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Home , Ishtar Gate, Lullubi, Statue of Marduk, Stele, Upper Mesopotamia

IMAGES OF POWER: ANCIENT : FOCUS (Akkadian and Babylonian) ONLINE ASSIGNMENT: http://smarthistory.khanacademy.o rg/victory--of-naram-sin.html

TITLE or DESIGNATION: Victory Stele of Naram-Sin

CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Akkadian

DATE: 2254-2218 B.C.E.

MEDIUM: pink sandstone ONLINE ASSIGNMENT: http://smarthistory.khanacad emy.org/law-code-stele-of- king-hammurabi.html

TITLE or DESIGNATION: Stele of with Code

CULTURE or ART HISTORICAL PERIOD: Ancient Babylonian

DATE: c. 1792-1750 B. C. E.

MEDIUM: basalt IMAGES OF POWER: : SELECTED TEXT (Akkadian and Babylonian) ART of the ANCIENT NEAR EAST

Online Links:

Naram-Sin of - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Code of Hammurabi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Translation of the - Wikisource

Ishtar Gate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Victory Stele of Naram-Sin – Smarthistory

Law Code Stele of King Hammurabi - Smarthistory Sargon the Great rose from obscure origins to become cupbearer to the king of Kish. Rebelling, he built the city of Akkad and proclaimed himself king. After defeating the king of , he conquered the rest of .

Sargon built a unified Akkadian state but respected the traditions of the conquered peoples, especially the culture of the Right: Head of an Sumer. Akkadian ruler He conquered Upper and the in , and created an empire that ranged from the to the Mediterranean.

A later king, Naram-Sin, brought the empire of Akkad to its zenith. He was the first Mesopotamian king to claim divinity, as well as the first to be called “King of the Four Quarters”. Victory Stele of Naram-Sin (from , ), 2254-2218 BCE, pink sandstone

Naram-Sin was the third successor and grandson of King . Under Naram-Sin the reached its zenith. He was the first Mesopotamian king known to have claimed divinity for himself.

Naram-Sin's famed victory stele depicts him as a god-king (symbolized by his horned helmet) climbing a mountain above his soldiers, and his enemies, the defeated . Although the stele was broken off at the top when it was stolen and carried off by the Elamites, it still strikingly reveals the pride, glory, and divinity of Naram- Sin.

The stele broke from tradition by using successive diagonal tiers, rather than a horizontal format, to communicate the story to viewers. Naram Sin’s routed enemies fall, flee, die, or beg for mercy. The king stands alone, far taller than his men. His troops march up the mountain behind him in orderly files, suggesting the discipline and organization of the king’s forces. The enemy, by contrast, is in disarray.

He is shown nearly twice the size of his soldiers, as gods (here represented only by their symbols in the sky) had previously been distinguished from mortals.

He clasps a veritable arsenal of weaponry- spear, battleaxe, bow and arrow- and the grand helmet that crown his head sprouts horns, an attribute heretofore reserved for gods.

Art historian Irene Winter has gone even further, pointing to the eroticized pose and presentation of Naram-Sin, to the alluring display of a well- formed male body. In ancient Mesopotamian culture, male potency and vigor were directly related to mythical heroism and powerful kingship.

The artist has included identifiable native trees along the mountain pathway to heighten the sense that this portrays an actual event rather than a generic battle scene. Before Naram-Sin, both along the right side of the stele and smashed under his forward striding leg, are representations of the enemy, in this case the Lullubi people from eastern Mesopotamia (modern Iran).

One diminutive adversary has take a fatal spear to the neck, while companions behind and below him beg for mercy.

The focus of the composition is Naram-Sin, who appears as god-hero-king, his divinity signaled by his horned helmet, his heroic magnificence suggested by the perfection of his body, and his role as gallant king and warrior intimated by his stance with one foot slightly raised, crushing the broken bodies of the defeated enemy. Because Naram-Sin was now considered both god and king, it was no longer necessary to separate the terrestrial and divine worlds and relegated them to different sides of the stele. The text- unfortunately fragmentary- situates the battle. Although the stele was broken off at the top when it was stolen and carried off by the Elamites, it still strikingly reveals the pride, glory, and divinity of Naram-Sin. The stele broke from tradition by using successive diagonal tiers, rather than a horizontal format, to communicate the story to viewers.

