To understand the severity of this unauthorized act, one needs recall that Bab-ili (as 'Babylon' was called in Akkadian) meant 'Gateway of the Gods', a sanctified place; and that Marduk was persuaded to give up his attempt on condition that the site will be left undisturbed, as 'hallowed ground'. Now Sargon "took away soil from the foundations of Babylon" to use as foundation soil for another Gateway of the Gods, adjoining Agade. The sacrilege naturally enraged Marduk, and reignited the clan conflicts. But Sargon not only broke the taboo regarding Babylon—he also planned to create at Agade his (or Inanna's?) own 'Gateway of the Gods'; and that angered Enlil.
* * *
The resulting prompt removal (and death) of Sargon did not end the 'Era of Ishtar'. With the consent of Enlil, she placed Sargon's son Rimush on the throne in Agade; but he was replaced after a brief nine years by his brother Manishtushu, who lasted fifteen years. Then Naram-Sin, the son of Manishtushu, ascended the throne—and once more, Inanna/ Ishtar had as king a man to her heart's desire.
Naram-Sin, whose theophoric name meant "Whom [the god] Sin loves," used the Akkadian name Sin of Inanna's father rather than the Sumerian Nannar. Capably building on the imperial foundations attained by his grandfather, he combined military expeditions with the expansion of commerce, sponsoring trading posts by Sumerian merchants in far-flung places and creating trade routes on an international scale, reaching as far north as the boundary of the Hittite domain of Ishkur/Adad, Nannar's brother.
Naram-Sin's two-track policy of stick and carrot, however, failed to counter the rising number of cities, especially in the west, siding with Marduk's renewed ambitions for supremacy. Highlighting the fact that his spouse, Sarpanit, was an Earthling and that his Earthborn son Nabu also married one (named Tashmetum), Marduk was gaining adherents among the masses. In Egypt, where Marduk/Ra has been worshipped as the hidden Amen/Amon, the expectations for Marduk's ultimate victory were reaching messianic fervor, and Egyptian Pharaohs began to thrust northward, to seize control of the Mediterranean's coastal lands.
It was thus that, with the blessing and guidance of Inanna/Ishtar, Naram-Sin launched against the "sinning cities" in the west what was by that time the greatest military expedition ever. Capturing what was later known as Canaan, he kept advancing all the way south to Magan (ancient Egypt). There, his inscriptions state, "he personally caught the king of Magan." His merciless advance and capture of adversary kings was commemorated on a stone plaque that showed a glowing Ishtar offering him a victory wreath (Fig. 102). Having entered and crossed
Figure 102
Figure 103
the forbidden Fourth Region with its Spaceport, Naram-Sin haughtily depicted himself on a victory stela (Fig. 103) godlike astride a rocketship to the heavens. He then went to Nippur to demand that Enlil endorse him as "King of the Four Regions." Enlil was not there; so "Like a hero accustomed to high handedness he put a restraining hand on the Ekur," Enlil's sacred precinct.
These were unprecedented acts of disobedience and sacrilege; Enlil's reaction is detailed in a text known as The Curse of Agade. He summoned the Anunnaki leadership to an Assembly; all the great gods, Enki included, attended—but Inanna did not show up. Ensconed in the venerated Eanna temple in Uruk, she sent back defying words, demanding that the gods declare her "Great Queen of Queens"—the supreme female deity.
"The heavenly Kingship was seized by a female!" the ancient text noted in astonishment; "Inanna changed the rules of Holy Anu!"
In their Assembly, the gods' decision was made—to put an end to all that by wiping Agade off the face of the Earth. Troops loyal to Ninurta from Gutium, a land across the Zagros Mountains, were brought in, and they systematically destroyed Agade to oblivion. The gods decreed that its remains shall never be found; and indeed, to this day, no one is even certain where exactly Agade had been located. With the death of the city, Naram-Sin too was gone from the records.
As to Inanna/Ishtar, her father Nannar/Sin fetched her from Uruk to Ur. "Her mother Ningal greeted her back at the temple's entrance. 'Enough, enough innovations' to Inanna she said," according to the texts; her home was to be with Nannar's family in the sacred precinct of Ur.
By 2255 B.C., the 'Era of Ishtar' was over. But the empire which she had brought about—as well as the challenges to olden authority—left their permanent mark on the ancient Near East.
