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For most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, commentators on the philosophy and history of historiography have believed that the field of history was invented by the Greeks. They either expressly denied that the Israelites and other Near Eastern civilizations had anything deserving of the name of history, or, more commonly, they ignored the Eastern civilizations altogether. A standard work by Ernst Breisach entitled Historiography: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, now in its third edition, does not offer a single word about the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, or Israelites but begins with “The Emergence of Greek Historiography.” Philosopher R. G. Collingwood, in his widely read work The Idea of History, opined that “two forms of quasi-history, theocratic history and myth, dominated the whole of the Near East until the rise of Greece.”[1] On the other hand, the encyclopedic German historian of antiquity Eduard Meyer believed that “the Judaic Kingdom at its apogee produced a genuine historiography.”[2] The bias favoring Western historiographical developments has begun to change in recent years, and the four-volume Oxford History of Historical Writing, published in 2011, begins with two chapters on Mesopotamia and one chapter each on Egypt and ancient Israel.[3]

The dismissal of Near Eastern historiography was largely based on the view, widely held from at least the middle of the nineteenth century, that true historiography had to be “scientific,” “objective,” and “disinterested.” Above all, it was expected to be secular and humanistic, so that while it was acceptable, for example, to discuss the subject of religion in history, any such discussion was supposed to be treated in strictly humanistic terms. So for example, in discussing the important historical question of why Christianity was so successful vis-à-vis the pagan religions in the Roman Empire, it was appropriate to propose political or social causes (e.g., that it appealed to men and women by providing strong social bonds), whereas it would be entirely unacceptable to argue that it had anything to do with God himself or his plan for humanity.

This bias toward exclusion of the Near Eastern civilizations was of course anachronistic in the sense that it insisted on the ancients following modern rules. The truth is that such a stance would in effect result in the exclusion of nearly all historical writings down to 1850, when the modern canons of historiography first began to be adopted, including much of the historiography of the Greeks and Romans, not to mention the writings of medieval Europe.

But whether or not one chooses to identify ancient Near Eastern writings as valid historiography, it would be quite incorrect to state that ancient peoples were not interested in history—that is, in their past. In fact, they were intensely interested in it, but for very different reasons than we are today. There is a huge gulf between modern and ancient notions of history and historiography, which is the reason it was necessary to spend all of part I examining the “mythic” nature of the ancients’ perspective.

Recapitulating from part I:

• The ancients were interested in primordial history because it set the pattern of behavior established by the gods. They were interested in imitating those models. This type of primordial history we typically call myth.
• They were interested in the history of kings—not merely on political grounds, as we might be today, but because the kings served as the key link between the gods and humankind. What happened to the kings was of fundamental importance because the kings represented the gods to their people, and the gods communicated directly to the kings.
• War was of particular importance—not only because it was endemic to ancient civilization but also because of the role that warfare played in the mythic worldview. Success in war represented the creation of order over chaos.
• However, the peoples of the ancient Near East—with the important exception of the Israelites—were not particularly interested in history in the “macro” sense as a means of unfolding a great plan of the gods for their people over centuries or millennia.

Ancient Near Eastern “Historiography”: Annals and Chronicles

Our main concern in examining ancient Near Eastern historiographical writings is their sacral aspects, but because of most readers’ unfamiliarity with these sources, I will begin by briefly surveying the principal types of historiographical writings they produced (or at least what has come down to us). Since readers will presumably be more familiar with the historical writings of the Israelites in the Bible, our initial survey will focus on the other major ancient Near Eastern civilizations: the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites, and Egyptians. This survey will of necessity be superficial, but it will be enough to give the flavor of such writings to facilitate comparison with later ancient writings and ultimately with Mormon’s record.

The principal forms of historiographical writings in the ancient Near East take the form of annals and chronicles of events relating to the royal court. These chronicles are for the most part limited to the deeds of a single king: the incumbent ruler. There is very little evidence, at least as far as we can judge from extant sources, that these early civilizations had any real conception of historiography in the sense of creating an extended narrative that transcended the immediate past (e.g., events going beyond the reign of a single king) or that attempted to explain how or why a people changed or developed. This should not be taken to mean that the ancients were incapable of thinking in terms of the historical past in broad terms or did not understand how past events affected the present. Rather, it means that they were less interested in such a perspective. They were more concerned with keeping a record of past events for use in the future than in “telling a story.”[4] For example, in the practice of ancient astrology and divination, astrological and other omens were often interpreted by comparing events that occurred under similar (astrological) circumstances. The priests would examine the historical record to discover occasions when similar events had taken place and attempt to predict the outcome of current circumstances.[5] Thus there was considerable interest not in telling the story of the past, but in keeping track of the most significant events of state, whether political, military, or cultic. Such occurrences were chronicled as they happened.[6]

Mesopotamia

Historically oriented writings from Mesopotamia throughout its history can generally be classified as annals and chronicles. They typically record the accomplishments of kings, usually of a single ruler, and therefore are very limited in chronological scope. They are for the most part greatly limited in subject matter as well, focusing on such activities as temple building (a chief means for kings to express their piety and seek the gods’ favor), dedicating statues, and above all chronicling military conflicts between two cities.[7]

