by Eckart Frahm
Lexicon
The Akkadian lexicon is largely common Semitic, although many basic words have no Semitic parallel (e.g., ana “to, for” and māru(m) “son” instead of Semitic *li and *bn). Loanwords derived from many different languages enriched its lexicon, albeit sometimes only in a limited area or for a short period of time. A considerable number of Sumerian words entered Akkadian at an early stage, and vice versa. As expected from the linguistic environment of the respective periods, Anatolian words of mainly Hittite, Luwian, or Hurrian origin entered the OA lexicon, while the NA lexicon was influenced by Aramaic.
Abbreviations
AEAD:
Parpola, S. and R.M. Whiting (ed.), Assyrian‐English‐Assyrian Dictionary, Helsinki: Neo‐Assyrian Text Corpus Project/Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007.
AHw:
von Soden, W., Akkadisches Handwörterbuch, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1958–81.
CAD:
The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1956–2010.
RIMA 1:
Grayson, A.K. Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia B.C. (to 1115 B.C.), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.
RIMA 2:
Grayson, A.K. Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C. I (1114–859 B.C.), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
RIMA 3:
Grayson, A.K., Assyrian Rulers of the Early First Millennium B.C. II (858–745 B.C.), Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
RINAP:
Royal Inscriptions of the Neo‐Assyrian Period, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011–.
SAA 2:
Parpola, S. and Watanabe, K., Neo‐Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988.
SAA 4:
Starr, I., Queries to the Sungod: Divination and Politics in Sargonid Assyria, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1989.
SAA 8:
Hunger, H., Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1992.
SAA 19:
Luukko, M., The Correspondence of Tiglath‐pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 2012.
References
Borger, R. 1996. Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals. Die Prismenklassen A, B, C = K, D, E, F, G, H, J und T sowie andere Inschriften, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Borger, R. 2004 (2010 2nd edn). Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon, AOAT 305, Münster: Ugarit‐Verlag.
Buccellati, G. 1996. A Structural Grammar of Babylonian, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Buccellati, G. 1997. “Akkadian,” in: R. Hetzron (ed.), The Semitic Languages, New York/London: Routledge, 69–99.
Caplice, R. 1988 (2002 4th edn). Introduction to Akkadian, Studia Pohl (Series Maior) 9, Rome: Biblical Institute Press.
Degen, R. 1969. Altaramäische Grammatik der Inschriften des 10.–8. Jh. v. Chr., Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 38/3, Wiesbaden: F. Steiner.
Fales, F.M. 1986. Aramaic Epigraphs on Clay Tablets of the Neo‐Assyrian Period, Studi Semitici NS 2. Rome: La Sapienza.
Fales, F.M. 2007. “Multilingualism on Multiple Media in the Neo‐Assyrian Period: A Review of the Evidence,” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 16, 95–122.
Finkel, I.L. and Reade, J.E. 1996. “Assyrian Hieroglyphs,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 86, 244–68.
Finkel, I.L. and Taylor, J. 2015. Cuneiform, London: British Museum Press.
George, A. 2007. “Babylonian and Assyrian: A History of Akkadian,” in: J.N. Postgate (ed.), Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 31–71.
Hämeen‐Anttila, J. 2000. A Sketch of Neo‐Assyrian Grammar, State Archives of Assyria Studies 13, Helsinki: The Neo‐Assyrian Text Corpus Project.
Hecker, K. 1968. Grammatik der Kültepe‐Texte, Analecta Orientalia 44, Rome: Biblical Pontifical Institute.
Huehnergard, J. 1997 (2005 2nd edn). A Grammar of Akkadian, Harvard Semitic Studies 45, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
Huehnergard, J. and Woods, C. 2004. “Akkadian and Eblaite,” in: R.D. Woodard (ed.), The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 218–87.
Hug, V. 1993. Altaramäische Grammatik der Texte des 7. und 6. Jh.s v. Chr., Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 4, Heidelberg: Heidelberger Orientverlag.
Jakob, S. 2009. Die mittelassyrischen Texte aus Tell Chuera in Nordost‐Syrien, Vorderasiatische Forschungen der Max Freiherr von Oppenheim‐Stiftung 2,3, Ausgrabungen in Tell Chuera in Nordost‐Syrien III, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Kouwenberg, N.J.C. 2000. “Nouns as Verbs: The Verbal Nature of the Akkadian Stative,” Orientalia 69, 21–71.
