I've written much about Babylon and Mesopotamia over the years, and some of the essays appear on my blog, either as extracts or as full text. I thought it would be useful to pull most of these together for convenience in a single post. Collected here are fourteen articles, which amounts to a small book of material, even if some of the articles are just extracts. All of the full text can be found either in The Sacred History of Being, or Understanding Ancient Thought.
I've been using Babylonian and Assyrian cultures as a contrast with ancient Greek civilisation, and many cultural continuities can be detected, though classicists and historians still discuss Greece largely in autocthonous terms, as if the Greeks are entirely self-made, and therefore no meaningful comparisons between Greece and Mesopotamia are possible. This inability to see what is in front of them, and their unwillingness to read about Mesopotamian parallels, won't continue forever, because it is ridiculous. But a ridiculous state of affairs can continue for a very long time, particularly in academia, and particularly when a discipline is more of a worshipful church than a place of discovery and exploration.
TY, September 20, 2017.
The Fifty Names of Marduk #An #Babylon #EnumaElish #Marduk #Mesopotamia #NewYearFestival
An extract from 'The Fifty Names of Marduk', a chapter in The Sacred History of Being, published November 2, 2015, which explores the significance of Marduk, head of the Mesopotamian divine pantheon, on the basis of his description in the Babylonian New Year Festival liturgy.
....The relevant passage of the Enuma Elish begins by announcing ‘Let us proclaim his fifty names…. He whose ways are glorious, whose deeds are likewise.' The first name is of course Marduk. His first description identifies him as An, the Sumerian king of the gods, and describes An as his father, who ‘called him from his birth…’. This refers to the fact that Marduk was not present in the first chaotic creation, before reason and order was imposed.
Shar Kishati, and the Cult of Eternity #Mesopotamia
#Philosophy #Abstraction #Cult
This is a discussion of the hypothetical core of the ancient understanding of Reality as something which might be separated from everything else (in a Husserlian sense), though it does not mean that such a hypothetical core was separable from the rest of the religious and theological implex of ideas which constituted Greek and Mesopotamian religion. The point of the exercise was to explore what was actually essential to that implex of ideas, and to get a better understanding of why it was important to the functioning of the ritual universe, in both Greece and Mesopotamia.
This is a discussion of the hypothetical core of the ancient understanding of Reality as something which might be separated from everything else (in a Husserlian sense), though it does not mean that such a hypothetical core was separable from the rest of the religious and theological implex of ideas which constituted Greek and Mesopotamian religion. The point of the exercise was to explore what was actually essential to that implex of ideas, and to get a better understanding of why it was important to the functioning of the ritual universe, in both Greece and Mesopotamia.
'Creation' (extract) #Abyss #Belus #Berossus
#Chaos #Creation #Heidel #Timaeus
From The Sacred History of Being, which explores the Babylonian account of the Creation of the World. In both Babylonia and Assyria, plenitude could be represented by the waters of ocean. Before ordered generation arose from these waters, there was a primal chaos, which Mesopotamian scholars understood in terms of undifferentiated possibility. The Babylonian priest Berossus, who lived and wrote in Greek most probably during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, describes this primal chaos in terms which emphasise that it is a plenitude.
From The Sacred History of Being, which explores the Babylonian account of the Creation of the World. In both Babylonia and Assyria, plenitude could be represented by the waters of ocean. Before ordered generation arose from these waters, there was a primal chaos, which Mesopotamian scholars understood in terms of undifferentiated possibility. The Babylonian priest Berossus, who lived and wrote in Greek most probably during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, describes this primal chaos in terms which emphasise that it is a plenitude.
The Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual #Babylon #Divinity #Installation #MisPi #Palm #Quay #Ritual
#Rivers #Statues #Tamarisk
An extract from 'The Babylonian Mis Pi Ritual', a chapter from The Sacred History of Being, It is a critical analysis of one of the most fascinating aspects of Babylonian culture - the inauguration of divine statues, and their endowment with divine powers.
