The Writing of the God and the Textualization of Neo-Assyrian Prophecy

Transcription

1 1 The Writing of the God and the Textualization of Neo-Assyrian Prophecy Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton I reflected that in the language of a god every word would speak that infinite concatenation of events, and not implicitly, but explicitly, and not linearly but instantaneously A god, I reflected, must speak but a single word, and in that word there must be absolute plenitude. No word uttered by a god could be less than the universe, or briefer than the sum of time. The ambitions and poverty of human words all, world, universe are but shadows of simulacra of that Word which is the equivalent of a language and all that can be comprehended within a language. Jorge Louis Borges, The Writing of the God Jorge Louis Borges imagines the divine word as an instantaneous concatenation of events that implies the sum of history. His saying can serve as an almost prescient description for the oracle collections of the late Sargonid period and their highly complex functions and meanings. 1 In Mesopotamia, oracles in written form derive from two periods: that of the reign of Zimrilim, king of Mari ( BCE) and that of the late Sargonid period under the kings Esarhaddon ( BCE) and his son and successor Ashurbanipal ( /27? BCE). In the first case the oracles were included in letters to the king sent by high officials or members of the family; in the second case single oracle reports and oracle collections survive independently. Furthermore, there are references to prophecy in royal inscriptions and letters. 2 To my understanding the context and function of prophecy per se do not differ very much in Old Babylonian Mari and the Sargonid period; however, both cultures differed greatly in their documentation and textualization of the oracles. In Mari, oracles are quoted in letters sent to the king by high officials or members of the family in order to inform the king of the divine will, while in the Assyrian context, oracles were transmitted in a primary stage of textualization in the form of oracle reports and in letters, and in a secondary stage of textualization in the form of oracle collections and as citations in 1 Various preliminary versions of this article have been read in the Program of the Ancient World at Princeton University and in the Classics Seminar at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. I would like to thank my colleagues at both institutions and the students in the program as well as Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Patrick Miller for the lively and inspiring discussions which helped clarifying my argument. 2 M. Nissinen, References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources, SAAS VII (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, 1998).

2 2 commemorative inscriptions. 3 It is important to distinguish between the primary and secondary stage of textualization because in the first case writing is used for a communicative act that originates in an oral context and serves situational information, while in the second case the textualization of the oracles has an enduring quality. 4 Affinity to text categories such as prayers, hymns and letters to gods 5 provide a sense of the scribal setting within which the Neo-Assyrian oracles have been recorded. Experts might ask what could possibly be added to the interpretation of multi-column oracle collections after the definitive works Simo Parpola, 6 Martti Nissinen, 7 Manfred Weippert 8 and others. 9 I will pursue my investigation of the oracle collections in the context of cultural production and textualization. In other words, rather than looking at the oracles as a genre, I intend to investigate them in their secondary stage of textualization within the context of the notion of the authority of the divine voice and divine writing, At stake is the immediacy of divine speech transmitted in oracle reports versus the permanency of writing in the oracle collections. During the second and first millennium BCE all cultural knowledge was stored in libraries of the temple and the palace to serve scholars and the king in state politics and propaganda. Tablet collections contributed to the mobility of texts: Assyrian kings, in particular, strove to acquire the tablet collections of conquered Babylonian cities and integrate them into their libraries. Thereby they would emphasize their interest in 3 On this aspect see M. Nissinen, Spoken, Written, Quoted, and Invented: Orality and Writtenness in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Michael H. Floyd (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000) K. van der Toorn, Mesopotamian Immanence and Transcendence: A Comparison of Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian Prophecy, in Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context. Mesopotamian, Biblical and Arabian Perspectives, ed. by Martti Nissinen (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000) S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1997) XLVIII with fn. 246 and 247.; M. Nissinen 2000, Parpola M. Nissinen, The Socioreligious Role of the Neo-Assyrian Prophets, in Prophecy in its Ancient Near Eastern Context. Mesopotamian, Biblical, and Arabian Perspectives, ed. M. Nissinen (Society of Biblical Literature: Atlanta, 2000a) ; idem, Spoken, Written, Quoted, and Invented: Orality and Writtenness in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, ed. by Ehud Ben Zvi and Michael H. Floyd (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2000b) M. Weippert, Assyrische Prophetien der Zeit Asarhaddons und Assurbanipals, in Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons, ed. F. M. Fales (Roma: Istituto per l Oriente, 1981) ; M. Weippert, König fürchte Dich nicht! Assyrische Prophetie im 7. Jahrhundert v. Chr., Orientalia Nova Series 71 (2002) It is impossible to quote all the literature on ancient Near Eastern prophecy and I refer the reader to the scholarly works just mentioned for further reference.