The earliest writings from Mesopotamia that can be viewed as historiographical in the simplest sense (i.e., recording a series of notable events of the past) are royal inscriptions that record certain deeds of individual kings of the various city states, primarily in Sumer. Stylistically, the earliest of such inscriptions were very spare in their use of language, as seen in this example from the city of Lagash:

Urnanshe, king of Lagash, . . . built the Bagara temple out of baked brick. . . . The name of the temple is “Bagara, Endowed with Justice.” . . . He built the Ibgal shrine; built the temple of the goddess Nanshe; built the sanctuary of the city of Girsu; built the Kinir sanctuary; built the temple of the goddess Gatumdug; . . . built the ME-gate; built the Abzu’e sanctuary; and built the wall of Lagash. He dug the Saman-canal and dug the Asuhur-canal. He fashioned a statue of the goddess Ninmarki; fashioned a statue of the goddess Ninesh. . . . The leader of Lagash waged war with the leader of Ur and the leader of Umma. The leader of Lagash defeated the leader of Ur. . . . He defeated the leader of Umma; took Lupad and Bilala, the commanders, captive.[8]

This rather brief inscription,[9] dating to approximately 2500 BC, consists of brief, taciturn statements of specific acts carried out by the ruler: building temples, shrines, canals, a gate, and a wall; creating statues of divinities; and waging war against various neighbors.

Many inscriptions, especially those of the Assyrians, consist almost entirely of a king’s military victories, and since they are written in the first person (though naturally they were composed by a royal scribe in the name of the king), they have a distinctly boastful tone. It should also be noted that many such inscriptions were not erected in public places and meant to be read by casual passersby (most of whom would have been illiterate in any case), but were buried as foundation deposits (i.e., in the foundations of temples) to be read by no one except the gods or future kings who might conduct a renovation of a temple after it had fallen into decay. Thus these inscriptions had a primarily ritual significance rather than a practical one. The following text relates to the famous ruler Sargon of Akkad, who in approximately 2300 BC conquered many of his neighbors and consolidated power, creating the first (Akkadian) empire throughout southern Mesopotamia.

Sargon, the king of Akkad, the bailiff of Ishtar, the king of the universe, the anointed one of An, the king of the land, the governor of Enlil. He vanquished Uruk in battle and smote fifty governors and the city by the mace of the god Ilaba. And he destroyed its fortress and captured Lugalzagesi, the king of Uruk, in battle. He led him to the gate of Enlil in a neckstock. Sargon, the king of Akkad, vanquished Ur in battle and smote the city and destroyed its fortress. He smote Eninmar and destroyed its fortress. He smote its territory and Lagash as far as the sea. He washed his weapons in the sea.[10]

One “autobiographical” account of the legendary early Akkadian king Sargon comes down to us in the form of a broad narrative, though the details appear more legendary than factual, partaking more of the flavor of epic poetry than of a dry chronicle. The text itself was undoubtedly drafted many centuries after Sargon’s death.

I am Sargon, the mighty king—king of Akkad.
My mother was a high priestess; I did not know my father.
My father’s brother occupies the mountains.
Azupiranu is my city, situated on the bank of the Euphrates.
My mother, the high priestess, conceived me; in secrecy she bore me.
She placed me in a reed basket; she sealed my opening with bitumen.
She gave me to the river, from which I could not come forth.
The river carried me; to Aqqi the water-drawer it brought me. . . .
Aqqi the water-drawer raised me as his adopted son.
Aqqi the water-drawer made me his gardener.
While I was a gardener, Ishtar loved me and
I reigned as king for [damaged text] years.
Humankind I ruled and governed.
With copper pickaxes I cut through mighty mountains.
I ascended high mountains.
I traversed the hills.
I sailed around the sea[lands] three times.
Dilmun submitted to me.[11]

Later annalistic inscriptions could be much longer and more detailed but not fundamentally different in content, except for specific references to the regnal year in which the events took place. For example, Sennacherib, the famous Assyrian king who conquered the northerly Hebrew kingdom of Israel in 711 BC and attacked (but did not conquer) the city of Jerusalem under the Judaean king Hezekiah, left a lengthy narration of his campaigns:

On my first campaign, in the environs of Kish, I brought about the defeat of Marduk-apla-idinna, king of Babylonia, together with the army of Elam, his ally. In the midst of that battle he abandoned his camp, fled alone and saved his life. Chariots, horses, wagons, donkeys which he left behind at the beginning of battle, my hands conquered. I joyously entered his palace, which is inside Babylon, and I opened his treasury. Gold, silver, equipment of gold and silver, precious stones, anything at all, property and possessions without number, heavy tribute, his palace women, his courtiers, his nobles, his male and female musicians, all of the workforce, as many as there were, the servants of the palace, I made go out and I counted as booty. By the strength of Ashur, my lord, 75 of his heavily fortified cities of Chaldea and 420 small towns of their environs, I besieged, I destroyed, I carried off their plunder. Arabs, Aramaeans and Chaldeans who were inside Uruk, Nippur, Kish, Hursagkalamma, Kutha, Sippar, together with the citizens, criminals, I made go out and I counted them as booty. . . .