'The new god is seated in the orchard, in the midst of the reed-standards on a reed-mat placed on a linen cloth. His eyes are turned toward sunrise. You go to the river and throw mashatu-meal into the river; You libate mihhu beer. You lift up your hand; and you recite three times each in front of the river the incantation, 'Apsu-temple, where fates are determined,' (and) the incantation 'Quay of the Apsu, pure quay;''
Mention of the 'Apsu-temple, where fates are determined,' and 'Quay of the Apsu, pure Quay,' represents a poetic reduplication of a single idea, which is the idea that both of them point to the ground of Being, of totality, where fate and destiny can be determined, since all knowledge is present in the Apsu, and that proximity to the Apsu is to be had at the river bank, since all rivers in Mesopotamia were accorded divine status, and therefore prefixed with the Sumerian determinative sign 'Dingir'....
Oannes and the Instruction of Mankind #Berossus #Telos
#Origins #Civilisation #Apkallu
The Babylonian writer Berossus (possibly a Greek form of the name Bēl-uşur), took up residence in Athens, after having been a priest of Bel in Babylon in the late 4th century/early 3rd century B.C.E. He wrote a three volume work, Babyloniaka, unfortunately now lost, which was a study on the culture and history of Babylonia. Alexander Polyhistor made an abridgement of this work in the first century B.C.E., also lost. However this abridgement was available to the christian writer Eusebius (4th century C.E), and also Josephus in the first century C.E. The passages which they quoted from Polyhistor and a few other authors survive. As Black and Green write, “Akkadian mythological and historical texts found in modern excavations have largely confirmed the authenticity of the tradition represented by Berossus.” [1] This includes the tradition of the Seven Sages, preserved in the account by Berossus (in his first book) of the eight creatures, beginning with Oannes and concuding with Odakon, which emerged from the sea bringing to man the civilising arts, including agriculture. His second book covered the history of Babylonia from the ‘ten kings before the flood’, through the Flood itself.
The Babylonian writer Berossus (possibly a Greek form of the name Bēl-uşur), took up residence in Athens, after having been a priest of Bel in Babylon in the late 4th century/early 3rd century B.C.E. He wrote a three volume work, Babyloniaka, unfortunately now lost, which was a study on the culture and history of Babylonia. Alexander Polyhistor made an abridgement of this work in the first century B.C.E., also lost. However this abridgement was available to the christian writer Eusebius (4th century C.E), and also Josephus in the first century C.E. The passages which they quoted from Polyhistor and a few other authors survive. As Black and Green write, “Akkadian mythological and historical texts found in modern excavations have largely confirmed the authenticity of the tradition represented by Berossus.” [1] This includes the tradition of the Seven Sages, preserved in the account by Berossus (in his first book) of the eight creatures, beginning with Oannes and concuding with Odakon, which emerged from the sea bringing to man the civilising arts, including agriculture. His second book covered the history of Babylonia from the ‘ten kings before the flood’, through the Flood itself.
Standing in the Place of Ea: The Adapa Discipline and Kingship in the Neo-Assyrian Empire. #Ashurbanipal #Assyria
This extensive article (10k words) explores the role of the King in ancient Assyria, as the vizier of the god Assur. He was trained in the Adapa discipline, which is related to the myth of Adapa. He was required to be skilled in crafts, spear-throwing, scholarship, mathematics, divination, etc., and to excel other men, as chosen for the role by Assur. Thus he would emulate the knowledge and power of Ea, the divine sage whose home was the Abzu, the abyss at the root of creation.
A Saussurian Approach to Babylonian Epistemology
#Cuneiform #Structuralism #Philosophy
'Philosophy Before the Greeks: The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia - Marc Van De Mieroop. Princeton University Press, October 2015.