* * *
For about a century thereafter, there was no kingship in a national capital in Sumer and Akkad. "Who was king? Who was not king?" the Sumerian King List itself noted as a way of describing the situation. De facto the country was administered by Ninurta from his 'cult center' in Lagash—a city whose written records, artifacts, and sculptures have served as a major source of information about Sumer, the Sumerians, and the Sumerian civilization.
Archaeological and documentary evidence from the site (now called
Tello) shows that circa 2600/2500 B.C.—about three centuries before Sargon of Akkad—dynastic rule began in Lagash with a ruler named Lugal.shu.engur; that first dynasty included such famed demigod heroes as Eannatum (of artificial insemination fame). Dynastic rule continued in Lagash uninterrupted for more than half a millennium, indicating outstanding stability throughout turbulent times; the list of its kings runs to 43 names!
The kings of Lagash, who preferred the title Patesi (= 'Governor') to that of Lugal, left behind countless votive and other inscriptions. To judge by the textual evidence, those were enlightened kings who strived to shape the people's lives in accordance with their god's high standards of justice and morality; the greatest honor a king could attain was to be granted by Ninurta the epithet 'Righteous Shepherd'. A king named Urukagina instituted, some 4,500 years ago, a code of laws that prohibited the abuse of official powers, the "taking away" of a widow's donkey, or the delay by a supervisor of the wages of daily workers. Public works, such as canals for irrigation and transportation, and communal buildings, were deemed a personal duty of the king. Festivals that involved the whole populace, such as the Festival of First Fruits, were introduced; literacy, evidenced by some of the most perfect cuneiform script, was encouraged; and some of the finest Sumerian sculptures—two thousand years before classic Greece!—come from Lagash (see Figs. 31, 33).
Yet none of the Lagash rulers are mentioned in the Sumerian •King List, and Lagash had never served as a national capital. Once the seat of national Kingship was transferred from Kish to Uruk—in religio-political terms, from the aegis of Ninurta to the dominance of Inanna—what Ninurta did was to establish his own redoubt, protected by what were then the best trained troops in the land, outside the reach of Inanna's whims and ambitions. So it was from Lagash that Ninurta restored Enlilite authority and brought about a century of respite to Sumer after the Inanna/Naram-Sin upheavals; but it was a shrinking Sumer & Akkad, subjected to relentless pressures as Marduk continued to seek Supremacy on Earth.
It was to counteract those ambitions that circa 2160 B.C. Enlil authorized Ninurta to erect, in Lagash, an astonishing and unique new temple that would declare Ninurta's claim to supremacy. To make it clear, the temple was to be called E.Ninnu—"House/Temple of Fifty," affirming Ninurta as the 'next Enlil' with the Rank of Fifty, just below Anu's 60.
Some of the most extensive inscriptions found in the excavated remains of Lagash—with amazing details that could come out of a Twilight Zone TV episode—concern the building of that new temple in the Girsu (the sacred precinct of Lagash) by a king named Gudea (= 'The Anointed One'). The story, which is recorded on clay cylinders that are now on display in the Louvre museum in Paris, began with a dream that Gudea had. In the dream, "a man, bright and shining like heaven ... who wore the headdress of a god" appeared and commanded Gudea to build him a temple. A female, "a woman carrying the structure of a temple on her head," appeared next; holding a tablet with a celestial map, she pointed at a particular star. Then a second male deity appeared, holding in one hand a tablet with a design on it and in the other hand a building brick.
&
nbsp; Awakened, Gudea was astounded to discover the tablet with the design lying on his lap, and the building brick in a basket by his side! Completely baffled by the experience (commemorated by Gudea in one of his statues, Fig. 104), Gudea journeyed to the "House of Fate- solving," abode of the goddess Nina in her cult center Sirara, and asked her to solve the dream and the meaning of the out-of-nowhere objects.
The first god, Nina said, was Nin.girsu (= 'Lord of the Girsu', alias Ninurta); "for thee to build a new temple he commands." The goddess is Nisaba; "to build the temple in accordance with the Holy Planet she instructs thee." The other god is Ningishzidda; the sacred brick he gave you, is to be used as a mold; the carrying-basket means that you have been assigned the task of construction; the tablet with the design on it is the architectural plan of the seven-stage temple; its name, she said, shall be E.Ninnu.
