The priestess and the king: the divine kingship of Su-Sin of Ur.

• Author: Brisch, Nicole

INTRODUCTION

The discovery of an administrative tablet of the Ur III period housed in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology at the University of Michigan offers an unlikely but welcome opportunity to revisit briefly the topic of divine kingship in ancient Mesopotamia. Ideally, a new study of this topic should consider Mesopotamian textual, art-historical, and archaeological data as well as cross-cultural comparanda and theoretical anthropological literature. However, such an undertaking would go far beyond the scope of this contribution.

One of the persons mentioned in the Kelsey tablet published here is an otherwise unattested woman named Sat-Su-Sin, whose title is given as NIN-dingir priestess of Su-Sin, the fourth king of the Third Dynasty of Ur. (1) The document may date to the third year of that king's reign, and it would therefore represent the first attestation of a priestess attending to the cult of a living king. The following remarks are preliminary, since I hope to pursue the topic of divine kingship in early Mesopotamia in subsequent research.

Before discussing the divine kingship of Su-Sin in greater detail, it is necessary to review briefly the historical and cultural background of the phenomenon at hand. Although three earlier monographs dealing in part with divine kingship in Mesopotamia (Labat 1938; Frankfort 1948; Engnell 1967) made admirable contributions in their time, they are now out of date, since much relevant material has come to light since their publication. Frankfort's definition of divine kingship was based on J. G. Frazer's famous The Golden Bough, whose notion of sacred or divine kingship was strongly influenced by Christian imagery (Feely-Harnick 1985: 275). More recent studies have focused only on certain aspects, for example the origins and early genesis of kingship (e.g., Heimpel 1992; Selz 1998; 2001; Steinkeller 1999) or on other topics related to divine kingship, as well as religious characteristics of power in ancient Mesopotamia. (2) Royal ideology of the Ur III period is, however, an exceedingly complex topic (Michalowski 2004), and I shall therefore focus here only on some aspects of divine kingship in the Ur III period.

DIVINE KINGS IN EARLY MESOPOTAMIA

The first Mesopotamian ruler to begin the practice of self-deification was Naram-Sin of Akkad, grandson of the famous Sargon of Akkad, founder of the Old Akkadian dynasty (Farber 1983; Franke 1995; Westenholz 1999). The religious, political, and economic significance of the fact that the first instance of apotheosis of the king coincided with what scholars have termed the "First World Empire" (Liverani 1990) has not been discussed thus far. (3) A possible reason for Naram-Sin's deification may be seen in the king's success in putting down the rebellion of southernmost Mesopotamia that had probably taken place shortly before (Franke 1995: 176). (4) Royal deification appears to have been abandoned shortly after Naram-Sin's first attempt, and was only re-introduced some two hundred years later during the Third Dynasty of Ur when Sulgi, the second ruler of that dynasty, took up this custom once more. (5) His successors Amar-Suena and Su-Sin continued and elaborated this practice of self-worship; whether the last of the Ur III rulers, Ibbi-Sin, continued this tradition is not entirely clear. It appears that after the fall of Ur the first kings of the new dynasty of Isin revived apotheosis by writing their names with the semantic classifier for deities, the divine determinative. There are some indications that Rim-Sin of Larsa and Hammurabi of Babylon were also deified during their lifetimes, but the question of deification of kings in the Old Babylonian period is highly contested and remains unresolved (see Kraus 1974 with older literature). The question warrants further research, and possible answers depend mainly on how divine kingship in ancient Mesopotamia is defined and what criteria are used to determine its presence or absence.

Several recent contributions have discussed the origins and concepts of rulership and kingship in early Mesopotamia. These discussions are relevant to the topic of divine kingship insofar as they illustrate factors that later became important in the kingship of the Ur III rulers. The widely differing opinions on the nature of early Mesopotamian kingship, however, make such a reconstruction--and with it a deeper understanding of kingship in the Ur III period--exceedingly difficult.