Marc Van De Mieroop’s book is an exploration of how the Babylonians understood and processed their reality in the 1st and 2nd millennia BCE, long before the Greeks developed the apparatus of logical thought which we now associate with philosophy in the 5th century BCE. Van De Mieroop chooses to call the Babylonian understanding of reality, which he describes in detail, ‘philosophy’. However what he is describing is, as he describes it, so far removed from what is understood in the west as philosophy, that it may be perplexing for the reader looking for the wider context of the development of the discipline in antiquity. It does not take Greek philosophy as its starting point, which might have seemed to be the obvious starting point. Instead, it proceeds with a phenomenological analysis of a variety of scribal processes, found in legal, omen and literary texts. The subtitle of the book is ‘The Pursuit of Truth in Ancient Babylonia’, so it will seem to someone picking up the book that we must be in cultural and intellectual territory familiar to us. We are not.
'The Idea of Being in Israel'. #image #religion #philosophy #theology #aniconism #Tertullian
A sample chapter (in draft) from the Sacred History of Being:This chapter looks at the body of Mesopotamian ideas about the gods and the divine through the extensive commentary on these ideas present in the books of the Old Testament.... The chapter also explores how Old Testament ideas about images were understood by the christian writer Tertullian, in the early second century of the common era.
A sample chapter (in draft) from the Sacred History of Being:This chapter looks at the body of Mesopotamian ideas about the gods and the divine through the extensive commentary on these ideas present in the books of the Old Testament.... The chapter also explores how Old Testament ideas about images were understood by the christian writer Tertullian, in the early second century of the common era.
….within the hierarchy of Mesopotamian ritual, the lengthy performance of washing the mouth of the temple statue is the most solemn, most sacred and most secret of rituals. This conclusion is reached from consideration of the special circumstances of the performance of the mis pi, the investment of time and resources, and the goal of the ritual. This ritual calls upon all the knowledge and spiritual know-how of the ritual specialists to transfer the deity from the spiritual world to the physical world. It requires the most expertise in ritual matters and accomplishes the epitome of ritual possibilities actualising the presence of the god in the temple.
The introductory remarks on the cult Image are prefaced with a quotation from James Preston, which is worth repeating here:
Through the study of icons and their construction we are able to perceive some of the most vital impulses underlying religious experience. Sacred images are products of the human imagination – they are constructed according to systematic rules, and then they are infused with sacrality and kept “alive” by highly controlled behaviours intended to retain the “spirit in matter”. An analysis of this process of constructing sacred images, and the corollary process of the destruction, reveals to us something paradoxical and intriguing about human religion.
The Idea of the Plenum in Babylon #Babylon #AncientHistory #Plenum #Creation
This article argues that the description of Marduk in the Babylonian New Year Festival liturgy (The Enuma Elish) and the fact that the described creation was two-fold (it began before Marduk appeared, and was subsequently destroyed), indicates that their creation was understood to emerge from a plenum, in which all things potentially exist. This is an abstract conception which is not supposed to be present in Mesopotamia in the early 1st millennium B.C.E.
This article argues that the description of Marduk in the Babylonian New Year Festival liturgy (The Enuma Elish) and the fact that the described creation was two-fold (it began before Marduk appeared, and was subsequently destroyed), indicates that their creation was understood to emerge from a plenum, in which all things potentially exist. This is an abstract conception which is not supposed to be present in Mesopotamia in the early 1st millennium B.C.E.
Who Will Appear Before the City? (Divination in Sargonid Assyria)
#Assyria #Divination #SunGod #Haruspicy
Twenty divinatory texts from Ancient Assyria, assembled for the purposes of a commentary on the logic and purposes of ancient divination, and the parallels with the installation of divine images in Mesopotamia. All of these texts are drawn from The State Archives of Assyria, vol 4 (Queries to the Sun God), by Ivan Starr.
The texts, where we have them near complete, are generally in two parts. The first specifies the query, with a precision that some readers may find startling. The inquirers wanted clarity in the responses, not a vague intimation of the future. The second describes the reading of the condition of the liver, entrails and whatever other organs were inspected by the haruspex (diviner), but rarely gives an interpretation of the reading. This absence of interpretation of the inspection changes around the time of the reign of Ashurbanipal, as does the standard text in which the inquiries were couched.
The commentary for 'Who Will Appear Before the City' is in preparation, and is likely to appear in 2019.
