State Archives of Assyria Bulletin Volume XV (2006) FEEDING DINNER TO A BED REFLECTIONS ON THE NATURE OF GODS IN ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA ∗ Barbara Nevling Porter The essay that follows will explore the significance of two incidents involving beds, boats, and sheep. These oddly assorted objects play significant roles in two letters sent by an imperial official to King Sargon II of Assyria, ruler of the Assyrian empire from 721 to 705 BCE. I will focus especially on the beds that are discussed in these letters, since their treatment provides unexpected insights into the nature of divinity as ancient Mesopotamians understood it.1 The first letter (no. 54 in Simo Parpola's excellent new edition) begins in typical Assyrian fashion with its author wishing the king good health and identifying himself. The writer is |âb-^ār-A^^ur, the ma^ennu or “state treasurer” of Assyria and one of the most powerful men in the Assyrian empire. From references to him in other letters, we know that |âb-^ār-A^^ur 's activities included allotting silver, gold, and precious stones from the state treasury to craftsmen for making precious objects, supervising the production of such articles for temples and palaces, serving as governor of an important province, assembling chariots for use by the Assyrian army, and supervising one of King Sargon's major public works projects, the construction of a new capital city, named Dūr&arrukēn.2 Given |âb-^ār-A^^ur's prominent role in imperial affairs, it is likely that the ∗ The present essay has developed from a talk presented at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität in Heidelberg in June of 2004. I am grateful to my host, Prof. Stefan Maul, his students Ms. Wiebke Meinhold and Mr. Uri Gabbay, and his colleagues Dr. Rita Strauss, Prof. Peter Miglus and Prof. Josef Maran for their perceptive responses and suggestions. I would also like to thank Prof. H.S. Versnel for reading the manuscript and offering perceptive comments, and Dr. Michael H. Porter, Ms. Anne K. Porter, and Capt. Peter Edgecomb for encouragement and tactful editing. 1. The two letters are published in transliteration and English translation in an excellent revised edition by Simo Parpola: Parpola 1987, nos. 54 and 55, pp. 50-52. 2. Mattila 2000, pp. 13-28, esp. pp. 15, 19-20, 24-25, and 26-28. 308 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER projects discussed in these two letters will prove to be matters of importance to Assyria and its king. As the first letter opens, we find |âb-^ār-A^^ur traveling on the Tigris River, heading toward the city of A^^ur, where the temple of the god A^^ur, Assyria's chief patron deity, was located. He reports to Sargon that he set out on this journey from “the palace” (in what city, he does not say) on the first day of his journey and has reached the town of Ubasê, about 15 kilometers north of A^^ur,3 where he is spending the night. He takes advantage of the respite to report to Sargon, first assuring him that the boats are safe, and then asking the king's approval of projects he plans to undertake when he reaches his final destination. |âb-^ār-A^^ur adds that if the gods take care of them (he seems a little nervous about this business of traveling in boats!), they will arrive at their destination on the following day. Although that city's name is now missing, later comments make it clear that he is heading for Libbi-āli, the temple quarter of A^^ur. The next five lines of the letter (9-13) are badly damaged, but enough traces survive at the ends of lines 9 and 10 to establish that |âb-^ār-A^^ur's plans include delivering something made of gold to the god A^^ur's temple.4 As the letter continues, clear traces of the word “bed” (GI&.NÁ) can be discerned at the ends of lines 14 and 15. As the text becomes more easily readable, |âb-^ār-A^^ur is explaining that people or objects are to be assembled “for decorating and washing” (ana dammuqi ana masê) some object (lines 16-18), probably the bed mentioned in the preceding two lines.5 The rest of the letter focuses on this bed and what is to be done with it. |âb-^ārA^^ur now asks the king's permission to bring it into the god A^^ur's temple, E^arra 3. Parpola – Porter 2001, p. 17 and map 10, grid C1 (with bibliography on its probable location). 4. The word qarbāti in this passage is problematic. To begin with, its presence is likely, but not certain; only part of its first sign survives, with the remainder of the word and all but the last sign of umamāni restored by Parpola on the basis of line 11 of the reverse of the tablet, where the two words survive together intact. If qarbāti is indeed here (as seems likely), its meaning is nevertheless uncertain. The AHw s.v. qerbetu(m), qa/erbatu(m) translates the term as “Flur” (Eng. “field, plain”), which makes little sense in this context; the CAD s.v. qarbātu offers “(meaning uncertain)” and proposes to translate line 11 as, “I will let my q.-s bring in the animals”. Parpola, in the glossary to the edition (p. 224), suggests translating the word as “personally(?)”, but the presence of the word here is only implied in his translation of obv., line 9, which reads, “I shall bring the golden [……]s into the temple of A^^ur” (with the presence of the restored umamāni indicated only in the transliteration). 5. The verb I translate here as “assemble” is karāku, translated in the AHw with the meanings “to bind up, collect, combine”, but read in the CAD as meaning “to obstruct; to dam (a canal or waterway); to immerse …; (in hendiadys) to do promptly (?)”. Parpola follows von Soden's interpretation, but reconstructing “th[ere is a ritual]” in line 14, he takes the direct object of the verb to be that ritual, and so reads, “there is a ritual to put together for decorating and washing the bed” (Parpola's italics indicate an uncertain translation). FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 309 (one of the most important settings for the performance of state rituals), so that “we” can “perform our rites jointly together” (rev. 3-4); he notes that there is room enough, and that the location would be “suitable for our vigil” (rev. 6). So the bed is traveling toward A^^ur to be the object of, or to participate in, some kind of ritual, and the state treasurer hopes to combine the bed's ritual with another ritual already planned for performance there. In case the king is wondering, |âb-^ār-A^^ur continues, the bed could “enter” (r. 8) (by which I think he means leave the boat and enter both city and temple6) by going to the house belonging to the treasurer of E^arra, where the gods of the new capital, Dūr-&arrukēn, are already staying (presumably represented by their statues or divine emblems). This is a tantalizing comment. If we could establish why those gods were staying in A^^ur, some 120 kilometers from their home city, it might shed light on why the bed was also traveling there. Sargon's inscriptions note that the statues of Dūr-&arrukēn's gods were constructed in A^^ur, in the renowned workshops of E^arra.7 If the construction of these had only recently been finished, the ritual |âb-^ār-A^^ur mentions might be the one used to transform statues into living gods before beginning their careers as deities. If that was indeed the case, the bed in our letter might have been intended for the future use of a god in the new capital city and in that case, might well have been on its way to A^^ur for ritual sanctification and commissioning along with its owner-to-be.8 It is, however, equally possible that the gods were already settled in the new capital and were now back in A^^ur to participate in some sort of state ritual to be performed in the national shrine. Although we cannot establish why the gods of Dūr-&arrukēn were in A^^ur, |âb-^ār-A^^ur's proposal that the bed should join them in the temple treasurer's house and then proceed to the temple indicates that the bed was somehow an object of religious significance. |âb-^ār-A^^ur continues. On his arrival, he reports, he will bring umāmāni into the city from the boat (r. 11-12). The word umāmu was a term for various types of exotic beast, some real and some mythological; Assyrian royal inscriptions report the occasional placement of statues of such creatures in palaces and in temples, in the latter case 6. In Assyrian dialect in this period, the verb erābu, “to enter”, was used both in the general sense of the word and as a technical term for the entry of a god's statue into a temple: see Pongratz-Leisten 1994, pp. 159-164, and Nissinen – Parpola 2004, p. 202. 