It is six feet and seven inches tall, and made from pink sandstone. The stele was found at Susa. A similar bas- depicting Naram-Sin was found a few miles northeast of Diyarbekir (in present-day eastern ). The First Babylonian Dynasty was established by an Amorite chieftain who was a semi-nomadic Semitic invader from the lands to the west. controlled little Surrounding territory until it became the capital of Hammurabi’s empire a century later (r. 1792-1750 BCE). Hammurabi is famous for codifying the of into the Code of Hammurabi that has had a lasting influence on legal thought. Subsequently, the city of Babylon continued to be the capital of the known as Babylonia. Hammurabi's empire quickly dissolved after his death, although the Amorite dynasty remained in power in a much reduced Babylonia until 1595 BCE when they were overthrown by the invading . Stele with law code of Hammurabi (Susa, Iran), c. 1780 BCE, basalt The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human- sized stone stele and various clay tablets. The Code consists of 282 laws, with scaled punishments, adjusting "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" as graded depending on social status, of slave versus free man.

One nearly complete example of the Code survives today, on a diorite stele in the shape of a huge index finger. It is located in the .

At the top is a representation in high relief of Hammurabi in the presence of Shamash, the flame-shouldered sun god. The king raises his hand in respect. The god extends to Hammurabi the rod and ring that symbolize authority. The symbols are builders’ tools – measuring rods and coiled rope – and connote the ruler’s capacity to build the social order and to measure people’s lives, that is, to render judgments and enforce the laws spelled out on the stele.

The collection of Hammurabi’s judicial pronouncements is inscribed on the Susa stele in Akkadian in 3,500 lines of characters. Hammurabi’s laws governed all aspects of Babylonian life, from commerce and property to murder and theft to marital infidelity, inheritances, and the treatment of slaves. Hammurabi is of great historical importance as the author of the oldest surviving code of laws. Its declared aim was to “cause justice to prevail in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil, that the strong might not oppress the weak”, although, in fact, one of its chief concerns was to protect money-lenders from defaulting borrowers, for whom rigorous penalties were prescribed.

This code is inscribed on a stele under a relief of Hammurabi standing before the enthroned sun god at penalties were prescribed. This code is inscribed on a stele under a relief of Hammurabi standing before the enthroned sun god at the summit of a holy mountain or - a perfect illustration of the semi-divine status of the priest-king, to whom the god, himself in human form, delivers the laws. That the stone takes the form of a phallus, an obvious symbol of male dominance, is perhaps no coincidence. Before Hammurabi there is no known equivalent attempt to organize a legal system and to put it down in . Punishments depended on the gender and social standing of the offender. Shamash wears the four-tiered, horned headdress that marks him as a god and a robe that bares one shoulder and ends in a stiff, flounced skirt. Hammurabi faces Shamash confidently, his hand raised in a gesture of greeting. Any suggestion of familiarity in the lack of distance is offset by the formality of the pose. The smaller, earthly law enforcer remains standing in the presence of the much larger divine judge, seated on his ziggurat throne. The Code is inscribed in the , using cuneiform script. Various copies of portions of the Code of Hammurabi have been found on baked clay tablets, some possibly older than the celebrated stele now in the Louvre.

Though the stated purpose of Hammurabi’s laws was to protect the weak from the strong, they also maintained traditional class distinctions: the lower classes were more severely punished for crimes committed against the upper classes than vice versa. There was no intent to create social equality in the protection of the weak, or in the expressed concern for orphans and widows, but rather to maintain the continuity and stability of society. The Neo-Babylonian Empire or the Chaldean Empire was a period of Mesopotamian history which began in 626 BCE and ended in 539 BCE During the preceding three centuries, Babylonia had been ruled by their fellow Akkadian speakers and northern neighbors.

Neo-Babylonian rulers were deeply conscious of the antiquity of their heritage, and pursued an -traditionalist policy, reviving much of their ancient Sumero-Akkadian culture. Even though had become the everyday tongue, Akkadian was restored as the language of administration and culture. Ishtar Gate (Babylon, ), c. 575 BCE Babylon is a name which actually means “The Gate of God”. The gate was named in honor of the goddess Ishtar of love, fertility, and war. The lions depicted on the gate are emblems of Ishtar. Ishtar is the Akkadian counterpart to the Sumerian and to the cognate northwest Semitic goddess Astarte. The goddess represents the planet Venus.

