Ancient Iraq

by Georges Roux

  Immediately behind the city-wall and close to the Ishtar Gate lay the ‘Southern Citadel’ (Südburg), ‘the House the marvel of mankind, the centre of the Land, the shining Residence, the dwelling of Majesty’ – in simpler words, the palace built by Nebuchadrezzar over the smaller palace of Nabopolas-sar, his father.7 This very large building was entered from Procession Street through one single monumental gate and comprised five courtyards in succession, each of them surrounded by offices, reception rooms and royal apartments. The throne-room was enormous (c. 52 by 17 metres) and seems to have been vaulted. In contrast with the Assyrian palaces, no colossi of stone guarded the doors, no sculptured slabs or inscribed orthostats lined the walls. The only decoration – obviously intended to please the eye rather than inspire fear – consisted of animals, pseudo-columns and floral designs in yellow, white, red and blue on panels of glazed bricks. Of special interest was a peculiar construction included in the north-eastern corner of the palace. It lay below ground-level and was made of a narrow corridor and fourteen small vaulted cellars. In one of the cellars was found an unusual well of three shafts side by side, as used in connection with a chain-pump. It was extremely tempting to see in this construction the understructure of roof gardens, the famous ‘hanging gardens of Babylon’ described by classical authors and erected – so one legend tells us – by Nebuchadrezzar for the pleasure of his wife, the Median princess Amytis.8 Recent excavations there have yielded less romantic results: these rooms merely served as stores for administrative tablets.9

  To the south of the royal palace, in the middle of a vast open space surrounded by a buttressed wall, rose the ‘Tower of Babel’, the huge ziqqurat called E-temen-an-ki, ‘the Temple Foundation of Heaven and Earth’. As old as Babylon itself, damaged by Sennacherib, rebuilt by Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar, it was, as will be seen, completely destroyed, so that only its foundations could be studied by the archaeologists. Any reconstruction of Etemenanki therefore rests essentially upon the meagre data yielded by these studies, upon the eyewitness description of Herodotus, and upon the measurements given in rather obscure terms in a document called ‘the Esagila tablet’.10 It was certainly a colossal monument, 90 metres wide at its base and perhaps of equal height, with no less than seven tiers. On its southern side a triple flight of steps led to the second tier, the rest of the tower being ascended by means of ramps. At the top was a shrine (sahuru) ‘enhanced with bricks of resplendent blue enamel’, which, according to Herodotus,11 contained a golden table and a large bed and was occupied by a ‘native woman chosen from all women’ and occasionally by Marduk, this statement being sometimes taken as referring to a ‘Sacred Marriage’ rite in Babylon, for which there is no other evidence.

  E-sag-ila, ‘the Temple that Raises its Head’, was the name given to the temple of Marduk, the tutelary god of Babylon and the supreme deity of the Babylonian pantheon since the reign of Hammurabi. It was a complex of large and lofty buildings and vast courtyards lying to the south of Etemenanki, on the other side of Procession Street and not at the foot of the ziqqurat, as did most Mesopotamian temples. All the kings of Babylon had bestowed their favours upon the greatest of all sanctuaries, and Nebuchadrezzar, in particular, had lavishly rebuilt and adorned ‘the Palace of Heaven and Earth, the Seat of Kingship’:

  Silver, gold, costly precious stones, bronze, wood from Magan, everything that is expensive, glittering abundance, the products of the mountains, the treasures of the seas, large quantities (of goods), sumptuous gifts, I brought to my city of Babylon before him (Marduk).

