In the Garden of the Gods

Models of Kingship from the Sumerians to the Seleucids

Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317117759
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Examining the evolution of kingship in the Ancient Near East from the time of the Sumerians to the rise of the Seleucids in Babylon, this book argues that the Sumerian emphasis on the divine favour that the fertility goddess and the Sun god bestowed upon the king should be understood metaphorically from the start and that these metaphors survived in later historical periods, through popular literature including the Epic of Gilgameš and the Enuma Eliš. The author's research shows that from the earliest times Near Eastern kings and their scribes adapted these metaphors to promote royal legitimacy in accordance with legendary exempla that highlighted the role of the king as the establisher of order and civilization. As another Gilgameš and, later, as a pious servant of Marduk, the king renewed divine favour for his subjects, enabling them to share the 'Garden of the Gods'. Seleucus and Antiochus found these cultural ideas, as they had evolved in the first millennium BCE, extremely useful in their efforts to establish their dynasty at Babylon. Far from playing down cultural differences, the book considers the ideological agendas of ancient Near Eastern empires as having been shaped mainly by class — rather than race-minded elites.

1 Dying kings in the ANE

Gilgameš and his travels in the garden of power

… ἀθάνατος ἂν ἡ ψυχὴ εἴη, ὥστε θαρροῦντα χρὴ ὃ μὴ τυγχάνεις ἐπιστάμενος νῦν—τοῦτο δ᾽ ἐστὶν ὃ μὴ μεμνημένος—ἐπιχειρεῖν ζητεῖν καὶ ἀναμιμνῄσκεσθαι;

Plato, Meno 86b¹

In this chapter I will investigate mythic episodes found in ANE traditions discussing the establishment of kingship. Early kings, such as Gilgameš, are represented in myth as having a special relationship with the gods through which, I argue, they get to define human nature (specifically our mortal condition) and culture (understood as our attempt to overcome our physical limitations through commemoration).² As mediators between the physical and metaphysical realms the kings retain a special place which is exemplified through two main metaphors: the kings tend to have an extraordinary relationship with the Sun deity,³ sometimes posing as his sons, and they also enjoy an affair with the fertility goddess. Early myths about kingship employ the relationship of the king with the Sun god in order to refer to justice and legitimate rule and his affair with the fertility goddess to negotiate funerary rites and the appropriate means of commemoration.⁴ The evolvement of these themes down the centuries and the transmission of Sumerian myths to the later Akkadian and Assyrian empires will be also discussed.

In early myths relating the institution of kingship, kings as the carriers of political authority seem to traverse an extraordinary “liminal” space in which men and gods interact and agree on their interdependence. Here, I argue that this space is mental – as denoted by the fact that heroic kings often communicate with the divine in dreams or dream-like locations/situations⁵ – and that it refers to a supra-rational experience which is rendered by heavenly as much as hellish symbols. This space which cannot be on the earth – inhabited by ordinary, mortal men – is metaphorically located either above, in the skies, or below in the Underworld. Both locations are typically under divine jurisdiction, and mythic kings traverse them in the name of their people and their kingship.⁶ Their heavenly ascent is often denoted in terms of their “adoption” by the Sun god (which promotes their rule as just), while their descent is typically related in terms of a dangerous relationship with the fertility goddess (which promotes the teleological profile of the king).

Kingship and culture

Kingship is negotiated already in the Sumerian period (2900–2340 BCE) during which five tales about Bilgameš (= Mesopotamian Gilgameš) were independently circulated.⁷ Interestingly, the negotiation of kingship as the utmost social institution coincided with the development of urbanization.⁸ In Mesopotamian mythology the origin of the city goes back to divine initiative and hand in hand with the establishment of kingship. Hence, in Gilgameš and Aga (/Akka) of Kish (30–35:52) we read:⁹

unug^ki giš-kin-ti-dingir-re-e-ne-ke₄

é-an-na é an-ta e₁₁-dè

dingir-gal-gal-e-ne me-dím-bi ba-an-ak-eš-àm

bàd-gal muru₉ ki-ús-sa-a-ba

ki-tuš-maḫ an-né gar-ra-a-ba

sag mu-e-sì za-e lugal-ur-sag-me-en

Uruk, the god’s handiwork,

and Eanna, a house come down from heaven,

whose parts were fashioned by the great gods

its great wall, a cloud standing on the ground,

the august abode established by An is

entrusted to you! You are the king and warrior!

