Power and Ritual in Mesopotamia

[us4-he2-gal2]

Hey e n e n u r u :








Today I am sifting through some commentaries about ritual and about ritual speech in Mesopotamia, trying to do some ground work. I have a paper coming due in 1 1/2 months so it's a good time to gain some new insight on how this culture works and thinks and come up with a good footing for a paper on something. Luckily, for this summer course I am able to write on a topic I enjoy, Mesopotamain magic and ritual.


I am looking at Andrew Cohen's Death Rituals, Ideology and the Development of Early Mesopotamian Kingship at the moment. Cohen has really done the field a service with this book which looks at questions many have avoided.. things like the hows and whys of ritual in Mesopotamian society and how it influenced or supported political leaders. Cohen tackles some really tough issues such as the correspondence of textual and archaeological evidence concerning the presence or ritual acts - or change and continuity in public ceremony and the relevance of late material.


The author makes extensive use of recent anthropological literature when he addresses the nature and use of ritual in ancient society, and this fills in something of a gap. One such study had concluded that rituals "are acts of power in the fashioning of structures: acts that make gods, kings, presidents and property rights by declaring that the authority of the priest, judge, or police officer resides in a higher source." (J.D. Kelly and M. Kaplan 1990). Cohen states that this sort of ritual reinforcement of power holding classes is evident already in 3rd millennium Mesopotamia, for example, in a royal inscription of Ur-Nanshe which mentions divination in the appointment of a priest. This was the first attestation of a long tradition of the use of divination "to select the ritual specialists who hold the highest ritual offices in the city-states." (pg. 10). The Ur-Nanshe text referred to can be found at the following CDLI entry. The transliteration/ translation of which reads:

1. ur-{d}nansze
#tr.en: Ur-Nanše,
2. lugal
#tr.en: king
3. lagasz
#tr.en: of Lagaš,
4. dumu gu-ni-DU
#tr.en: son of GuniDU,
5. dumu gur-sar
#tr.en: “son” of Gursar,
6. e2 {d}nansze
#tr.en: had the temple of Nanše
7. mu-du3
#tr.en: built.
8. {d}nansze
#tr.en: (A statue of) Nanše
9. mu-tu
#tr.en: he created.
10. a-sangax(REC107)
#tr.en: The A-Sanga (canal)
11. mu-dun
#tr.en: he dug,
12. {d}nansze
#tr.en: (and) for Nanše
13. sangax(REC107)
#tr.en: into the Sanga
14. a mu-na-REC558
#tr.en: he made water enter.
15. esz3-ir
#tr.en: (A statue of) Eš-ir
16. mu-tu
#tr.en: he created.
17. ur:nimin
#tr.en: Ur-nimin,
18. dam
#tr.en: as the spouse
19. {d}nansze
#tr.en: of Nanše
20. masz be2-pa3
#tr.en: he chose by kid-omen.
21. a-edin
#tr.en: A-edin
22. mu-du3
#tr.en: he built,
23. nin-gar
#tr.en: Ningar
24. mu-du3
#tr.en: he built,
25. e2-PA
#tr.en: E-PA
26. mu-du3
#tr.en: he built,
27. bad3 lagasz
#tr.en: the wall of Lagaš
28. mu-du3
#tr.en: he built.
29. {d}lugal-iri
#tr.en: (A statue of) Lugal-iri
30. mu-tu
#tr.en: he created.
31. ma2 dilmun
#tr.en: He had boats of Dilmun
32. kur-ta
#tr.en: from the mountains
33. gu2 gesz mu-gal2
#tr.en: produce loads of timber.

On a somewhat related note, I translated a middle Assyrian law last year for class - certainly not the first translation as the class worked using prior publications. This law makes interesting reference to the role of the exorcist in a particular legal situation. The exorcist is certainly one profession that makes use of ritual usually with the aim of dispelling demons etc, but as this text shows, sometimes in legal contexts at the behest of the king.


In the following law, or record of legal precedent, it is stated that those found guilty of witchcraft shall be executed. Particular attention is given to how to deal with first and second hand witnesses of an act of witchcraft - a first hand witness is someone who see the act himself, while a second hand witness is a man who hears about the act from the first hand witness. The exorcist is brought in by the king to ritually threaten (in a sense) the witnesses into speaking the whole truth. To aid in their interrogation. Interesting here is the use of ritual to reinforce the state - and secondly, it should be noted that the exorcist has a vested interest in the persecution of witches, being professionally opposed to non-sanctioned uses of magic and himself responsible for the anti-witchcraft rituals (Abusch is the authority on all of these points). The texts reads:

1-6: If a man or a woman are practicing witchcraft, and they are caught, should they prove the charges against them and convict them, they will kill the practitioners of witchcraft.7-13: A man [2nd hand witness] who heard from a witness to the witchcraft [1st hand witness] that he witnessed witchcraft, [who had] said to him "I myself have seen [it]," that witness [2nd hand witness] will go and tell the king.

14-17: If the witness [1st hand witness] denies to the king what he told [the 2nd hand witness], he will declare before the divine bull-son-of-the-sun-god "I did not tell him" then he is clear.

18-21: The witness [1st hand witness] who spoke then denied it, the king will interrogate him as he chooses, to see his intentions.

23-31: The exorcist will make the man speak when they do a purification and he himself [the exorcist] will say "no one will release you of the oath you swore to the king and his son. You are sworn to the oath which you swore to the king and his son."

More to come on this subject..

[us4-he2-gal2]

For the above point about the exorcists agenda against "witches" see:


Tzvi Abusch: "The Demonic Image of the Witch in Standard Babylonian Literature: The Reworking of Popular Conceptions by Learned Exorcists." Pp. 27-58 in Religion, Science, and Magic: In Concert and in Conflict, edited by J. Neusner, et al. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989