The lack of specifically Kassite elements in Babylonia is also attested in Babylonian religion. The only frequently cited Kassite deities, who would survive within the Babylonian pantheon, were Shuqamuna and Shumaliya. These were the guardian deities of the ruling dynasty. Other deities, such as Harbe, Marutash and Buriash are attested in the names of Kassite kings, and in lists providing their Babylonian equivalents. It is highly significant that these names frequently changed and were still uncertain. This is because the Kassite deities were difficult to identify with Mesopotamian deities.
In the pantheon of Nippur, the city from which the vast majority of Kassite texts come from, Enlil remained the main deity. However, the now consolidated role of Babylon as political capital allowed the rise in popularity of its patron deity, Marduk. This tendency had already begun under Hammurabi, and would acquire a more systematic coherence under Nebuchadnezzar I. The important role of Babylon as a political centre was therefore mirrored by its equally important role as a cultic centre, with the gods of the other cities gravitating around it. Alongside the prestigious gods of the previous period, such as the moon-god, Sin of Ur, or the solar god, Shamash of Larsa and Sippar, new gods entered the pantheon, most notably Nabu of Borsippa and Nergal of Kutha.
Apart from geo-political factors, this evolution was a consequence of the general tendencies of the time. The cult of Shamash, god ofjustice, and Adad, the heroic and belligerent god, had been widespread in the previous period, due to their largely social and positive qualities. Within the characteristic mentality of the Kassite period, Marduk, the exorcising god, Nabu, the god of wisdom, and Gula, goddess of medicine, became the most popular deities of Babylonia. This is because they took care of an individual’s moral and physical evils. In other words, justice and heroism ceased to be the prevailing models, and each person began to have faith in exorcisms or learned considerations about life.
In the Old Babylonian period, gods had already visibly evolved from mere expressions of natural forces to expressions of moral values. This evolution became even more prominent in the Kassite period. This period shows a marked preference for a more personal type of deity. The latter could have had the name and personality of one of the great deities of the official pantheon. However, this type of deity was willing to establish a personal tie with an individual, becoming his confidant, the receiver of his prayers and sacrifices, his advisor on the correct remedies to implement, and his saviour. Consequently, personal prayers became a common way to express this personal relation between man and god. While scribes standardised the ‘classical’ list of the Babylonian pantheon, listing thousands of gods, each individual worshipper began to prefer a single deity, able to embody the divine sphere as a whole, so as to successfully interact with people’s lives.
Man became the object of a fight between the negative forces (from illness to failure, defamation, poverty and impotence) afflicting him, and the positive forces meant to remove evils through exorcisms. Diagnostic interventions (such as omens) and remedies (such as exorcisms) could not entirely solve the problem, since the ultimate cause of the difficulties or successes was the person’s sin or faith in the gods. In theory, this moral and theological aspect was essential. However, the practical aspect of diagnostic and curative measures had a far more crucial role in daily life and popular opinion.
Evil forces were provided with their own personality. Some gods, at times even major ones, belonged to negative realms, such as Nergal, god of pestilence, while illnesses and accidents became minor demons. Similarly, divine positive forces aimed to support humankind became some sort of personal ‘guardian angels’, divided into four figures: ilu, a protective god; istaru, some sort of goddess of fortune; lamassu, the protective genie; and sedu, a sort of personification of the elan vital. Therefore, alongside the strong tendencies towards formalism and exorcism, the Kassite period also shows a considerable degree of introspection, placing those divine forces formerly external to people on an internal and personal level.
Formalism and standardisation were also the cause for the increased importance of the symbolic representations of gods and their diffusion in the private sphere, mainly in the form of seals and kudurrus. The kudurrus, the boundary stones mentioned above, left considerable space to curses. In the depicted section, the kudurrus also left space to divine symbols, as if the measures established by the king would not have been followed without mentioning divine punishments. The repetitiveness and lack of space on these kudurru led to the transformation of symbols and curses into specific stereotyped formulas for each deity. In some cases, the symbols represented animals, such as Adad’s bull or Gula’s dog. In other cases, there were astral symbols (mainly for Sin, Shamash and Ishtar), a clear mark of a tendency towards that astral interpretation of the divine sphere that would peak in the first millennium bc. Finally, there were symbols depicting typical divine weapons or tools, such as Marduk’s spade and Nabu’s stylus, at times chosen as a result ofpeculiar word games. All these exorcisms, amulets, symbols and formulas indicate how Babylonian religion moved its attention from political relations to interpersonal relations, and, finally, intrapersonal ones.
World History
