A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  We do not know if, in that early time, the rulers of the city also sought to obtain the grace of the god Assur; indeed, we cannot even say if the cult of Assur was already propagated in the third millennium BCE. The archeologists were unable to detect any building remains that could be interpreted with any likelihood as the remnants of an early preexisting structure under the foundations of the later, monumental Assur temple. It is therefore possible that the cult of Assur was much younger than that of the “great goddess” who was later referred to as Ištar, and that it was only in the late third millennium BCE that a male deity of the name Assur increasingly surpassed the female deity.

  If the excavators are correct (Haller and Andrae 1955: 9ff., 12ff.), the nucleus of the settlement of Ashur (Bär 1999: 10f.), the cliff rising precipitously over the Tigris in the extreme northeast of the city, which was later crowned by the Assur temple, may have remained without a widely visible cult center for a long time.2 This would be in line with later Assyrian historical tradition, which ascribed the construction of the temple not to the gods themselves or the very first ruler of Ashur, but rather to Ušpia, the otherwise obscure sixteenth monarch of the Assyrian King List, who is counted as the penultimate of the early kings who “lived in tents” (see Grayson 1980–3: 103 and Grayson 1987: A.0.77.2: 5–7; Borger 1956: 3 iii 16ff.).

  The God Assur

  Even the name of the most Assyrian of all gods escapes our understanding. We cannot etymologize it, and we do not know whether Assur (Aššur) bears the name of his city or the city the name of its god.3 Already in the Old Assyrian period the concepts “god Assur” and “city Ashur” were inextricably interwoven, even in the writings of the divine name and the name of the city: not infrequently, the divine determinative was added to the name of the city and the determinative for localities to the name of the god (Galter 1996). The clarity that should actually be established with the help of a determinative is thus deliberately obfuscated. City and god, such is the message, are inseparable from each other.

  Unlike all of the other great gods of the ancient Near East, Assur was originally an independent and solitary god who was conceived as entirely without family and without involvement in divine communities and hierarchies. For him, neither father nor mother is envisioned, nor does he have a wife and children. The city gods of Babylonia, in contrast, all have a place in the complex Mesopotamian pantheon – just as their cities are integrated into a political system, they are related to one another through family ties. Furthermore, even if they were worshipped as the lords of their city, they always also represent a cosmic force or an aspect of culture. Thus is Enlil, the god of Nippur, in equal measure the father and king of the gods and the divine representative of the unpredictable natural force of the earth that brings forth flood and earthquakes. Nanna‐Sîn, the god of Ur, is the moon with all of the celestial body’s associated properties, and Utu‐Šamaš, the god of Larsa and Sippar, is the sun god, who is also the patron deity of order and justice and the god of the homeless and disconsolate. Finally, Enki‐Ea, venerated as the god of the city Eridu and as lord of the fresh water, embodies the power of intellect that produces civilization and clever solutions for any problem.

  Assur is completely free of such qualities. His character is difficult to capture. He is the city and its power; no further attributes can be identified. While numerous myths feature the gods of Babylonia, depicting in great detail their respective characteristic traits, Assur remains strangely without face or fable. Even in a late hymn to the god from the reign of Assurbanipal (668–631 BCE), descriptions of heroic exploits of any kind that would allow any conclusions about Assur’s character or his history are lacking. Only Assur’s splendor and strength and his power and omnipotence are praised, while his character is described as being incomprehensible even for the gods (Livingstone 1989: 4–6; Foster 2005: 817–19 IV.4b). Assur is called “the maker of (all) the creatures of heaven and earth, fashioner of the mountains” (Livingstone, loc. cit., 4: 15), but aside from this reference to his role as a primeval god of creation, allusions to more specific deeds are missing. Assur appears without attributes, he is simply god. So it is not surprising that, particularly in the Old Assyrian period, he is often mentioned not with his name but rather is just called ilum “god.”

  Somewhat ironically, it was exactly this absence of any particular character traits that permitted the unprecedented rise of Assur, for it allowed the recognition of an all‐encompassing divinity in him, which could easily absorb deities venerated in other regions. Over the course of centuries, as the city and the state of Ashur became more and more prominent and influential, Assur too grew from a largely inconsequential local deity into a global god. Assur’s transformation into a great god is quite interesting from the point of view of the history of religion, as there are few other cases of deities rising to prominence that are equally well documented.

