Kingship in Ancient Assyria

[This is a chapter from Echoes of Eternity. Of interest to those interested in the origins of the discussion of ethics and morality. Did Socrates initiate interest in these questions? Did Aristotle build his discussion of ethics on ideas in his own head? A close look at the ideas of kingship and divinity in the Near East, in the centuries before classical Greece, suggests otherwise.]

The Excellence of the King

Throughout the texts and inscriptions and iconography we are presented with images of the king as a kind of perfection. He is at the apex of the social structure of Assyria and is its principal priest (in terms of his participation in the key rituals). Thus he is the most excellent of human beings and holds his position because of his theoretical excellence in all aspects of Assyrian life: exercising the virtues of kingship, justice, statecraft, warfare, divination, administration, etc.

It would be easy to argue that the king was understood to have the privilege of contact with the divine on account of his pre-eminence in human society; almost that the king arrogated this privilege to himself on account of his power to do so. However this would be to retroject a secularism into Assyrian society which the evidence does not warrant.

The office of priest, for example, is not distinguished by a term which we can easily equate with "priest". The kalu-priest is designated simply "kalu". In other words, the function of these officials is not seen as apart from the function of the rest of the Assyrian social structure: religion and society are inextricably intertwined, having never been conceived as separate ways of looking at the world (Compare for example the elaborate intertwining of everyday life and the understanding of the structure of the world illustrated by Marcel Griaule's study of Dogon belief: Conversations with Ogotemeli). The term "apkallum" (used to describe Adapa's priesthood of Ea at Eridu) was understood by the Assyrians to be a term indicating a mortal sage, though in connection with Adapa I think the term to have a technical meaning.

In any case, there is little evidence that people thought in antiquity this way up. Even if someone did steal privileges by virtue of his power to do so, the act would be understood and explained within a moral framework, and the success of the act would depend on the will of the gods. When Esarhaddon entered Nineveh and sat on the throne of his father, he describes how

"favourable powers drew close in heaven and earth... messages of gods and goddesses they sent me continuously and gave me courage"[Borger, R. Die Inschriften Asarhaddons (AfO Beiheft 9), 1959, Nin. A-F Ep. 2] (Translation supplied by A.T.L. Kuhrt).

Instead, much of the evidence is explained if we infer that the king understood that he owed his privileges of contact with the gods and his rulership over mankind to his excellence and perfection. In other words, that his wisdom and power came to him by virtue of his perfection, not only in eminence among men, but among all men.

The king is described as "king of kings", which concept may have been understood as essential to the function of his kingship, and not merely as a vainglorious styling. From the Assyrian point of view, the reason why there is a point of contact between the king and the gods at all is because they have something in common, and that the point of contact is precisely the pre-eminence, the excellence, and the perfection of the king in all his roles. It is this commonality which establishes the harmony between the world of man and that of the gods. Cf. Plato, Timaeus 31c-32c; also Aristotle, Politics 1277a, and Nicomachean Ethics Bk. X, chap. 8.

In antiquity in general, perfection is understood as a kind of completion: the perfect is that which is complete, and that which is complete is perfect. Thus the king is also complete, in his attainments, his power, his wisdom and his capacity. In this the king emulates the divine, all aspects of which must be complete in their own natures.

That completion was understood as a virtue in itself is illustrated by the fact in Mesopotamia and elsewhere, sin was often countered not by attempting to undo the sin directly, but by the perfect performance of rituals and incantations. Each of these, properly performed, counted towards the expiation of the sin, irrespective of the nature of the sin. Thus, to undo the damage done by the sin, it is not necessary to repair the damage, to make good the imperfection, directly (often impossible – see the "Sin of Sargon" text in SAA vol. IV, Starr): to undertake repair without regard to context but complete attention to purpose is the requirement. See SLA 323 [= Harper 629], lines 13-17, which illustrates that completions in the abstract are efficacious. Thus, in acting as "apkallum" (standing in for the god Ea) in rituals necessary for the continuation of the Assyrian state (as illustrated in the throne room relief where the king is shown apparently engaged in the business of fertilizing the date palm represented as a sacred tree) the ritual is brought closer to the divine creation, and the consonance of the act with the divine will is emphasised.

