Wilfred G. Lambert Babylon: Origins It is a fact that Babylon is very little known in the Third Millenium B.C. It only came to prominence when Hammurabi made it the dominant power in southern Iraq in the earlier second millennium B.C. The earliest unambigous mention occurs in a year-name of the Akkadian king Šar-kali-šarri, RTC 118 rev., restored from parallel phrases in other yearnames of the same king, RTC 86, 87 and 124, also found in part on Adab 405 in the Istanbul museum, cited from an unpublished transliteration of I. J. Gelb 1 : [i]n 1 šanat (mu) In the year šar-kà-lí-šàr-ri when Šar-kali-šarri [uš-šì bī]t an-nu-ni-tim laid [the foundations] [ù bī]t ìl-a-ba 4 [of the] temple of Annūnītum in KÁ.DINGIR ki [and of the] temple of Ilaba iš-ku-nu in Babylon. ù m šar-la-ak and when he defeated šarri gu 5 -ti-im ki Šarlak, ik-mi-ù king of Gutium. The wording here implies the foundation of temples which did not previously exist. Sumerian and Babylonian kings often write of building temples, when certainly repairs, or at the most rebuilding, is meant. Here it is different: the new temples imply that Babylon was not a trivial place to be so honoured, and it also implies that at least one temple already existed there, namely that of the city patron deity, Marduk. Annūnītum is an expanded form of the name Anūna, probably of Semitic origin. 2 Ilaba is a little known god in Babylon, but also known from Ugarit and certainly Semitic. 3 Babylon is well attested in administrative documents of the Third Dynasty of Ur, where it is recorded as being under a governor (ensi) and as paying taxes to the central government. 4 Babylon was of course in the Semitic speaking Akkad, not in the Sumerian speaking Sumer of the Sumer and Akkad divide. 1 D. Frayne, RIME II p. 183 iii k. 2 See the present writer, A Babylonian Prayer to Annūna, in: H. Behrens/D. Loding/M. Roth (eds.), Dumue 2 -dub-ba-a, Philadelphia 1989, 321 325. 3 See the present writer in: Ugarit Forschungen 13 (1981), 299 301. 4 W. W. Hallo, A Sumerian Amphictyony, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 14 (1960), 88ff. and RGTC II, 21 22. BABYLON: ORIGINS 71
The beginning of the Second Millennium was marked by a migration of Amorites down the Euphrates valley into Sumer and Akkad, where their tribal leaders took over and ruled the cities and were gradually assimilated into Babylonian civilization, as Sumerian culture declined outside the scribal schools. Hammurabi s ancestors took over Babylon and formed a long-lasting dynasty, which Hammurabi propelled into headship of the whole area, and though his successors often lacked his skills, the city retained its prestige until the end of the Persian Empire. These well-known facts can be found in all the standard histories. Hammurabi s success was owed to a combination of circumstances. First, he inherited the rule over Babylon at a young age and so had the time to develop plans and bring them to fruition. Secondly, there is no evidence that he was a great general. It appears that he succeeded by making moves slowly and only at the right moment. Thus his military successes had lasting impact. Thirdly, he was an extremely shrewd and utterly unscrupulous diplomat. Fourthly, he was perhaps unique in his age in keeping a firm control on all his officials, which no doubt endeared him to his subjects, so that on his death no rebellion against his successor took place. Against this background we may probe the origins and cultural status of the city more deeply. Ur III writings of the name of the city are ká-dingir ki, often with a resuming -ma proving an Akkadian name Bāb-ilim, Gate of the God. Place names of this kind are rare, but note Ka-Geštinanna (RGTC II, 88: Ur III, RGTC III, 128: OB), and Ka-Enlilla (RGTC III, 127: OB). Ur III readings with a resumptive -ra (RGTC II, 21) perhaps need collation, but in the Second and First Millennia this is a normal writing, and a Sumerian version of the name Ka-Dingirra, is surely proved. I. J. Gelb in Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies I (1955), 1 4, argued that this standard reading was only achieved by folk etymology. He cited a place near Lagash in Ur III documents (now RGTC II, 194 195) ( giš ) tir-ba-bíl/bìl/ bil 4 -la. This place has nothing to do with Babylon, but Gelb s idea is entirely conceivable. There is evidence, but this Forest of Babilla is entirely unrelated. In the Cassite period the name of Babylon can be written with the traditional logograms, but, when not, phonetic writings attest an unexpected A vowel in the second syllable: pan/pa-an/pa-am-ba-li; bà-bàlam/lim 5. This is inexplicable from the traditional common writing and would remain a mere curiosity did it not drawn attention to what may well be the earliest royal inscriptions from Babylon itself, hitherto unnoticed. It is part of a limestone votive inscription published by Ferris J. Stephens 6 : 5 B. Landsberger, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 8 (1954), 67 68 172 ; RGTC V, 47 49; Archiv für Orientforschung 32 (1985), 1 4. 6 F. J. Stephens, in: Yale Oriental Series. Babylonian Texts IX (1937), 2, see fig. 1. 72 WILFRED G. LAMBERT