The Sumerian Inanna was first worshiped at Uruk in the earliest period of Mesopotamian history. In incantations, hymns, myths, epics, votive inscriptions, and historical annals, Inanna/Ishtar was celebrated and invoked as the force of life.

But there were two aspects to this goddess of life. She was the goddess of fertility and sexuality, and could also destroy the fields and make the earth's creatures infertile. She was invoked as a goddess of war, battles, and the chase, particularly among the warlike Assyrians. On Ishtar’s Gate, profile figures of ’s dragon and Adad’s bull alternate. Left: An aurochs above a flower ribbon (The aurochs, the ancestor of domestic cattle, was a type of large wild cattle which inhabited , , and North , but is now extinct; it survived until 1627.)

The Ishtar Gate, dedicated to the Babylonian goddess Ishtar, was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city. Through the gate ran the Processional Way, which was lined with walls covered in lions on glazed bricks (about 120 of them).

Statues of the deities were paraded through the gate and down the Processional Way each year during the New Year's celebration.

An avenue used for procession passed beneath the gate of Ishtar, followed the double wall that protected the palace and led into the heart of the city, where it connected the Heragila, a word meaning “the high-roofed temple” or temple of Marduk to the new year temple outside the city walls where celebrations marking the beginning of the year and lasting 12 days took place each spring.

The consort of Ishtar was Tammuz. Their sacred marriage was performed at the New Year Festival between the king and a priestess of Ishtar. The possession of a god’s image was a fundamental tenant to Babylonian religion. The Babylonians would “kidnap” the gods of their enemies and hold them captive in Babylon, thus asserting their control over their enemies. The Elamites once captured Babylon and took the statue of Marduk back to Susa in the 12th century BCE. The Babylonians couldn’t conduct their New Year celebrations without the statue and it was forbidden to make a replica since the statue itself was “alive”. IMAGES OF POWER: ANCIENT NEAR EAST: ACTIVITIES and REVIEW (Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian) This stele commemorates Naram Sin’s victory over the Lullabi peoples. The suns or the stars Naram- Sin is the ruler of above are the forces that the Akkadian peoples. validate Naram-Sin’s powers. They remind us of his access to the divine.

In order to convey a sense of divinity, Naram-Sin wears a horned helmet. The vanquished are shown begging for mercy. One The mountain depicted in has a spear protruding the stele serves through his neck. The symbolically as a enemy is clearly in transition between heaven disarray. Their size and earth, indicating that indicates inferiority when Naram-Sin has access to contrasted to the the divine powers of the hierarchical proportion gods that ordinary used to depict Naram-Sin. humans do not have.

Naram-Sin is clearly designated as the focal This stele is made of pink point of the composition limestone was was created because the gaze of all of around 2254-2218 B.C.E. the other figures are It is 6 feet and 7 inches directed towards him. tall. In the early 18th century The sun god Shamash with B.C.E., the Babylonian flames emanating from his king Hammurabi shoulders demonstrates formulated a set of nearly greater status due to his 300 laws for his people. being seated and of slightly Here the king raises his higher proportion. He sits hand to show respect to on a ziggurat throne and is the seated god that he depicted in the familiar stands before. convention of combined frontal and profile views The god hands but with two important Hammurabi the tools of a exceptions. His great builder, a headdress with it s four and a coiled rope. These pairs of horns is in true connote the ruler’s profile so that only four, not capacity to construct the all eight, of the horns are social order and to visible. Also, the artist regulate people’s lives, seems to have tentatively that is, to render judgment explored the notion of and enforce the laws foreshortening. His beard is spelled out on the stele. a series of diagonal rather than horizontal lines, suggesting its recession This stele is made of from the picture plane. basalt which is very durable. The fact that it is made of such a hard stone The feet of the god is placed may be an indication of on top of a symbolic how it has survived to be representation of the almost 4,000 years old. mountains from which the god emerges. The image of Hammurabi, as an emblem of power, differs from the image of Naram-Sin in that he is a pious conduit Under the relief we see three pieces of writing: (1) the king’s through which a god speaks. Naram-Sin, with his idealized investiture, or his right to rule, (2) an ode to his glory, and (3) body and larger proportions, is himself a god. the laws that are used to govern Babylonia. They are written using cuneiform in the Akkadian language.

VIDEO: Victory Stele of Naram-Sin on Smarthistory VIDEO: Stele of Hammurabi with Law Code on Smarthistory