On my third campaign I duly went against Hatti. Luli, king of Sidon, fear of the radiance of my majesty overwhelmed him and he escaped far away in the middle of the sea and he disappeared. . . . As for Hezekiah, the Judaean, who did not submit to my yoke, 46 heavily fortified cities and small cities of their environs, which were countless, with siege ramps, and siege engines drawn close, combat infantry, mines, breaches and scaling ladders, I surrounded and conquered. . . . Him [Hezekiah], like a caged bird, I confined inside Jerusalem, his royal city. . . .

In my fourth campaign, Ashur, my lord, encouraged me and I levied my troops in their great numbers and I ordered them to march against Bit Iakin.[12]

Apart from war narratives, many inscriptions, particularly those from Babylonia, focused on building projects carried out by the king, especially the construction of temples. The later Babylonians also wrote inscriptions referred to as “chronicles.” These differed significantly from the annalistic writings of the kings in several ways. First, they did not originate with the royal court and are not written in the first person of the king. Second, military campaigns and other events were organized by regnal year: “In my first campaign . . . my second campaign . . .” In contrast, chronicles, as one would expect, were more explicit about chronology:

For one year there was no king in the land (Babylonia). On the twenty-sixth day of the month Marchesvan Nabopolassar ascended the throne in Babylon. The accession year of Nabopolassar: In the month Adar Nabopolassar returned to Susa the gods of Susa whom the Assyrians had carried off and settled in Uruk. The first year of Nabopolassar: On the seventeenth day of the month Nisan panic overcame the city. Shamash and the gods of Shapazzu went to Babylon. On the twenty-first day of the month Iyyar the army of Assyria entered Sallat and carried off the booty. On the twentieth day of the month Sivan/Tammuz the gods of Sippar went to Babylon. On the ninth day of the month Ab Nabopolassar and his army marched to Sallat. He did battle against Sallat but did not capture the city. Instead the army of Assyria arrived so he retreated before them and withdrew.

The second year of Nabopolassar: At the beginning of the month Elul the army of Assyria went down to Akkad and camped by the Banitu canal. They did battle against Nabopolassar but achieved nothing . . . and they withdrew.[13]

Third, and even more notable, these chronicles are written in a surprisingly factual and even objective style; even military failures are sometimes clearly noted and not explained away. The following example records a battle in which the king of Akkad suffered great losses at the hand of the Hittites and retreated:

The fourth year: The king of Akkad mustered his army and marched to Hattu. He marched about victoriously in Hattu. In the month Kislev he took his army’s lead and marched to Egypt. (When) the king of Egypt heard (the news) he mustered his army. They fought one another in the battlefield and both sides suffered severe losses (lit. they inflicted a major defeat upon one another). The king of Akkad and his army turned and went back to Babylon.[14]

On the other hand, it has been argued that the dry facticity of the chronicles may conceal a conscious shaping of the narrative through subtle manipulation of the facts. For example, the recording of failures by the king of Babylon may have been prompted by a deliberate attempt to explain the decline and defeat of the Babylonian Empire at the hand of the Persians in 539 BC. In other words, we should not allow ourselves to be deceived by the dry and even boring style of the records into believing that the author was entirely objective.[15]

Finally, the so-called Neo-Babylonian Chronicle Series appears to have been an attempt to write a more continuous account spanning more than a few years or merely the details of one monarch’s reign. This chronicle, insofar as we can tell from the extant fragments, covered the period from the reign of Nabunasir (747–734 BC) down to at least the conquest of Babylon by the Persians (539 BC).[16]

Egypt

Scholars have frequently rejected Egyptian writings, even more than Mesopotamian writings, as not properly historiographical, claiming that the Egyptians had no proper idea of history at all. As discussed earlier, the Egyptians were particularly committed to the sacral or ritual view of the world. Perhaps it is for this reason that we have relatively few extant examples of extended narrative accounts in which ritual or epic-style hyperbole emphasizing the superhuman power of the king is not a conspicuous element.[17]

Nonetheless, it should be noted that in antiquity the Egyptians were known as meticulous record keepers. Herodotus stated: “The Egyptians who live in the cultivated parts of the country, by their practice of keeping records of the past, have made themselves much the best historians of any nation.”[18] John Van Seters, a distinguished scholar of ancient historiography, affirmed this: “No Near Eastern society was more meticulous [than the Egyptians] in its record keeping, as represented in the annals and king lists, and yet more ideological in its presentation of past events as they centered upon the king.”[19]

Egyptian writings share much in common with those of their Mesopotamian neighbors, but there are some differences worth noting. One of the earliest historiographical texts is a chronicle dating to the Old Kingdom known as the Royal Annals (also commonly referred to as the Palermo Stone). These annals comprise a kind of king list going back to the earliest times, predating even the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt, which is usually considered the beginning of the First Dynasty. Many early names of the kings have been lost, and the terse listing of events is often so obscure as to be completely opaque.

The following are excerpts from the annals of a Second Dynasty king named Ninetjer:

Year 7

Appearance of the King of Upper Egypt; stretching of the cord at the building “mouth of Horus.”
3 cubits, 4 palms, 2 fingers.

Year 8

Following of Horus; fourth occasion of the census
4 cubits, 2 fingers.

Year 9

Appearance of the King of Upper and Lower Egypt; running of the Apis bull “the son of life”
4 cubits, 1 palm, 2 fingers.