#Assyria #Divination #SunGod #Haruspicy
Twenty divinatory texts from Ancient Assyria, assembled for the purposes of a commentary on the logic and purposes of ancient divination, and the parallels with the installation of divine images in Mesopotamia. All of these texts are drawn from The State Archives of Assyria, vol 4 (Queries to the Sun God), by Ivan Starr.
The texts, where we have them near complete, are generally in two parts. The first specifies the query, with a precision that some readers may find startling. The inquirers wanted clarity in the responses, not a vague intimation of the future. The second describes the reading of the condition of the liver, entrails and whatever other organs were inspected by the haruspex (diviner), but rarely gives an interpretation of the reading. This absence of interpretation of the inspection changes around the time of the reign of Ashurbanipal, as does the standard text in which the inquiries were couched.
The commentary for 'Who Will Appear Before the City' is in preparation, and is likely to appear in 2019.
What is Sacred, and what is Profane? #Holy #Divine #Finitude #Infinity #Creation #God #Gods #EnumaElish #Religion
Ancient accounts of the creation of the physical world however suggest that the created world was in chaos at its beginning. What does this mean? It means that, by whatever means the plenum gives rise to the physical world and its realities, by itself it cannot give rise to a rational creation. Its creations are not defined by anything approaching reason.
Ancient cosmogonies reflect this. The Enuma Elish from Mesopotamia has two distinct levels of divine beings. The first group is present during the initial creation, and the second group is responsible for the second and rational creation. The first group of gods are not gods after the pattern of the second group. The king of heaven does not have a name in Mesopotamia, or rather his name is his description (Anshar). It is two words joined together – ‘heaven’ and ‘king’. In the Mesopotamian context both heaven and the king were understood as representations or images reality itself – representing some of the properties of the plenum.
In a sense therefore, the initial gods are simply gods which must be latent in the nature of reality itself, whether or not there is a rational creation underway. There must be a heaven, and there must be a king of it, if there is to be anything else. And somehow the first creation has to be destroyed, if there is to be a rational creation. The gods who are present during the first creation are there to serve the purpose of making it possible for there to be a rational creation.
Ann extract from the chapter 'Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree' in The Sacred History of Being.
Stylised trees were part of the iconography of religion in ancient Mesopotamia, as far back as the fourth millennium. The symbol, as it interests us here, dates from around the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. At about that time there is a new development of the symbol of the tree. The Late Assyrian form of the Tree appeared during the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I, of the thirteenth century B.C.E. The rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the first millennium spread the symbol throughout the Near East, and it survived until the end of the millennium. This form of the tree is the one most familiar to students of Assyriology and those who have visited the Assyrian galleries in the British Museum, with its garland of cones, pomegranates, or palmates surrounding either the crown of the tree, or its trunk. The importance of this symbol is made clear by the fact that it appears on royal garments, jewelry, official seals, as well as the royal wall paintings and sculptures found in the royal palaces. Indeed in the famous throne-room of Ashurnasirpal II (now in the British Museum), it is the central motif, standing directly behind the throne.
Parpola argues that the Tree symbol in Assyria had a dual function in Assyrian Imperial art. As well as symbolizing the divine world order which the Assyrian king maintained, it could also relate to the king, resulting in his portrayal as the Perfect Man. This would account for the prominence of the Tree as an imperial symbol, providing legitimation for the rule of Assyria, and justification of the king as absolute ruler.
Ancient accounts of the creation of the physical world however suggest that the created world was in chaos at its beginning. What does this mean? It means that, by whatever means the plenum gives rise to the physical world and its realities, by itself it cannot give rise to a rational creation. Its creations are not defined by anything approaching reason.
Ancient cosmogonies reflect this. The Enuma Elish from Mesopotamia has two distinct levels of divine beings. The first group is present during the initial creation, and the second group is responsible for the second and rational creation. The first group of gods are not gods after the pattern of the second group. The king of heaven does not have a name in Mesopotamia, or rather his name is his description (Anshar). It is two words joined together – ‘heaven’ and ‘king’. In the Mesopotamian context both heaven and the king were understood as representations or images reality itself – representing some of the properties of the plenum.