7. The Khorsabad inscriptions: Fuchs 1994, p. 182, sections 426 and 427. 8. For a discussion of the ritual transformation of statues into gods in Mesopotamia, see Walker – Dick 1999, pp. 55-121. There is no evidence that beds of gods themselves underwent that ritual, but it would seem reasonable to suppose that important objects meant to be used in the god's service might be ritually dedicated in some formal way, and that combining the two operations had struck the state treasurers as a sensible idea. 310 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER perhaps representing the umāmāni of the goddess Tiāmat, demons who had become minor gods after their defeat by the god Marduk.9 The mention of this delivery to the temple, together with |âb-^ār-A^^ur's earlier reference to golden objects he was planning to deliver there, suggests that deliveries to the E^arra temple may have been the main purpose of his boat trip. |âb-^ār-A^^ur now returns to discussing the bed. Once the umāmāni are safely in the city, |âb-^ār-A^^ur informs the king, he will return to the bed, still waiting aboard the boat. He tells the king that he will himself spend the night on board the boat with the bed, keeping watch over it, and will then bring it into the city as soon as the king grants him permission, which he urges the king to do quickly. This is clearly no ordinary bed. It is receiving solicitous personal attention from the Assyrian royal treasurer, its movements are being monitored and directed by the king himself, it is to join a group of important gods housed by an official of the Assyrian chief temple, and it will then enter the great E^arra temple for some kind of ritual performance. When we turn to the second letter (no. 55), we again find a bed that is important to the king and that has some kind of religious significance. The name of this letter's author is broken away, but Parpola (p. 51) informs us that it is written in |âb-^ār-A^^ur's characteristic hand. Once again our intrepid state treasurer is on a boat trip, and once again he is escorting a bed. This is a different and much longer trip; |âb-^ār-A^^ur tells Sargon that he has arrived safely in A^^ur after 18 days of travel, thanks to the gods, whose protection the king had encouraged by presenting them with a special gift.10 The treasurer reports that at their arrival, the city's inhabitants had set up offering tables and presented offerings (possibly thank-offerings to the gods of Assyria for the boats' safe arrival). The boats, he tells us, are now tied up on the river in front of the city gate, and his canopy has been set up onboard ship, where he will be “keeping watch” until he departs (e. 10¥-11¥). It is at this point that he mentions the bed, probably already discussed in the missing first section of the tablet. Surprisingly he now comments, “As long as the bed is aboard, regular sheep offerings are being made in front of it” (lines 13¥-r. 1).11 9. AHw, p. 1412, s.v. umāmu. 10. The text is somewhat ambiguous; it refers to their arrival on “the eighteenth day”, but whether this was the 18th day of the trip or the 18th of the month is not made clear. 11. In Assyria, ritual instruction texts describe the procedure for presenting food offerings to a god, which typically consisted of erecting an offering table (passuru) “before, in front of, the god” and placing the food on it at the appropriate moment (for some examples, see CAD P, s.v. passuru). The comment that they made an offering “in front of” a god (written here ina IGI) is a common way of saying that an offering was being given to that god. The bed, in other words, is clearly the intended recipient of the sheep offering here. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 311 Not only is the state treasurer of Assyria presenting cuts of meat to a bed, he describes that action in terminology normally used to discuss offerings presented to gods. The term he uses for his gifts is UDU.dariu, literally “perpetual, or regular, sheep”, a technical term denoting a type of offering; in Neo-Assyrian times it was an offering of lamb, in one case described as roasted.12 The verb he employs to describe his action is nasā~u, a term used in the Neo-Assyrian dialect in ritual contexts to mean “to carry out an offering”.13 Dariu offerings had been presented to Mesopotamian gods as early as the late third millennium and were still presented to gods in Assyria more than a thousand years later; letters to several Assyrian kings discuss the provision of sheep for dariu offerings, which were given to the god A^^ur in his temple in A^^ur, to the god Nabû at Dūr-&arrukēn, and to the god Marduk in his temple in an unnamed city. These texts suggest that enjoyment of the UDU.dariu was a prerogative of some of Assyria's most important gods.14 After remarking that he is presenting dariu offerings to the bed and will do so until his departure, |âb-^ār-A^^ur moves on to discuss his future travel plans, and the tablet breaks off, having given us a somewhat surprising glimpse of a second important bed. Two things about the beds emerge from these letters. First, both beds are of considerable importance to the king, so much so that he gives personal attention to their movements and treatment, and so much so that his royal treasurer writes to him reporting on the beds' progress and safety, escorts them as they travel, and camps out beside them aboard ship until they enter the city. In addition, the royal treasurer himself proposes to participate (at least in a supervisory capacity) in a ritual involving the first bed. It is also clear, as we have seen, that the significance of the beds is at least partly religious. The first bed is to join important gods in the house of a temple official and is to participate in a ritual in the E^arra temple, while the second bed receives offerings of a 12. In Sumerian texts, the closely related term MA&.DA.RI.A, literally “perpetual. or regular, goat (offerings)”, was occasionally used for offerings of grain, beer, or dates rather than of goat (MA&), suggesting that DA.RI.A offerings in that period were sometimes simply “regular food offerings”, despite the original implication of the first sign (e.g., Jean 1931, p. 185). In Neo-Assyrian letters, however, the UDU.da-ri-u appears to have consisted of lamb, as the name suggests (the primary meaning of the sign UDU is immeru, “sheep”); this is suggested by references to the kidneys of dariu sheep used for offerings, and by the assertion made by certain dariu shepherds that they had sometimes provided their own sheep for the offering (Cole – Machinist 1998, nos. 131, 133, and 172). The evidence that dariu offerings were cooked, at least in some cases, is the reference to “two cuts of meat from one roast (^u-bé-e) dariu sheep” in an A^^ur offering list: Fales – Postgate 1995, no. 197, l. 5. 13. CAD N/2, s.v. nasā~u 9, used idiomatically in association with niqê; and Black – George – Postgate 2000, s.v. nasā~u, p. 242, G 7: “carry out a sacrifice”. 14. E.g., for A^^ur, Parpola 1993 (SAA 10), p. 73, no. 96, l. 5; for Nabû, Parpola 1987(SAA 1), p. 104, no. 129, l. 9; for Marduk, Cole – Machinist 1998 (SAA 13), no. 134, r., l. 11 and no. 172, ll. 5-9. 