3 3 particular religious texts. 10 Thus mobility of texts allowed for mobility of knowledge and provided a foundation for intertextual creativity, text critique, commentary and textual control. In festivals as well as incantatory rituals the recitation of texts was part of the complex fabric of ritual, and at some point in Near Eastern history reading itself is turned into a ritual act. 11 Part of the legibility of religion ( Lesbarkeit von Religion ) 12 was the idea of the god himself using the medium of writing as reflected in the so-called letters of gods 13 and the textualization of divine speech as reflected in the Tablet of Destinies. Although or maybe because it was a society with restricted literacy, the symbolism of writing pervades the cultural discourse in ancient Mesopotamia. The metaphor of writing has evoked a host of images and fantasies throughout the ages ranging from the Book of Nature and Book of Life as media of divine revelation to Borges world as divine universal library in his short story The Library of Babel. Western metaphors represented the book as an image of destiny, the cosmos, or the human body. 14 In Ancient Near Eastern thought, the metaphor of writing reached far beyond the media of tablet and scroll into the realm of nature. 15 The divine will was supposed to be written in the stars as well as in the liver, and from early on a host of specialists claimed to possess the knowledge to decode these messages. In literary texts from the period of Gudea ( BCE) and Shulgi ( BCE) in particular, the Sumerian expression MUL AN originally meaning star of heaven was used as a 10 S. J. Lieberman, Canonical and Official Cuneiform Texts: Towards an Understanding of Assurbanipal s Personal Tablet Collection, in Tzvi Abusch et.al. (eds.), Lingering over Words, Studies W. L. Moran (Atlanta, 1990) ; G.B. Lanfranchi, The Library at Niniveh, in Capital Cities: Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions, ed. J. G. Westenholz (Jerusalem: Bible Lands Museum, 1998) ; B. Pongratz-Leisten, Herrschaftswissen in Mesopotamien. Formen der Kommunikation zwischen Gott und K nig im zweiten und ersten Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1999) 314ff. 11 B. Gladigow, Von der >Lesbarkeit der Religion< zum iconic turn, in G. Thomas (ed.), Religiöse Funktionen des Fernsehens? (Wiesbaden, 2000) See Gladigow Pongratz-Leisten 1999, R. Chartier, Forms and Meanings. Texts, Performances, and Audiences from Codex to Computer (Philadelphia, 1995) 22. Hans Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983.) 15 F. Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing. Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

4 4 metaphor for cuneiform signs 16 and appears in the Akkadian language as šiir šamê. Earthly designs such as the ground plan of a temple were supposed to be written in the constellations as told in the building hymn of king Gudea or a reflection of constellation as is the case of Sennacherib s annex to the Assur temple. 17 Among the dreams images told in Gudea s hymn about the restoration of the Eninnu temple of Girsu s patron deity, Ningirsu, is one of the goddess of writing, Nisaba, who consults the tablet of the heavenly stars, probably in order to determine the location and orientation of the temple: The young woman coming forward, who did something with sheaves, who was holding a stylus of shining metal, had on her knees a tablet (with) stars, which she was consulting She was in fact my sister Nisaba; she announced to you the bright star (auguring) the building of the House. (Edzard, Gudea, E.3/1.1.7.CylA v 21 vi 2) Another image in that dream is of the warrior god Ninduba engraving all details of the ground-plan onto a lapis lazuli plate: Furthermore, as for the warrior who bent his arm holding a lapis lazuli plate he was Ninduba: he was engraving thereon in all details the ground-plan of the House. Note that in this case the goddess, the patroness of writing, merely announces the ground plan of the temple while the god Ninduba performed the engraving on the tablet. This division in labor evokes the later setting of the scribe writing down the message of the divinity delivered by a prophet. According to Enuma elish V 17ff. Marduk created the sun and the moon not only to define months and days but also to provide divinatory sentences. 18 The mythical narrative thus emphasizes the connection between cosmic time, calendar calculations and divination, i.e., between cosmic time and historical times. 19 Although the gods determination of the destinies as a whole remained secret, part of it would be disclosed in 16 P. Michalowski, Nisaba. Reallexikon der Assyriologie 9 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, ) , 577f. and W. Sallaberger, Nachrichten an den Palast von Ebla. Eine Deutung von NÍG- MUL-(AN), in Semitic and Assyriological Studies Presented to Pelio Fronzaroli (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2003) G. B. Lanfranchi, Archeologia e astronomia: esperienze e prospettive future in (convegno internazionale Roma, 26 novembre 1994). Atti dei convegni lincei no. 121, published by Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma, ISSN , M. Huxley, The Gates and Guardians in Sennacherib s Addition to the Temple of Assur, Iraq 62 (2000) Enuma elish v J.-J. Glassner, Historical Times in Mesopotamia, in A. de Pury/Th. Römer/J.-D. Macchi (eds.), Israel Constructs its History. Deuteronomistic Historiography in Recent Research, JSOT 306 (3333, 2000)

