A Companion to Assyria

by Eckart Frahm

  The Teumman text (Livingstone 1989: no. 31) must also be mentioned here since it reflects a similar psychological disposition and differs in several respects from other texts dealing with the exploits of Assyrian kings treated above. Unlike in the royal epical texts, where these exploits are recounted in the third person, in this text Assurbanipal himself speaks and the voice is a human one that lacks the bombast of the annals. The historical background was that Assurbanipal had attempted reconciliation with the Elamite princes and even at times sent famine relief to Elam but was now confronted with a revolt and even the taunt, “But he (Teumman) [mustered] the forces of Elam and marched on, saying ‘I will not [sleep] until I have come and dined in the centre of Nineveh!’” Assurbanipal’s response was to pray in some confusion to Ištar of Arbela – apparently the attack had occurred at the precise moment when the king was in Arbela attending her cult. At any rate, after a great battle at the River Ulay the native Elamite polity was destroyed forever and the Elamite princes who had been trained and indoctrinated in Assyria installed as puppet rulers there.

  The Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Crown Prince (Livingstone 1989: no. 32) is one of the longer Neo‐Assyrian literary texts, with a total of seventy‐five lines, but unfortunately the middle of the obverse is poorly preserved. After a short lacuna the text opens with a reference to one who frequented the place of work of the extispicy priests and took counsel with them and with “wise registrars who guard the secret of their lords.” As we then learn, this individual was in the position to appoint governors and magnates and to strengthen the watch over his own property, therefore either a king or a crown prince overseeing the royal business of his father. There follow some obscure references to personal events relating to this individual that cannot be placed in a further context especially since the next twenty‐five lines are extremely poorly preserved. However, in the middle of the badly preserved section, an individual is named, Kummaya. There is mention of entering a temple, planning to go down to the underworld, and of setting up a censor. When connected text sets in again Ereškigal, the queen of the underworld, is addressing Kummaya, who wakes up startled and confused. He then lays down to sleep and sees a night vision; there follows a long section of text in which the denizens of the underworld are mentioned by name one by one and their appearance described, beginning with Namtar, god of fate, and his spouse. This section is highly reminiscent of, and may have been inspired by another Babylonian text that is significantly longer but does much the same thing, naming with awe and describing in detail the appearance of the denizens of the underworld. Nergal, Ereškigal’s spouse, then appears to Kummaya, who kisses his feet. This would have resulted in Kummaya’s death had not Išum, Nergal’s vizier, intervened on his behalf. The remaining text is extremely dense but very rich in content. The references to the akītu house on the plain and the garden of abundance likening Mount Lebanon make it certain that the corpse of Sennacherib makes an appearance, while the description of a second individual, still alive, closely fits the persona of Esarhaddon. Kummaya is then Assurbanipal. This agrees with the references to frequenting the workshops of extispicy experts and priests, which can be brought into association with Assurbanipal’s education as crown prince and his intense interest in even the most obscure scribal esoterica. The lines quoted above are followed by another bout of agony and stress on the part of Kummaya. What is certain is that the broader background to the text is the fear and dread that had been caused at the Assyrian court by Sennacherib’s murder, following as it did on the death of Sargon on the battlefield.2

  Two further Neo‐Assyrian texts that can loosely be classified as literature but have some of the characteristics of political vignette also belong to the conflict between the pro‐Assyrian and pro‐Babylonia parties at the Neo‐Assyrian court. The hard line policy of the anti‐Babylon party implemented with drastic effect by Sennacherib had been supported by appropriate propaganda in his royal inscriptions, and with Esarhaddon’s decision to restore the cults in Babylonia, including that of Marduk in his temple Esagil, and eventually to create a kind of parity between the two lands by having them each ruled by one of his sons, clear and forceful counter‐propaganda was needed. In this context the text perhaps confusingly known as the Sin of Sargon (Livingstone 1989: no. 33) is the main piece. This text has been the subject of an extensive discussion (Tadmor et al. 1989). While it is clear that the purpose of the text is to justify religious and political policies already determined on by Esarhaddon and his followers of the pro‐Babylon party, the conceit of the text is that Sennacherib speaks from the dead saying that he had collected groups of haruspices to independently investigate through extispicy the reasons for the death of Sargon on the battlefield and the non‐recovery of his body for proper burial in Assyria. Extispicy deals only in yes or no answers and the question was whether Sargon has esteemed the gods of Assyria over those of Babylon (or perhaps rather vice versa), and there was of course a reliable answer in the affirmative. From a propaganda point of view the beauty of this is that the correctness of Esarhaddon’s planned policies are projected back to mistakes ostensibly made by the founder of the Sargonid line, thus making it unnecessary to deliberate on Sennacherib’s actual policies. Like the warning to Bel‐eṭir discussed above, the Sin of Sargon harks back to the Cuthean Legend of Naram‐Sin, appropriately since the Legend concerns a king who was portrayed as coming to grief because he ignored instructions from the gods.