312 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER type usually presented to important Assyrian gods. How can we explain such treatment of two pieces of furniture? I would suggest that both beds belonged to gods, or were soon to be presented to gods by Sargon. Providing gods with beds was an ancient royal practice in Mesopotamia. It is mentioned as early as the inscriptions of Gudea of Lagash (ca. 2125 BCE), who celebrates his construction of a temple for his god Ningirsu in a hymn that includes an account of his placement of a bed in the temple for the god's use: In the bedroom, the house's place of rest, he set up the bed; on its slats, like birds, the mountains rested with (the god) Enlil's son …; the bed … was (like) a young cow kneeling down …; on its pure back, spread with fresh hay, the mother goddess Baba was resting comfortably with lord Ningirsu.15 In subsequent periods, the construction and presentation of beds to gods by human rulers is referred to in ways that indicate it was considered an important official activity. King &ulgi of Ur (ca. 2094-2047 BCE16), for example, presents a bed to the goddess Ninlil in his sixteenth regnal year and names that year of his reign after its construction, “the year a bed for the goddess Ninlil was made”.17 I^bi-Erra, a ruler of Isin in the Old Babylonian period (2017-1985 BCE), continues the tradition, naming his sixth year after his presentation of a bed to the goddess Inanna of Uruk.18 Another king of Isin, I^me-Dagan, commemorates in two successive year-names the making of “a bed covered with silver and gold” for the goddess Ninlil.19 Other texts from the Old Babylonian period refer to beds that belonged to the god Enlil in Nippur,20 to the god Dagan in Isin,21 and to the god Nanna/Sîn.22 Temple administrative records in this period refer to allotments of wool, sheepskin, and goatskin for the bed of Enlil, suggesting that at least some of the beds given to gods as royal gifts were not small clay bed models (a type of object frequently discovered in Old Babylonian sites), but actual beds, in some cases 15. Jacobsen 1987, Cyl. B, pp. 438-439. 16. The dates cited here are approximate and are taken from the appendix, “Mesopotamian Chronology”, by J.A. Brinkman in A.L. Oppenheim 1964, p. 336; for debates about that chronology, see Frayne 1997, p. 3. 17. Salonen 1963, p. 114. 18. Richter 1999, p. 238. For brief comments on the debated chronology of this period, see Richter, p. 9, fn. 34. 19. Al Gailani Werr 1996, p. 29. 20. Richter 1999, p. 28. 21. Richter 1999, p. 195. 22. Richter 1999, p. 379. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 313 equipped with woolen coverings and sheep- and goatskin pads like the beds of wealthy humans.23 More than a thousand years later when our letters were written, the practice of providing beds for gods was still much in evidence. Gods or divine couples who are reported to have owned beds in the Neo-Assyrian and Late Babylonian periods include Marduk and his spouse Zarpānītum, I^tar, Nabû and his spouse Ta^mētum, &ama^ and his spouse Aya, A^^ur and his two alternative wives Mulissu and &eru`a, as well as Ninurta, Gula, Nanāya, and Bēltu-^a-rē^ and their spouses.24 In some temples, special rooms were provided to house the bed or beds of the resident gods, such as the room known as the “bed chamber” of Nabû and his consort Ta^mētum in Nabû's temple in Kal~u,25 and the Enir chapel of the goddess Antum in Uruk, known as “the chamber of the golden bed”.26 That at least some god's beds in this period were large and impressive pieces of furniture is suggested by the detailed description of a bed belonging to the god Marduk of Babylon (and then for a brief time, to the god A^^ur in Assyria); it is described as about 11 feet long and 6 feet wide, made of musukannu-wood (sisoo or teak), overlaid with red gold and adorned with precious stones, and equipped with eight statues of protective deities and two of golden dragons — an impressively large and valuable piece of furniture.27 As in earlier periods, accounting records from both Assyrian and Babylonian temple administrators often list linens and blankets for the god's bed among the possessions of temples,28 supporting the likelihood that in the NeoAssyrian period at least some of the beds given to gods were full-sized, fully equipped pieces of furniture. 23. Salonen 1963, p. 114. Small clay models of beds have been found in numerous sites from the Old Babylonian period, but they are not consistently found in or near temples. It is unclear whether such model beds were the property of gods or humans, and equally unclear whether they had religious significance, were used as toys, or served as objects with pleasant sexual connotations, to mention only a few of the proposed interpretations: see Cholidis 1992, pp. 123-183. 24. For general discussion of the beds of gods, see Porter 2002; for divine owners of beds, Porter 2002, p. 534, fn. 48. 25. E.g., Cole – Machinist 1998, no. 56, ll. 16-17, a letter that reports that Nabû and his consort were to enter the bed chamber (GI&.NÁ) to take part in a ritual known as the qur^u, and no. 78, l. 9, dealing with the same ritual and room. For further discussion, see Porter 2002, p. 532, fn. 39. For archaeological evidence suggesting the probable location of that room in the temple, see Postgate 1974. 26. George 1992, p. 474, fn. 8. 27. On the travels and significance of this bed, see Porter 2002. 28. Fales – Postgate 1992, no. 117, l. 5 (blankets and a bedspread [?] “pertaining to the bed of the temple of Sheru`a”), with further references to blankets in temples and as offerings in nos. 96, 97, 105, 115, and 168; for textiles used to protect the bed of &ama^ of Sippar in the Late Babylonian period, see Matsushima 1985, pp. 134-135. 314 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER Three Assyrian kings are recorded as having presented a bed to a god. The earliest is the eleventh century ruler Assurnasirpal I (1049-1030 BCE), whose hymn to I^tar celebrates his placement of an elaborate bed for her use in the Ema^ma^ temple in Nineveh; the text describes it as made of taskarinnu “boxwood”, decorated with “precious stones from the mountains”, and plated with gold so that it shone “like the radiance of the Sun”.29 Later, in the seventh century, King Sennacherib presented the elaborate bed described above (previously the property of Marduk of Babylon) to A^^ur, and later Assurbanipal presented it again to Marduk with much fanfare. Sennacherib describes his presentation of the plundered bed to A^^ur in an elaborate hymn, and Assurbanipal describes its return in an equally elaborate hymn to Marduk, as well as in four different accounts in his inscriptions, one of them carved in triplicate on stone and displayed in the I^tar temple at Nineveh.30 Two inscriptions of Assurbanipal describe his later presentation of a second bed to Marduk, this one made of ebony plated with red gold.31 The extensive and often elaborate records of the presentation of beds to gods as royal gifts suggests the great importance Assyrian kings attached to this traditional action. In some cases, the beds of gods seem to have been used to enhance the performance of a particular ritual,32 but all three of the Assyrian kings who gave beds to gods make it clear that their primary reason for giving beds to gods was the beneficial effect such beds were felt to have on the health and survival of the donor king. Assurnasirpal I, for example, explains that he is suffering from a serious illness, which he suspects that I^tar, inexplicably angry, has caused.33 His gift of a bed to her is meant to make her relent and heal him; he refers to the bed as “the pacifier of your divine self” (mu^ap^i~ ilūtika, l. 35), and at the end of his dedicatory hymn he asks the goddess to intercede with her beloved, the god A^^ur, to secure a long life for the king. By pleasing the goddess, this bed was intended to have an immediate impact on Assurnasirpal's precarious health. Sennacherib and Assurbanipal, in their dedicatory inscriptions, also describe the gift of a bed as a way of ensuring their health and safety. In presenting the bed to A^^ur and Mulissu, Sennacherib asks of the goddess, “Truly may a good word be on your lips before A^^ur about Sennacherib, king of Assyria”, so that the divine couple may choose 29. 30. 31. 32. Von Soden 1989, p. 217, obv. 35-39. For these texts and their editions, see Porter 2002, fn. 4 and fn. 7. Borger 1996, p. 189, Prism H, I, 2¥-3¥, and p. 194, Prism J, Stk. 2, 8-9. Assurbanipal notes that the bed he gave to Marduk was intended in part for “establishing the ha^ādu”, a ritual of betrothal (or perhaps a part of the marriage ceremony): based on the composite transliteration of the passage as it appears in Prism Classes C and T in Borger 1996, pp. 139-140, T I 4654. For discussion, see Porter 2000, pp. 530-531. See also fn. 25, above. 33. Von Soden 1989, pp. 215-227. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 315 to grant him “old age, family, length of days” and “firmly established rule”.34 Assurbanipal informs us later that he presents that same bed to Marduk, “for his life, for the length of his days”.35 In another text, Assurbanipal is more explicit about how beds were thought to produce this desirable effect; he requests of the god Nabû, “May Ta^mētum, the great lady, your beloved wife, who intercedes for me before you [daily?] in the well-appointed bed, request of you my life”.36 Assyrian kings were clearly convinced that gods lying together contentedly night after night in a fine bed would be inclined to decree long life for the king who had given it to them. Armed with this information, we can now return to the beds discussed in |âb-^ārA^^ur's letters. If, as seems likely, both beds belonged to a god or were about to be given to a god, their importance to the king and their religious significance are now easily explained. To begin with, beds presented to gods were not only inherently valuable objects, they were also a means of ensuring lasting good health and safety for the king and his family; it is no wonder that Sargon and his state treasurer showed a lively interest in the beds' safe delivery and welfare. The religious significance of such beds is also apparent, making it unsurprising that the bed in the first letter was to be housed under the protection of a temple treasurer in the company of gods' statues and was to be used in rituals performed in the great E^arra temple. But the treatment of the bed in the second letter is still puzzling. If these beds were simply valuable pieces of cultic furniture, why did |âb-^ār-A^^ur take the extraordinary step of presenting dariu offerings to the second bed, an honor otherwise attested in this period only for the gods A^^ur, Nabû and Marduk? Did |âb-^ār-A^^ur consider the bed itself to be a god? I think so: a particular kind of minor god, a “god” only in the Mesopotamian sense of the word, and from |âb-^ār-A^^ur's Assyrian point of view, perhaps a god only provisionally, but a god nevertheless.37 34. Matsushima 1988, p. 102, K. 2411, 11-14. I am grateful to Dr. Jamie Novotny for allowing me to consult his notes toward a new edition of this text, to appear in the RIM series. 35. Matsushima 1988, p. 100, K. 2411, I, 18. 36. Hunger 1968, no. 338, 21-24. 37. I understand the word “god” in modern English usage to refer to an entity that is “divine” but not necessarily “anthropomorphic”, which is to say that a “god” need not necessarily resemble a human being, either in its physical form or in its nature. Some modern observers may disagree, arguing that by definition, a “god” is a “divine being”, and that the word “being” presupposes a living, humanoid entity. My purpose here is not to advance one particular definition of the English word “god” and its equivalent in other modern languages, but rather to better understand the meaning to ancient native speakers of the Sumerian and Akkadian words DINGIR and ilu (cited in ancient lexical lists as synonyms and routinely translated by Assyriologists as “god”). It is my contention that the ancient documentary evidence suggests that Sumerian DINGIR and its Akkadian equivalent, ilu, referred to entities that were in some cases envisioned as wholly or partly anthropomorphic, and in other cases were not 316 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER This may seem at first surprising. The great majority of ancient Mesopotamian texts suggest that Mesopotamians imagined the great gods, the members of their families, and the lesser deities who were their dependents, to exist primarily as great divine persons, anthropomorphic in form and behavior; certainly, it is this aspect of the Mesopotamian concept of deity that historians of Mesopotamian religion have usually stressed. In his masterful study of Mesopotamian religion, Jean Bottéro asserts, for example, that Mesopotamian gods were “resolutely anthropomorphist beings from the beginning”,38 and indeed, he has a point. As any Assyriologist is well aware, the great gods are both addressed and described in texts in anthropomorphic terms, as warriors, lords and ladies, kings and queens, shepherds and fathers, sons and daughters, terms that imply such gods were imagined to resemble the human rulers and great lords of Mesopotamia and their entourages. Gods' temples are referred to as gods' “houses”, and the other gods resident in those temples are described in hymns and royal inscriptions, and even in scholarly reference lists, as family members, servants and courtiers of that temple's chief deity.39 Much of the daily ritual of Mesopotamian temples in every period (to the extent that we know of it from texts giving instructions for the performance of rituals, from letters and inscriptions referring to rituals, or from records of the supplies needed to perform them) appears to have echoed the patterns of daily life in Mesopotamian palaces and great households, so that gods (at least in some temples) were awakened in the morning, were dressed in clothes, and were served elaborate, carefully cooked meals.40 This treatment reflects what was in many ways a profoundly anthropomorphic vision of divinity. At the same time, however, texts name and describe many of these same gods as if each was also simultaneously present in the cosmos in the form of a particular natural phenomenon such as grain, fire, plague, or storm; in the form of a particular human achievement, such as justice; and/or in the form of a particular planet, star, or constellation. Hymns, prayers and royal inscriptions often describe such gods in terms that seem to imply that the associated natural phenomenon was understood as the same “god” in an alternate, non-anthropomorphic form. The great god Enlil, for example, associated with wind and storm, is described in one hymn as “the great and powerful ruler” who envisioned as anthropomorphic at all. In choosing to use the word “god” here for these ancient Mesopotamian entities, I do mean to sugggest that DINGIRs and ilus bore a partial resemblance to “gods” of other traditions and of modern usage; I do not mean to suggest, however, that “gods” and ilus are in every way identical. 38. Bottéro 2001, p. 44. 39. E.g., Lambert 1990, p. 117, and Bottéro 2001, pp. 114-116. 40. Bottéro 2001, pp. 125-133. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 317 “sits down in majesty on his sacred and sublime throne”,41 while another hymn refers to him as the storm itself: he is “the mighty one, Enlil, whose utterance cannot be changed, he is the storm, is destroying the cattle pen, uprooting the sheepfold. My roots are torn up! My forests denuded!” 42 If we are to take such descriptions as meant literally (and perhaps we should, since the texts suggest nothing to the contrary), it would appear that Enlil was imagined to have both anthropomorphic form, as a great ruler, and nonanthropomorphic form, as storm and wind. Some gods were similarly equated with a planet or star. In the massive list of gods' names known to Assyriologists as AN=Anum, a Mesopotamian classic that was probably composed in the Old Babylonian period but was then recopied (and presumably read and consulted) until the final days of Mesopotamian civilization, the names listed for the god Nanna/Sîn, for example, identify him both as an anthropomorphically conceived ruler and as the moon itself;43 names attributed to him include, for example, oLUGAL (“king”) and oDUMU.NUN.NA (“princely son”), but he is also called by names that refer to his appearance in the form of the moon, such as oMEN.ZALAG.U&U (“bright, radiant crown”), oA&IM.BABBAR (“brightness going forth”) and oMÁ.GUR8 (“boat”, of a type often used in religious processions), a metaphorical reference to the quarter-moon as a curved boat crossing the great ocean of the night sky. Hymns also celebrate Sîn as a ruler, “Father Nannar, who rules with pomp, chief of the gods, … who goes about in princely garb”,44 as a “fruit which grows of itself”,45 referring to the waxing moon, and as a “lamp appearing in the clear skies, Sîn, ever renewing himself, illuminating the darkness”.46 Sîn is as much moon as person. The goddess I^tar is similarly both lady and planet; in one hymn, for example, she is both “lady of ladies, … queen of all the inhabited world”, and also the planet Venus, “shining torch of heaven and earth”.47 W.G. Lambert, although he emphasizes the anthropomorphic nature of Mesopotamian gods, takes note of the multiple forms attributed to many of the great gods; he suggests that while modern observers may find the multiplicity of forms confusing, Mesopotamians apparently felt comfortable with the ambiguities of a god imagined in any of several different forms. He comments, 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. Bottéro 2001, p. 31. Jacobsen 1976, p. 101. Litke 1998, Tablet III, pp. 116-119. Bottéro 2001, p. 32. Ibid. Jacobsen 1976, p. 122. Bottéro 2001, pp. 35-36. 