‘O Esarhaddon, king of all the lands, do not fear! Which wind has ever blown against you, whose wings I have not broken? Your enemies fall like ripe apples at your feet. I am the Great Lady, I am Ishtar of Arbela, who throws your enemies at your feet! Which of my words, that I ever said to you, you could not rely on? I am Ishtar of Arbela, I will set up an ambush for your enemies, I will give them to you. I am Ishar of Arbela, I walk before you and behind you: do not fear! (Spoken by Ishtar-la-tashiat, (woman) of the city of Arbela.)’
Apart from positive responses, there were negative omens. If they were discovered as a response to a request on whether or not to engage in an action, they naturally discouraged it, with limitative and negative consequences. Moreover, there were negative omens containing worrying predictions of misfortunes. In these cases, it was necessary to implement magical counter-interventions, meant to remove the effects of the omen, or at least divert them. When negative omens affected the king himself, the practice of substituting the king was resumed. Therefore, an individual formally took over the role of the king for the period predicted by the omen, while the king stayed in a safe place. At the peak of the dangerous phase, the substitute king was killed, in order to remove the predicted misfortune once and for ah.
This procedure, as rare and extreme as it was, clearly shows the marked formal and ritualistic tendencies of the Assyrians. These tendencies were typical of this period, and developed alongside a variety of magical measures. On a private level, there were the apotropaic namburbu rituals, which provided individuals with the means (namely, incantations to be recited and actions to be executed) to face any kind of risk. The ‘classical’ magical rituals, such as the Surpu and Maqlu series, were widespread in this period. These series standardised the incantations to be pronounced while burning the ‘magical material’, which symbolised the evil or the enemy. This formality peaked with the endless lists of possible enemies, made in order to include all possibilities, ensuring that the protective barrier meant to guard the person had no defects. Spells and exorcisms were made on the enemy’s tracks, his clothes, hair, nails, and so on. In order to prevent the dangerous use of this magic, the nails of the Assyrian king were cut, placed in a small bottle, and thrown away at the far end of the world, where nobody could find them or use them.
On a more historical and political level, apart from these common practices, which provide a good representation of the time, the tendency towards magical formalities gradually acquired more importance. Sources from the ninth century bc still present political and military relations between the Assyrians and their neighbouring populations in a realistic way. Thus, we have sequences of rebellions and punitive expeditions, of missed tributes and destroyed cities, of atrocities and triumphs. All of this was certainly achieved through the superior support of the gods, but was led with a human point of view. With the eighth and seventh century bc, the presentation of events changed. The enemy did not rebel against the Assyrians, but violated the oath sworn in the name of the gods. Therefore, the enemy was not punished by the Assyrian king per se, but by the intrinsic effectiveness of the oath. This was because divine punishment was able to reach beyond human intervention. The oath (ade) became the heart of all political relations, both within the state and outside of it. The fundamental importance of the oath intrinsically justified any reaction. This means that the enemy was to blame not for disrespecting the Assyrian king, but the gods. Therefore, an enemy, traitor, or rebel, was not defined from a subjective and interpersonal point of view anymore, but from a more objective and cosmic one.
The Assyrian king maintained his central role in the religious system of his land. This centrality was ancient, and was based on the figure of the king as ‘delegate’ of the god Ashur. The king was the protagonist of the rituals of the Assyrian cultic calendar. With the eighth century bc, he was at the centre both of the system of sworn loyalty oaths, and of the network of information (omens) and magical solutions. In this system, the role of the priesthood from the numerous Assyrian temples seems rather marginal. Naturally, the number of temples increased. Alongside the traditional Assyrian ones, several temples of Babylonian origins were added. The Assyrian kings continued to restore, decorate, and enlarge them, and boast about these changes. However, the influence of the priesthood of the individual temples on the political management of the empire seems to have become rather limited. A centre such as Ashur (or even Harran, about which we know far less) was predominantly seen as a temple-city, and for this reason was granted exemptions. Meanwhile, the political centre of the empire was moved to ‘virgin’ sites, in which the surface occupied by the palace, deposits, storehouses, and fortifications was far superior than the area occupied by temples. The expressive code of the Assyrian political ideology remained predominantly religious, but the divine sphere was purely a hypostasis of Assyrian kingship and its political power. After all, it is sufficient to move our attention from the celebrative inscriptions to other administrative texts and letters to note the secular nature of the Assyrian state. The latter indeed featured the absence of priests in the imperial elite, the purely figurative formality of invocations to the gods, and the absolute centrality of the king.
World History