  A further literary text involving the religious and mythological crises that transpired in the wake of Sennacherib’s destruction of Babylon and the Esagil, as well as once again the deportation of the Marduk statue to Assyria, is that known as the Marduk Ordeal (Livingstone 1989: nos. 34–5). This takes the form of an explanatory text, that is to say that it superficially resembles a commentary, but rather than commenting on an established text it produces gobbets of information reflecting known practices or beliefs and then provides them with an explanation or interpretation. The text exists in two versions, each of just over seventy lines; the content is varied in scope but there is a clear focus on the cult of Marduk in Babylon and the cults of those of the deities close to him: Zarpanitu, Nabû, and Belet‐ili. The interpretations turn the legitimate cult of Marduk on its head: the house of the New Year’s festival is now a place of ordeal where Marduk is questioned; Nabû comes from Borsippa because his father has been imprisoned; Zarpanitu, whose hands are stretched out in supplication to Sîn and Šamaš, is in fact praying that Marduk may live. The whole is underpinned by dense theology. Thus, Marduk’s deeds in the Epic of Creation were in fact done for Assur and at his behest and the Epic itself is actually about his imprisonment. There is also scurrilous treatment of the cult. For example, reeds that were thrown in jubilation in the path of Nabû when he came from his own city, Borsippa, to Babylon are now soiled reeds from a pigsty.3

  Finally, some fragmentary pieces of literary work that are in Neo‐Assyrian dialect or pertain to the royal court need to be brought forward since in different ways they form a sort of vignette on the literature discussed above. The first, in Neo‐Assyrian dialect (Livingstone 1989: no. 48), is actually a ritual with an accompanying incantation for childbirth but with a literary bent. That it is in dialect, that it comes from the Assurbanipal libraries, and that it does not show an affiliation with relevant medical and related material from the stream of tradition make it seem at least not impossible that it should be associated with the work of the court physicians who tended the royal children. Another text (Livingstone 1989: no. 51) reminds us of the reality of court life, the wheeling and dealing and jockeying for position. Written in the second person it accuses an unnamed individual of “dark things,” of slander, and “pocketing a shekel.” On a more positive note there is a short text of only eleven lines, and of which the whole of the left hand side has been broken off, that even in that small compass draws together several features of Neo‐Assyrian literature and its production (Livingstone 1989: no. 49). It spea
ks in one line of Gilgameš, “a royal work of art,” and in the next of a scribe of Borsippa, dwelling in the Inner City (Assur) or dwelling in Arbela, and immediately afterwards “the temple, the House of Emašmaš.” Male scribes with writing boards and styluses tied to their waists are followed by a reference to a single female figure, presumably a goddess of writing, and equipped with similar accoutrements.

  The overriding features of Neo‐Assyrian literature that emerge are clear. It had a discernable history of several centuries before its blossoming in the Sargonid period and especially the reigns of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, and within this tradition there was always a core of texts that centered around the persona of the king. Especially in the later period there is an intense literary intervention in the affairs of the day, especially religious politics, but one that bears inspiration from the older Mesopotamian tradition. Perhaps what is most striking, however, within what is such a small corpus is the sheer variety and the different types of vitality that are shown.

  References

  Ataç, M.A. 2004. “The ‘Underworld Vision’ of the Ninevite Intellectual Milieu,” Iraq 66, 67–76.

  Dercksen, J.G. 2005. “Adad is King! The Sargon Text from Kültepe,” Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux 39, 107–29.

  Foster, B.R. 2005. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, Bethesda: CDL Press.

  Foster, B.R. 2007. Akkadian Literature of the Late Period, GMTR 2, Münster: Ugarit‐Verlag.