318 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER There was always some ambiguity about the precise relationship of the deity to the aspect of nature, whether, for example, the sun god was in very fact the actual firey ball moving across the sky, or whether he was not of human form, living in a palace and directing the actual solar body in its daily motions from a distance. Probably they were not so conscious of such problems as we are.48 Lambert's assertion is supported by texts such as those we have just examined, which matter-of-factly present the great gods of Mesopotamia as both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic in form and nature. It is not particularly surprising, then, that alongside gods that are described mainly as divine persons, at least some deities in every period appear to have been envisioned as having no anthropomorphic form at all. These non-anthropomorphic gods take the form of a wide variety of objects and phenomena, such as particular rivers, illnesses, temples, city walls and even objects belonging to gods, such as their harps, chariots, thrones, and (rarely) their beds. That such non-anthropomorphic entities were considered gods in their own right is suggested in three principal ways. First, certain objects or phenomena are explicitly referred to as gods (denoted by the word DINGIR in Sumerian, ilu in Akkadian) or are described as acting in ways considered characteristic of gods. Second, many nonanthropomorphic entities are labeled as gods in the writing system by having the cuneiform sign representing the Sumerian word DINGIR (“god”) placed before their names as an unpronounced, optional graphic marker called by linguists a “determinative”, a graphic marker used in writing languages such as Akkadian and Sumerian to indicate the category to which the word directly following or preceding the determinative belonged — in the case of words marked with the DINGIR determinative, evidently the category of deity. The DINGIR determinative was placed (frequently but not invariably, as is typical of the use of determinatives in these languages) before the names of almost all gods that had an anthropomorphic form; when it was placed before the name of an object or other non-anthropomorphic entity, it appears intended to indicate that that object was also considered a god, that is, a member of the same category as other DINGIRs.49 48. Lambert 1990, p. 120. 49. On the reading of the sign AN as DINGIR in Sumerian and ilu in Akkadian, in both cases usually translated into English as “god”: Labat 1963, p. 49, top; CAD s.v. ilu. On determinatives and their use in Akkadian, GAG § 4b; Huehnergard 1997, pp. 111-112. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 319 The third, and perhaps most frequent, usage that marked certain non-anthropomorphic entities as gods was the presentation to them of the specially named food offerings (such as the ginû and the sattukku) presented to more familiar gods, a type of gift apparently reserved for gods alone. As an introduction to the phenomenon of non-anthropomorphic Mesopotamian deities, we can take the case of rivers, which are characterized in texts as gods in all three of these ways. The river Tigris, for example, is represented as acting like a god in personal names such as oIDIGNA-rēminni, “Tigris have mercy on me”, and fta^me- oIDIGNA, “the Tigris hears”; in both cases, the river Tigris is further identified as a god by having its name, IDIGNA, labelled with the DINGIR determinative.50 The river Balī~ was also considered a deity. It is marked as such by the treatment that is accorded to it, as in the case where an Old Babylonian offering text lists it among gods that had each received an animal offering.51 The same river is also cast as a god in personal names, such as Kurub-Balī~, “pray to Balī~”,52 where it is referred to as an appropriate recipient of prayers. Rivers collectively are also treated as gods. For example, in a text that gives instructions for performing an elaborate Assyrian ritual named the tākultu (“meal”), in the course of which offerings of food and drink were presented to all significant gods of Assyria, the word “rivers” appears in the list of offering recipients beside the names of well-known gods, is marked with a DINGIR determinative, and at the conclusion of the text, is petitioned, as one of the gods named in the text, to act as a god by conferring blessings on the Assyrian king and his country.53 The characterization of various rivers as gods is one example of a widespread phenomenon. Numerous non-anthropomorphic entities are similarly called “gods” explicitly or described as acting in ways considered characteristic of gods. The tākultu54 text mentioned above is particularly rich in references to what appear to be deified objects. For example, it lists ziggurats (tower-shaped buildings that were part of a temple complex) alongside well-known, partly anthropomorphic gods such as Anum (“sky” and lord of the sky) and Nisaba (“grain” and patroness of grain), and then refers to all the 50. 51. 52. 53. Freydank – Saporetti 1979, p. 182. Nakata 1991, Chart 1, pp. 256-257. Roberts 1972, p. 17. Menzel 1981, II, no. 54 (K. 252), VI, 19; for the concluding request for blessing, column X passim. It is likely that “rivers” were also explicitly named as gods in the now missing final lines of the passage in which they appear, which probably resembled the conclusion of the previous section (VI, 5-10), which asks the previously listed gods to accept the offering and names them as “the gods of Nineveh”, a pattern repeated with minor variations throughout the text. 54. Menzel 1981, II, no. 54 (K. 252), T 113-125. 320 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER entities in the list as “the gods of the temple of Anu” (II, 23-24); it similarly names the gate of the god Ura^ (XI 6¥) and the walls of the city of Babylon (XI, 18¥-19¥) among “the gods of the temple Esagil and Babylon” (20¥-21¥), indicating that certain parts of temple complexes and cities were also considered gods in Assyria, at least in some contexts. Personal names, as we have already seen, identify some natural phenomena as gods, such as the Middle Assyrian name &ār-ili (“the wind is my god”).55 In other personal names, temples are appealed to in terms that suggest they, too, were thought to act as gods, such as the Neo-Assyrian names E^arra-^arru-u#ur (“O temple E^arra, protect the king!”) and Esaggil-idinna (“the temple Esagil has given [an heir?]”).56 If these two important temples had not also been marked with the DINGIR determinative here, we might have wondered whether the buildings here were meant to stand for the chief god resident in them, but the attachment of a DINGIR determinative to the name of the temple itself in both cases suggests that it was itself an independent divinity, closely associated with a powerful anthropomorphic god, but in itself also possessed of a divine nature and protective powers. A wide variety of other non-anthropomorphic entities are labelled as deities in the writing of their names with the DINGIR determinative. “Stone” (abnum), for example, is labeled as a god with the DINGIR determinative in an Old Babylonian juridical text from Larsa that discusses “the weapon ‘of the god stone' ” (oAbnum) together with several objects belonging to anthropomorphic gods.57 In Assyria, the crown belonging to the god A^^ur, referred to as both “Lord Crown” (EN AGA) and “Crown” (written either with the sign AGA or the sign MEN), is frequently labeled with a DINGIR determinative and acts as a deity of some importance; it joins the king and the god A^^ur for a ritual in the temple of the god Dagan, and it is presented with offerings alongside A^^ur in another ritual.58 Its labeling with its own DINGIR determinative in such texts confirms that the crown, which acts separately from its divine owner A^^ur in these rituals, was understood to be a god in its own right. The DINGIR sign was occasionally omitted before the names of both anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic gods. Although occasional omission for no apparent reason is characteristic of the use of determinatives in Akkadian, we need to consider whether the absence of the divine determinative may in some cases have been deliberate, and if so, whether its omission was intended to indicate that the object in question was not (in that context or by that writer) considered to be a god. In most cases, there 55. 