5 5 the constellations of the stars or in the liver or lungs of sacrificial animals, or both, as divulged in the the first millennium BCE in the Diviner s Manual: Sky and earth produce portents. Though appearing separately they are not separate (because) sky and earth are related. A sign that portends evil in the sky is (also) evil on earth. One that portends evil on earth is evil in the sky. 20 Depending on time, space and context, to the ancients every physical manifestation could become a potential sign of the future. Divination functioned as a language of signs for reading the intersection of the human condition and the natural world. 21 Diviners sought their signs in the exta of animal bodies or cosmic space, i.e. the configuration of the stars and planets, or in the images of dreams. In addition they relied on prophecy to learn the divine will which, in Ishtar-Kititum s address to king Ibalpiel of Eshnunna, is coined as secrets of the gods, 22 i.e., the decisions of the divine assembly. In his 679 BCE inscription dedicated to the restoration of the Assur Temple King Esarhaddon ( BCE) offers a fine example of the hierarchy of divinatory techniques as represented in the communication process between the gods and the king recorded in the ideological presentation of the king s literary narrative: 23 [Sin and Sham]ash, the twin gods, took month after month the truthful and rightful path; and in order to bestow a righteous and just [ju]dgment up[on the land] they appeared regularly on the [first] and fourteenth day of the month. The brightest of the stars, Venus, appeared in the west [in the path of] Ea, to stabilize the land and appease the gods; it reached its hypsoma and disappeared. Mars, who passes the decision for the Westland, shone brightly in the path of Ea, announcing by his sign his decree which gave strength to the king and his land. Messages (šipru) from prophets (maû) were constantly available, concerning the establishment of the foundation of my sacerdotal throne for all time. Favorable signs kept occurring to me 20 A. L. Oppenheim, A Babylonian Diviner s Manual, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 33 (1974) , 200 ll. 39ff. 21 P. Cox Miller, Dreams in Late Antiquity. Studies in the Imagination of a Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) On the notion of secret knowledge see R. Borger, Geheimwissen, Reallexikon der Assyriologie 3 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, ) ; A. Livingstone, Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works of Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) 1; P.-A. Beaulieu, New Light on Secret Knowledge in Late Babylonian Culture, ZA 82 (1992) , J. G. Westenholz, Thoughts on Esoteric Knowledge and Secret Lore, in Intellectual Life in the Ancient Near East, Papers Presented at the 43 e Rencontre assyriologique internationale Prague, July 1-5, 1996 ed. J. Prosecký (Prague, 1998) ; Pongratz-Leisten 1999, 286ff.; as stressed by Scott Noegel, Nocturnal Ciphers: The Allusive Language of Dreams in the Ancient Near East (New Haven, CT: American Oriental Society, 2004) 71, the terms secret words (amāt niirti) and secrets of the gods (pirišti ilī), often found in the postscripts of erudite literature such as commentaries might indeed refer to polysemous and paronomastic extrapolations. 23 F. M. Fales/G. B. Lanfranchi, The Impact of Oracular Material on the Political Utterances and Political Action in the Royal Inscriptions of the Sargonid Dynasty, in Oracles et prophéties dans l antiquité, ed. Jean-Georges Heintz (Paris: Diffusion de Boccard, 1997) , 108.

6 6 in dreams and egirrû-oracles in order to secure the foundation of my throne and the length of my reign. Gazing upon these favorable signs, my heart rejoiced and my mood became good. 24 The inscription shows the following sequence of divinatory techniques as means of communication between the gods and the king: 1) First, astrology, to which great attention is paid in describing various stellar constellations. The primary position of astrology appears not only in the ideology of the royal inscriptions, but in a list of experts at court 25 where astrologers are named before exorcists and diviners. The same hierarchy is attested in an inventory listing various experts and their ownership of tablets and writing boards. 26 2) Next the oracles of the maû-prophets and the oracles delivered in dreams together with the egirrû-oracles. The egirrû-oracles may have formed a fixed combination with the dream-oracles in Neo-Assyrian times, as has been suggested by A. L. Oppenheim. 27 Oracles from ecstatics and dream-oracles are interchangeable in their sequence. Jack Sasson, when studying the Mari letters, came to the conclusion that the Mari personnel made no value distinctions among prophecies, dreams, or visions in that none of them was deemed applicable unless confirmed or validated through divination. 28 3) Extispicy, because of its verifying character, follows behind these types of divination within the hierarchy of divinatory techniques. It does not appear in the above passage of Esarhaddon s inscription because it would have implied an initiative on behalf of the king. In this particular section of the narrative, Esarhaddon s intention is just the opposite, namely to show that the gods by their various types of communication or signs proclaim the king as ruler. However, from the queries to the sun-god and the extispicy reports from the period of Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal we do know that the inspection of the exta was a very common way of asking the god s will, used not only during military campaigns but also for the appointment of officers, or in cultic affairs. And 24 R. Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons, Königs von Assyrien. AfO. Beiheft 9 (Graz, 1956) 2, 2 A i 31 - ii SAA SAA 7 50:5-19. According to U. Koch-Westenholz the first reference to the sun and the moon is a general reference to the favorable signs connected with the opposition of sun and moon. Only the second observation represents an actual astronomical constellation, see U. Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology (Kopenhagen, 1995) A. L. Oppenheim, Sumerian inim-gar, Akkadian: egirrû = Greek: kledon, Archiv für Orientforschung 17 ( ) J. M. Sasson, The Posting of Letters with Divine Message, in D. Charpin/J.-M. Durand, Florilegium Marianum II. Recueil d études à la mémoire de Maurice Birot (Paris, 1994)