... (Beginning lost) fen 5 j-[si] governor of BAR.KI.BAR BAR.KI.BAR dumu a-h u-ì-lum son of Ah u-ilum lú ì-lum-be-l[í] man of Ilum-beli lú ur-kù-bí man of Ur-Kubi dím é builder of the temple of d amar-utu Marduk mu-gub-am 6 set up (this votive)... (End lost) The ruler responsible for this votive is unknown, but what remains is largely clear, though man of is not a known term in such contexts. Ah u-ilum and Ilum-beli are well known Old Akkadian name types. Ur-Kube belongs to an extremely common Sumerian name type ( Man (literally dog ) of (divine name) ), but Kubi (a demon) seems not otherwise to occur in Sumerian personal names, though it is not rare in Akkadian personal names 7, either declined (Kubum, etc.) or not (Kubi, note i-din-ku-bi) 8. The writing dím é (=bāni bīt) suggests that the text is to be read as Akkadian, not Sumerian. The date was given as Zeit Mesilims by D. O. Edzard 9, while T. Jacobsen assigned it on palaeography to Early Dynastic II 10. A recent examination of the original by B. R. Foster (private communication) supports its being genuinely archaic and not a copy from a later scribal school such as that of Sippar. A key problem is in the second preserved line: what is BAR.KI.BAR. The present writer would take the KI as the determinative for places, kept in the middle from a very archaic traditional writing when sign-order was not rigorous, so that the place name is written BAR.BAR, which could be Babbar (note that older Sumerian writes UD.UD for babbar, but later only UD) or Baba(r/l): ba 15 -ba 15 11. In any case the writing can explain the Cassite writings of the name Babylon just given. If this is correct, it supports the idea that gate of the God results from folk etymology, perhaps a deliberate attempt to boost the place. The name of the god of the place remains to be investigated: d amar-utu. Amar-utu is in fact a male personal name of a well known type: bull-calf of Utu. Lack of the divine determinative is no problem. Names of this type at Fara normally, but not invariably, take the divine determinative, while the common Ur-Utu regularly lacks it 12. There are other cases of gods bearing human names: Dumuzi and d inim-ma-ni-zi (Ninurta s vizier), but so far no expla- 7 J. J. Stamm, Die akkadische Namengebung, 1939 (= Mitteilungen der Vorderasiatischen Gesellschaft 44), 306. 8 Textes cunéiformes 1 238 48. 9 D. O. Edzard, in: H. W. Haussig (ed.), Wörterbuch der Mythologie I/1, Stuttgart 1965, 96. 10 T. Jacobsen, in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 88 (1968), 105 2. 11 R. Borger, Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon, Münster 2003 [= Alter Orient und Altes Testament 305], 70. 121. 12 F. Pomponio, La Prosopografia dei Testi Presargonici di Fara, Rome 1987. BABYLON: ORIGINS 73
nation of this phenomenon is certain. The spelling of the name Amar-utu is given in a variety of sources, not all of which are given here. The Old Babylonian period can be represented by Diri-Nippur: ma-ru-tu-uk/ma-ru-tu-u 4 13 The Middle Assyrian copies of the god list AN=Anum can be used for a Middle Babylonian example: d ma-ru-tu-uk-ka 14 For the First Millenium the acrostic prayer of Ashurbanipal is significant since the spelling is part of the acrostic: ma-ru-du-uk 15 The almost universal modern Marduk is extremely hard to find in ancient sources: It occurs in a Late Assyrian copy of a literary text: d mar-duk (KAR 166 rev. 8). In the so-called Canon of Ptolemy, conveniently cited in Greek in RlA VI, 101, two Babylonian kings names include: Mardok- and mordakou, but no one will put too much weight on texts that have reached us by more than a millennium of Greek copyists. The modern usage of Marduk may have been influenced by a man s name which first appears in Middle Babylonian times: Mar/šd/tuku/a/i, etc., of unknown origin and meaning. The resemblance of this to Marūtuk is of course of no consequence, and it is unfortunate that T. Jacobsen 16 quoted d mar-duk as occurring twice in F. E. Peiser s Urkunden aus der Zeit des dritten babylonischen Dynastie 17, when in fact it is the name of a man involved in the business transactions with name written m mar-tuk. Ancient Hebrew copying traditons were better informed. The Ben Asher family that supplied the most respected pointing system to the Hebrew Bible in the later First Millennium A.D. regularly distinguished between the man Mord o kay and the god M e rōdak, a distinction already attested in the LXX version of the relevant Biblical books. The emesal form of the name is not hard to find, though modern scholars have not searched for it. An Emesal litany K 9270+9289 BA V 659 (collated) in obv. 3 reads: umun d a-ma-ru-uk-kám 13 MSL XV 36 10 44 and 11 09. 14 R. L. Litke, A Reconstruction of the Assyro-Babylonian God-Lists, New Haven 1998, 91 (Z. 195). 15 J. Craig, Assyrian and Babylonian Religious Texts I, 1895, 31:1 8. 16 T. Jacobsen, in: Journal of the American Oriental Society 88 (1968), 105 4. 17 Berlin 1905. 74 WILFRED G. LAMBERT