56. 57. 58. Saporetti 1970, II, p. 161. Radner 1999, pp. 405 and 407. Van der Toorn 1997, pp. 10-11. Menzel 1981, II p. 57*. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 321 appears to be no significant pattern in the omission or inclusion of the DINGIR determinative, suggesting that its occasional omission was arbitrary, perhaps simply a short-cut on the part of the scribe. A particularly convincing example of such random omission occurs in the case of the text mentioning the god “Stone”, discussed above; in this case, “stone” is labeled with the DINGIR sign on the envelope enclosing the text, but appears without the determinative in the text inside the envelope; since the object, the scribe, and the situation described are precisely the same in both cases, it seems likely that “Stone” was considered to be no less a god on the inside of the tablet, where the determinative was omitted, than on the outside, where “Stone” is explicitly labeled as a DINGIR. In this case, it seems clear that the decision to use the DINGIR determinative or omit it was not intended to convey information about the nature of the stone in question. Occasionally, however, a DINGIR sign is used for some items in a list but not for others, suggesting that in these cases the omission of the DINGIR determinative might well have been deliberate and was intended to differentiate between the unmarked and marked objects. The nature of the difference between the marked and unmarked objects in such lists, however, remains unclear. Two texts recording certain offerings presented at Nippur in the Ur III period, for example, begin by listing several well-known, largely anthropomorphic deities, each marked with the DINGIR determinative,59 who were each presented with a liter of milk; it then lists a throne and bed, each of which receive the same food offering but are labeled with the determinative for wooden objects, rather than with a DINGIR determinative.60 Since the throne of Enlil is frequently marked with a DINGIR determinative in other Nippur offering lists in this period, and since the bed and throne are treated here exactly like more conventional gods who precede and follow them in the list, it seems likely that the two pieces of furniture were considered to be gods here as well, even though in this case they lack the identifying label. Perhaps their labeling with the determinative for wooden objects was intended to mark these gods as different in physical type from those listed before them, rather than to indicate that they were not gods at all. Despite the ambiguities introduced by occasional omissions of the DINGIR determinative, however, the frequent use of the DINGIR determinative in writing the names of many objects and natural phenomena suggests that numerous nonanthropomorphic entities were understood to be gods in their own right. 59. There is one exception, the god An, but it is probably not significant; An's name itself was usually written with the same sign as the DINGIR sign, which was in such cases read syllabically as “an”, and scribes customarily omitted the DINGIR determinative in writing it, presumably because a duplicated sign, meant to be read once as a determinative and once syllabically, might well have confused readers. 60. Sallaberger 1993, II, p. 19. 322 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER A third indication that a particular non-anthropomorphic entity was considered by Mesopotamians to be a god is its treatment as a god by the presentation of food offerings to it, an honor apparently reserved for deities alone. The thousands of texts recording offerings presented to gods on various occasions make it clear that offerings were presented not only to the familiar anthropomorphic deities but also to a wide variety of non-anthropomorphic entities, ranging from mountains to parts of temples and the chariots of gods. This veneration of objects as gods was a persistent part of Mesopotamian religious practice, attested from early times until the final days of Mesopotamian civilization. At Nippur in the late third millennium, for example, regular offerings in the temples of Enlil and Ninlil were presented not only to anthropomorphic gods such as Nusku, Ninurta, Enlil, and Ninlil, but also to the throne of Enlil (oGU.ZA oEN-LÍL-LÁ, frequently written with the DINGIR determinative), to the @ursagkalamma (the named temple-tower of Enlil's temple), to the harp of the goddess Ninlil (frequently marked with the DINGIR sign), and to the chariot and plow of the temple, neither ever marked with the DINGIR determinative (to the best of my knowledge) but nevertheless receiving offerings together with that temple's other deities.61 In Uruk some two thousand years later, a chariot of the god Anu similarly received substantial daily offerings of sheep, lambs, turtledoves, duck and geese, as did many largely anthropomorphic great gods of that city.62 The size and frequency of the offerings presented to such non-anthropomorphic deities varies considerably, suggesting that some such deities were important gods and others, relatively insignificant. At Uruk in the Neo-Babylonian period, for example, a deity referred to as the “star [-shaped] branding iron of the goddess I^tar” appears to have been a very minor god indeed, labeled with the DINGIR determinative, but only once honored with an offering, on the occasion of a great festival.63 The beds of gods (of particular interest to us here) also appear to have been minor deities in the Ur III period; beds (probably the beds of gods) are twice mentioned as receiving offerings, in two offering lists mentioned earlier which report the presentation of a liter of milk to a bed and to a throne together with various other gods, on two different occasions.64 In contrast to these relatively insignificant divine objects, other non-anthropomorphic deities appear to have been major gods in their particular cities, judging from the size, regularity, and variety of the offerings presented to them. At Sippar in the Neo-Babylonian period, for example, the city's ziggurat, or temple-tower, appears near the top of 61. 62. 63. 64. Sallaberger 1993, pp. 99-100. Beaulieu 2003, p. 295. Beaulieu 2003, p. 353. Sallaberger 1993, Table 7, MVN 10, 144 and PDT 1, 527, p. 19. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 323 the lists of daily offerings together with the city's most important gods, and received an offering of a bull, sheep, lambs, geese, ducks, and turtledoves, only slightly less than the food presented to the city's chief patron deities, &ama^ and Aya, and the same amount as that given to important anthropomorphic gods such as Marduk, Bunene and the Queen of Sippar.65 The presentation of offerings to objects ranging from beds to ziggurats, and the identification of these and other objects as gods by explicit references to them as such in texts, as well as by their labeling with the DINGIR determinative, seems to indicate that Mesopotamians in every period considered certain objects and natural phenomena to be gods, entities belonging to the same category as the more anthropomorphically conceived gods. This suggests a concept of deity of considerable complexity, encompassing within the model of “god” (or deity) both active divine persons, having cognition, volition, and the ability to act upon the world, and also a variety of non-anthropomorphic entities. Some of these, such as illnesses or rivers, while not represented as anthropomorphic, are nevertheless represented in documentary evidence as living beings that were capable of having an active impact on the lives of humans; others, including the beds and thrones of gods, appear to have been conceived of as largely inanimate. Why were such entities considered to be gods? How (and to what extent) were they understood to function in their role as “gods” ? How had they come to be seen as entities of the same type as the more anthropomorphic gods? Lacking any concrete or explicit evidence about the origins of such gods, we are reduced to cautious speculation. In the case of objects such as certain harps and thrones, used for the benefit of a god in rituals or understood to be used by the god or goddess in daily life, it seems probable that Mesopotamians came to feel that such objects had become “imbued with divinity” through their intimate contact with a powerful, animate, anthropomorphically-conceived god and that as a consequence, they too should be understood as independent locuses of awesome supernatural power, objects now charged with a divinity originally derived from the god with whom they were associated, but nevertheless a separate divine entity from him or her.66 65. Myers 2002, pp. 213-214, and 241-246. 