Selz (1998: 283) distinguishes between two main concepts of rulership in early Mesopotamia: a "burokratisch-sakrales" and a "dynastisch-charistmatisches." He identifies these concepts with cultural traditions commonly referred to as "Sumerian" on the one hand (bureaucratic-sacred) and "Semitic" on the other (dynastic-charismatic). Similarly, in an earlier contribution Heimpel (1992) offers a distinction between lordship ("Herrentum") and kingship. To state his argument succinctly, he argues that in kingship (lugal) succession was based on the dynastic principle, whereas in rulership (en) it was not. These different principles, although not as neatly as presented here, manifest themselves in the terms lugal (dynastic) and en (non-dynastic), respectively, and can seemingly be found among the rulers of the Early Dynastic period who are usually, but not always, referred to as en and in the kings of Akkad who called themselves lugal, Akkadian sarrum. The rulers of the Third Dynasty of Ur at the end of the third millennium integrated both principles.

Steinkeller (1999) offers a different picture of early Mesopotamian kingship. He proposes the following development: The early Sumerian pantheon was dominated by female deities who resided in the capital of the city-state; each ruler (en), was considered to be the goddesses' consort and representative in the secular realm. Originally, the city of residence of the en was the capital of the city-state. As male deities became more dominant in the pantheon, a new center was founded, which became the seat of the political ruler while the old capital became a religious center. Originally, political and religious powers were united, but the growing dominance of male deities led to a split of religious and political power, again according to Steinkeller. The new political centers had male deities as their patrons, so that the ruler could no longer legitimize his rule by his status as the deity's consort. This then led to the new office of the ensik, the bearer of political and military power, while the en-ship became a religious office. However, as Steinkeller himself indicates, for the time being this hypothesis remains speculative for lack of evidence. Furthermore, it is unclear why the shift to a more male-dominated pantheon would have led to a split of religious and political powers in the way Steinkeller reconstructs.

Some scholars would like to see divine kingship in Mesopotamia as the culmination of a long development related to the religious character of kingship. (6) Sallaberger (1999: 152-53), for example, names three traits of early kingship as precursors of royal apotheosis: Rulers already called themselves "child," "beloved," "favorite," etc. of the gods; they functioned as mediators between the divine and the secular worlds; and, last but not least, some of them were worshipped after their deaths. This, then, could lead to deification of deceased rulers. Selz (1992: 254) adduces the example of a statue of Sasa, wife of the Early Dynastic ruler Irikagina of Lagas, which had apparently been fashioned in veneration of the goddess Baba while at the same time receiving sacrifices on its own. Selz sees in this an important feature of Mesopotamian cult statues, which could be simultaneously subject and object of worship; and he interprets this as an important step towards the deification of Naram-Sin (Selz 1992: 254). Sallaberger (1999: 152 n. 100), however, raises certain doubts as to the validity of Selz' observation. Selz himself, in a later contribution (1997: 182) contends that writing a king's name with the divine determinative may rather refer to the deification only of the king's statue, perhaps after his death, and may not necessarily indicate the cult of a living king.

While the importance of placing divine kingship within a Mesopotamian tradition is beyond doubt, it may also obscure the innovation that this "final" step represents. The issue at hand also depends on a definition of divine kingship. Veneration of deceased rulers, for example, can be interpreted as a manifestation of the divinity of the king rather than a precursor of divine kingship, and it remains unclear whether Sallaberger interprets worship of divine deceased rulers as the former or the latter (Sallaberger 1999: 153). This issue, however, lies at the heart of the characterization of divine kingship in Mesopotamia, since no common denominators have thus far been established to make such a distinction possible.

SU-SIN

It is impossible here to do justice to the very complex topic of royal ideology in the Ur III period as a whole (see Michalowski 2004). Therefore, I shall concentrate on a discussion of the divinity of Su-Sin.

Sallaberger (1999: 153f.) considers the following points to indicate the presence of divine kingship in the Ur III period: (a) the name as well as the "spirit's" name ([.sup.d.gidim]) is written with the divine determinative, the dingir-sign; (7) (b) statues of the living king receive regular offerings; (c) temples are dedicated to the worship of the living king; (d) festivals are named after the king (attested for Sulgi, Amar-Suena, and Su-Sin); (e) months are named after these festivals; (f) personal names invoke the ruler. (8) Wilcke (1988) adds the peculiar instance that mentions Sulgi's ascension to the heavens, apparently after his death. The same was said of an Isin king, most likely Isbi-Erra, upon his demise (Steinkeller 1992). (9) Another attribute is the...