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The Cult of the Deified King in Ur III Mesopotamia The Cult of the Deified King in Ur III Mesopotamia The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Pitts, Audrey. 2015. The Cult of the Deified King in Ur III Mesopotamia. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:17467243 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Cult of the Deified King in Ur III Mesopotamia A dissertation presented by Audrey Pitts to The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2015 @ 2015 - Audrey Pitts All rights reserved iii Dissertation Advisor: Professor Piotr Steinkeller Audrey Pitts The Cult of the Deified King in Ur III Mesopotamia Abstract The topic of divine kingship in Mesopotamia, and in the Ur III period (ca. 2112-2004 B.C. E.) in particular, has been the subject of studies focused on aspects such as its ideology, rhetoric, political motivation, and place in the history of religion. This dissertation is concerned with more pragmatic aspects of the phenomenon, and investigates what, if any, effect the institution of divine kingship had on day-to-day life. The Ur III period was selected both because four of its five kings were deified during their lifetime, and over 95,000 administrative, i.e. non-ideologically oriented, records dating to this period are available for analysis. The main focus of this thesis is on cult, the essential signifier of divinity in that society, and, specifically, on the manner in which the cult of the deified king was established, extended, and popularized. The primary source utilized was the Base de Datos de Textos Neo-Sumerios (BDTNS). The first chapter demonstrates that at the center of the cult of the deified king were effigies that underwent numerous ritual treatments and were housed in both their own and in other deities' temples, and that in these respects the king's cult was identical to those of the traditional gods. A list of the individual statues and their locations is provided, in chronological order of attestation. Areas where ramifications of the king's godhood might be identified outside of cult are also addressed. The chapter is bracketed by discussions of divine kingship as manifested in the immediately succeeding (Sargonic) and following (Isin-Larsa) periods, for comparative purposes. The second chapter provides evidence that processions of cult statues by boat and chariot, and offerings before them at specific festivals and at sites outside of temples were relatively iv common events. As cult images of the deified kings were among those so treated, it is clear that the Ur III kings saw the benefit of these practices, with their concomitant festivities, banquets and entertainment, for publicizing their own cult among the largely illiterate populace. In addition, I analyzed the movements and activities of the king himself, as recorded in the administrative archives. These show that the kings were frequently in the public eye as they travelled, mainly by boat, among the cities of southern Babylonia, to ritual events both in- and outside of temple settings. The third chapter addresses the issue of the effect of the concerted efforts to publicize the king's cult on the population at large, settling on onomastics as the best proxy for determining the public's reaction available. Two hundred and sixty-seven individual names in which the name of a deified king was used as a theophoric element are identified, with Šulgi, the second Ur III king and the first of that dynasty to be deified during his life, the most popular honorée by far. I examine the statements that the holders of these names are making about a particular divine king, and show that virtually all such names have a counterpart incorporating the name of a traditional deity. I also provide a representative sampling of the people who were given or had adopted such names in terms of their sex, ethnicity, and job title or function in order to determine if this practice was limited to a particular demographic, and conclude that it was widespread, affecting all levels of society. From this I deduce that the deliberate efforts of the kings to popularize their cult may be termed successful. An appendix contains two