66. The more modern practice of attributing divine powers to saints' relics similarly involves a “transfer” of powers from a human owner to an inanimate object. The reverent treatment frequently accorded to objects that once belonged to rock stars or famous people (and the high sale prices of such objects) suggests that the concept of transfer from owner to owned is not entirely restricted to the religious sphere in modern times. 324 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER But however such objects had come to be thought of as gods, many (but not all) of the objects used in the ritual lives of gods were indeed treated and labeled as deities, as we have seen. How they were thought to function as gods is only suggested indirectly. Some were presented with offerings, implying they were understood to be alive and presumably cognizant, at least in the sense of being capable of being pleased. Such ritual objects are not appealed to for help, however, (so far as I know) nor are they described as having had any impact on the lives of worshippers. Although their activities and impact on humans therefore appear to have been thought of as negligible, inanimate objects such as beds, harps, and crowns that were closely associated with an active god were nevertheless frequently labeled and treated as if they were independent divine entities, awesome and potentially dangerous. * * * Having briefly explored the roles of certain objects as gods in Mesopotamia, we may now at last return to the bed of Sargon's letter, waiting aboard a boat tied up at the quay in A^^ur while |âb-^ār-A^^ur presents it with sheep offerings, which seems to imply that he considers this particular bed to be a god. Given the context, his actions no longer seem bizarre, since it is now clear that cultic implements and furniture were frequently labeled as DINGIRs and were formally presented with offerings on many occasions, suggesting that they were indeed thought to be “gods” in the Mesopotamian sense of the word. But |âb-^ār-A^^ur's presentation of offerings to a bed is nevertheless still puzzling, for reasons that we must now address. The first difficulty is that unlike other cultic implements and furniture, gods' beds were only rarely treated as gods in their own right. The two Ur-III-period offering lists mentioned earlier are the only texts, out of hundreds of offering lists from their time, to record that beds were ever treated as gods, despite considerable evidence that other pieces of cultic apparatus received offerings on many occasions during the Ur III period. In addition, beds of gods were never, to the best of my knowledge, marked with a DINGIR determinative in Mesopotamia, either at that time or in any later period. After the Ur III period, there is no further evidence that beds of gods received offerings in Mesopotamia at all.67 We know that in Babylonia at the time of our two letters and later, offerings were presented to numerous cultic implements and cultic furnishings, sometimes on a daily basis, as the texts discussed above attest, but beds of gods are never mentioned as recipients of such offerings, although beds were part of the 67. I am grateful to Dr. Rita Strauss for drawing my attention to the presentation of offerings to beds in Hurrian ritual texts from Boğazkoy, published in Haas 1998. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 325 cultic equipment of some Babylonian temples in this period. In short, gods' beds do not appear to have been treated as deities in their own right after the third millennium BC, and even at that early time received offerings very rarely, a situation that makes |âb^ār-A^^ur's casual comment that he is presenting dariu sheep offerings to a bed in the eighth century BCE very unusual indeed. It is even stranger in view of the fact that non-anthropomorphic deities in general appear to have played a more minor role in state worship in Assyria than in Babylonia, and that moreover, cultic implements and furniture are treated or labeled as gods in Assyrian texts relatively rarely.68 In a few special contexts, Assyrians do treat a number of non-anthropomorphic entities as deities. In the texts describing the tākultu ritual,69 for example, celebrated by Assyrian kings from Middle Assyrian times until the fall of the Assyrian empire, the deities presented with offerings during the ceremonies include, as we have already seen, parts of temples and cities (such as the ziggurat of the Anu and Adad temple at A^^ur [K. 252, II, 23-25] or the walls of Babylon [K. 252, XI, 18 and 19]), objects such as the pipes running from a particular temple's fermenting vat (VAT 10126, I, 39), or the crown of A^^ur (K. 252, I, 14), or winds (K. 252 ,VI, 35), or a chariot of a special type (onubalu, VAT 10126, II, 14). All of these entities are further identified as gods in the text by the use of the DINGIR determinative. There are a few other examples of objects treated or labeled as gods in Assyrian contexts. In the description of a ritual associated with the god A^^ur, for example, a chariot is listed among the “total of 15 gods who stand on the right”,70 and the crown of A^^ur appears as a deity alongside A^^ur in several ritual texts, as we have seen.71 In addition, an enigmatic object called oKA.EME (literally either “mouth and speech” or “mouth and tongue”) receives an offering and is asked to intercede for the worshipper with I^tar in a Middle Assyrian 68. The weapons of A^^ur and Marduk and the standards of various gods are sometimes marked with DINGIR determinatives, presented with offerings, and shown visually in what appear to be ritual settings in Assyrian contexts, where they appear to have played a role of some importance. Such objects, however, can be shown to have served as portable representations of their associated anthropomorphic god in legal contexts in both Assyria and Babylonia, suggesting they were understood as emblems representing a particular god, not as separate deities in their own right. On the weapon of A^^ur, see Holloway 2001, pp. 160-177, and on gods' standards, Pongratz-Leisten 1992 and Bleibtreu 1992. 69. Menzel 1981, II, no. 54 (K. 252) and no. 61 (VAT 10126). Frankena, in his earlier edition (Frankena 1954), treats both texts as instructions for performing the tākultu ritual, although only VAT 10126 mentions it by name, but even if K. 252 describes another ritual or rituals, it provides evidence of the worship of numerous objects in Assyria. 70. Van Driel 1969, p. 97, IX, 5¥. 71. Menzel 1981, II, p. 57*. 