In a sense therefore, the initial gods are simply gods which must be latent in the nature of reality itself, whether or not there is a rational creation underway. There must be a heaven, and there must be a king of it, if there is to be anything else. And somehow the first creation has to be destroyed, if there is to be a rational creation. The gods who are present during the first creation are there to serve the purpose of making it possible for there to be a rational creation.
Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree #Assyria #Kabbalah #Abstraction #Mesopotamia
Ann extract from the chapter 'Being, Kabbalah, and the Assyrian Sacred Tree' in The Sacred History of Being.
Stylised trees were part of the iconography of religion in ancient Mesopotamia, as far back as the fourth millennium. The symbol, as it interests us here, dates from around the middle of the second millennium B.C.E. At about that time there is a new development of the symbol of the tree. The Late Assyrian form of the Tree appeared during the reign of Tukulti-Ninurta I, of the thirteenth century B.C.E. The rise of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the first millennium spread the symbol throughout the Near East, and it survived until the end of the millennium. This form of the tree is the one most familiar to students of Assyriology and those who have visited the Assyrian galleries in the British Museum, with its garland of cones, pomegranates, or palmates surrounding either the crown of the tree, or its trunk. The importance of this symbol is made clear by the fact that it appears on royal garments, jewelry, official seals, as well as the royal wall paintings and sculptures found in the royal palaces. Indeed in the famous throne-room of Ashurnasirpal II (now in the British Museum), it is the central motif, standing directly behind the throne.
Parpola argues that the Tree symbol in Assyria had a dual function in Assyrian Imperial art. As well as symbolizing the divine world order which the Assyrian king maintained, it could also relate to the king, resulting in his portrayal as the Perfect Man. This would account for the prominence of the Tree as an imperial symbol, providing legitimation for the rule of Assyria, and justification of the king as absolute ruler.
Concerning Cult Images (Porphyry) #Cult #Religion #Philosophy #Images #Interpretation #Thought #TheGods #Porphyry
Some informative texts from antiquity (such as this one) survive in part as quotations by other writers. In this case the original author was Porphyry, and it was quoted in an extensive work (the Preparation for the Gospel) by the industrious christian apologist Eusebius in the 4th century C.E. As I've shown elsewhere, Porphyry knew about the doctrine of wholes and totalities also understood by Pythagoras and Plato and others, and so he was well informed, and so gives an insight into the real significance of the practice of idolatry in the ancient world.
Eusebius' purpose in quoting the text was to show that much of the nature of earlier religion was a mere foreshadowing of the Christian revelation. By contrast, my purpose in including the text as an appendix was to show that there was still much known of the nature of 1st millennium idolatry up until the closure of the philosophical schools in 529 C.E., and that their knowledge pointed to quite a different understanding of polytheism than the one we commonly associate with the history of Israel and its religious struggles, and the later Christian objections to the 'abomination' of polytheism.
Some informative texts from antiquity (such as this one) survive in part as quotations by other writers. In this case the original author was Porphyry, and it was quoted in an extensive work (the Preparation for the Gospel) by the industrious christian apologist Eusebius in the 4th century C.E. As I've shown elsewhere, Porphyry knew about the doctrine of wholes and totalities also understood by Pythagoras and Plato and others, and so he was well informed, and so gives an insight into the real significance of the practice of idolatry in the ancient world.
Being and Representation in Greece and Assyria #Forms
#Idolatry #Philosophy
This is a discussion of the argument and significance of The Sacred History of Being. The essential argument of the book is that, in both Greece and Assyria, knowledge was conceived to exist in Being itself, and as a consequence, all true knowledge was knowledge of the Divine. The cultural apparatus of both states can be understood to have been built on that conception.
This is a discussion of the argument and significance of The Sacred History of Being. The essential argument of the book is that, in both Greece and Assyria, knowledge was conceived to exist in Being itself, and as a consequence, all true knowledge was knowledge of the Divine. The cultural apparatus of both states can be understood to have been built on that conception.
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