With most other kings just proud to engage in repairing existing temples, the choosing of Gudea to build a brand new one from
Figure 104
foundations up was an unusual honor. With joy he set out to build it, mobilizing the whole populace for the project. The architectural requirements, he found out, were far from simple; there was to be at the top a domed observatory—"shaped like the vault of heaven"—to determine star and planetary positions after nightfall, and in the forecourt two stone circles were to be erected to determine constellations af the moment of sunrise on Equinox Day. There was also need to construct two special sunken enclosures, one for Ninurta's aircraft, the "Divine Black Bird," and the other for his "Awesome Weapon." In his clearly written inscriptions in perfect Sumerian script (example, Fig. 105) Gudea states that he had to go back repeatedly to the deities for guidance, and "had no good sleep until it was completed." At one point he was ready to give up, but in a "command-vision" was ordered "the building of the Lord's House, the Eninnu, to complete."
The preliminary events and details of the complex construction are inscribed on what is called Gudea Cylinder A. 'Cylinder B' is devoted to the elaborate rites connected with the temple s inauguration—precisely on
Figure 105
New Year's Day—and the ceremonies attendant on the arrival of Ningirsu and Bau at the Girsu and their entry into their new temple-home. It ends with a recorded blessing of Gudea by Bau in gratitude for his construction efforts; his reward was Nam.ti muna.sud—"His Lifetime Sustained/ Prolonged" (without an explanation how it was granted).
Introducing himself in Cylinder A, Gudea stated that the goddess Nina—a daughter of Enlil and Ninlil, a half-sister of Ninurta—was his mother, repeatedly calling her "my mother" in Cylinder A; and in the blessing by Bau at the end of Cylinder B, she twice referred to him as "son of Nina." These texts also shed light on the manner of his birth: The goddess Nina brought him forth from seed implanted in her womb by the goddess Bau: "The germ of me thou didst receive within thyself, in a sacred place thou didst bring me forth," he said to Nina; he was "a child by Bau brought forth."
Gudea, in other words, asserted that he was a demigod, engendered by Bau and Nina of the Enlil/Ninurta clan.
* * *
The challenge posed to Marduk by the Eninnu temple was compounded by the roles of the deities Ningishzidda and Nisaba—both known and worshipped in Egypt: The former as the god Thoth and the latter as the goddess Sesheta. The active participation of Ningishzidda/Thoth in the project was especially significant, since he was a son of Enki/ Ptah and a half-brother of Marduk/Ra, with whom he had repeatedly quarreled. That was not the only inner rift with Marduk: His other half-brother, Nergal (spouse of Enlil's granddaughter Ereshkigal), also sided frequently with the Enlilites.
Yet all that failed to stop Marduk and Nabu from gaining adherents and territorial control. The growing problem for the Enlilites was the fact that Ninurta, the presumptive heir to Enlil and Anu, had come from Nibiru—whereas Marduk and Nabu had Earthling affinities. In desperation, the Enlilites dropped the 'Ninurta Strategy' and switched to a 'Sin Tactic', transferring the seat of national Kingship to Ur—the 'cult center' of Nannar, an Earthborn son of Enlil, who unlike Ninurta also had an Akkadian name: Sin.
Ur, situated between Eridu to the south and Uruk in the north along the Euphrates River, was by then Sumer's thriving commercial and manufacturing center; its very name, which meant "urban, domesticated place," came to mean not just 'city' but 'The City' and spelled prosperity and well-being. Its gods (see Fig. 97) Nannar/Sin and his spouse Ningal (Nikkal in Akkadian) were greatly beloved by the people of Sumer; unlike other Enlilites, Nannar/Sin was not a combatant in the wars of the gods. His selection was meant to signal to people everywhere, even in the "rebel lands," that under his leadership an era of peace and prosperity will begin.
In Ur the deities' temple-abode was a great ziggurat that rose in stages within a walled sacred precinct, where a variety of structures housed priests, officials, and servants. One of the buildings within the walled section was the Gipar (= 'Nighttime Abode') within which was the Gigunu, the 'Chamber of nighttime pleasures' for the god; for though Nannar/Sin was monogamous and had only one spouse (Ningal), he could (and did) enjoy in the Gipar the company of hierod- ules ('Pleasure Priestesses') as well as concubines (by whom he could have children).
