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=> Assyrian Monotheism, Part I

Assyrian Monotheism, Part I
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Published in One God or Many?
Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World, ed. Barbara Nevling Porter. Transactions of the Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, Vol. 1, 2000, pp. 165-209

Monotheism in Ancient Assyria
Dr. Simo Parpola

The religion of ancient Assyria is generally viewed as a classic example of a polytheistic religion with a pantheon, mythology and cult teeming with different gods.1 This view can be easily defended and it is not my intention here to challenge it. Instead, I shall make an effort to show that it is a mistake to regard Assyrian religion as exclusively, or even primarily, polytheistic. On the contrary, belief in the existence of a single omnipotent God dominated the Assyrian state religion, royal ideology, philosophy and mystery cults to the extent that Assyrian religion in its imperial elaboration, with all its polytheistic garb, must be regarded as essentially monotheistic.

As will be shown below, the basic equation underlying the Assyrian concept of god was “God” = “(all) the gods.” This formula implies a distinction between a transcendent universal God – the supreme god of the empire and the only true God – and his powers and attributes, hypostatized as different “gods.” While admitting, and in fact, even promoting the idea of diverse divine beings (the “great gods”) ruling the physical universe, such a concept of god cannot be labeled as essentially polytheistic with only elements of “incipient monotheism” or “monotheistic tendencies” in it, as has been done hitherto.

2 The nature of the “great gods” as mere powers and attributes of God is repeatedly stressed in Assyrian texts, and their fundamental unity, expressed in a network of interlocking doctrines and visual symbols, was a structural feature of the whole religious system. By no means can it be claimed either that belief in one universal God in Assyria was limited to a small elite group only for a short period of time and not shared by the bulk of the population. 3 On the contrary, as we shall see, it formed the very backbone of Assyrian imperial ideology and was systematically propagated, by all possible means and over extended periods of time, to all segments of Assyrian population as well as to neighboring nations. The essentially monotheistic nature of the Assyrian concept of god is strongly implicit in the credo imposed on vassal rulers in the Succession Treaty of Esarhaddon: “In the future and forever Aššur shall be your god, and Assurbanipal shall be your lord.”4 Compare the Islamic credo, “There is no god except Allah, and Muhammad is his envoy.”

Several considerations, not least the biblical designation of Jahweh as Elohîm, literally, “the gods,”4 strongly suggest that impulses received from Assyria played an important role in the emergence and development of Jahwistic monotheism. This likelihood is strengthened by a closer look at the Assyrian doctrines and imagery relating to the unity of the divine powers, many of which (most importantly the symbolism of the menorah/Tree of Life) occupy a central position in post-exilic Judaism and Jewish mysticism. What is more, it can be shown that many centrally important Assyrian doctrines resurface in Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and Christianity, indicating the persistence of Assyrian ideas in the doctrinal structure of Christianity as well (see below, pp. 13-15).

In order to understand the monotheistic dimension of Assyrian religion and the complex doctrinal system set up to reduce its many gods into just one, we must have a clear idea of the nature of its most important gods. We shall accordingly begin with a presentation and discussion of the supreme god of Assyria and his powers, the “great gods,” which will be considered both individually and as a group.

The Almighty God

Aššur is unequivocally marked as the supreme god of Assyria by his position in relation to other gods mentioned in Assyrian texts. If not mentioned alone, he always precedes any god or gods mentioned beside him.5 In Assyrian royal inscriptions, letters and rituals, treaties, and other state documents; he often heads a long list of gods displaying considerable standardization in its composition and in the order of the individual gods. Passages such as “Aššur and the great gods,” “Aššur and the gods,” or “Aššur, Ištar and the (great) gods,” where Aššur is followed by a group of gods rather than individual gods,6 are “abbreviations” for such enumerations of gods, see the chapter below on the “great gods.” In such lists, Assyrian gods always precede foreign gods.