  In Esagila, the palace of his lordship, I carried out restoration work. Ekua, the chapel of Marduk, Enlil of the gods, I made its walls gleam like the sun. With shining gold as if it were gypsum… with lapis-lazuli and alabaster I clothed the inside of the temple…

  Du-azag, the place of the Naming of Destiny… the shrine of kingship, the shrine of the god of lordship, of the wise one among the gods, of the prince Marduk, whose construction a king before me had adorned with silver, I clothed with shining gold, a magnificent ornament…

  My heart prompts me to rebuild Esagila; I think of it constantly. The best of my cedars, which I brought from Lebanon, the noble forest, I sought out for the roofing of Ekua… Inside (the temple), these strong cedar beams… I covered with shining gold. The lower beams of cedar I adorned with silver and precious stones. For the building of Esagila, I prayed every day.12

  The wealth of Esagila is also emphasized by Herodotus who, having described the ziqqurat, speaks of a ‘lower temple’:

  Where is a great golden image of Zeus (Marduk), sitting at a great golden table, and the footstool and chair are also of gold; the gold of the whole was said by the Chaldaeans to be of 800 talents' weight (3 tons). Outside the temple is a golden altar. There is also another great altar, whereon are sacrificed the full-grown of the flocks. Only sucklings may be sacrificed on the golden altar, but on the greater altar the Chaldaeans even offer a thousand talents' weight of frankincense yearly…13

  Twenty-three centuries after Herodotus visited Babylon however, the great temple of Marduk lay buried under more than twenty metres of earth and sand, making extensive excavations almost impossible. At the cost of a considerable effort, the Germans were able to unearth the main sanctuary (‘Hauptbau’) where, among the many rooms symmetrically arranged around a central courtyard, they identified Ekua, the shrine of Marduk, the smaller chapel of Marduk's consort, the goddess Sarpanitum and chapels devoted to other deities, such as Ea and Nabû. Of an adjacent building (‘Anbau’), only the outer walls and gates could be traced. Thoroughly plundered in antiquity, Esagila yielded practically no object of value. On top of the artificial hill that concealed it the tomb of 'Amran ibn 'Ali, a companion of the Prophet, perpetuates for the Moslems the sacred character attached to that part of Babylon.

  The New Year Festival

  Once a year, in the spring, the religiosity diffused throughout Sumer and Akkad crystallized in Babylon. For several days the thoughts of the entire population were focused on the ceremonies which took place in the capital-city, because they offered an answer to the fears and hopes of every Mesopotamian. It was felt that mankind shared in the great renewal undergone by nature, that the past was abolished, that the cosmos momentarily reverted to chaos, that the fate of the country depended upon the judgement pronounced by the gods. Nothing short of a complex ritual loaded with magical virtues could solve the unavoidable crisis and put an end to the terrible uncertainty that overwhelmed the human race.

  The New Year Festival, or akîtu, as celebrated in Babylon during the first millennium B.C.,14 resulted from the confluence of two powerful currents of religious thought: an extremely old Fertility Cult, consisting of seasonal feasts and a ‘Sacred Marriage’ ceremony, which is only attested in certain cities and up to the first half of the second millennium B.C., and a comparatively more recent cosmogony developed by the theologians of Nippur, wherein the creation of the world was attributed to Enlil following his victory over Tiamat and the forces of Chaos. After the world was created, a general assembly of the gods presided by the ‘Lord Wind’ decreed the Destinies of the Land, the fate of humanity. Creation and the naming of Destiny were not unique and final, but annual and conditional. The great cosmic struggle was believed to take place every year and its outcome was unpredictable. In the Babylonian akîtu-festival, the passage of nature from want to fruitfulness was made to coincide with the restoration of divine order, and the main role was played by Marduk, who combined the personality of Enlil, champion and king of the gods, with his own personality of fertilizing city-god.