tables summarizing the onomastic material. Table A lists all of the names in which the king's was incorporated as the theophoric element, along with their translation. Table B provides the data that was used to differentiate among the individual persons who bore one of the names listed in Table A. v Table of Contents i. General Introduction 1 1. The Deified King: the Concept and its Establishment in Cult 1.1 Naram-Suen vis-à-vis Šulgi 10 1.2 Cult Statues and Temples of the Deified King 29 in the Ur III Period 1.3 Reflections of the King's Godhood in Other Areas 1.3.1 Seals 59 1.3.2 Royal Hymns 62 1.3.3 The King's Consorts 65 1.3.4 Death and Afterlife of the Deified King 76 1.4 Deified Kings between the Ur III and Hammurabi Dynasties 85 1.5 Summation 90 2. Public Display 2.1 The Public Face of Cult 92 2.1.1 Chariots and Boats of the Gods 94 2.1.2 Cult Statues at External Rituals 101 2.1.3 Major Festivals and Annual Rituals 106 2.1.4 The Festival of the Deified King 118 2.2 The Deified King, in his Body 123 2.2.1 The Reign of Ur-Namma 126 2.2.2 The Reign of Šulgi vi 2.2.2.1 Years Š01-20 130 2.2.2.2 Years Š21-37 133 2.2.2.3 Years Š38-48 138 2.2.3. The Reign of Amar-Suen 2.2.3.1 Years AS01-08 150 2.2.3.2 The Death of Amar-Suen and the Year AS09 167 2.2.4 The Reign of Šu-Suen 2.2.4.1 Years ŠS01-08 169 2.2.4.2 The Death of Šu-Suen and the Year ŠS09 192 2.2.5 The Reign of Ibbi-Suen 200 2.2.5.1 Years IS01-02 205 2.2.5.2 Years IS03-24 215 2.3 Summation 221 3. Popular Response 3.1 Introduction 227 3.1.1 Private Devotions 228 3.2 Onomastics 230 3.2.1 Personal Names Incorporating the King's Name as their Theophoric Element 235 3.3 Demographics - Who Incorporated the King's Name 243 in their Own? 3.3.1 The Royal Family and their Personal Retainers 246 3.3.2 Governors, Governor-Generals, and Foreign Dignitaries 250 3.3.3 Lower Military Ranks and Security 253 vii 3.3.4 Diplomatic Corps and Couriers 255 3.3.5 Administration and Accounting 259 3.3.6 Cult Officials and Servitors 261 3.3.7 Entertainers 264 3.3.8 Health and Hygiene 264 3.3.9 Craftsmen 265 3.3.10 Forestry and Building Materials 266 3.3.11 Animal Husbandry 266 3.3.12 Textiles 267 3.3.13 Transport and Storage 269 3.3.14 Food Production and Service 269 3.3.15 Agriculture 270 3.3.16 Corvée Labor, Servants and Slaves 272 3.3.17 Miscellaneous Titles 276 3.4 The King's Name as Theophoric Element in Succeeding Periods 276 4. General Conclusion 282 5. Appendices 5.1 Table A - Onomastic 291 5.2 Table B - Demographic 311 6. Bibliography 422 1 The Cult of the Divine King in the Ur III Period General Introduction In the middle of the twenty-first century BCE, sometime before the twenty-first year of his forty-eight year reign, Šulgi, the second king of the Ur III dynasty of Sumer (c.2112-2004), became a god. While extraordinary, the self-deification of a ruler was not unprecedented in Mesopotamia, having, from all evidence, been pioneered by Narām-Suen, the fourth king of the earlier Sargonic dynasty (c2334-2195).1 That this innovation proved expedient in the conditions of the late Sargonic period is shown by its adoption by Narām-Suen's son and heir, Šar-kali-šarrī, whose translation into godhood officially occurred at the moment of his accession to the throne. Whether the latter's heirs would have continued the practice of self-deification and thereby, perhaps, normalized it, is moot, as Šar-kali-šarrī turned out to be the last of his dynasty to rule. Indeed, the apotheosis of a living king would have remained a historical oddity for Mesopotamia had it not been reinvigorated by Šulgi and subsequently embraced by both his immediate successors as well as many, if not all, of the kings of the following Isin-Larsa dynasties. Nonetheless, in the long span of Mesopotamian history, with its myriad of polities and styles of ruling, a setup in which the highest human authority, a king, was defined and presented explicitly as a deity is a relatively rare phenomenon that, as such, invites closer investigation. It was scholarly notice of particular textual and glyptic practices that first led to analysis and attempted systematization of the phenomenon of divine kingship in third-millennium Mesopotamia.
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