The king was "chosen" by the gods because of his special excellence and his virtue, and he was the person responsible for performing very special actions. Everything associated with the act being performed was of equal and critical importance: upon the timing of the ritual depended its success - see SLA 342 [= Harper 406], where the auspicious day for a sacrifice is discussed; see also SLA 344 [= Harper 365], and SLA 328 [= Harper 356]. Oaths were a matter for auspicious days also, and the king was available to be visited likewise only when the day was right - see SLA 341 [= Harper 384].

The king is the agent of the divine in the fight against chaos and the maintenance of order in his realm (which struggle might be characterized as war with the imperfect and the incomplete: compare for example the "Enuma Elish" and the strange creatures which were made in the first creation). Heidel The Babylonian Genesis. pp. 23-4 [Tablet I, lines 132-45]. See also pp. 75-81 for the surviving Greek accounts by Berossus and Alexander Polyhistor.  The struggle against chaos is vividly illustrated in the palace reliefs according to the metaphor of the battle between Marduk and Tiamat. The lion hunt sculptures from the palace of Ashurbanipal echo this struggle. The king is also the final judge, meaning that his insight into the true nature of matters is second to none - see SLA 322 [= Harper 1006].

The divine is understood as some place on the other side of the limit of the world which the king rules, from which he is excluded except in terms of priestly contact.* SLA 327 [= Harper 565], which illustrates the fact that we are excluded from the celestial world except via observation. He is near to the divine, but not so proximate to qualify as divine himself. Though a letter suggests that part of the aura of the king was the power to do exactly as he wished - see SLA 324 [= Harper 137]. To those lower down the social scale in Assyria this might count as divinity; but to those able to juggle with the pattern of ideas within which Assyrian royalty functioned, it would connote no more than proximity with the divine - see SLA 137 [= Harper 992].

As the most perfect individual in his state the king nearly emulates the divine in containing all things: he is complete. The completion of his nature and that of Assur can be made concrete by its literal realization. The king is "king of kings", and this can be made real by conquest and the subjection of surrounding states from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea. Hence also his description as "king of countries" and "king of the four quarters (lit., edges) of the world".

It is possible that his "official" moods were in imitation of the gods, understood to be manifest in the motions of the planets: the Crown Prince was excluded from the presence of the King when Mars was in opposition to the Sun and hence subject to retrograde motions (which exclusion is an interesting reflection of the Adapa myth,of central importance to Sargonid kingship: Ea knew that Adapa was not fit to appear in the presence of Anu without some schooling in what to say) SLA 328 [= Harper 356]; see also SLA 342 [= Harper 356]; SLA 344 [= Harper 365]; SLA 345 [= Harper 652]. The same sort of equation was made between the geography of the Mesopotamian world and the surface of the moon at the time of lunar eclipse – see SLA 322 [= Harper 1006]. Roaf in his Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia illustrates this letter, but gives no citation (22 May 678 B.C.). See also SLA 324 [= Harper 137]. See also Parpola's Doctoral Thesis, Letters of Assyrian Scholars to Ashurbanipal and Esarhaddon 1971, Appendix 3B.

It is difficult to specify exactly what is going on here, but it would appear that there is some kind of transactive relationship understood to exist between the abstract (gods) and the concrete (the earthly responsibilities of the king): the character of some of the acts for which we have evidence is best explained by presuming that the principal point of the acts was to create a harmony between heaven and earth; to act as agents, the viziers of the divine, not to supplant its position, or to exploit it for personal ends. Prestige and propaganda are naturally of significance in a world dominated by metaphors (the king being a metaphor for the divine), but the state machine is driven by, both the internal logic of its theology, and the theology functioning as a tool of state. In any case, the distinction between the character of the state and the will of the gods has not yet been made.