  The New Year Festival began on the day called zagmuk, in the month of Nisan (March – April), and lasted eleven or twelve days. The tablets which describe it are unfortunately damaged, but enough is legible for us to follow, albeit with some gaps, the ceremonies of the first six days. From what remains concerning the first day we can only gather that a priest unlocked the ‘Lofty Gate’ of Esagila and opened its gr
eat courtyard. On the second day the great-priest (sheshgallu) rose before dawn and washed himself with Euphrates water; he then entered the temple, recited a secret prayer asking Marduk to bestow his favours on Babylon and its people, and let in the erib bîti priests, the incantators (kalû) and the singers, who performed their rites. What follows is too fragmentary to be understood, but it seems that it referred to difficult times, speaking of ‘forgotten rites’, ‘enemies’ and ‘malediction of Marduk’. The third day began very much like the second day, but three artisans were summoned and provided with material to make two statuettes of wood adorned with precious stones and clad in red garments; one statuette was brandishing a serpent, the other a scorpion. On the fourth day prayers to Marduk and his spouse Sarpanitum were chanted in the early morning, and after the second meal, in the late afternoon, the sheshgallu-priest recited the long poem Enuma elish (the Epic of Creation) in its entirety, whilst Anu's tiara and Enlil's seat remained covered by deference to these gods who, in the Epic, had been replaced by Marduk.

  The first part of the fifth day was devoted to the purification of the temple. A specialized priest, the mashmashu went around Esagila with a censer and a torch, sprinkled its walls with Tigris water and smeared them with cedar resin. A slaughterer was then called in to cut off the head of a sheep, take its body around inside the temple and, with the help of the priest, throw head and body into the river, the ‘scapegoat’ being supposed to take away all the sins of the previous year; whereupon both the mashmashu and the slaughterer left Babylon to remain in the open country until the end of the Festival. The sheshgallu – who had kept away from these ceremonies to avoid becoming impure – ordered craftsmen to cover the shrine of Marduk's son, Nâbu,– who was then travelling by boat from Barsippa (Birs Nimrud)15 to Babylon – with a veil of blue material embroidered with gold.

  In the evening, the king proceeded to Esagila. Before the statue of Marduk, he surrendered the insignia of kingship – the sceptre, the circle and the mace – to the sheshgallu-priest, who deposited them on a chair in front of Marduk, and then struck the king on the cheek:

  He (the priest), says the ritual to which we owe these details, shall accompany him (the king) into the presence of the god Bêl… he shall drag him by the ears and make him bow down to the ground… The king shall speak the following (only) once:

  ‘I did not sin, lord of the countries. I was not neglectful of your godship. I did not destroy Babylon; I did not command its overthrow… The temple Esagila, I did not forget its rites. I did not rain blows on the cheek of a subordinate… I did not humiliate them. I watched out for Babylon; I did not smash its walls…’

  The priest reassured the king:

  ‘Have no fear… The god Bêl will listen to your prayer… He will magnify your lordship… He will exalt your kingship… The god Bêl will bless you for ever. He will destroy your enemy, fell your adversary.’

  The king was given back his insignia and struck once more:

  He (the priest) shall strike the king's cheek. If, when he strikes the king's cheek, the tears flow, (it means that) the god Bêl is friendly; if no tears appear, the god Bêl is angry: the enemy will rise up and bring about his downfall.16

  The symbolism of this humiliating ritual is clear: the king, scapegoat of the community, atoned for his sins and was reminded that he owed his powers to none but the gods. Later in the night, he took part in other ceremonies involving the burning of a bull in a fire of reeds.

  All we know about the sixth day is that Nabû arrived from Barsippa and that, at the same time, the two ‘statuettes of evil’, which had been made three days before, were decapitated and their heads cast into fire. Our main narrative breaks off here, but other texts indicate that other gods reached Babylon, notably from Sippar, Kutha and Kish. On the ninth day, the king entered Marduk's shrine, ‘took his hand’ – a gesture which came to summarize the royal participation in the Festival17 – and installed him in the ubshukkinna chapel, together with the other deities. In this first divine assembly was proclaimed the sovereignty of Marduk, as stated in the Epic of Creation and the Destinies were named for the first time. A great, solemn cortége was then formed, including the statues of all the gods and goddesses. Headed by Marduk on his chariot glittering with gold and precious stones and led by the king, it went down Procession Street across Babylon in an aura of incense, songs and music, while people were kneeling down in adoration as it passed by. Through Ishtar Gate the cortége left the city, and after a short journey on the Euphrates, reached the bît akîtu, a temple filled with plants and flowers in the middle of a large park.18 We lack details concerning the ceremonies which took place there but the triumph of Marduk over the forces of evil was certainly celebrated.19 The gods stayed in the bît akîtu for three days. On the eleventh of Nisan they returned to Esagila, where they assembled again to decree, once more, ‘the Destinies of the Land’. What is meant by this vague expression, we do not know exactly. Perhaps oracles concerning definite events, such as wars, famines, inundations, etc., were pronounced; perhaps the gods simply reaffirmed their protection over the Babylonians and their monarch in general terms. The session ended in a huge banquet accompanied by music and prayers. On the twelfth of Nisan all the gods who had come to Babylon returned to their respective cities, the priests to their temples, the king to his palace. The great New Year Festival was over.