7 7 throughout the history of Mesopotamia, the royal inscriptions mention it in descriptions of building activities or the fashioning of statues. The gods were not only deemed to have control over a particular physical realm of nature, but also as having the power to make decisions, to draw the cosmic designs, and to determine the fate of people and the nature of things. This image of the divine evokes the metaphor of the god as king, who orders and legislates existence, 29 illuminated at best in an incantation from the first millennium BCE: Incantation: Ea, Shamash, Marduk, the great gods, You are the ones who judge the law of the land, Who determine the nature of things, Who draw the cosmic designs, Who assign the lots for heaven and earth; It is in your hand to decree the destinies And to draw the cosmic designs; You determine the destinies of life, You draw the designs of life, You decide the decisions of life. 30 The Babylonian term šīmtu (Sumerian nam.tar) denotes something that is fixed or determined by decree and belongs to the semantic field of uurtu design and purrussû decision. Thereby it seems that uurtu design reflects the overall concept of order of which the šīmtu assigned either to the gods or to humankind represents a subordinate part. 31 The Mesopotamian world view is dominated by this concept of an overarching plan in which gods, king and humans have a share. As the ominous phenomena and the events indicated by them are set into relationship to one another in the manner of conditional relationships 32 there is a formal parallel between lists of omens and legal texts, as the if in these sentences bears the influence of Sumerian and Akkadian law collections and standardized legal formulae. 33 Consequently, both, the divine decision or omen prediction as well as the legal decision or verdict are termed purussû. In the terminology used in texts describing celestial and terrestrial omina, the 29 F. Rochberg, Heaven and Earth. Divine-Human Relations in Mesopotamian Celestial Divination, in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, ed. Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brandon Wheeler (University Park, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003) , LKA 109:1-8, English translation quoted from Rochberg 2003, F. Rochberg, Fate and Divination, Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 19, Vortra ge gehalten auf der 28 e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale in Wien, Juli 1981 (Horn, Austria: Verlag Ferdinand Berger & Soḧne, 1982) Rochberg 2003, Ibid.

8 8 Akkadian phrase purussû nadānu to give a decision or judgment, when used in celestial omens, parallels the phrase dīna dânu to render a judgment in the form of an oracle, 34 and both phrases are familiar from a legal context. This notion of the divine judgment could even enter the ceremonial names of temples as shown by the name EŠ.BAR.ME.SI.SÁ [House] which Keeps in Order Decisions and Me s. 35 Furthermore, the notion of the gods writing down on a tablet the fate of the king appeared in one of Nebuchadnezzar s inscription which conveys the idea of Nabû who in his role as divine scribe decreed a long life and who, on his reliable writing board (GIŠ.LI.U 5.UM) establishing the borders of heaven and earth, decreed old age for the king. 36 The legal connotation of the divine word decreeing the destiny shows in the Tablet of the Destinies sealed with the Seal of Destinies. Holding the Tablet of Destinies conferred a pre-eminent status in the pantheon and signaled absolute control, as we learn from the creation epic Enuma elish. This text describes Marduk s recovery of the tablet from the rebel Qingu: Enuma elish IV He snatched from (Qingu) the Tablet of Destinies not rightly his; 122 he sealed it with the seal and held it at his breast. It seems that in this particular case the sealing implies the authenticity of ownership of the tablet. Throughout Mesopotamian mythology, depending on the period, various leader gods were considered to be in charge of controlling the Tablet of Destinies, and when that fell into the wrong hands, the cosmic order got disrupted. The dramatic effect of an outsider challenging the established order 37 is well illustrated in the mythical narrative of Anzû s theft of the Tablet of Destinies: Anzû, Standard Babylonian Version I 79ff.: 34 Ibid. 35 A. R. George, House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia (Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1993) see further examples there. 36 O Nabû, pronounce a long life for me, write down for me old age in your reliable tablet. S. Langdon, Die neubabylonischen Königsinschriften (Leipzig, 1912) 100 ii P. Machinist, Order and Disorder: Some Mesopotamian Reflections, in Genesis and Regeneration. Essays on Conceptions of Origins, ed. Saul Shaked (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 2006) 31-61

9 9 79 When Enlil was bathing in the pure waters, 80 Undressed, his crown set on the throne, 81 He (Anzû) took control of the Tablet of Destinies, 82 He took supremacy, the cosmic regulations were overthrown. 83 Anzû soared off [and made his way] to his mountain, 84 Deathly stillness spread, awful silence reigned. 85 Enlil, their father and counselor was still as death. 86 The cella was stripped of its splendor. Enlil, the counselor, usually responsible for decreeing the fates, becomes incapable of acting and speaking, and, worse, his cella, a further emblem of his sovereignty, loses its brilliance. The divine sphere in all its cosmic dimensions is stripped of its power, and, consequently, this scene suggests that even the gods fell under the stipulations of the tablet of destinies. The combination of writing and sealing in this narrative is particularly worth noting since it originates in the context of legal transactions. The seal as a mark of authority and validation was the primary legal instrument of the ancient Mesopotamian economic, legal and commercial systems. However, as revealed in the mythological texts and the loyalty oaths, the divine seal also formed a nexus of control and authorization in the religious conceptualization. While we do not exactly know the content of the Tablet of Destinies, except that in one way or another it must reveal the divine plans of the cosmic order, the mythical narrative informs us that it was sealed with the divine seal. Thus, in the mythical narrative, Marduk s act of sealing formalizes and authorizes the content of the tablet and transforms the tablet into the religious icon of divine authority par excellence. 38 Recall that the divine seal was sealed on the loyalty oath that regulated Esarhaddon s succession by one of his younger sons, Ashurbanipal. In this case, of course, the Assyrian national god Assur is supposed to have sealed the succession treaty. The Seal of Destinies, with [which] Assur, king of the gods, seals the destinies of the Igigi and Anunaki of heaven and underworld, and of mankind. Whatever he seals he will not alter. Whoever would alter it may Assur, king of the gods, and Mullissu, together with their children, slay him with their terrible weapons! I am Sennacherib, king of [Assyria], the prince who reveres you whoever erases my inscribed name or discards this, your Seal of Destinies, erase from the land his name and seed! Rather than describing the function of the Tablet of Destinies in vague terms such as magical or numinous as suggested by W. M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 24ff. 39 George 1986, 140f.

