccur-
rencesoftheSemiticloanwordmaš-gan₂(Akk.maškanu),“settlement,”inthesourcesofLate
Urukdate(Steinkeller1995b:695;Monaco2016:10andnotes62and68).