History, Texts and Art in Early Babylonia

Three Essays

Piotr Steinkeller

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781501519062
• eBook ISBN: 9781501504754
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion
• Index: History

These essays represent a summation of Piotr Steinkeller's decades-long thinking and writing about the history of third millennium BCE Babylonia and the ways in which it is reflected in ancient historical and literary sources and art, as well as of how these written and visual materials may be used by the modern historian to attain, if not a reliable record of histoire événementielle, a comprehensive picture of how the ancients understood their history.

The book focuses on the history of early Babylonian kingship, as it evolved over a period from Late Uruk down to Old Babylonian times, and the impact of the concepts of kingship on contemporaneous history writing and visual art. Here comparisons are drawn between Babylonia and similar developments in ancient Egypt, China and Mesoamerica.

Other issues treated is the intersection between history writing and the scholarly, lexical, and literary traditions in early Babylonia; and the question of how the modern historian should approach the study of ancient sources of "historical" nature.

Such a broad and comprehensive overview is novel in Mesopotamian studies to date. As such, it should contribute to an improved and more nuanced understanding of early Babylonian history.

Essay 1

Writing, Kingship and Political Discourse in Early Babylonia: Reflections on the Nature and Function of Third Millennium Historical Sources

In real history there are no new chapters and no new beginnings.

Ernst Gombrich

1Preface

This essay aims to study the inter-relationship between the ideology of kingship and the historical and chronographic sources that a given culture produces. More specifically, I will attempt to investigate how the ideas about kingship influence and shape attitudes toward history, both past and present, and how those attitudes then impact the character and the types of historical materials. My premise is that there is a direct connection between the two.

The case study I will be using to test this hypothesis is ancient Mesopotamia during the third millennium BC, more exactly the last four centuries of it, roughly the period between 2400 and 2000 BC. On occasion, though, I will be venturing back into Mesopotamia’s last prehistoric phase, which is named the Uruk period after the extremely important city of Uruk in southern Iraq. Uruk was undeniably the source of Mesopotamian urbanism, and the place where Sumerian culture as we know it, and all the later Sumerian institutions, were born. It was also in Uruk that cuneiform writing in all likelihood was invented.

The specific geographical area I will be concerned with is Babylonia, roughly the region extending from Baghdad in central modern Iraq all the way down to the Persian Gulf. Within Babylonia, one further distinguishes between “southern Babylonia,” which was the home of the Sumerians, and which therefore is commonly referred to as “Sumer”; and “northern Babylonia,” which was largely inhabited by the Semitic Akkadians. The latter area is called “Akkade” or “Akkad,” after a city in that region that gave rise, around 2300 BC, to a powerful dynasty – and subsequently, to an empire – of the very same name. The border between the southern and northern portions of Babylonia ran roughly north of the city of Nippur, the religious and cultural capital of the Sumerians. In this essay, the terms “southern Babylonia” and “Sumer” will be used interchangeably.

2Early Historical Sources of Southern Babylonia

The early inhabitants of southern Babylonia left to us a relatively limited corpus of cuneiform inscriptions, written on clay and on stone, which are of a dedicatory character, and which involve royal figures. For reasons of convenience – if nothing else, cuneiform scholars have traditionally classified these materials as “royal” or “historical.” The designation “royal” is technically correct, and therefore acceptable, though it may not be a particularly apt description, since it says little about the nature and purpose of these materials. The label “historical” is much more problematic. This is because, with a few notable exceptions, the materials in question are exclusively dedications of public buildings (usually temples) or objects to deities, which, apart from identifying the donor and specifying his patronymic and titles, do not usually dwell on his peronal accomplishments other than building activities. If any historical information is included, it is usually brief and always incidental to the main purpose of the inscription, which is dedication.3 In my opinion, therefore, the name “historical” should properly by reserved for the texts that were written with a specific purpose of recording historical information, of making this information public in some form, and of preserving it for posterity.

All of these inscriptions — and I stress again that I am referring only to the earliest sources of this type stemming from southern Babylonia – show essentially the same basic pattern: “to deity so-and-so, the ruler named so-and-so erected temple X or presented object Y.” With the passage of time, the custom of adding or inserting into this pattern some historical information developed.4 Quite often this historical part takes the form of a temporal clause, as in the following example: “when (king Šu-Suen) built the Amorite wall (called) ‘The one that keeps Tidnum at a distance,’ and so he turned the Amorite’s foot back to his land, he then erected for god Šara his beloved temple” (RIME 3/2 327‒328 Šu-Suen 17).5 This section grew progressively more extensive, becoming eventually the longest (and sometimes the most important) element of the inscription. Even in such cases, however, the inscription nearly always has a dedicatory character, often beginning with the invocation of a deity. This pattern can still be discerned in the first millennium royal inscriptions from Babylonia and Assyria – though in most other respects the latter documents differ quite dramatically from the early Sumerian inscriptions I am concerned with presently.