10 10 In the context of this treaty the purpose of the seal is to bind Assur and his earthly representatives, the king and his successor to the stipulations of the treaty and thus enter into a mutual obligation with their treaty partners, the Medians and the Assyrian officials, and to bind them to their oath forever. 40 Thus, royal succession is sanctioned, authorized, and guaranteed by the divine seal. Prayer literature and mythical narratives show that the divine spoken word had a creative force in Mesopotamia. 41 The idea of the inalterability of the divine word finds its climax in Ashurbanipal s Hymn to Assur dating to the seventh century BCE, of which I quote the relevant passage: 19 [ ] of his [ ], Assur, whose command is far-reaching! 20 [A ], whose foundation, like a mountain, cannot be shaken! 21 [Whose ], like the writing on the celestial firmament, does not miss its appointed time! 22 [Whose] pronouncement is unchangeable, whose command stands fast! 23 [A whose] foundation cannot be shaken! 24 [Whose, like the writing] on the celestial firmament, does not miss its appointed time! 25 Your word [is everlasting], spoken from the beginning. 26 (Even) a god does not comprehend [the of] your [majest]y, O Assur! 27 The meaning of your ma[jestic designs] is not understood. 42 Divine speech gained its ultimate character of inalterability in the written form. This notion could explain why King Shulgi in his self-praise emphasizes the fact that An wrote a tablet for him and decreed his destiny 43 and why in first millennium texts kings would ask the god Nabû to write a destiny of long life on a tablet for them. In the ideological rhetoric of Shulgi, the written form of the god s decree seems to imply that Shulgi might evade the fate of his predecessor Ur-Namma whose decreed fate had been altered by An and who, consequently, according to the literary composition of Urnamma s Death, was 40 P. Steinkeller, Seal Practice in the Ur III Period, in McG. Gibson, R. D. Biggs (eds.), Seals and Sealing in the Ancient Near East (Malibu, 1977, 41-53, 44-46, discusses this obligation of the sealing party in the Ur III period: The legal texts [sale, loan, gift, hire] are sealed by the party who undertakes a specific obligation in a given transaction: in sales, the seller who abandons any claim to the sold property; in loans, the borrower who promises to return the loan (and interest) on a given date; in gifts, the donor who renounces his rights to the gift; in hiring, the owner or relative of the hired person who assures that the hireling will work in accordance with the agreement. 41 For numerous examples see J. N. Lawson, Mesopotamian Precursors to the Stoic Concept of Logos, in R. M. Whiting (ed.), Melammu Symposia II (Helsinki, 2001) , esp Hymn to Assur, ABRT 1 (A. Livingstone, Court Poetry, SAA 3, no. 1). 43 J. Klein, Three ulgi Hymns (Bar-Ilan University: Ramat Gan, 1981) 75 ulgi D 57.

11 11 condemned to a premature death. 44 We do not know when and why the gods would alter a destiny once determined. It has been argued that šīmtu šiāmu to determine one s fate just encapsulates the idea of man s mortality and that everything else is open in the Mesopotamian worldview. In other words, fate is not immutable. Everything depends on the action of the individual and his communication and relationship with his personal god. However, the inalterability of writing does not preclude its ambiguity 45 expressed either in the polysemy of the signs, in puns 46 and in cryptographic writing 47 or in the possibility of its annihilation as shown in the legal practice by the tablet might be broken once the legal transaction recorded on it had been settled or even entirely destroyed. Part of this context is the notion of the tablet of sins (uppi arnī listing the failures of a person which in a ritual act could be broken and thus annihilated. 48 An almost humorous allusion to the ambiguity of cuneiform writing is attested in Esarhaddon s report of his rebuilding the city of Babylon for which he needed the divine support of Marduk, who in the first millennium BCE had risen patron deity of Babylon to national god of Babylonia. He tells us the following story: He (the god Marduk) wrote the time of its lying waste as 70 years, but quickly merciful Marduk s heart calmed down and he turned it upside down and ordered its rebuilding within 11 years. 49 Although the text was regarded as an immutable expression of the god s command, it could be reinterpreted by the king by means of turning the tablet upside down so that the same signs read 1+10 instead of However, in the narrative the king reinterprets the god s change of mind E. Flückiger-Hawker, Urnamma of Ur in Sumerian Literary Tradition (Fribourg/Göttingen: University Press Fribourg and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Göttingen, 1999) 102 ll H. L. J. Vanstiphout, Ambiguity as a Generative Force in Standard Sumerian Literature, in Mesopotamian Poetic Language: Sumerian and Akkadian, Cuneiform Monographs 6 (Groningen: Styx Publications, 1996) Noegel Westenholz 1998, B. Pongratz-Leisten, Paratextual Literature in Mesopotamia in preparation for a volume ed. by A. Lange. 49 R. Borger, Die Inschriften Asarhaddons Königs von Assyrien, Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 9 (Osnabrück: biblio-verlag, 1967) Bab. A and D Ep R. Westbrook, Codification and Canonization, in La Codification des lois dans l Antiquité, Actes du Colloque de Strasbourg novembre 1997, ed. E. Lévy (Paris: Diffusion De Boocard, 2000) 33-47, 41.