Kouwenberg, N.J.C. 2003. “Evidence for Post‐Glottalized Consonants in Assyrian,” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 55, 75–86.
Kouwenberg, N.J.C. 2010. The Akkadian Verb and Its Semitic Background, Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns.
Kouwenberg, N.J.C. 2012. “Spatial Deixis in Akkadian: Demonstrative Pronouns, Presentative Particles and Locational Adverbs,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 102, 17–75.
Labat, R. and Malbran‐Labat, F. 1995. Manuel d’épigraphie akkadienne, Paris: Geuthner.
Larsen, M.T. 2002. The Assur‐nada Archive, Old Assyrian Archives 1, PIHANS 96, Istanbul: Nederlands Instituut.
Livingstone, A. 1989. Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea, State Archives of Assyria 3, Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.
Mayer, W. 1971. Untersuchungen zur Grammatik des Mittelassyrischen, AOATS 2, Kevelaer and Neukirchen‐Vluyn: Butzon & Bercker/Neukirchener Verlag.
Millard, A. 2007. “Early Aramaic,” in: J.N. Postgate (ed.), Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern,” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 85–94.
Parpola, S. 1988. “Proto‐Assyrian,” in: H. Hauptmann and H. Waetzoldt (eds.), Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft von Ebla: Akten der internationalen Tagung Heidelberg, 4.–7. November 1986, Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 2, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Orientverlag, 293–8.
Pedersén, O. 1985. Archives and Libraries in the City of Assur I. A Survey of the Material from the German Excavations, Studia Semitica Upsaliensia 6, Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Postgate, J.N. 1997. “Middle Assyrian to Neo‐Assyrian: The Nature of the Shift,” in: H. Waetzoldt and H. Hauptmann (eds.), Assyrien im Wandel der Zeit, Heidelberger Studien zum Alten Orient 6, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Orientverlag, 159–68.
Postgate, J.N. (ed.) 2007. Languages of Iraq, Ancient and Modern, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Radner, K. 2004. Das mittelassyrische Tontafelarchiv von Giricano/Dunnu‐ša‐uzibi, Subartu 14, Turnhout: Brepols.
Saggs, H.W.F. 2001. The Nimrud Letters, 1952, Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud 5, London: British School of Archaeology in Iraq.
Streck, M.P. 2005. Sprachen des Alten Orients, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Tadmor, H. 1982. “The Aramaization of Assyria: Aspects of Western Impact,” in: H.‐J. Nissen and J. Renger (eds.), Mesopotamien und seine Nachbarn: Politische und kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Alten Vorderasien vom 4. bis 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr, BBVO 1, Berlin: Reimer, 449–70.
Tadmor, H. 1994. The Inscriptions of Tiglath‐pileser III, King of Assyria, Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities.
Veenhof, K.R. and Eidem, J. 2008. Mesopotamia: The Old Assyrian Period, OBO 160/5, Fribourg and Göttingen: Academic Press Fribourg/Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
von Soden, W. 1989. “Dolmetscher und Dolmetschen im Alten Orient,” in: W. von Soden, Aus Sprache, Geschichte und Religion Babyloniens, Istituto Universitario Orientale, Dipartimento di Studi Asiatici, Series Minor 32, Naples: University of Naples, 351–7.
von Soden, W. 1995. Grundriss der Akkadischen Grammatik, Analecta Orientalia 33, Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute.
Walker, C.B.F. 1987. Cuneiform, London: British Museum Press.
Watanabe, K. 1987. Die adê‐Ver
eidigung anlässlich der Thronfolgeregelung Asarhaddons, Baghdader Mitteilungen, Beiheft 3, Berlin: Gebr. Mann.
Woodard, R.D. (ed.) 2004. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Worthington, M. 2010. Teach Yourself Complete Babylonian, London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Further Reading
Most standard reference grammars (von Soden 1995, Buccellati 1996) and study books (e.g., Caplice 20024, Huehnergard 20052, and Worthington 2010) describe Babylonian. Up‐to‐date summaries of Akkadian grammar can be found in Buccellati 1997, Huehnergard and Woods 2004, and Streck 2005. Assyrian is treated by Hecker 1968 (OA), Mayer 1971 (MA), and Hämeen‐Anttila 2000 (NA).