  The god Assur was probably not only connected to his city but also very closely associated with the steep rock projection towering over the Tigris upon which his temple was constructed. An inscription of the Middle Assyrian king Tukulti‐Ninurta I (1233–1197 [1243–1207] BCE) states specifically that Assur, “the lord of the mountain Abi, loved his mountain,” and commanded the king “to build a lofty residence in its center” (Schroeder 1922: Text Nr. 54; Weidner 1959: 36). The cliff in Ashur called Abi was inextricably linked with the god and his cult site. Even when, in the early Neo‐Assyrian period, the city of Ashur no longer satisfied the geopolitical and logistical demands that the capital of a large empire had to contend with and Aššurnaṣirpal II (883–859 BCE) left the old capital in order to establish a new residence further in the north in Kalu (Nimrud), Ashur remained the uncontested sole seat of the god Assur and with that the religious and cultic center of Assyria. Aššurnaṣirpal II did not consider a relocation of the cult to the new royal residence, nor did his successors in the later Neo‐Assyrian period, who relocated the court first to Dur‐Šarrukin and then to Nineveh. To implement additional cult centers for Assur in the respective royal residences, duplicating the god’s cult, also did not come into consideration – too closely was he connected with the location of his cult in Ashur.4

  The only exception to this rule occurred during the reign of Tukulti‐Ninurta I, the first king of Ashur to leave the time‐honored but space‐constricted capital city to establish a new royal residence. Only three kilometers upstream from Ashur, on the opposite bank of the Tigris, he produced out of thin air an entire city with temples and palaces, proudly gave it the name Kar‐Tukulti‐Ninurta, and attempted to relocate the cult of Assur to the new residence. Not only was a new royal palace constructed there but also a cult building with a stepped tower that was consecrated to Assur (Andrae 1977: 174–6; Heinrich 1982: 215–217; Eickhoff 1985: 27–35). Yet the magnificent temple building was probably thought of only as a temporary residence of the god, to be used in the context of festive ceremonies associated with processions (Miglus 1993: 199–204) – due to its comparatively small size, it seems unlikely that it was meant to completely replace the old Assur temple. In any case, Tukulti‐Ninurta’s newly established building was given up after only a few years of use, and was made unusable (Eickhoff 1985: 34f.). Tukulti‐Ninurta’s attempt to move Assur to another location, close to his new residence, was apparently considered an act of severe hubris that contributed to the king’s poor reputation. Assur was not to be removed from his cliff.

  An ancient representation of the deified cliff of Assur, partly human‐shaped, adorned with “scales” representing a mountain, and accompanied by two gods associated with wellsprings, has been preserved on a stone relief that most likely originated from the Old Assyrian period. It seems to have been housed in the Assur temple for centuries, until it was thrown into the well of the main court of the temple by the conquerors of Ashur in 614 BCE (Andrae 1931; Kryszat 1995).

  All in all, then, it seems likely that the original cult place associated with Assur was the cliff towering
over the Tigris. For a long time, there seem to have been no major architectural structures on the cliff. It was possibly the Assyrian ruler Ušpia, who remains a largely obscure figure to us, who first gave Assur – as well as other gods – a fixed dwelling.

  When, at the end of the third millennium BCE, merchants from Ashur established trade colonies in Anatolia and brought their city to great wealth, soon too did the house of Assur receive a new, more splendid form. Yet even though several inscriptions of the ruler Erišum are known that deal with the new temple and its dimensions (Grayson 1987: A.0.33), we can form no proper conception of it. What we do know is that it housed the god – just as in later periods – in the form of a probably life‐sized image in the round. A letter found in the Assyrian trading colony Kaniš speaks specifically about the fact that thieves had penetrated the temple and “had stolen the sun (wrought) from gold from the chest of Assur, as well as the sword of Assur” (Hirsch 1961: 14; Larsen 1976: 261f., n. 37). This is, incidentally, the only passage suggesting that Assur was associated with the sun already in the early period, perhaps even as the god who gave the sun its space (?).