12 12 In Ancient Near Eastern studies, the conservation of religious texts has been dealt with primarily from the vantage of conservation, compilation, memorization and learned tradition. Divine speech in the form of prophecy has been studied for orality and literacy only recently. 51 Below, I would like to approach its textualization from another vantage and show that especially in the Sargonid Period (seventh century BCE) we can go far beyond the notion of writing as a substitute for speech by considering the seemingly insignificant question of why Sargonid scholarly tradition maintains two basic formats for the transmission of prophetic reports: the horizontal format of the u iltu and the vertical format of the uppu. The tablets with horizontal format dealt with notes, omen reports, receipts etc. and were disposable, while the uppu format, on the contrary, was used for treaties, census lists, balanced accounts, inventories of treasury royal decrees and ordinances, 52 lexical lists and literary texts, and was designed for archival storage. Prophecies in the archival context, in particular, are of interest for our discussion. Karel van der Toorn, has already cursorily stressed the enduring significance of the Neo- Assyrian oracle collections, 53 and I would like to amplify his remarks. However, before embarking on the analysis of the multi-column oracle collections I shall provide a short survey on Esarhaddon s rise to power since I claim that the collective tablets represent an abbreviated version of his narrative as presented in the apology describing his rise to power, written long after his ascension to the throne. 54 This claim has been made already by Simo Parpola for the first oracle collection. 55 I would like to extend this claim to all the collections and contextualize them in the textual production of the apology and the letter to the god, all linked with Esarhaddon s decision to appoint his younger son Ashurbanipal as his successor to the throne, as well as with the literary predictive texts. 51 M. Nissinen, Spoken, Written, Quoted, and Invented: Orality and Writtenness in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, in E. B. Zvi and M. H. Floyd (eds.), Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy (Atlanta, 2000) Parpola 1997, liii. 53 Van der Toorn See above. 55 See below.

13 13 Esarhaddon came to power during a civil war that broke out after the murder of his father Sennacherib ( BCE). 56 As there is extensive recent research on Esarhaddon s succession I will only mention the facts necessary to understand the arrangement of the oracle collections. As Barbara Porter 57 has demonstrated it is very difficult to reconstruct the events of Esarhaddon s rise to power since very few inscriptions of his father Sennacherib survived from the late years of his reign. These accounts primarily focus on the destruction of Babylon, his raid against the Arabs, and the building of the festival house in Assur. However, the barrel cylinder commemorating the construction of Esarhaddon s succession palace in Assur and the so-called Will of Sennacherib, 58 however, clearly testify to his intention to install Esarhaddon as his successor to the throne. 59 A fragment of a loyalty oath may very well have recorded arrangements for his appointment as crown prince, although the name of Esarhaddon is not preserved. 60 These arrangements were necessary since, although never stated officially, the eldest son normally inherited the throne. 61 Evidence comes from the inscriptions of Esarhaddon and his successor Ashurbanipal, both not eldest sons, who state so in the accounts of their succession. Originally Sennacherib had expected his eldest son Assur-nadin-shumi to be heir to the throne and had installed him as governor of Babylonia to prepare him for his future office. 62 However, Assur-nadin-shumi was killed in a conspiracy of the Babylonians and Elamites which led to Sennacherib s devastating destruction of Babylon. Already before his father s murder Esarhaddon probably had to face the conflicting factions struggling for power in Assyria, as Sennacherib had four sons among whom to choose. His choice fell upon Esarhaddon who was one of the younger surviving 56 S. Parpola, The Murderer of Sennacherib, in Death in Mesopotamia, ed. Bendt Alster, Mesopotamia 8 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1980) B. N. Porter, Images, Power, Politics. Figurative Aspects of Esarhaddon s Babylonian Policy (Philadelphia: American Oriental Society, 1993) ABL 1452 = L. Kataja/R. Whiting, Grants, Decrees and Gifts of the Neo-Assyrian Period, SAA 12 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1995) no Porter with fn S. Parpola/K. Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths, SAA 2 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1988) no See the discussion by Paul Garelli, l État et la légitimité royale sous l empire assyrien in Power and Propaganda : A Symposium on Ancient Empires, ed. Mogens Trolle Larsen, Mesopotamia 7 (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1979) , and by Barbara Porter 1993, 15 fn A different view is presented by Eckart Frahm, Einleitung in die Sanherib-Inschriften, Archiv für Orientforschung Beiheft 26 (Wien: Institut für Orientalistik der Universität Wien, 1997) 19 who contends that Sennacherib installed his first-born son Aššur-nādin-šumi as governor in Babylon and his second son Arda-mullissi as his successor demoted in 683 BCE in favor of Esarhaddon.