Year 10

Following of Horus; fifth occasion of the census
4 cubits, 4 palms.

Year 13

First occasion of the festival “Adoring Horus of the Sky”; hacking up the place Shem-Ra, hacking up the place Ha
4 cubits, 3 fingers.

The repeated measurements in cubits, palms, and fingers refer to the height reached by the annual flood of the Nile on which Egypt’s agriculture depended. Many of the other references are quite unclear, such as “hacking up the place.”[20]

Royal annals dating from the New Kingdom are much lengthier and highly reminiscent of the annalistic inscriptions of the Assyrians and Hittites. The best known of these relates to the campaigns of Thutmose III, of which the following are brief excerpts:

Regnal year 22, fourth month of winter, day 25: His majesty passed by the fortress of Tjaru on the first victorious campaign, in order to drive off the attackers of Egypt’s borders in bravery, in victory, in strength and justice. . . . Now it happened in other times that the troops which were there are now in the city of Sharuhen, while beginning at Yursa to the farthest northlands are in rebellion against his majesty.

Regnal year 23, at the first month of summer, day four, the day of the Festival of the King’s Coronation at the city “That which the Ruler Captured,” whose Syrian name is Gaza. Regnal year 23, first month of summer, day five, departing from this place in bravery, in victory, in strength and justice, in order to overthrow that feeble enemy and in order to expand the borders of Egypt according to what his brave and victorious father Amun-Re ordained that he conquer.[21]

One interesting aspect of the Thutmose III inscription is that it gives us a clear idea of how such annals were compiled—that is, where the scribe who wrote such inscriptions obtained his information. The inscription includes the following aside:

Now all that his majesty did to this town and to that wretched enemy together with his wretched army was recorded on (each) day in its name, in the name of the expedition and the names of the (individual) infantry-commanders.

This reveals that in time of war a daily record was kept of developments. Egyptologists refer to these records as “daybooks” and believe that similar records were kept of other royal events apart from battles.

As the following excerpt demonstrates, official war reports were drafted and preserved in a temple, and the later royal annals made use of these reports. These reports were kept in a very terse writing style akin to a ship’s log. The daybooks recorded the booty seized and tribute brought back to Egypt, which were also included in the inscription:

3400 prisoners of war
83 hands
2041 horses
191 foals
6 stallions . . .
the gold decorated chariot and golden chariot pole of that enemy
the fine, gold decorated chariot of the chieftain of Megiddo[22]

In one instance, the scribe himself, named Tjaneny, clearly asserts:

I saw the victories of the king which he made over every foreign land. . . . It was I who recorded the victories which he achieved over all foreign lands, it being put into writing according to what was done.[23]

This type of detailed record was doubtless a major basis for the comment by Herodotus that the Egyptians were the best historians of any ancient people.

Elements of Sacral Historiography—Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the Hittites

From the perspective of sacral history, certain king lists are notable because they begin with a mythic account of the foundation of kingship by the gods. The Sumerian King List, a document dating to around 2100 BC, takes us back at first to primeval (mythic) time. Kingship itself is a creation of the gods.

After kingship had descended from the heavens, (the seat of) kingship was in (the city of) Eridu. In Eridu Alulim became king and reigned for 28,800 years. Alalgar reigned for 36,000 years. . . . In five cities eight kings reigned for 385,200 years. Then the flood swept over (the land). . . . After the flood had swept over (the land and) kingship had (once again) descended from the heavens, (the seat of) kingship was in (the city of) Kish. In Kish, Gishur became king and reigned for 1,200 years. Kullassina-bel reigned for 900 years.[24]

In other words, kingship was established by the gods in primordial time, after which various kings reigned for thousands of years each. Then came the great flood, and after the flood the gods returned kingship to humankind and there ensued a series of kings who reigned for hundreds, rather than thousands, of years. All these names of kings are assumed to be mythical or legendary, but eventually the list reverts to historical kings.

We have already discussed the earliest Egyptian king list, known as the Palermo Stone. But there is another such list that, like the Sumerian King List, begins in the mythic age. The Turin King List, which is believed to date from the Nineteenth Dynasty (1292–1190 BC), consists of a papyrus that provides the names of the pharaohs and the lengths of their reigns (in some cases months and years), beginning with the divine founder of the kingship, the sun god Re. He is followed by his successor gods in the kingship—Geb, Osiris, Set, Horus, and others—and eventually by the human rulers of historical times.[25]

Among the early Sumerian inscriptions discussed above, one such inscription provides a link to the primordial age. It tells of a border dispute, but we are initially informed that the border between the two cities was established by divine decree:

Enlil, king of all the lands, father of all the gods, by his firm command, fixed the border (between the god) Ningirsu (i.e., the kingdom of Lagash) and (the god) Shara (i.e., the kingdom of Umma). Mesalim, king of Kish, at the command of (the goddess) Ishtaran, measured the field and set up a (boundary-)stone there.

Thus the boundary was not a human creation but was established by the king of the gods to run between the local gods of the two cities. This occurred at the time of creation, or rather in the second primordial age as the gods were laying the foundations of civilization. Subsequently the (human) king of Kish (where the kingship was first lowered from heaven after the flood) set up a boundary stone marking the proper border.