  The temple of Assur bore the curious name – probably referring to the god’s overwhelming power – “House, Wild Bull” (Grayson 1987: A.0.33.1:16). On an Old Assyrian seal, which is explicitly labeled as the seal “of (the god) Assur,” a remarkable image has been preserved, which, in the style of many Ur III period seals, shows an interceding deity before a peculiar symbol that may depict in equal measure the temple of the god and his craggy cult site as well as the might of Assur. It shows a mound armored with “mountain scales” standing on four legs and furnished with a bull protome (Veenhof 1993: 652 with n. 27 and Pl. 124), thus representing the name of the temple almost pictographically.

  Although it was, as a rule, not tolerated to give Assur a home elsewhere, Assur’s might was also present in the trading colonies. Kaniš and other places where Assyrian merchants lived received ceremonial weapons that were regarded as the weapons of the god. In legal cases, following old Mesopotamian traditions, oaths had to be sworn before these weapons (Hirsch 1961: 64–7). This amounted to self‐imprecation in the case of perjury, which was expected to result in a deadly strike by the god with just those weapons. In addition, the “sword of Assur” received in regions far from the homeland the deference that otherwise was given to Assur in his home city. Even in Neo‐Assyrian times, ceremonial weapons were used in the temples of captured territories in order to demonstrate the presence and the might of Assyria’s gods (see, for example, Fuchs 1998: 25 and 55: 6‐8, as well as Holloway 2002: 151–77).

  In the Old Assyrian period, Assur was by no means the only god venerated in his city. Besides him are named, above all, Adad, the weather god, and his father, the sky‐god Anum, the moon‐ and the sun‐god, as well as Ištar of Ashur, now, in most cases, called Aššurītum (“the Assyrian”). In lists of multiple deities, Assur, however, always stands in the first position. For a long time he was regarded specifically as the “king”:5 not only as the king of the gods but also as the true king of his city.

  The political power of the ruler, who stood at the helm of the city in the Old Assyrian period and called himself “overseer” (waklum) or “great one,” (rubā’um), was restricted. The “overseer” was apparently simply the head of the influential assembly of the powerful citizens of Ashur, much rather than a king equipped with far‐reaching power (Larsen 1976: 109–91). Yet he was also – following a concept that we encounter in southern Mesopotamia already in the early third millennium BCE – the earthly representative of the god Assur, who served as intermediary between the god and his land and guaranteed as a trustee that the property of the god was enlarged and tended to. The Assyrian word that designates this function, iššiakkum, goes back to the Sumerian title ensi(ak), “vice‐regent (of the god NN).”

  The office of High Priest remained a central one for Assyrian rulers from the Old Assyrian period onwards. The rulers cared for the well‐being of their god, by means of which they also guaranteed the well‐being of their subjects, whom the god had entrusted to them. Until the downfall of the Assyrian empire at the end of the seventh century BCE, little of this changed in principle, even though, with the growth of their power in the course of the Middle Assyrian period, the rulers of Ashur began to assume the title “king” (šarrum), following the Babylonian example (Seux 1967: 295ff.). One of the most important duties of the rulers of Ashur was to watch over the main task issued to mankind according to the ancient Near Eastern creation myths: to care for the gods and particularly for the god who embodied one’s own land (Maul 2008).

  It almost appears as if only the “vice‐regent” was able to maintain the connection between “King Assur” and his mortal subjects. Virtually all remaining hymns and prayers to Assur are formulated in the name of the ruler, while prayers to Assur designated for other people are entirely absent – very much in contrast to extant prayers directed to other great gods of the ancient Near East. Moreover, as we know from later period texts, the major rituals and festivities revolving around Assur, especially the New Year’s festival, could not be carried out in the absence of his “vice‐regent,” because it was incumbent upon him alone “to grasp the hand of the god” and with this to bring the ritual into motion.