The transcendental nature of Aššur is firmly established by the logographic spelling of his name as AN.ŠÁR, attested since the fourteenth century BCE, which implies his equation with the god Anšar (written AN.ŠÁR) of En?ma eliš, the Babylonian epic of creation which had canonical status in Assyria since the late second millennium. In the theogony of En?ma eliš, AN.ŠÁR (literally, “the universe of heaven”) with his spouse KI.ŠÁR (literally, “the universe of earth”) precedes the birth of Anu, the god of heaven, as well as all other gods included among the “great gods.”7 Born from the union of “the universe of heaven” with “the universe of earth,” the latter must be understood as entities materialized in the physical universe, “the universe of earth.” AN.ŠÁR, by contrast, who emerges from nil through the pair Lahmu and Lahamu denoting binary oppositions,8 has nothing to do with the limited physical universe, KI.ŠÁR, a realm of darkness, evil, imperfection, ignorance and death; he is its binary opposite, the infinite metaphysical universe of light, goodness, perfection, wisdom and eternal life.9 As such, he was an abstract metaphysical entity, a transcendent “God beyond gods,” who could not be known directly.

His transcendence was not absolute, however. Whereas in Vedic Hinduism and in ancient Egyptian religion the single transcendent source of the multiplicity of gods was defined in negative terms as “non-existence,” Aššur’s definition as the “universe of heaven” made him an intermediate entity between existence and non-existence, the source of all manifest divine powers worshiped in the world, and thus an omnipresent, almighty God.

In Assyrian imperial propaganda, Aššur is presented not as a remote god located outside this world, but as the maker and sovereign lord of the entire universe. He is “the lord of all lands, the king over the totality of heaven and earth”;10 “the creator of himself, the father of the gods, who grew up in the Abyss (Apsű); the king of heaven and earth, the lord of all the gods, who emanated (lit., ‘poured out,’ š?pik) the supernal and infernal gods and fashioned the vaults of heaven and earth, the maker of all the regions, who lives in the [pur]e starlit heave[ns].”11 He is present through his winged icon in the campaigns of the Assyrian king, and is praised as “the exceedingly great one, prince of the gods, the omniscient, venerable, surpassing, the Enlil of the gods, he who decrees the fates... whose pronouncement is feared, whose command is far-reaching [and], like the writing on the celestial firmament, does not miss its appointed time.”12 At the same time, he is hidden to the degree that “even a god does not comprehend [the ... of his] majesty, the meaning of [his majestic designs] is not understood.”13

This combination of transcendence and immanence was possible because Aššur was present in the world through his “emanations,” gods, while the identities of all the gods of the world converged in him. His winged icon (Fig. 1) is a composite symbol reflecting both aspects of him. The winged disk, a symbol of the sun, symbolized him as the infinite ocean of light engulfing the visible world and radiating its brightness into it. The divine ruler figure within the disk, which displays the attributes of all the “great gods,” symbolizes him as the divine father and king – the almighty God from whom all the manifest divine powers emanate and in whom they converge, the “sum total” of all the gods.14 At the same time, the icon also symbolizes the trinity of the divine king, the volute on its top standing for his two other principal hypostases, the divine son exalted to the right side of the father, and the mother, his “Spirit,” enthroned on his left (see below, p. 14).

The doctrine of Aššur as the “sum total of all the gods” is unequivocally attested since the mid-eighth century BCE in the personal name Gabbu-ilani-Aššur, “Aššur is all the gods.”15 Other similar names show that the doctrine was widespread in Assyria throughout the imperial period. In several personal names dating between the thirteenth and seventh centuries BCE, the compound Gabbu-il?ni “all the gods” and its abbreviation Il?ni “the gods,” like Hebrew Elohîm “God” (lit. “the gods”), function as a singular proper name alternating with Aššur and Ilu “God” in identical contexts.16 Names like Ilani-aha-iddina “God (lit. “the gods) gave (sg.) a brother” (13th cent.), to be compared with the well-known royal name Aššur-aha-iddina (Esarhaddon), imply that the multiplicity of gods venerated in Assyria was conceived as a single deity already in the early imperial period.

The etymology and original meaning of Aššur are unknown, but it can be taken as certain that the name was in scholarly circles interpreted as “the only God.” The cuneiform sign AŠ used in the most common spelling of the name, daš-šur, did not normally have the phonetic value /aš/ in Assyrian script; its most common logographic readings were “one” and “single, only”; in scholarly texts, it could also mean “mystery.” By taking the divine determinative (d) preceding the name in its logographic meaning (“god”), the spelling, which was frequently abbreviated to daš, could thus be analyzed not only as “The Only God” but also as “God is One” and “The Hidden God.” Another common spelling of the name, da-šur, could be correspondingly analyzed as “Flashing Water,” a reference to the god as “the ocean of light.”17

The “Great Gods”

The polytheistic notion of Assyrian religion basically resides in the “great gods” appearing in Assyrian texts both as a group accompanying Aššur and individually as seemingly independent gods. It will be shown below that this notion of independence is largely illusory. The “great gods” formed an organized system of hypostatized divine powers comparable to the gnostic pleroma and the Sefirot of Jewish mysticism. Like the names of Allah, each of them represented an aspect or “limb” of the invisible God; together, they constituted his manifest “body.”