  Frymer‐Kensky, T. 1983. “The Tribulations of Marduk: The So‐called ‘Marduk Ordeal Text,’” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103, 131–41.

  George, A.R. 2010. “The Assyrian Elegy: Form and Meaning,” in: S. Melville and A. Slotsky (eds.), Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Benjamin R. Foster, CHANE 42, Leiden/Boston: Brill, 204–16.

  Livingstone, A. 1989. Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea, State Archives of Assyria 3, Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press.

  Reiner, E. 1978. “Die akkadische Literatur,” in: W. Röllig (ed.), Altorientalische Literaturen, Wiesbaden: Athenaion, 151–210.

  Sanders, S.L. 2009. “The First Tour of Hell: From Neo‐Assyrian Propaganda to Early Jewish Revelation,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 9, 151–69.

  Tadmor, H., Landberger, B., and Parpola, S. 1989. “The Sin of Sargon and Sennacherib’s Last Will,” State Archives of Assyria Bulletin 3, 3–51.

  Further Reading

  Much less has been written about the ancient literature of Mesopotamia than about the literatures of many other areas in the ancient world. Foster (2005), referred to above, provides a kaleidoscope of translations from all periods of Akkadian. A further contribution by Foster (2007) is useful for placing Assyrian literature within its wider context of Akkadian literature, Akkadian being understood in the larger sense to include not only Old Akkadian, but also Assyrian and Babylonian. Despite its title, Akkadian Literature of the Late Period, this book is not limited to the very latest period of Mesopotamian culture, but takes a first millennium BCE perspective. The classic statement on Akkadian literature is Reiner (1978), a book that also includes chapters on Sumerian, Hittite, and other ancient Near Eastern literatures.

  Notes

  1 A new assessment will be provided by the present writer elsewhere.

  2 The text has been discussed by Ataç (2004) and Sanders (2009), among others.

  3 A differing interpretation is provided by Frymer‐Kensky (1983).

  CHAPTER 20

  Assyrian Scholarship and Scribal Culture in Ashur

  Nils P. Heeßel

  The beginnings of Assyrian scholarship are largely obscure. Evidence preceding the 13th century BCE is scant and whether or not a distinctive Assyrian tradition of scholarship existed before this time is still a matter of debate. In the early second millennium BCE, Assyrian entrepreneurs established trading colonies in Anatolia and made the town of Ashur a hub in the long‐distance trade (see the overview by Veenhof and Eidem 2008). While thousands of sales documents, letters, and lists have been found in the excavations of the main trading colony Kaniš, very few literary texts from this period have come to light. They include a tale about Sargon of Akkad (see Chapter 19), short incantations against the demoness Lamaštu (von Soden 1956; Michel 1997; Ford 1999) and a black dog (Veenhof 1996), and a letter to the goddess Tašmetum (Kryszat 2003). References to scholars or to scholarly activities in letters and other documents of daily life are rare. Apart from a few mentions of female diviners and ecstatics, divination, ritual lore, and other religious and scholarly endeavors play almost no role in Old Assyrian letters (Hirsch 1961: 72, 81).

  Assyrian Interest in Babylonian Scholarship

  The picture changes dramatically in the Middle Assyrian period. In the 14th–12th centuries BCE, the Assyrians began to take a lively interest in Babylonian scholarship, which they took over, adapted, and developed. This new interest in scholarly knowledge might, in part, be connected to the new style of Assyrian kingship: the kings believed increasingly in strengthening their power through knowledge. Babylonian scholarship was by no means an end in itself. It served the stability of the state and the well‐being of its citizens and, in particular, the well‐being and power of the king, who held the most important position in Mesopotamian society as the leader of the state and the intermediary between the worlds of the gods and of humankind. The knowledge the texts provided regarding ritual interaction with the sphere of the divine, obtaining or retrieving ritual purity and divine benevolence, recognition of the divine will through divination, the possibility of appraising the outcome of any action by extispicy (the study of animal entrails), and more, was thought to enhance the stability of the state and its ruler. At that time, Babylonia was at the forefront of scholarship, Babylonian Akkadian was the lingua franca for the entire Near East, and Babylonian knowledge was adopted in Elam, Syria, the Levant, and even in the royal courts of attuša and Tell el‐Amarna. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Assyrian kings developed an eager interest in this scholarly literature and tried to secure it also for Assyria (Pongratz‐Leisten 1999).