Ush, ruler of Umma, acted haughtily. He ripped out that (boundary-)stone, and marched toward the plain of Lagash. Ningirsu, warrior of Enlil, at his (Enlil’s) just command, made war with Umma. At Enlil’s command, he threw his great battle net over it and heaped up burial mounds for it on the plain.

The inscription goes on to relate the ongoing boundary dispute that involved wars between various successive pairs of city rulers but also included the ongoing involvement of the gods:

Enmetena, ruler of Lagash, whose name was chosen by Ningirsu, . . . and at the just command of Nanshe, built that (boundary-)channel from the Tigris river to the Nun canal. The foundations of the Namnundakigara he constructed in stone for him (Ningirsu), and restored it to Ningirsu, the lord who loves him, and Nanshe, the lady who loves him.[26]

Thus, as we might expect, given the sacral nature of ancient Sumerian thinking, an actual historical event (the boundary dispute) was not presented in purely humanistic terms of a conflict between two states, but rather an appeal was made based on what the gods were believed to have decreed in primordial times.[27]

As discussed in chapter 1, the pattern of divine involvement in wars is found throughout the ancient Near East. Yet, surprisingly, the historical inscriptions we have been discussing mention the gods much less frequently and less specifically than we might anticipate, especially when we contrast them with the historical writings of the Old Testament. In order to provide a basis for comparison, we will examine four separate categories of divine involvement in human affairs and subsequently use these same categories to examine the Hebrew Bible and, in chapter 11, Mormon’s record.

Divine intervention

In light of the highly sacral character of ancient Near Eastern civilization, it would be reasonable to expect the narrative accounts we have been surveying to be full of gods—regular interventions by deities and dramatic miracles of varied types. Yet it is surprising to find that in many such annals, reference to the gods is quite limited. While they are mentioned at times, it is nearly always in very generic terms; intervention by the gods is mostly expressed in indirect terms, while explicit miracles are rare.

The following is from a lengthy inscription of Sargon II (reigned 722­–­705 BC) from the palace at Dur-Sharrukin (Khorsabad):

Palace of Sargon, the great king, the mighty king, king of the world, king of Assyria, governor of Babylon, the king of Sumer and Akkad, beloved of the great gods, to whom Ashur, Nabu, and Marduk entrusted an incomparable rule and have brought my good name to preeminence.

I continually made provisions for Sippar, Nippur, Babylon, and Borsippa, whose exempt people, as many as there were, I recompensed for damage (suffered). I eliminated their forced labor. I calmed the people of Der, Ur, Uruk, Eridu, Larsa, Kullaba, Kisik, and Nemed-Laguda. Ashur and Haran, whose freedom was for many days forgotten, I restored their interrupted privileges. The great gods looked on me with their loyal hearts; among all the princes they gave me the strength of manhood and made my form massive. In the days of my rule, there was no rival prince. I saw no adversary who could subdue me in making war and battle. I smashed all the enemy lands like pots and I cast the nose-rope on the rebels of the four (regions). Distant mountains, whose passes were difficult and without number, I opened. Again and again I passed over steep, inaccessible paths whose locations were extremely frightening. I continually crossed all watercourses. With the power and strength of the great gods, my lords, who set my weapons in motion and smote all my enemies, from Iadnana in the midst of the sea of the setting sun, to the border of the lands of Egypt and Mushki, the wide land of Amurru, Hatti in its entirety [and a long list of other peoples and cities] . . . altogether I ruled.[28]

What is interesting is that the inscription notes that the gods love the king and entrusted rule to him; they “look on” the king in battle, impart strength to him, and “set [his] weapons in motion,” but all the effective actions in the battle are carried out by the king himself, not the gods: “I smashed all the enemy lands like pots and I cast the nose-rope on the rebels of the four regions.” While he does say that the great gods “smote all my enemies,” this type of description sounds formulaic and routine.

The inscription continues at length in much the same vein, narrating in considerable detail Sargon’s military exploits. Every so often the king gives broad, overall credit to the gods for strengthening him and allowing him to accomplish these deeds. But nowhere does he suggest that the gods were directly involved in the battles, that they directly assisted him or effected miracles on his behalf. The actual exploits were all his—to be sure, with some background support from the gods.

One reason for this apparent downplaying of the gods’ involvement suggests itself in the following annalistic inscription of Shalmaneser III, king of Assyria from 858 to 824 BC:

In the month Aiaru, the 13^th day, I departed from Nineveh; I crossed the Tigris, bypassed the countries Hasam and Dihnunu and approached the town of La’la’te which belongs to Ahuni, man of Adini. The terror and the glamor of Ashur, my lord, overwhelmed them . . . and they dispersed. I destroyed the town, tore down its wall, and burnt it down. . . . [much additional text omitted] At that time, I paid homage to the greatness of all the great gods and extolled for posterity the heroic achievements of Ashur and Shamash by fashioning a sculptured stela with myself as king (depicted on it). I wrote thereupon my heroic behavior, my deeds in combat, and erected it beside the source of the Saluara river.[29]

Note that the erection of the stela is in honor of the gods, including their “heroic achievements.” This suggests that, even though the exploits are explicitly described as those of the king (“I destroyed the town,” etc.), the king also considered those acts to be in some sense the deeds of the gods as well (“the heroic achievements of Ashur and Shamash”). In other words, the accomplishments of the king were simultaneously the deeds of the gods—because they had placed him in the office of king, had strengthened and supported him in everything. Thus it was unnecessary to give repeated mention to the activities of the gods, because they were presumed to be active at all times.[30] This provides support for the idea expressed earlier that one principal element of sacral historiography is what can be described as “dual causation.” In other words, the writer explains events in secular, or human, terms, but then gives ultimate credit to the gods without providing any explicit explanation of how the gods brought the events about.