Beyond those walls there extended a magnificent city with two harbors and canals linking it to the Euphrates River (Fig. 106), a great city
Figure 106
with the king's palace, administrative buildings, lofty gates, avenues for promenading, a public square for festivals, a marketplace, multilevel private dwellings (many two-storied), schools, workshops, merchants' warehouses, and animal stalls. The imposing ziggurat with its monumental stairways (see Fig. 35), though long in ruins, dominates the landscape to this day, even after more than 4,000 years.
(Ur, let it be noted, was the 'Ur of the Chaldees' in which the biblical story of Abraham the Hebrew began, the starting point of his migration to Harran and then to Canaan. Born in Nippur, Abram grew up in Ur where his father served as a Tirhu, an Omen Priest skilled in astronomy. How his tale and mission interlocked with the events and fate of Sumer, has been told by us in detail in The Wars of Gods and Men)
To restart afresh Kingship in and from Sumer, the choice of a new king was also carefully made. The new king, named Ur-Nammu (= 'The joy of Ur'), was selected by Enlil and approved by Anu; and he was no mere Earthling—he was a demigod. Born in Uruk, he was a son—"the beloved son"—of the goddess Ninsun (who had been the mother of Gilgamesh)—a birth (according to the inscriptions) approved by Anu and Enlil and witnessed by Nannar/Sin. Since this divine genealogy (including the claim that Ninharsag helped raise him) was restated in numerous inscriptions during Ur-Nammu's reign, in the presence of Nannar and other gods, one must assume that the claim was factual, k was a claim that placed Ur-Nammu in the very same status as that of Gilgamesh, whose exploits were well remembered and whose name remained revered. The choice was thus a signal, to friends and foes alike, that the glorious days under the unchallenged authority of Enlil and his clan were back.
The inscriptions, the monuments, and the archaeological evidence attest that Ur-Nammu's reign witnessed extensive public works, restoration of river navigation, and the rebuilding and protection of the country's highways. There was a surge in arts, crafts, schools, and other improvements in social and economic life. Enlil and Ninlil were honored with renovated and magnified temples; and for the first time in
Sumer's history, the priesthood of Nippur was combined with that of Ur, leading to a religious revival. (It was at that time, by our calculations, that the Omen Priest Terab, Abram's father, was transferred from Nippur to Ur.)
Treaties with neighboring rulers to the east and northeast spread the prosperity and well-being; but the enmity stirred up by Marduk and Nabu in the west was rising. The situation in the "rebel lands" and "sinning cities" bordering the Mediterranean Sea demanded action, and in 2096 B.C., Ur-Nammu launched a military campaign against them. But as great a builder and economic 'shepherd' as
he was, he failed as a military leader: In the midst of battle his chariot got stuck in the mud; Ur-Nammu fell off it and was "crushed like a jug." The tragedy was compounded when the boat returning Ur-Nammu's body to Sumer "in an unknown place had sunk; the waves sank it down, with him on board."
When news of the defeat and the tragic death of Ur-Nammu reached Ur, a great lament went up. The people could not understand how such a religiously devout king, a righteous shepherd—a demigod!—could perish so ingeniously. "Why did the Lord Nana not hold him by the hand?" they asked; "Why did Inanna, Lady of Heaven, not put her noble arm around his head? Why did the valiant Utu not assist him?" There could be only one plausible explanation, the people of Ur and Sumer concluded: "Enlil deceitfully changed his decree"—these great gods went back- on their word; and faith in them was profoundly shaken.
It was probably not by chance that exactly upon the shocking death of Ur-Nammu in 2096 B.C. Abram's father moved his family from Ur to Harran (= 'The Caravanry'), a major city at what was then Sumer's link with the Land of the Hittites. Situated at the headwaters of the Euphrates River and located at the crossroads of international trade and military land and river routes, Harran was surrounded by fertile meadows perfect for sheepherding. It was founded and settled by merchants from Ur who came there for its local sheep's wool, skins, and leather and imported metals and rare stones, and brought in exchange Ur's famed woolen garments and carpets. The city also boasted the second largest temple to Nannar/Sin after Ur and was often called "the second Ur."
There Were Giants Upon the Earth Page 24