which allows the second writing of the name in Enūma Eliš VI 138 to be seen as such: d ma-ru-uk-ka/ku The intervocalic T has dropped, as in adda/a a father, and the endings are the product of late or middle-period scribes. The meaning of the name is transparent: Bull-calf of (the god) Utu. No doubt amar was originally taken as a metaphor for son, but the short form of amar, mar (a common phenomenon in words of that phonetic pattern) allowed the ancient scholars to identify it with the Akkadian māru son (actually from the root mr ), as plainly asserted in Enūma Eliš I 101 102 and VI 127 128. What has been presented so far may seem of purely philological relevance, but that is not the case. It allows us to probe into the cultural and religious prehistory of Babylon. Sumer and Akkad were originally, it appears, a land of city states, independent both politically and religiously. Each city state had its own patron deity (very rarely two such gods), but in Sumer the totality of city gods added up to a comprehensive pantheon with no duplication. Did an ecumenical conference in early times work out such a scheme for their mutual benefit? The larger cities were of course the core of such city states, the smaller places had their deities worked into the pantheons of the larger. Babylon, with its god Bullcalf of Utu (the sun-god) is marked as being under the influence of Sippar, where Šamaš was the patron. The Sumerian sun-god Utu was at home far away in the south. But Šamaš/ Utu was second- or even third-ranking in the Babylonian pantheon as it developed at the beginning of the Second Millennium B.C. In Semitic circles he had been much higher. Yah dun-lim of Mari calls him King of heaven and earth (šar šamê u ers etim: RIME IV, 605: 1 2; see the whole context), which amounts to supreme power in the universe. And Hammurabi himself in one inscription calls Šamaš great lord of heaven and earth, king of the gods (en gal an-ki-bi-da lugal dingir-re-e-ne-ke 4 = bēlum rabi um ša šamā i u ers etim šarru ša ilāni: RIME IV, 334: 1 4). On an entirely different level a conventional greeting in Old Babylonian letters is May Šamaš and Marduk keep you in good health (Šamaš u Marūtuk liballit ūka). The sequence of the two gods is normal in one sense: fathers had precedence over sons. That Marduk s status in Babylon was never challenged is proof of its antiquity. No doubt in the Third Millennium Babylon was within the religious orbit of Sippar. However, as time passed the status of Šamaš did not improve, indeed it declined and we may suspect that the priests of Babylon were not too happy. Another ancestry of their city god was proclaimed. Marduk was identified with Asalluh i, son of Enki/Ea of Eridu in the far south of the country. By the end of the Third Millennium a generally accepted pantheon had been worked out for Sumer and Akkad, with An, Enlil and Enki as the top trinity, occasionally joined by the Mother Goddess. BABYLON: ORIGINS 75
The Prologue to Hammurabi s laws begins with a statement of the promotion of Marduk, son of Ea, to having power over the peoples and being one of the Igigi gods, a group of top gods. This reflected Hammurabi s having made Babylon politically supreme in Sumer and Akkad, with a theological consequence that Marduk had be to a top god. One might think that Hammurabi himself was responsible for this, asserting that Marduk was son of Ea by virtue of having also the name Asalluh i. But a literary letter of Sin-iddinam of Larsa to the goddess Nin-isina published by W.W. Hallo 18, mentions: [ d asa]l-lú-h i lugal Ká-dingir-ra ki dumu d íd-lú-ru-gú Asalluh i, king of Babylon, son of Idlurugu. Sin-iddinam ruled well before Hammurabi, so it appears that persons in Babylon before Hammurabi wanted to exalt their god by changing his paternity from Utu to Ea. The move was so successful that from Hammurabi s time no known source explicity alludes to Šamaš as Marduk s father. The problem of the name was overcome by ignoring the final -k. By normal Sumerian grammar the genitive -ak loses the k at the end of a word or name, so Son of the Sun-god became The son, the sun-god : this sun-god not simply giving humans light and heat, but Marduk giving light to the gods, the higher calling, as plainly stated in Enuma Eliš I, 101 102 and VI, 127 128. 18 W. W. Hallo, in: B.L. Eichler (ed.), Kramer Anniversary Volume, Neukirchen-Vluyn 1976 (= Alter Orient und Altes Testament 25), 209 224, line 16. 76 WILFRED G. LAMBERT