Following are several additional scattered references to the gods’ indirect involvement in battle, where the Assyrian king in question carries out the actions himself with hidden support of the gods.

Tiglath-Pileser I

With the onslaught of my fierce weapons by means of which Asshur, the lord, gave me strength and authority I took with thirty of my chariots . . . my warriors trained for successful combat. . . . The land of Ishdish I overwhelmed (so that it looked) like ruin hills (created by) the Deluge.[31]

With the exalted strength of Asshur, my Lord, against the land Haria and the army of the extensive land of Paphe in high mountains, where no king had ever gone, Asshur, the Lord, commanded me to March. I put my chariotry and army in readiness; . . . I fought with them in rough mountainous terrain, and I brought about their defeat. I built up mounds with the corpses of their warriors in the plains of the mountain; and I made the blood of their warriors flow into the hollows and plains of the mountain. . . . Their booty, possessions, and property I carried off. Their cities I burned, razed and destroyed.[32]

Sennacherib

In my second campaign: Asshur, my lord, encouraged me and I indeed marched against the land of the Kassites.[33]

Assurnasirpal

When Asshur, the Lord who called me by name and made my kingship great, and trusted his merciless weapon in my lordly arms, I felled with the sword in the midst of battle the wide-spread troops of the Lullume.[34]

Other routine expressions of divine support include the following:

The awe-inspiring radiance of (the god) Asshur and the goddess Ishtar overwhelmed him and he went into a frenzy. The brilliance of my royal majesty, with which the gods of heaven and other world had endowed me, covered him.[35]

Sargon II

The great gods looked on me with their loyal hearts; among all the princes they gave me the strength of manhood and made my form massive. In the days of my rule, there was no rival prince. . . . With the power and strength of the great gods, my lords, who set my weapons in motion and smote all my enemies, . . . I ruled.[36]

The Hittites had particularly stereotyped phraseology regarding the gods that is repeated at various intervals:

The gods of my father ran before the lords, so that they defeated them all.

The gods of my father now ran before my brother, so that he conquered the enemy tribal troops.

The gods of my father now ran in front of Zita and Arnuwanda, so that they defeated the enemy.

The sun-goddess of Arinna, my lady, the mighty storm-god, my lord, Mezzulla and all the gods ran before me and I destroyed the Pišhuruan enemy in Palhuišša.[37]

But it must be stressed that these phrases are found dispersed in long inscriptions that otherwise consist of the deeds of the kings and make no mention of the gods.

We get a similar impression from the Egyptian inscriptions. While the inscription of Thutmose III says very little about direct divine intervention in battle, it emphasizes that the victories were given by “his father Amon,” and in gratitude the king erected the monument in the temple of Karnak. Further on it states that “my father Amon strengthened the arm of my majesty” and that the army “rejoiced and gave praise to Amon because of the victory which he had given to his son on this day.”[38] But of specific actions taken by the god in the thick of battle there is no mention.

In the case of the Egyptians, it must be kept in mind that the Pharaoh was often regarded as a kind of god himself. Although he was acknowledged as mortal and thus not fully divine, he was so closely identified with deity that Egyptian writers may have felt there was no need to mention divine support of the king’s activities. Because Pharaoh was the son of Re, it could be taken for granted that the sun god supported his son in battle.

Divine miracles

In keeping with the relative rarity of overt interventions by the gods, stories of distinct divine miracles are also uncommon in historical accounts of Mesopotamian and Egyptian origin; indeed, they are almost nonexistent. Among the few exceptions is a reference to a divinely directed thunderbolt in a Hittite document:

But when I had set out and I reached Mt. Lawaša, the mighty storm-god, my lord, revealed his divine power. He shot a thunderbolt. My armies saw the thunderbolt and the land of Arzawa saw it. The thunderbolt went and struck Arzawa. It struck Apaša, Uhhaziti’s city. Uhhaziti fell to his knees and he became ill. As Uhhaziti was ill, he did not then come against me in battle.[39]

It is not clear if the account refers to a literal thunderbolt or not; the wording is somewhat confusing and seems to refer to something greater than a mere lightning strike. The thunderbolt strikes the city of Uhhaziti and also strikes the king himself, causing him to fall to his knees and become ill. Perhaps it describes a meteor? Also rather confusing is a well-known report of the so-called Miraculous Star in the Gebel Barkal stela from the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III. The exact event described in this passage is difficult to discern, and scholars have interpreted it in different ways.