The individualized groups of “great gods” appearing beside Aššur display considerable variation both as regards the number of gods enumerated and their identity and order of enumeration. Some lists are very long, consisting of up to 20 gods, others are much shorter, 2 to 5 gods only; some end with Ištar and other goddesses, in others these are inserted in the middle of other gods.18 Nevertheless, all the lists display a stable nucleus of deities present in most if not all enumerations, as well as a definite divine hierarchy reflecting the second-millennium BCE god list An = Anum, which presents the entire Mesopotamian pantheon as an extended royal family starting with the divine king, Anu. All variations in the order of the gods can be explained as different “paths” through the “genealogical tree” (see below, p. 7).

An Assyrian prophetic oracle refers to “sixty great gods” attending to the king at his birth.19 This passage has to be understood in the light of the mystic number of Anu (see pp. 4 and 7), which as “One and Sixty” comprised all the “great gods,” making them “one” while at the same time retaining their plurality. “Sixty” as the number of the “great gods” will have been reached easily, for each god had several alternative names; conversely, many divine names were just alternative designations of the same god. All female deities were identified with Ištar as names of her different aspects; Marduk had fifty names (including other “great gods”); there were “seven Nergals,” “seven Ninurtas,” and so on.20

THE INDIVIDUAL GODS

Nine “great gods” figure in Assyrian texts as seemingly independent entities generally not identified with one another. Most of them, especially Anu, Sîn, Ištar, Marduk and Ninurta/Nabű, are, however, occasionally represented as including all the others or fusing with other gods. On the basis of their attributes and descriptions found in sundry religious texts (myths, prayers, esoteric commentaries, etc.), their “personal profiles” can be briefly sketched as follows:21

1. Anu: the god of heaven, “the first one, the heavenly father, the greatest one in heaven and earth, the one who contains the entire universe, the king of the gods, the father/progenitor of the (great) gods, creator of everything.” He was the “reflection” of his father Anšar (= Aššur), with whom he was identified. A personification of the immutable heaven, his word in the “assembly of gods” was final. The symbol of his authority was the crown, which he had conferred upon the Assyrian king, just as he had ceded the divine kingship to his grandson, Marduk, the establisher and maintainer of the present world order. Through his mystic number 1 (= 60), he was associated not only with the crescent but also with the full moon: “15 times 4 is 60 (= 1); 1 is Anu; he called the ‘fruit’ [i.e., the full moon].”22

2. Ea: “the lord of wisdom/secrets, the sage/king of wisdom, the sage of the gods/of the universe, surpassingly/exceedingly wise, omniscient, knower of ingenious things; the father of the (great) gods, the creator of everything/all mankind/created things; the lord/king of the subterranean waters, the king/prince of Apsű (= the ocean of gnosis),23 the great light of Apsű, the lord of the waters of life.” Ea had two numbers, 40 and 60, derived from the 2 : 3 ratio between the length of day and night at the winter solstice.24 The latter made him the “mirror image” of his father Anu and the personification of the night sky, the former merged him with his grandson Ninurta (see below).

3. Sîn: the moon god, “fruit (enbu) giving birth to itself, birth-giving father, father of the great gods, procreator of all; maker of decision(s), jugde of the universe; judicious, thoughtful, circumspect, prudent; Anu of the sky whose counsel nobody perceives, whose profound heart no god can fathom, whose mind no god knows; wise, knower of secrets, sage of the gods; the pure god, light of the gods, light of the upper and lower worlds.” Sîn was, like Ea, the son of Anu; by virtue of Anu’s identification with Enlil as the supreme authority, he was also called the son of Enlil.