14 14 brothers and would not ordinarily have been next in line for the succession. 63 The principle of the eldest inheriting the throne is clearly expressed in a comment of one of Esarhaddon s advisers who states at the beginning of his letter: What has not been done in heaven, the king, my lord, has done upon earth and shown us: you have girded a son of yours with headband and entrusted him kingship of Assyria; your eldest son you have put (up) to the kingship in Babylon. 64 In the introduction to his apology written long after his succession to the throne in 673 BCE to justify his decision to appoint Ashurbanipal as his successor, 65 Esarhaddon refers to the two important stages of his rise to power, his appointment as crown prince in the month Nisannu of the year 683 BCE 66 and his ascension to the throne on the 18 th of Addaru (XII) 680 BCE which frame the civil war period described at length in this apology. It is interesting to note that great similarity exists between the apology and the oracle collection as both are deeply concerned with the period after Esarhaddon s appointment as crown prince, i.e. the time of the civil war and his struggle for power. In addition, the apology refers explicitly to astrological signs as well as oracles predicting a favorable reign for him on the occasion of his ascension to the throne: In the month of Adaru (XII), a favorable month, on the 8 th day, the day of the eššēšu festival of Nabû, I joyfully entered into Niniveh, the residence of my lordship, and happily ascended the throne of my father. The Southwind, the breeze of Ea, was blowing the breeze whose blowing is a favorable omen for exercising kingship. Favorable omens in the sky and on earth came to me. Oracles of prophets, messages of the gods and the goddess (Ishtar) were constantly sent to me and they encouraged my heart. 67 The first two oracle collections abound in divine messages sent in the period probably shortly before the performance of the loyalty oath and during the civil war. By contrast the third collection seems largely retrospective in summarizing Esarhaddon s rise to power. Even the reference to what Parpola dubbed as the meal of the covenant seems to be a literary adaptation of the actual performance of the loyalty oath as it is transferred to 63 Porter 1993, 16 and Esarhaddon Nin. A, Ep. 2, l. 8. Among my big brothers, I was their little brother. 64 S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars, LAS 129 = SAA (S. Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, SAA 10 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1993). 65 H. Tadmor, Autobiographical Apology in the Royal Assyrian Literature, in History, Historiography and Interpretation, eds. H. Tadmor and M. Weinfeld (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1983) 36-57, 37; S. Parpola, Assyrian Prophecies, LXIX-LXX; M. Nissinen, References to Prophecy in Neo-Assyrian Sources, SAAS VII (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1998) For the date of Esarhaddon s appointment as crown prince see T. Kwasman/S. Parpola, Legal Transactions of the Royal Court of Niniveh, Part I, SAA VI (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1991) XXXIII-XXXIV) and Nissinen 1998, Borger, Ash., 27 Nin A F, Ep 2, i 87-ii 7.

15 15 the level of the divine where Ishtar takes on a mediating role on behalf of the king. 68 In some way the combination of Assur and Ishtar as the central divine agents in the narrative of the oracle collection mirrors the iconographic representation of the Neo- Assyrian seal sealed on the succession treaty where the king is shown in the company of Assur and Ishtar-Mullissu. The question to be investigated now in terms of the function of the written records is why one should distinguish between the tablets carrying single reports and the multi-column oracle collections. For the most part, prophecy, from the view of the communication process, does not presuppose any literary activity at all. 69 However, since the oracles were performed mostly when the king was absent, the message needed to be written down for him to receive it. Already with this first step of recording the oracle, we can presuppose a refined literary form that was not only adjusted to necessary scribal conventions and stylized according to the prevailing customs 70 but also aimed at intelligibility for the message to be understood by its recipient, in most cases the Neo- Assyrian king. 71 Hence the formulaic framework employed to transmit the message in writing can be compared with that of astrological reports or omen reports. Recently Karel van der Toorn demonstrated on the basis of three oracles from Mari spoken by the same prophetess and dealing with the same event but sent to the king by three different persons how much the account of an oracle can differ according to the person who reports on the event. 72 The texts give only the gist of the oracle of the prophetess, each using its own words while pretending to quote hers. 73 The Neo-Assyrian tablets carrying a single oracle had the horizontal u iltu format also typical of astrological and omen reports and served no purpose other than to provide a written version of the oral report to be submitted by a mediator to the king or a representative of his inner circle. 74 While the u iltu format, chiefly used as a memory aid 68 B. Pongratz-Leisten, Sacred Marriage and the Transfer of Divine Knowledge: Alliances between the Gods and the King in Ancient Mesopotamia, in Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity, eds. Martti Nissinen and R. Uro to be published by Eisenbrauns in Nissinen 2000, Nissinen 2000, Pongratz-Leisten 1999, 267; K. van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2007) Van der Toorn 2007, 112f. 73 Van der Toorn 2007, K. Radner, Die neuassyrischen Privatrechtsurkunden (Helsinki, 1997)

16 16 by the transmitter of the divine message has the character of disposable documents not necessarily meant for long-term preservation, the uppu format, in contrast, is intentionally designed for archival storage 75 and this suggests, of course, determining the purpose of the oracle collections stored for posterity. Much information can already be gleaned from format and formulation of these tablets. Simo Parpola made the extremely important observation that, judging from the sign forms and other scribal idiosyncracies, all the single reports were written by different scribal hands while the four oracle collections were all compiled by the same scribe. 76 Secondly, the single oracle reports usually open with a brief note introducing the oracle, sometimes specifying its origin, context or date such as The word of Ishtar of Arbela [to the king s mother ], 77 The prophetess Mullissu-kabtat (has said), 78 or Words [concerning the Elam]ites. 79 In the oracle collections of the multi-column tablets these notes follow the oracle and are rigorously standardized. 80 The individual oracles on the tablet and the authorship indications following them are separated from each other by horizontal ruling. 81 What is more, each oracle collection was originally preceded by an introductory section which, in the case of the first collection, to judge from the second column, consisted of ten lines completely lost, separated from a postscript by a double ruling again separated by a single ruling from the corpus of the oracles to follow. In the case of the third oracle collection this introduction probably contained a statement about Esarhaddon s success in eventually stabilizing his rule over Assyria as expressed in the formulas of a declarative speech act: Heaven and earth are [well]; Esharra is [wel]l; Esarhaddon, king of Assyria is[well]. 82 Subsequently the text seems to refer to a ritual performance in the Assur temple as indicated by statements such as before Assur and they come and burn (aromatics). All oracle collections assembled on these three-column or two-column tablets refer to historical events linked with Esarhaddon s ascent to the throne and the ensuing civil war, 75 Nissinen 2000, Parpola, SAA 9, LV. 77 SAA 9 5:1. 78 SAA 9 7:1. 79 SAA 9 8:1. 80 Parpola, SAA 9, LXII. 81 Parpola, SAA 9, LVI. 82 SAA 9 3:9-11.