Pay attention, oh people of the south land . . . ; then you will know the miracle of Amun-Re in the presence of the Two Lands. . . . Sentries were in the very act of being posted at night in order to do their regular watch. There were two astronomers present. A star approached, coming to the south of them. The like had not happened before. It shot straight toward them (the enemy), not one of them could stand, . . . falling headlong. Now then [illegible] was behind them with fire in their faces. Not one of them retaliated; no one looked back. Their chariotry is gone, they (the horses?) having bolted in . . . order that all foreigners might see the awe of my majesty.[40]

Revelation of the gods’ will

Ancient Mesopotamian documents frequently refer to kings receiving communications from the gods. But these communications are typically very brief, and often the mode of communication is not specified. For example, in an inscription of King Hammurabi of Babylon, when the king declares that the sun god Shamash “ordered with his pure mouth that cannot be altered to settle the people of Sippar and Babylon in a dwelling of peace, instructed me to build the wall of Sippar,”[41] it is not clear by what means the god spoke to the king. Other examples are equally vague: “When Anum and Enlil with a magnificent order instructed me in a lordly way to execute kingship over the universe forever and govern the totality of the peoples . . .”[42] “At the command of Ashur, the great lord, . . . I fought with [the enemy].[43] “At the command of Ashur, Sin, Shamash, Adad, Bel, Nabu, Ishtar of Nineveh, . . . like the onset of a furious storm I covered Elam completely.”[44]

From other instances it is clear that these divine communications could come in a variety of ways. The three most common were divination, dreams, and omens or portents, but prophets and seers also communicated the will of the gods to the king. The practice of divination was the principal means of determining the will of the gods in Mesopotamia. As we saw in chapter 1, the main form of divination was called extispicy, which involved the reading of livers. In justifying his accession to the throne, the Assyrian king Esarhaddon explained that his father “consulted Shamash and Adad by divination and they answered with their true consent, ‘He [Esarhaddon] is your successor.’”[45]

In the Cuthean Legend, the king Naram-Sin states:

I summoned the diviners and gave orders.
I sacrificed seven lambs for the seven (diviners). . . .
I inquired of the great gods who
. . . did not permit me to go,
nor did a divine communication in my dream.[46]

This passage also refers to a communication received through a dream, forbidding the king from attacking his enemies. A Hittite monarch records that on one occasion “the goddess my lady appeared to me in a dream (saying): ‘Serve me with your household!’ So I served the goddess together with my household.”[47] Dream messages could also come to those who served the king as dream interpreters.

At that time one dream interpreter, while he slept at night, he saw a dream as follows: on the surface of the pedestal of Sin was written, “who plots evil against Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, and starts a fight, I will give an evil death. By means of a swift stab from an iron dagger, by fire, by famine, or plague, I will destroy their lives.”[48]

Kings also report receiving revelations through prophets or seers, though these were most common in Syria, and, of course, in Israel. In one inscription from Aramaea in Syria, the king Zakkur states that the god Baal-Shamayim, in response to his prayer, “spoke to me by the hand of seers and by the hand of diviners; and . . . said to me: ‘Fear not! For it was I who made you king, and [I will rise] with you. I will rescue you from all of [these kings] who have forced the rampart upon you.’”[49]

Finally, omens or portents, which were signs that appeared in nature, were understood to be signs of the divine will:

At the exalted command of Nabu and Marduk who set in motion the position of the stars signifying a good omen for the taking up of my weapons, and favorable signs which mean the gaining of power, Sin [the moon god], lord of the crown, remained eclipsed for more than one watch, (a portent) for the Guti to be wiped out.[50]

Divination typically involved asking the god a question that could be answered with a yes or no:

I ask you, Shamash, great lord: should Assurbanipal, son of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, send Nabusharra-usur . . . to Egypt? And will he carry out whatever orders Assurbanipal is going to give him?

Stand by me, by placing in this ram a firm positive answer, favorable designs, favorable, propitious omens, in accordance with your great divinity, and may I see them. May [the query] go to your great divinity, O Shamash, great lord, and may it be answered by an oracular message.[51]

The gods communicated through a variety of means. An inscription of Esarhaddon the king states:

Prophetic oracles concerning the establishment of the foundation of my priestly throne until far-off days were conveyed to me incessantly and regularly. Good omens kept occurring to me in dreams and speech omens concerning the establishment of my throne and the long life of my rule. When I saw these good signs, my heart turned confident and my mood became good.[52]

Extispicy and such forms of divination were not practiced among the Egyptians. A few accounts of royal dreams are found in Egyptian sources. An inscription found between the paws of the Great Sphinx of Giza relates that one day when Thutmose IV was still a prince, he fell asleep and in a dream was told by the god Khepri (the Sphinx) that if he cleared away the sand that had nearly buried the sphinx, he would be granted the kingship.[53] On several occasions gods appeared to kings in dreams while on campaign merely to grant them additional strength.[54] Because Egyptian kings were considered to be more fully divine than Mesopotamian and other ancient kings, they had more-intimate relationships with the great gods and were in closer contact with them, thus having little need to consult diviners to learn the divine will.

Moralizing

Another aspect of ancient historiography that can be considered sacral in nature is the presence of moralizing passages—discussions regarding the importance of moral behavior or, more broadly, behavior toward the gods. To what extent do historical writings explicitly moralize, outlining good and bad behavior, or include either implicit or explicit discussion of the consequences (blessings or curses) of certain behaviors with respect to the gods?