The main dictionaries are AHw/CDA, CAD, and AEAD. Walker 1987 and Finkel and Taylor 2015 present an overview of cuneiform; Borger 20102 and Labat and Malbran‐Labat 1995 provide general sign lists of Akkadian and Sumerian cuneiform.
Recent introductions to various ancient Near Eastern languages are found in Woodard 2004 and Postgate 2007. Old Aramaic was studied by Degen 1969 and Hug 1993.
Note
* We would like to thank Graham Cunningham, Bert Kouwenberg, and Jaume Llop for their critical remarks and suggestions.
CHAPTER 18
Assyrian Religion
Stefan M. Maul
What is actually Assyrian about “Assyrian religion?”1 This question immediately arises in any study of the Assyrians’ religious beliefs, their divine cults, their piety, their prayers, and their rituals. After all, most of the great gods venerated in Assyria bear the names of the very same deities that were venerated in the ancient civilization of southern Mesopotamia, and in Assyria too were these gods bound to the mythological narratives that had taken their literary form in the south. Many hymns to the gods, prayers, and descriptions of rituals that circulated in Assyria were inspired by Babylonian and Sumerian models, or were copies of texts that originated in Babylonia. Assyrian temple architecture and art are likewise indebted to Babylonian traditions in a fundamental way. To what degree the south influenced Assyrian culture and religion is clear from the fact that, both in the divine cult and in the official proclamations of Middle and Neo‐Assyrian kings, the prevailing idiom used was not the native Assyrian language, but rather the languages of the south – primarily Babylonian, which was closely related to Assyrian, but also Sumerian, which was already extinct by the early second millennium BCE.
During the late Middle Assyrian and Neo‐Assyrian periods, these Babylonianizing tendencies were strengthened considerably as Assyrian rulers consciously attempted to give, at least outwardly, a Babylonian appearance to their systems of government, their institutions, their ceremonies, and their piousness, whether it was in order to make Assyria appear more familiar to the kingdoms and principalities of the Near East that were strongly influenced by Babylonian culture or meant to dissociate from Babylon the symbols of Babylonian culture that were connected to its claim to power and to transfer them to Assyria. What is genuinely Assyrian is therefore not always easy to recognize beneath an exterior that appears initially to be quintessentially Babylonian. To complicate matters, some phenomena of Babylonian origin are far better known from Assyrian sources than from Babylonian ones and may only misleadingly appear to us as typically Assyrian. For this reason, the time is not yet ripe to present here a substantial comparison between Assyrian and Babylonian religion. Thus, in this chapter, the discussion will often be rather about the religion and cult in Assyria than about the typically Assyrian traits of Assyrian religion.
The City of Ashur and its Temples in the Third Millennium BCE
The traveler who journeys from the flat, fertile Babylonian alluvial plain to the north rapidly learns to recognize that Babylonia and Assyria may indeed have shared cultural roots but always remained two entirely different countries in terms of their natural settings. Beyond Samarra, vegetation becomes increasingly meager. Some 150 kilometers further north comes the Babylonian plain to an unexpected, abrupt end. Like a locking bolt, a 300 meter high, jagged mountain range stretches before the traveler, through which only the Tigris breaches its course, via the el‐Fatḥa strait. Behind this natural boundary, the Jebel Ḥamrin, lies Assyria, a land in which – unlike in Babylonia – there are no more palm groves, but rain‐fed agriculture is possible. The mountains continue into the Jebel Khanukah, which then tapers off in low chains towards the north. On one of these elevations, which stands a proudly soaring 25 meters high towards the northeast over the Tigris only to plummet almost vertically down to the river, lies Ashur, the starting point of Assyrian culture.
The god who carries the name of the city of Ashur and its dominion, which steadily grew over the course of centuries, is without doubt unmistakably Assyrian and intrinsic to the Assyrian religion (Tallqvist 1932; Lambert 1983). The god Assur is the heart of Assyrian religion even though he likely played no prominent role in the early history of Northern Mesopotamia.