The Assyrian concept of nobility

In Assyria justice was not based upon equity, but upon who you were. Thus, the kind of treatment one might expect depended upon what kind of position one occupied in the social structure. In other words the arrangement of society was hierarchical, and the honour and moral worth of an individual depended upon his social position (which, given the complexity of the court and society, might not be reflected by means of the possession of a title). Hence the poor and the helpless by definition were morally worthless, deserving pity; and the rich and the powerful, also by definition, were naturally of high moral character SLA 329 [= Harper 1237], which illustrates that only the divine can exist in harmony. Thus, the more noble the individual (reflected by social position), the greater the proximity to the divine.

The basis of such a social system is teleological: each social position being understood as a rung on the ladder with the divine at the very top; the king stood in close proximity to the divine. The divinity represented a perfect completion, each social position being a more or less imperfect emulation (though perhaps achieving its own special completion of no significant worth). It would seem however that sometimes the hierarchical order could be reversed, for reasons which are difficult to understand: see SLA 329 [= Harper 1237].â Since completion and perfection were the criteria by which the excellence of acts, things and people were judged, fact and value interpenetrate. Everything in such a world speaks of its meaning.

This of course means that the moral structure of the Assyrian state ought to be intelligible, at least to some extent, in terms of Aristotle's understanding of the way human beings ought to function, since in both the Politics and the Ethics he discusses actions and structures in  terms of honour and completion. Herodotus too constructed his Histories on the basis of a teleological model, interestingly associating space and direction with moral qualities [see also Aristotle, Politics 1327b-1328a].

Both of these writers lived some time after the fall of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which means that caution is important. Herodotus however lived close enough in time to at least contemplate writing a history of Assyria. Though Greek and Assyrian cultures are clearly quite different entities, a comparison between the two might shed considerable light on the latter.

The King and Totality

The concept of totality as a feature of both the Adapa (myth and discipline) and Assyrian theology, arises as the logical corollary of the association of the king with perfection, and thus completion: it is another way of framing the idea that the universe is structured according to degrees of participation in the ultimate completion (the realm of the divine). This ultimate completion is transcendent, in that we can have no commerce with it except via individuals with a special quality in common (temporary or permanent). However, the essential characteristic of the divine, if it cannot exist in the world, can be emulated within the limitations imposed by the nature of earthly reality. Hence we find the king engaged in conquest and empire building, attempting to take hold of the known universe and to subject it to his will (which is naturally the will of the divine). This ambition (if not necessarily the reality) is reflected in the style of the king’s inscriptions, whether addressed to a human or divine audience. Client kings make sense within this emulatory system: he need not rule directly, just as Marduk need not. A proxy representative (bound by oaths to the Assyrian king, justas the king is bound by oath to the god) is not only satisfactory, but fits harmoniously into the Assyrian model of the world.

Aristotle was insistent that, while a man might be regarded as a god among men, a man could not be divine while still living, because the divine has a strict definition. Man is connected with the divine in a participatory sense through the accomplishment of ends and completion. While man has existence on earth he cannot be truly divine (though he might be truly human only by virtue of something of the divine within him).

That Aristotle's definition of the divine is traditional is supported by the fact that no clear evidence exists for the paying of divine honours to a Greek (while still alive) before and including Alexander the Great (Heroic honours being a quite different matter: the different species of honours require to be clearly distinguished).

That the teleological world view was important in the fourth century B.C. is illustrated vividly by the proskynesis debate at the Persian court of Alexander. The best account is by Arrian, and it presents the debate as a struggle between theteleological view of divinity (of which he must have been aware, having been Aristotle's pupil) and the Democritean view of theological matters (in which nothing happens according to fortune, for there is nothing beyond the meaningless concourse of atoms). The debate is a miniature of the struggle between Plato's Gods and Giants (the Sophist): ironically Anaxarchus tempted Alexander to side with the giants in order that he be regarded as a god. Thus it is a fourth century miniature of the struggle between the ancient teleology (in which actual divinity is incompatible with complete physical existence), and the moderns (who restrict themselves to dealing with the idea that divinity is a metaphor, with only the meaning with which it is invested by its devotees).