What is markedly absent among all the early Sumerian records of this kind are true historical inscriptions, the ones whose primary function was to glorify a particular royal figure and his lineage or to commemorate specific historical events (other than temple-building). Or, to put it differently, sources that are primarily concerned with dynastic history. As we will see later, such texts, which may best be characterized as “elite display” inscriptions,6 appeared for the first time under the Sargonic kings, becoming one of the hallmarks of that period.

Here I need to offer the following caveat. Among the corpus of early Sumerian royal inscriptions one finds a few texts that do contain a good deal of historical information.7 This is particularly true of one of the inscriptions of En-metena of Lagaš (ca. 2350 BC), which is concerned with a border conflict between Lagaš and its neighbor Umma (RIME 1 194‒199 En-metena 1).8 Another notable example of such a source is the famous “Stele of the Vultures” (ca. 2400 BC), which too comes from Lagaš and deals with the same border dispute (RIME 1 126‒140 E-anatum 1). The Stele additionally is provided with rich iconography, which, at least from that perspective, makes it a truly monumental artifact. However, while these inscriptions name historical facts,9 the primary function of both of them is that of legal documents, since they serve to confirm Lagaš’ title to the contested territories. Because of this, also in these two cases historical information is of secondary importance to the main purpose of these sources, which is the demonstration of ownership rights to a particular strip of land. Therefore, even though these two texts (especially the En-metena piece) are replete with historical information, I would be reluctant to lend such clusters of historical facts the designation of “historical narrative,” reserving this term for sources whose express purpose was to record historical events.10

In my view, the case of the En-metena inscription and the “Stele of the Vultures” is broadly analogous to that of the Middle Babylonian and early Neo-Babylonian kudurrū or symbolic boundary stones, which date to the second half of the second millennium BC and later times. Made of stone and often provided with elaborate iconography, these objects likewise establish title to landed property. Like the former inscriptions, some of the kudurrū too involve royal figures and contain extensive historical narratives.11 As a matter of fact, these particular records are more informative in this respect than any of the proper “historical” sources that have come down to us from the period in question. In spite of this, however, it would be a mistake to classify them as historical sources sensu stricto.

However, there exist two early Sumerian royal inscriptions for which the label “historical” might be appropriate. The first of them is the inscription of Lugal-zagesi, a late Early Dynastic ruler of Uruk and a rival of Sargon of Akkade, which survives on several stone bowls presented by this ruler to the god Enlil at Nippur (RIME 1 433‒437 Lugal-zagesi 1). Although this inscription adheres to a dedicatory pattern,12 its main section (i 36 ‒ iii 2) may be classified as a “historical” text in its own right, in that it deals exclusively with Lugal-zagesi’s personal accomplishments. This is even though it does not name any specific historical events – beyond a poetic description of the extent of Lugal-zagesi’s political influence. For this conclusion, the highly elevated style of this section of the inscription is significant as well: “when Enlil, master of all countries, gave to Lugal-zagesi the kingship of the Land, directed all the eyes of the Land toward him, put all the countries under his foot, and, from the east to the west, subjected them to him, etc.” This kind of rhetoric, which focuses on the figure of the king, represents a complete novum among the early Sumerian materials. When viewed from this perspective, the Lugal-zagesi text clearly anticipates the voice of the Sargonic royal inscriptions.

The other inscription I have in mind is that of Utu-hegal of Uruk, the unifier of southern Babylonia following the so-called Gutian interregnum (at ca. 2100 BC) (RIME 2 283‒293 Utu-hegal 4). Here the label “historical” is even more appropriate, since this text consists practically entirely of historical narrative. Moreover, there is no clear evidence that it recorded any sort of dedication.13 These facts make the Utu-hegal inscription completely unique, not only among the third millennium materials, but equally among later Mesopotamian sources of broadly historical content. However, the evaluation of this inscription is complicated by the fact that it survives only in later, Old Babylonian copies. This opens up a possibility that, despite its seemingly genuine late third millennium characteristics, as pertains to its orthography and grammar, the Utu-hegal inscription may actually be a literary text, which was composed subsequent to Utu-hegal’s own time.

The data presented thus far establish quite conclusively that the corpus of early Sumerian royal inscriptions contains precious little that may be described as properly “historical” by any stretch of imagination. In this connection, it is equally significant that virtually none of these materials were meant for public consumption. This we can tell based on what the physical destinations of these records are known to have been: either the foundations of temples or, in the case of votive objects, sacred areas that remained inaccessible to the public at large. It becomes evident, therefore, that the intended audience of these records was not human but divine.14 As s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Essay 1
• Essay 2
• Essay 3
• List of Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Index
• List and Sources of Illustrations