In Sumerian theology,¹⁰ the city of Nippur, host of the temple of Enlil, who legitimized kingship, gains prominence.¹¹ Another important city was Kish where, according to the Sumerian King List, kingship was first established after the Deluge.¹² Kingship, therefore, becomes the primary lens through which to examine civilization and its consequences for mortals; in the later Standard Babylonian version of the GE¹³ (where some of the original Sumerian episodes were organized into a continuing narrative)¹⁴ Enkidu, the “wild man,” discovers that his introduction to civilization has terrible effects: his pure body is corrupted, his legs stand still and he can no longer run as fast as the wild animals, his hitherto companions (GE I.197–201). Yet he realizes that his broad knowledge has increased (GE I.202: ù šu-ú i-šī ṭ[é-ma? r]a-pa-áš ḫa-si-sa), a development understood as his compensation for the loss of his innocence. The Akkadian dynasty starting with Sargon (ca. 2334–2279 BCE), who took over the Sumerian cities and unified them with the Akkad people from the north, was heavily indebted to the Sumerian cultural input. At the same time, given that the Sumerian sphere of influence was actually quite limited in geographical terms, the translation of Sumerian literature in Akkadian ensured the proliferation of Sumerian traditions,¹⁵ along with the association of kingship with the dawn of culture.¹⁶ Since civilization brings about knowledge or rather self-awareness, then who would be better positioned to negotiate this knowledge than the king? Accordingly, the temples, palaces and walls that these early cities boasted¹⁷ functioned not just as practicable means for ensuring the safety of the citizens but also as emblems of the divine benevolence that their powerful kings enjoyed.¹⁸

In this context, the relationship of Gilgameš, the king, with Enkidu, the “wild man,” deserves closer attention especially since in the Sumerian episodes Enkidu poses as Bilgameš’s servant: he was occasionally referred to as ku-li, Gilgameš’s friend (cf. GE VII.139: ibru, talīmu, your friend and brother; also, XII.30 and 88),¹⁹ but most often his status was that of an ìr (šubur = servant; Akkadian ardu, XII.54) with Gilgameš clearly named as the lugal (= master, Akkadian belum, XII.7) of Enkidu.²⁰ In addition, at first Gilgameš’s regime seems to have been extremely problematic:²¹ his tyrannical attitude brought suffering upon his people, with the Sumerian version relating the oppression of widows and orphans, while the Akkadian version refers to the king’s outrageous insistence on taking ius primae noctis on newly-wed brides;²² it was, in fact, Gilgameš’s arrogance that necessitated the creation of Enkidu, and therefore, the initial struggle between Enkidu and Gilgameš seems to have offered the latter a chance to realize his responsibilities as a leader and improve his conduct.

By the time the Sumerian tales found their place in the more canonical OB version of the GE (around 1800 BCE) Enkidu was typically termed as a friend and companion of Gilgameš (ibru, tappu), his brother (aḫu) and his equal (mašlu, kima).²³ Scholars have often read in the relationship of the two heroes a story about the king’s growth to maturity, Gilgameš’s attempt to connect to his inner self.²⁴ Furthermore, I would like to suggest that this is a story of political maturity and that the relationship between the two heroes reflects the rapport between the king and his subjects, who, exemplified in the person of Enkidu, abandoned their life in the wilderness to enjoy the benefits of urban life. The Epic makes it clear that at the time, the symbols of kingship, that is the crown, the sceptre and the throne, had been already established; but the exact mode of yielding power in early Mesopotamia remains foggy.²⁵ The preoccupation of the Sumerian Gilgameš tradition with political organization and political ethos is also stressed by the fact that, although Gilgameš and Akka has no corresponding episode in the Epic, the themes of mercy toward captives and counsel from the city elders were included in the GE in the tale of Ḫuwawa (Ḫumbaba).²⁶ According to Davenport (2007: 19–20), the so-called Letter of Gilgameš, in which the hero appears as an overbearing king making overwhelming demands of a minor king,²⁷ relates late Babylonian royal ideology that was subsequently used to refer to the “oppressive nature of Assyrian rule.”²⁸ Although this suggestion is appealing, given that the letter is now considered to belong to the traditional scribal literature of Babylonia, I would be inclined to think that the Bilgameš tradition projects themes about monopolizing political power that were given multiple poetic treatments. Although hints against the Assyrian rule cannot be readily disproved, it seems that this interpretation relies too much on the reputation of the Assyrians as oppressive rulers and overlooks the importance of the king as cultural institutioner. The hints may simply refer to the previous rulers regardless of their racial background. In fact, a supra-ethnic interpretation of kingship where the new king – posing as the answer to the dissatisfaction of the gods with the impious previous ruler (cf. Cyrus’ claims against Nabonidus in Chapter 4: p. 156) – is called to re-establish civilization, and divine order is likely to have suited each wave of conquerors much more than a model imposing racial divisions. In the GE the king, having undertaken a journey in the Underworld, having seen the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations and copyright permissions
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Conventions
• Introduction: laying the groundwork
• 1 Dying kings in the ANE: Gilgameš and his travels in the garden of power
• 2 Sacred marriage in the ANE: the collapse of the garden and its aftermath
• 3 Renewing the cosmos: garden and goddess in first-millennium ideology
• 4 The Seleucids at Babylon: flexing traditions and reclaiming the garden
• Synthesis: cultivating community memory
• Bibliography
• Index