4. Šamaš: the sun god, the divine judge par excellence, the “lord of judgment, king/lord of justice/righteousness, the lord of justice and right, the great judge of the great gods, the judge of the heaven and earth/upper and lower worlds.” Conceived of as “destroyer/slayer of the wicked and the enemy,” his standard epithets were “strong man” (e?lu) and “hero” (qur?du). He was the son of Sîn and the brother of Ištar; his number was 20, which in the first millennium also served as a logogram for the king as the “sun of the people.”

5. Marduk: the son of Ea, exalted to the kingship of gods as the of slayer of the forces of chaos and the establisher of cosmic order: “the lord of lords; the exalted lord of gods, lord of the gods of heaven and earth, king of the gods; the organizer of the regions, the organizer of all the gods, the organizer/founder of the assembly of the gods; the leader of the gods/mankind.” Marduk was the brother of Ištar, but the polar opposite of her other brother, Šamaš: “merciful and forgiving, the merciful god/father/lord, the merciful one with forgiving heart, merciful to mankind, he who forgave the gods.” His standard epithet was “the great lord”; his number was 50, inherited from Enlil, the head of the Sumerian pantheon.

6. Ištar: “the lady/goddess of beauty and love; the lady of love, the loving one, the one who loves all mankind.” She was the daughter of Anu, Ea, and Sîn (moon), and the sister of Šamaš and Marduk, “beautiful to a superlative degree.” Her standing epithets were “pure/holy” and “virgin.” In Assyrian iconography, her most common symbolic representation was the eight-pointed star; she is often depicted as a female figure surrounded by intense radiance.

Ištar embodied in herself all Mesopotamian goddesses and had an extremely complex mythological figure, which has been characterized as a “paradox and a coincidence of opposites.” On the one hand, she was “the queen/mistress of heaven (and earth/and the stars), the queen of queens, the lady of ladies, the goddess of the gods, who holds all the powers; the creatress of the gods/all mankind, the mother of men, mother of those who give birth, midwife; the merciful goddess/mother; the veiled bride, wise, knowledgeable.” On the other hand, she also was “the prostitute, the whore, the raging deluge, the lady/goddess of battle/strife and war.”

7. Ninurta/Nabű, “the mighty son” of Enlil/Marduk, the heavenly crown prince and exalted savior: “the killer of Anzű (the personification of sin), the warrior who achieved victory for Enlil, the victor who threshes the foe but makes the righteous stand, whose strength is exalted.” In a Neo-Assyrian prayer, both Nabű and Ninurta are presented as powers of Marduk, the former as his “victory”, the latter as his “prowess.” The standard epithet of Ninurta is “lord,” a title which he shares with his father; he is also called “the arrow” and “the weapon.”

After his triumph over Anzű, he becomes “the lord of the stylus, the keeper of the (life-giving) writing-board, the holder of the stylus of fates,” who presents the “tablet of sins” to Marduk “on the day of the settling of accounts;” his looks are changed; his eyes flame like fire, his [garments] glow like snow; casting numinous splendor and silence over god and man, he returns in his triumphal chariot to his father, who rejoices in him, blesses him, and magnifies his kingship. He now merges with his father: in a Neo-Assyrian hymn glorifying Ninurta, his body is described as encompassing the whole universe, with different gods, including his fathers Marduk and Enlil, presented as his limbs, his face being the sun, etc.25 His number was 40, but in line with his magnification, his name could occasionally be spelled with the vertical wedge, “One and Sixty”, the number of Anu.

8. Adad, the god of thunder: “glorious, splendid, proud, mighty; the lord/king of oracles/decisions, august judge.” As “the voice of [Aššur’s] majesty,” he was the oracle god, divine herald and punisher in the same person, announcing, by his roar, divine judgments and decisions to mankind and hitting by his lightning the obstinate and the wicked. His number was 10, which he shared with Girru “Fire,” Madanu “Verdict,” and Nusku, the god of awakening and vigilance. Through his equation with Girru and the association of heaven with fire, he was the son of Anu.

9. Nergal, “the lord/king of the earth,” to whom “Enlil [his] father entrusted the mankind, all living creatures, the cattle of Šakkan, and the herds of wild animals,” a personification of sexual potency and man’s animal insticts: “the power of the earth, the strongest/most potent/powerful of gods, the lord of power and strength”; a beautiful, “good-looking” tempter, “fox, king of tricks, cunning in tricks”. He was the son of the mother goddess Belet-ili and Anu. His number was 14, symbolizing the ascent and descent through the seven gates of the netherworld.



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