In Nineveh and Arbela, the ancient cities that developed into the most important centers of the Assyrian heartland during the second and first millennia BCE, it was from the earliest periods not a male deity that stood at the center of religious veneration but rather the great goddess that would later – under the influence of southern Mesopotamia – be equated with Ištar, the goddess of war and unstoppable lust. There are some indications that this was no different in the early history of Ashur.
Already in the mid‐third millennium BCE, a probably not insignificant city blossomed on this privileged site, from which one could control the trade routes to Babylonia, Syria, Anatolia, and into the Iranian highlands and thereby obtain great wealth, while enjoying the security provided by the sparse no‐man’s‐land separating Assyria from Babylonia in the south.
The construction of monumental buildings in Ashur in later periods, and the digging of foundations and the leveling that went along with it, almost completely destroyed the remains from this time, but a glimpse into the early period of Ashur was granted to the excavators of the city in at least one place. The unique but, unfortunately, largely isolated evidence conveys to us a surprisingly detailed impression of the religious life of the city. In northern Ashur, deep below the foundations of several subsequent buildings, were discovered the remains of a temple that was most likely dedicated to the great goddess of Assyria, as were the later sanctuaries that lay above it (Andrae 1922 and 1935; Bär 2003; Schmitt 2012). In a blaze of fire, possibly set by hostile conquerors, the roof and walls of the sanctuary caved in at some point, burying the interior of the cult room under them. In this room of about 16 × 6 meters, which one entered from the long side, there was a niche located on the narrow side. There, on a pedestal, once stood the cult image of the probably nude goddess, vaulted by a narrow, deep compartment. She appeared to confront the worshipper as if she were coming from another, transcendental world. This oldest temple layout, which the excavators called “archaic,” already shows the basic design of the later Assyrian temple and testifies to the appreciation for tradition that is so characteristic of Assyrian culture. As in later times, the goddess was even then already provided with daily meals and smoke offerings. A small blood basin for animal sacrifices, clay incense‐holders and stepped altars, sacrificial bowls and libation vessels bear witness thereof. Fragments of almost ninety alabaster statuettes depicting men and women, some sitting and others standing, with folded hands and large eyes that were directed contemplatively into the distance, were found in the debris. Many of these sculptures, which were generally less than 50 centimeters high, could be reassembled. The findspots suggest that they were positioned on low mud‐brick benches on the long sides of the cult room. The men are shaved bald and wear a “tressed skirt,” probably made from sheepskin, which leaves the upper body uncovered. The women, adorned with ornate, wide plaits of hair, are likewise wrapped in a tressed robe, which, however, mostly leaves only the right shoulder free. Such statues were probably meant to represent their donors permanently
before the deity and to secure divine favor with uninterrupted prayer.
The parallels to conventions from the “high period” of Assyria in the second and first millennia BCE should not be overlooked here. In the Neo‐Assyrian period the Assyrian kings still took care to set up their statues in the most important cult centers of the land, where they remained steadfastly in their place listening in prayer for the divine command, while the gods “gazed benevolently” upon them and thus blessed their endeavors. One could therefore assume that the votive statues from the “archaic Ištar temple” portray several generations of early city leaders of Ashur, as well as their wives, sons, and high officials, asking for blessings for themselves and for their city. Perhaps already the early city leaders expressed their gratitude to the goddess by dedicating booty to her, such as is documented first for the Old Akkadian period in an inscription of the ruler Ititi (Grayson 1987: A.0.1001) and then increasingly in the second and first millennia BCE during the heyday of the Assyrian kingdom.
The telling, albeit singular finds from the Early Dynastic Ištar temple in Ashur leave no doubt that, in the third millennium BCE, the people in northern Mesopotamia – just as in the south – imagined that the divine forces they called upon to attain benevolence were anthropomorphic. Like princes, deities resided in monumental houses and, through their presence, provided protection to the community. The furnishings of the temples – implements for sacrifices, various types of offerings, and votive statues – demonstrate that the Assyrians attempted to secure divine protection through consistent devotion and through the diligent care and nurturing of the deity.
