The Legend of Naram-Sin

NaramSin explains in this talc of woe that his troubles began when the goddess Ishtar “changed her plan” and the gods gave their blessing to “seven kings, brothers, glorious and noble; their troops numbered 360,000.” Coming from what is now Iran, they invaded the mountain lands of Gutium and Elam to the east of Mesopotamia and were threatening Akkad itself. Naram-Sin asked the gods what to do and was told to put aside his weapons and, instead of going to battle, to go sleep with his wife (but, for some deep reason, avoid making love):

The gods reply to him:

“O Naram-Sin, this is our word: This army against you . . . Bind your weapons, in a corner place them!

Hold back your boldness, stay at home! Together with your wife, in bed go sleep. but with her you must not . . . Out of your land, unto the enemy, you must not go.”

But Naram-Sin. announcing that he would rely on his own weapons, decided to attack the enemy in spite of the gods’ advice. “When the first year arrived, I sent out 120,000 troops, but none of them returned alive,” Naram-Sin confessed in his inscription.

More troops were annihilated in the second and third years, and Akkad was succumbing to death and hunger. On the fourth anniversary of the unauthorized war, Naram-Sin appealed to the great god Ea to overrule Ishtar and put his case before the other gods. They advised him to desist from further fighting, promising that “in days to come,

Enlil will summon perdition upon the Sons of Evil,” and Akkad would have respite.

The promised era of peace lasted about three centuries, during which the olden part of Mesopotamia. Sumer, reemerged as the center of kingship, and the oldest urban centers of the ancient world —Ur, Nippur, Lagash, Isin, Larsa—flourished again.

Sumer, under the kings of Ur, was the center of an empire that encompassed the whole of the ancient Near East. But toward the end of the third millennium B.C., the land became the arena for contending loyalties and opposing armies; and then that great civilization—man’s first known civilization—succumbed to a major catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. It was a fateful event which, we believe, was echoed in biblical tales. It was an event whose memory lingered on for a long time, commemorated and bewailed in numerous lamentation poems;

they gave a very graphic description of the havoc and desolation that befell that great heartland of ancient civilization. It was, those Mesopotamian texts stated, a catastrophe that befell Sumer as a result of a decision of the great gods sitting in council. It took southern Mesopotamia almost a century to be resettled and another century to fully recover from the divine annihilation.

By then, the center of Mesopotamian power had shifted northward, to Babylon. There, a new empire was to rise, proclaiming an ambitious god. MARDUK, as its supreme deity. Circa 1800 B.C.. Hammurabi, the king renowned for his law code, ascended the throne in Babylon and began to extend its boundaries. According to his inscriptions the gods not only told him if and when to launch his military campaigns but were literally leading his armies:

Through the power of the great gods the king, beloved of the god Marduk. reestablished the foundations of Sumer and Akkad. Upon the command of Anu. and with Enlil advancing in front of his army, with the mighty powers which the great gods gave him. he was no match for the army of Emutbal and its king Rim-Sin. . . . To defeat more enemies the god Marduk granted Hammurabi a “powerful weapon” called “Great Power of Marduk”: With the Powerful Weapon with which Marduk proclaimed his triumphs, the hero [Hammurabi] overthrew in battle the armies of Eshnuna, Subartu and Gutium. . . . With the “Great Power of Marduk” he overthrew the armies of Sutium, Turukku, Kamu. . . . With the Mighty Power which Anu and Enlil had given him he defeated all his enemies as far as the country of Subartu.

But before long Babylon had to share its might with a new rival to its north—Assyria, where not Marduk but the bearded god ASHUR (“The All-Seeing”) was proclaimed supreme.

While Babylon tangled with the lands to its south and east, the Assyrians extended their rule northward and westward, as far as “the country of Lebanon, on the shores of the Great Sea.”

These were lands in the domains of the gods NINURTA and ADAD, and the Assyrian kings carefully noted that they launched their campaigns on the explicit commands of these great gods. Thus, Tiglat-Pileser I commemorated his wars, in the twelfth century B.C., in the following words:

Tiglat-Pileser. the legitimate king, king of the world, king of Assyria, king of all the four regions of the earth; The courageous hero who is guided by the trust-inspiring commands given by Ashur and Ninurta, the great gods, his lords, thus overthrowing his enemies. . . .

At the command of my lord Ashur, my hand conquered from beyond the lower Zab River to the Upper Sea which is in the west. Three times I did march against the Nairi countries. … I made bow to my feet 30 kings of the Nairi countries. 1 took hostages from them, I received as their tribute horses broken to the yoke. . . . Upon the command of Anu and Adad, the great gods, my lords, I went to the Lebanon mountains; I cut cedar beams for the temples of Anu and Adad.

In assuming the title “king of the world, king of the four regions of the Earth,” the Assyrian kings directly challenged Babylon, for Babylon encompassed the ancient region of Sumerand Akkad. To legitimize their claim the Assyrian kings had to take control of those olden cities where the Great Gods had their homes in olden times; but the way to these sites was blocked by Babylon. The feat was achieved in the ninth century B.C. by Shalmaneser III; he said thus in his inscriptions:

I marched against Akkad to avenge . . . and inflicted defeat. … I entered Kutha, Babylon and Borsippa. I offered sacrifices to the gods of the sacred cities of Akkad. I went further downstream to Chaldea, and received tribute from all the kings of Chaldea. . . . At that time, Ashur, the great lord . . . gave me scepter, staff … all that was necessary to rule the people. I was acting only upon the trustworthy commands given by Ashur, the great lord, my lord who loves me.

Describing his various military campaigns, Shalmaneser asserted that his victories were achieved with weapons provided by two gods: “I fought with the Mighty Force which Ashur, my lord, had given me; and with the strong weapons which Nergal, my leader, had presented to me.” The weapon of Ashur was described as having a “terrifying brilliance.” In a war with Adini the enemy fled on seeing “the terrifying Brilliance of Ashur; it overwhelmed them.”

When Babylon, after several acts of defiance, was sacked by the Assyrian king Sennacherib (in 689 B.C), its demise was made possible because its own god, Marduk, became angry with its king and people, and decreed that “seventy years shall be the measure of its desolation”—exactly as the God of Israel had later decreed for Jerusalem. With the subjugation of the whole of Mesopotamia, Sennacherib was able to assume the cherished title “King of Sumer and Akkad.”

In his inscriptions, Sennacherib also described his military campaigns along the Mediterranean coast, leading to battles with the Egyptians at the gateway to the Sinai peninsula. His list of conquered cities reads like a chapter in the Old Testament—Sidon, Tyre, Byblos, Akko, Ashdod, Ashkalon—“strong cities” that Sennacherib “overwhelmed” with the aid of “the awe-inspiring Brilliance, the weapon of Ashur, my lord.” Reliefs that illustrate his campaigns (as the one depicting the siege of Lachish, Fig. 4) show the attackers using rocketlike missiles against their enemy. In the conquered cities Sennacherib ‘“killed their officials and patricians . . . and hung their bodies on poles surrounding the city; the common citizens I considered prisoners of war.”

Fig. 4