  The Theology of Assur and His Elevation to Universal Dominion

  In the late 19th century BCE, the city and the temple of Assur received a completely new design, and it appears that, during that time, the god Assur also became associated with an entirely new theology, which was to shape the image of the god until the downfall of Ashur. Šamši‐Adad (ca. 1808–1776 BCE), a ruler of Amorite origin, had conquered Ekallatum, a city that lay in Assyrian territory, and from there also brought under his sway Ashur and an entire Upper Mesopotamian kingdom that ranged westward until the Euphrates. As Sargon of Akkad had formerly done, he now called himself “king of the universe” (šar kiššatim), thus expressing his far‐reaching claims to sovereignty to the rival kingdoms of Mesopotamia that were struggling for hegemony. Although later times saw in him a king who was “not of the flesh of the city Ashur,” he was the one who gave the house of Assur the monumental form that was retained largely unchanged for more than one thousand years, until the downfall of the city (Haller and Andrae 1955; van Driel 1969; Miglus 2001). The new building, with which, “at the command of Assur,” the self‐proclaimed “pacifier of the lands between the Tigris and Euphrates” (Grayson 1987: A.0.309.1:5–10) replaced the decayed Assur Temple of Erišum, was, however – as the building inscriptions reveal – not dedicated to Assur but rather to the god Enlil. Yet in no way had Šamši‐Adad abolished the cult of Assur with this. His new Assur theology, strongly influenced by southern Mesopotamian ideas, implied that Assur was none other than Enlil, the king of the gods of the Sumerian‐Babylonian pantheon, who was worshipped in Nippur.

  This was both a bold and a politically clever maneuver. During the third millennium BCE, Nippur had become the undisputed cultic‐religious center of the federation of southern Mesopotamian cities and had maintained, as the most important seat of the gods, this paramount position under the mighty kingdom of the Third Dynasty of Ur. In the Sumerian city‐states of the third millennium, supremacy came to the ruler who had command over Nippur, the city of Enlil, “the king of the gods” and “king of all lands,” and who provided for the god. Nippur was considered the heart of a large united territory for which the provider of the king of the gods bore a special responsibility – wherever his royal court was located. When the political fragmentation that followed the collapse of the Ur III dynasty put this role of Nippur into question, Šamši‐Adad found himself in the position to do what would have previously been unthinkable: to construct in another location, namely in Ashur, a “new Nippur” and with that, as “the appointee of Enlil (šakin Enlil),” to raise a claim not only over a city but also over an, in principle, endlessly expandable large‐scale territory.

  The figur
e of the god of Assur lent itself to equation with Enlil. Like Enlil, Assur had been regarded for quite some time as the king of the gods; and Enlil’s epithets “great mountain” and “wild bull” were very much in line with corresponding qualities of Assur. So it was quite reasonable that Šamši‐Adad endeavored to reproduce in Ashur the cultic topography of Nippur, which was aligned to Enlil, and that he gave his new temple the ceremonial Sumerian name É‐am‐kur‐kur‐ra, “House, Wild Bull of All Lands,” after the southern Mesopotamian archetype. Based on the evidence from later periods (see George 1992: 186–91 and Menzel 1981: T 146–9), the Enlil‐Assur temple of Šamši‐Adad was probably furnished with shrines for many other great gods, in order to show that the cult place of the god, as was taught about Nippur, was the origin of all divinity and the true home of all gods. We come to know of the abundance of the gods worshipped in Ashur from a letter of Šamši‐Adad in which he chides his son Yasma‐Addu for housing far too many gods in Mari: “But now you fill the city (i.e. Mari) with (statues of) gods, while the sheep for the sacrifice do not suffice. What is this, what do you do there? Do you have no advisor who advises you? The city Mari is full of gods. No other city is as full of gods as Mari. Only Mari and Ashur are so full of gods!” (Charpin 2004: 379 with n. 40).

  Following the example of the Enlil temple in Nippur, an enormous stepped tower with a base of about 60 × 60 meters and a height that was probably likewise 60 meters (Haller and Andrae 1955: 2–5; Miglus 1985), crowned with a small temple, arose in Ashur, in the immediate vicinity of the Assur temple. The rites and festivities associated with such a building in Nippur were probably introduced in Ashur as well. The time‐honored cultic institutions of Nippur, which were considered to be closely linked to creation and believed to be primeval, were now accessible in Ashur too. Later, the belief that not only was Ashur a mirror image of Nippur, but that Nippur was also a mirror image of Ashur, was reinforced in historical‐mythological narratives. Enlil himself speaks in one of them of his “two cultic sites,” Nippur and Ashur, and takes the form of a white raven to reveal, after a destruction of both his seats, the location for reconstruction in both places (Frahm 2009: 145–51, text no. 76).