17 17 as well as his enthronement and episodes of his reign. Thereby it is important to stress that the assemblage of the oracles of the multi-column tablets is not random but roughly follows the course of the events. In other words, in content, the oracles can be read as a narrative of Esarhaddon s ascension to the throne cast into the framework of the divine voice authorizing his rule, and directly related to the narrative as told in his royal inscriptions, especially in his apology from Nineveh. However, this narrative framework relating to Esarhaddon s rise to power has been interspersed with oracles dealing with political and military actions that occurred later in his reign. It is precisely this mix of timeframes that complicates our understanding of the function of the oracle collections, and that, in my opinion, does not allow for a dating in the early reign of the collective tablets. 83 A survey of the chain of events presented in the narrative should help illuminate the purpose of the tablets. The first oracle collection, dubbed by Simo Parpola Oracles of Encouragement to Esarhaddon pertains to the period of Esarhaddon s absence from Assyria, when his father Sennacherib had sent him away to protect him from assassination, best expressed by the oracle of the prophetess Sinqisha-amur of Arbela: King of Assyria, have no fear! I will deliver up the enemy of the king of Assyria for slaughter. [I will] keep you safe and [make] you [great in] your Palace of Succession. 84 Further support is provided by the oracle delivered to the Queen Mother: I am the Lady of Arbela. To the king s mother: Because you implored me, saying: You have placed the ones at the (king s) right and left side in your lap, but made my own offspring roam in the steppe Now fear not, my king! The kingdom is yours, yours is the power! 85 The tablet seems to end with Esarhaddon s safe arrival at the succession palace mentioned in his apology. 86 Ishtar, in the last oracle, delivered by La-dagil-ili, points out to Esarhaddon that he can rely on her when fighting his enemies as predicted in the oracles and emphasizes that he can equally rely on her oracles in the future: 83 Pace Weippert 1981, Parpola, SAA 9, LXVIII points out that the references to Elam, Mannea, Urartu and Mugallu of Melid could, in principle, belong to any phase of Esarhaddon s twelve-year reign. 84 SAA 9 1:2: SAA 9 1:8: Borger, Ash., Nin. A F, Ep. 2 i 21.

18 18 [I am the Lady of Arb]ela. [O Esarhaddon, who]se bosom [Ishtar] of Arbela has filled with favor! Could you not rely on the previous utterance which I spoke to you? Now you can rely on this later one too. 87 While Esarhaddon s inscriptions do not refer explicitly to Ishtar s oracles pronounced in favor of his installment as crown prince, the author of the Nineveh inscription summarizes her intervention under the expression at her lofty command : The fear of the great gods, my lord, threw them down, and when they saw the rush of my mighty attack, they became like ecstatics. The goddess I tar, lady of war and battle, who loves my priesthood, stood at my side and shattered their bows. She broke their ranks. They gathered together, saying, This is our king! At her lofty command they kept coming over to my side. Standing behind me like lambs, they tumbled about and implored me to be their ruler (Nin. A, Ep. 2, ll ). 88 The second oracle collection deals with the stabilization of the Esarhaddon s reign. Unfortunately, the introduction is missing and the remaining tablet starts right away with the oracles. The first oracle, however, already sets the stage: [Have no fe]ar, Esarhaddon! [Like a] skilled pilot [I will st]eer [the ship] into a good port. [The fu]ture [shall] be like the past; [I will go around you and protect you. 89 The oracles, cast in beautiful metaphors, repeatedly evoke Esarhaddon s difficulty in consolidating his throne by referring to the inner enemies contending his rule and outer enemies striving to take advantage of the destabilized situation and to destroy Assyria: I will [reconcile] Assyria with you. I will protect [you] by day and by dawn and [consolidate] your crown. Like a winged bird ov[er its young] I will twitter over you and go in circles around you. Like a beautiful (lion) cub I will run about in your palace and sniff out your enemies. I will keep you safe in your palace; I will make you overcome anxiety and trembling. Your son and grandson shall rule as kings before Ninurta. I will abolish the frontiers of all the lands and give them to you. Mankind is deceitful; I am one who says and does. I will sniff out, catch and give you the noisy daughter. 90 And another oracle provides a glimpse of the military challenges Esarhaddon had to face during the years to come. I will choose the emissaries of the Elamites and the Mannean. I will seal the writings of the Urartian. I will cut off the of Mugallu (of Melitene). Who (then) is the lone man? Who is the wronged man? Have no fear! Well sheltered is Esarhaddon, king of Assyria SAA 9 1:10: vi English translation quoted after Porter 1993, SAA 9 2.2: SAA 9 2.3: ii SAA 9 2.4:12-17.