  The most striking evidence for this new interest is found in a passage of the so‐called “Tukulti‐Ninurta Epic,” a highly poetic literary text recounting how the Assyrian king Tukulti‐Ninurta I (1233–1197 [1243–1207] BCE) defeated his Babylonian opponent Kaštiliaš IV and describing the conquest and depredation of the capital Babylon (Machinist 1978; Foster 2005: 298–317; Jakob 2009). The text includes a lengthy list of booty taken from Babylon to Ashur that mentions clay tablets containing scholarly knowledge, among them exorcistic texts, prayers to appease the gods, collections of extispicy omens and other divinatory texts, medical treatises, and inventories. According to the epic, the looting of tablets was so complete that “not one was left in the land of Sumer and Akkad” (Foster 2005: 315). Of course, this extreme claim can be seen as literary hyperbole, yet the many Middle Babylonian scholarly texts found in excavations in Ashur illustrate the fact that Babylonian tablets with scholarly knowledge did find their way to the Assyrian capital, where they were studied and incorporated into Middle Assyrian libraries (Weidner 1952–3). The Babylonian tablets found in Ashur may indeed have been the ones mentioned in the “Tukulti‐Ninurta‐Epic,” brought to Ashur by the command of the king, even though it is also possible that they were acquired, at least in part, through more peaceful means as scholars in different cities exchanged their texts and traveled long distances to copy tablets (Frahm 2012).

  Middle Assyrian Scholarship

  Evidence for scholarly activity before Tukulti‐Ninurta, especially from the 14th and early 13th century BCE, the early, formative phase of an independent Assyrian territorial state, is still scant, but the fact that King Aššur‐uballiṭ’s (1353–1318 [1363–1328] BCE) personal scribe was of Babylonian origin can be seen as a hint toward an increasing interest in scribal lore as it existed in Babylonia (Jakob 2003: 7 and 244). Furthermore, historical texts and letters show that extispicies were carried out for th
e Assyrian kings Adad‐nirari I and Shalmaneser I. But it is the aforementioned passage in the Tukulti‐Ninurta Epic that demonstrates the Assyrian interest in the entire range of scholarly texts in the Middle Assyrian period for the first time.

  Among the Middle Babylonian tablets found in Ashur, divinatory texts constitute the largest part, making up roughly 40 percent of all texts. Within this group, by far most prominent are extispicy texts, detailing the hermeneutic principles of interpreting specific features of sheep’s livers, lungs, entrails, and other organs. The next largest corpus is the lexical texts, while prayers, hymns, fables, laws, and medical texts make up the rest of the tablets (Weidner 1952–3: 200). This distribution does not deviate from other contemporary or later Mesopotamian libraries. It is, on the contrary, quite typical, representing the broad spectrum of intellectual pursuits Mesopotamian scholars were engaged in.

  The scholars in Ashur did not content themselves with simply copying and handing down the Babylonian texts, but rather adapted and reworked them for their own needs. This can be shown clearly for some new Middle Assyrian text series, especially in the case of extispicy and lexical texts rewritten by scholars in Ashur. A Middle Assyrian lexical text that is similar to (yet displays distinct variations from) the 21st tablet of the lexical texts series named ur5‐ra = ubullu indicates that there was a Middle Assyrian version of this series (Horowitz 1988; see also Veldhuis 2014: 317–53). Within the Middle Assyrian extispicy corpus from Ashur, a distinct Assyrian text series can be substantiated as well. The relevant tablets have catch‐lines at the end of the text that refer to the first line of the following tablet, thereby forming a sequence of tablets, i.e., a text series. Both with regard to the format of the text and the selection and sequence of omens, this Middle Assyrian extispicy series shows similarities to the later, widely used extispicy series bārûtu, yet it also differs from it, particularly in the sequence of tablets. For example, a Middle Assyrian text similar to the later eighth tablet of the sub‐series “If the lung” of the bārûtu series has the catch‐line not of the ninth but of the tenth tablet of that series. Another Middle Assyrian text similar to the later tenth tablet of the same sub‐series “If the lung” bears the catch‐line of the seventh tablet (Heeßel 2012: 14). This illustrates to what extent the Assyrian scholars adapted and reworked the Babylonian tradition.