326 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER ritual text.72 Such examples of worship of inanimate objects are relatively rare in published Assyrian texts, however. In addition, the presentation of regular daily offerings to objects such as chariots and ziggurats, although widely attested in Babylonian texts, is largely missing in Assyria, where temple administrative texts record offerings only to more anthropomorphic gods.73 Even in the long lists of gods in the tākultu ritual texts, pieces of cultic furniture such as divine thrones or beds do not appear, although we know from numerous texts that Assyrian temples did have such furnishings. |âb-^ār-A^^ur's presentation of offerings to the bed of a god in this later period is both surprising and unique. How can we explain it? Despite the letter's silence on this point, I think there is a plausible explanation. To begin with, the Assyrians, as we have seen, shared with other Mesopotamians the idea that divinity could be transferred from gods to objects closely associated with them. Although Assyrian apparently did not extend this concept of “transfer of divinity” to the furniture of gods, Babylonians of this period evidently did, frequently labeling objects such as gods' chariots and thrones as deities in their own right and presenting offerings to them. By this time, Assyrian kings were increasingly involved with Babylonian temples and their rituals.74 Earlier in the eighth century, Sargon's predecessor Tiglath-Pileser III had seized control of Babylonia, and after ascending the Babylonian throne, had personally participated in the celebration of the akītu festival of the god Marduk in his temple at Babylon, an action later repeated by his successor Shalmaneser V. Sargon II, after reclaiming the Babylonian throne for Assyria after a period of rebellion and independence, had also personally participated in the Babylonian akītu and then spent several years living in Babylonia, involving himself in the rebuilding of the Eanna temple at Uruk and presenting lavish gifts to various Babylonian temples. In such a climate of intense cultural and religious interaction with Babylonia, the idea that a piece of cultic furniture such as a god's bed might be a god itself may have seemed at least a possibility even to an Assyrian such as |âb-^ār-A^^ur. This would have been all the more likely if the bed in question happened to belong to a Babylonian god; the eighteen-day journey required for the bed in the second letter to reach A^^ur makes it almost certain that the bed had not come from an Assyrian city, but had instead 72. Menzel 1981, I, p. 110, and II, T.1. 73. See Fales – Postgate 1992, nos. 62, 81, 158, 171, 175, 189, 190, 191, 192, 195, 196, 199, 206, 207, 211, 212, and 215; it is however possible that the relative scarcity of offering records for Assyria (rather than of offerings themselves) has created the mistaken impression that non-anthropomorphic gods rarely received offerings there. 74. Brinkman 1984, pp. 40-54. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 327 been towed upstream from a city in Babylonia.75 Although there is no indication that the thrones or beds of gods were treated as deities in other circumstances in Assyria, the situation of a god's bed being held on a boat might have been felt to require special tact. In the first letter, |âb-^ār-A^^ur had been eager to get the first bed ashore as quickly as possible, urging the king to send him a message permitting its transfer as soon as possible. In the light of what we have now seen about cultic furniture, he may not only have been concerned for the security of a valuable object but was perhaps also uneasy at the possibility of offending an object that might, from a Babylonian point of view at least, have been itself a locus of divine power. While in the case of the bed discussed in the first letter, he might simply have been concerned about offending the god who owned the bed or was about to become its owner, in the second letter it is explicitly the bed itself to which sheep offerings are presented. I think the most likely explanation of |âb-^ār-A^^ur's unusual behavior is that, influenced by what he knew of Babylonian religious practices, he had come to see the bed as quite probably a deity in its own right and had treated it as such for safety's sake, presenting it with the prestigious dariu sheep offerings. 75. On navigation on the Tigris and Euphrates in ancient times, see de Graeve 1981; on towing, see pp. 151-154 and on punting, pp. 154-156. She comments, “In Mesopotamia the wind generally blows from north to south; this is in the same direction as the river courses. As rowboats cannot be rowed upstream against the current and the wind, they have to be towed. Sailing-ships had to be towed upstream as well, as they sailed with the wind astern” (p. 152). Such towing as a form of locomotion for boats “takes … much labour and is naturally slow going ...” (p. 151). Punting, while faster, was only practical for moving small boats, and only in shallow waters where the punting pole could reach bottom; it use was primarily restricted to the southern marshes (p. 154). The bed in our second letter was probably being towed north up the Tigris from somewhere in Babylonia. De Graeve reports (following A. Salonen's research) that ancient economic texts dealing with towing boats indicate that a standard cargo boat of 60 gur averaged a distance of 9-10 km a day towed upstream (as opposed to 30-35 km a day when towed downstream for extra speed) (p. 152). The trip was probably made in summer or early fall, since upstream travel on the Tigris became difficult or impossible in the annual periods of high water and swift current, beginning with the December rains and reaching a maximum in May after the mountain snow melts of March and April (p. 11). For a detailed report on the navigability of various Mesopotamian rivers, region by region, in 1917, see the 4-volume handbook published by British Naval Intelligence: Great Britain, Naval Intelligence, 1917-18. This reports a rate of current past islands in the Tigris between Baghdad and Samarra as averaging between 4½ and 3¾ mph when the handbook was written in the early nineteenth century (v. III, p. 19). It is clear that towing a substantial craft upriver, which Assyrian reliefs and economic texts show to have been done by men rather than by draft animals, was a time-consuming business, so that 18 days of travel for the bed in the second letter was not unreasonable if it was coming upstream from one of the cities of Babylonia to A^^ur. I am grateful to Dr. Ariel Bagg for bringing these two informative books to my attention. 328 BARBARA NEVLING PORTER This presentation of sheep offerings to a bed (and in Babylonia, the regular presentation of food offerings to objects such as chariots and scepters) also has implications for our understanding of the significance of the food offerings presented to gods in Mesopotamia. In an article on donations of food and drink to the gods, W.G. Lambert has argued76 that food offering in Mesopotamia, in contrast to the biblical world, reflected the conviction that “the gods needed food and drink just like humans” (p. 194); he concludes that “anthropomorphism was pushed to its logical conclusion in this matter” (p. 201). Jean Bottéro advances a similar argument. Using as his example the massive meals presented to gods four times a day in the Eanna temple of Uruk in the Seleucid period, he argues, “In an anthropomorphic regime like that of the ancient Mesopotamians … the gods ate and drank … better than we do, but necessarily as we do”; “it was believed that to eat and drink was necessary for them”, he asserts, “to keep them alive”.77 As we have seen, however, the gods of Mesopotamia were not so exclusively anthropomorphic as Bottéro and Lambert suggest in these passages; the presentation of food offerings to gods such as divine chariots, thrones, and beds implies that food offerings were not presented to gods simply because they needed nourishment. After all, it hardly seems likely that |âb-^ār-A^^ur thought the bed was hungry. I suspect there was more to food and drink offerings than this. Just as one invites one's employer to dinner in an elegant restaurant, not because you think he or she needs nourishment, but because you hope to please him, honor him, and make him feel well-disposed toward you, in the same way, I suspect, Assyrians and other Mesopotamians presented sheep, beer, barley, incense, and the occasional dead lion to their gods primarily to honor them, to propitiate them, and to win their favor, and not simply because gods were anthropomorphic beings who needed dinner. 76. Lambert 1993. 77. Bottéro 2002, p. 167. FEEDING DINNER TO A BED 329 BIBLIOGRAPHY Al Gailani Werr L. 1996, “Domestic Furniture in Iraq, Ancient and Traditional”, in G. Hermann (ed.), The Furniture of Western Asia: Ancient and Traditional, Mainz, pp. 29-32 and pls. 1013. Beaulieu P.-A. 2003, The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo-Babylonian Period (Cuneiform Monographs 23), Leiden. Black J. – A.R. George – Postgate J.N. (eds.) 2000, A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (2nd ed.), Wiesbaden. 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