Studien zu Ritual und Sozialgeschichte im Alten Orient.

• Author: Scurlock, Jo Ann
• Position: Book review

Studien zu Ritual und Sozialgeschichte im Alien Orient. Edited by THOMAS RICHARD KAMMERER. Beihefte zur Zeitschrift fur die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, vol. 374. Berlin: WALTER DE GRUYTER, 2007. Pp. xi + 386. [euro]99.95.

The work under review consists of a collection of articles drawn from a series of symposia organized at Tartu University (see the list on p. viii). These are published together with indices of personal names, topographical and geographical names, god and temple names, Classical and ancient Near Eastern personal names, and subjects.

The works of Amar Annus are always stimulating: he has a knack for finding the most obscure points of contact within Mesopotamian civilization and between Mesopotamia and the outside world. However, a note of caution is in order: It is good to have everything that could conceivably be a consonance/borrowing searched out and placed on the table, but it does not necessarily follow that all that is offered is valid. A case in point is the seven heavens and the seven stages of the ziggurat alluded to by Annus here (pp. 8-16). R. Averbeck (American Oriental Society Annual Meeting. Chicago. 2008) has recently disputed the claim that the Gudea cylinder is describing a ziggurat, and in any case, early ziggurats such as that of Ur-Nammu had three stages rather than seven (corresponding to the original three heavens). To my knowledge, seven-stage ziggurats first appear in Assyria, and may possibly be connected with the emergence of astronomy at the Assyrian court.

Moreover, one must be careful to distinguish between the original Mesopotamian context and its borrowed usage, however direct, since these may (and often do) represent quite different things. It is hard to imagine that any normal Mesopotamian actually desired to descend to the Netherworld (not a nice place and with nothing to offer). On the other hand, it is sometimes impossible to decode the meaning of borrowed imagery without consulting the ancient Mesopotamian original.

For example, the Mithraic order of the planets (p. 15) is indeed a descent and ascent of the soul, which may readily be decoded by a careful comparison of original Mesopotamian elements in HeIle-nized Persian religion and Gnosticism. It is important to know that Nabil (Mercury) and Nanaya (Istar = Venus) were a married pair at Harran and, in the late periods, understood as equivalent to the Persian Mithra and Anahita, as well as to the Greek Apollo and Artemis (the sun and the moon, but like Mithra and Anahita, a brother-sister pair). Mercury and Venus, then, form a pair to be imagined as a line drawn from left to right (masculine first, male/female second) and running parallel to another line represented by the pair, drawn from right to left (male/female first, masculine second) of Moon and Sun.

Nergal (Mars) is, of course, the Mesopotamian Netherworld god. Laid out as a mathematical figure, then, Mercury, Venus, and Mars (the first three steps) form a triangle pointing downward, which represents the downward ascent of the soul. By this means is reached the fourth step, Jupiter (Marduk), the Demiurge, creator and master of this world. Anu (Saturn) is, of course, the Mesopotamian god of the Heavens. The Moon, Sun, and Saturn (the last three steps), then, form an upward triangle drawn in the opposite direction, representing the turning round and upward ascent of the soul into the heavens. Laid across one another, the two triangles form the Shield of Solomon, the classic symbol of the...