  Economic Life

  From the lofty summits of religious thought to the mundane realities of economic life the distance in Chaldaean Babylonia was not very great, since in many places the clergy cared for both the spiritual and material needs of the population. For instance, the archives of E-Anna, the great sanctuary of Uruk, show that the temple owned large estates which were partly let out to tenants, carried out extensive trade within and outside Mesopotamia and formed a social and economic unit almost independent of the central government.20 These various activities were directed by an ‘administrator’ (shatammu), assisted by an ‘overseer’ (qipu) and by the head scribe (tupshar bîti). The temple employed a considerable number of people: notables (mâr bâni) and artisans (ummane) engaged in various professions. Hired men and slaves ploughed and harvested its fields, dug and maintained its canals, grazed its cattle and flocks, and assured the transportation and storage of goods. Among the temple servants special mention should be made of the shirkê (sing. shirku), literally ‘consecrated‘, men and women of different social classes who had been ‘offered’ in perpetuity to the temple, performed various tasks, received no pay, but were fed and kept by the clergy.21 The produce of the land, the profits of trade, the rent of fields and houses, taxes levied on the community and part of the offerings and sacrifices – in theory optional, but in practice compulsory – constituted the revenues of the temple. A similar organization probably existed in other cities, though most of the documents from Babylon, Sippar, Nippur, Barsippa and Ur published up to now deal mainly with transactions between individuals.2 2

  The importance assumed at least by some temples under the Chaldaean dynasty probably originated in the tenth and eleventh centuries B.C. Prior to that date, the general trend in history had been towards a gradual reduction of the temples' privileges through the creation of large royal estates and the development of private property. But during the ‘dark age’ of Aramaean invasion events took a different course. Despite the lack of written evidence, we may reasonably assume that while the invaders ransacked and occupied the open country, the Mesopotamian farmers and craftsmen took refuge in or immediately around the cities, and put themselves at the service of the only remaining authority, the local clergy. The temples then became the social, economic and cultural centres of southern Mesopotamia – a state of affairs reminiscent of the role played by the monasteries in our Middle Ages – with unlimited facilities for enlarging their domains. Under the Assyrian domination, when texts again become available, it appears that the wealth of Babylonia was concentrated in her ‘holy cities’. The kings of Assyria, who relied a great deal
upon the temples to maintain the political stability of Babylonia, bestowed their favours upon them and generally exempted them from taxes and duties; but they also kept them under tight administrative control and, on occasion, ‘borrowed’ from their treasures.23 The collapse of Assyria to a great extent freed the temples from governmental interference, and if Nabopolassar and Nebuchadrezzar, out of personal devotion and faithfulness to a well-established tradition, materially rebuilt and adorned the sanctuaries, they abstained from interfering with their organization and contented themselves with a twenty per cent return on their revenue. Nabonidus, however, attempted to bring the temples' business under closer royal scrutiny. We know that in 553 he appointed two high officials – the ‘Royal Officer Lord of the Appointment’ and the ‘Royal Officer over the King's Coffer’ – over the E-Anna of Uruk, with instructions to supervise its transactions and ensure the regular collection of royal tithe and taxes. In all probability it was this, more than the king's ‘heresy’, which alienated the priests from him and threw them on Cyrus's side.