Such discussions are not found in the genuine historiographical writings we have been considering, such as annals and chronicles, but they do exist in similar writings that deal with historical figures but are entirely, or mostly, imaginative. Several are attempts to explain the reasons for the fall of a particular state or dynasty. For example, a historical narrative from Sumer known as “The Curse of Agade” tells how the great king Sargon of Akkad had been blessed by the gods to achieve remarkable political and military success, thereby establishing the Akkadian Empire. Shortly after his death, however, in the reign of his son Naram-Sin, the empire collapsed. The reason? According to our author, Naram-Sin had allowed his soldiers to desecrate and destroy the chief temple in all Sumer, the sanctuary of the god Enlil in the sacred city of Nippur.[55]

The idea of the gods blessing one king and cursing another for his violation of divine decrees is carried to another level in the text known as the “Weidner Chronicle.”[56] Although labeled a “chronicle” and covering an extended period of time, briefly discussing the reigns of thirteen kings in chronological order, it should not be considered a genuine historical chronicle like those discussed above, but rather a literary piece. At the beginning of the text, the goddess Gula announces that no king should attempt to compete with the great god Marduk for supremacy. “Whoever commits sacrilege against the gods of that city [Babylon], his star shall not stand in heaven. . . . His kingship will come to an end, his scepter will be taken away, his treasury will become mounds and ruins.”[57] Then, beginning once again with the career of Sargon of Akkad, we are told that he was raised to the kingship and granted sovereignty over the world by Marduk because of his piety. Yet later, because he neglected the word of the god Bel, his subjects rebelled against him. There followed a line of several other kings who were granted rule, only to fail to properly keep the rituals of the gods and suffer the inevitable consequences.

This idea of cursing a wicked ruler has precedent in the famous Code of Hammurabi:

May the god Shamash, the great judge of heaven and earth, who provides just ways for all living creatures, the lord, my trust, overturn his kingship; may he (= the bad king) not render his judgments, may he confuse his path and undermine the moral of his army; when divination is performed for him, may he (= Shamash) provide an inauspicious omen portending the uprooting of the foundations of his kingship and the obliteration of his land; may the malevolent word of the god Shamash swiftly overtake him, may he uproot him from among the living above and make his ghost thirst for water below in the Netherworld.[58]

In genuine historiographical sources there do not appear to be any instances in which a king acknowledges his own failures or sins or is declared by his own people (e.g., by a prophet) to have sinned and failed. The only such account I am aware of is the Cuthean Legend, another literary rather than historiographical piece. In discussing that text in connection with sacral war in chapter 1, we saw that Naram-Sin confessed his defiance of the gods after his own diviners had told him the gods had refused permission for him to attack, and as a result he suffered three massive losses.[59]

Rather, the doctrine is more typically found in the case of a foreign king or people whose defeat by the king responsible for the inscription is blamed on his lack of piety toward the gods. One of the most notable instances of this is an inscription of Esarhaddon, son of the famous king Sennacherib who conquered Babylon in 689 BC. One can say that it was typically assumed that, almost by definition in any account of battle, the opposing king and people should be considered to be wicked in some form, to worship the wrong gods, and to deserve punishment in one way or another.

Esarhaddon’s various inscriptions completely ignore his father’s role in the destruction of Babylon and blame the Babylonians themselves. These inscriptions are somewhat similar but are not merely different recensions of one inscription. They include the following:

• There were evil omens.
• The people committed crimes, injustice, and dishonored parents.
• They mistreated their gods.
• They didn’t make the regular offerings to the gods.
• They took treasures from the temple Esagila and used it to pay Elam to help defend them.
• Marduk became angry and resolved to destroy the city and people.
• Esagil and Babylon become a wasteland.
• The gods leave and go up to heaven.[60]

We should also recognize an inscription of the Babylonian king Nabopolassar, who defeated the Assyrians and expelled them from Babylon in 609 BC. This text acknowledges that the Assyrians had previously been allowed to rule Babylonia and “harass the people of the land with [their] heavy yoke” because of “the anger of the gods,” provoked by an unstated transgression by the people or the king.[61]

In the case of Egypt, one might anticipate that because the Egyptians had such a strong sense of morality, their historiographical writings would more frequently include moralizing passages, chastisements of the kings for their sins, and so on. But this hypothesis would again ignore the fact that the Egyptians considered their kings to be divine in a way that the Mesopotamians did not. There are few if any examples of chastisement of kings—perhaps because historiographical writings are so rare in Egypt. Nevertheless, the possibility of divine reprimand was always implicit. In one inscription relating to the Battle of Kadesh, Ramesses II reproached the god Amon for failing to support him adequately in battle; he had not in any way neglected the god’s will:

Have I done aught without thee? Have I not moved or stood still in accordance with command? I never swerved from the counsels of thy mouth. . . . What are these Asiatics to thee, Amon—wretches that know not god. Have I not fashioned for thee many monuments and filled thy temples with my captives? . . . I caused tens of thousands of oxen to be sacrificed to thee. No good thing do I leave undone in thy sanctuary.[62]

Thus the king acknowledges the possibility that the god might fail to support him in battle if he did not honor the god sufficiently.

It is clear that the Hittites too believed that the gods punished those who sinned, above all those who violated oaths sworn in the context of a treaty. In a text known as “Murshili II’s ‘Second’ Plague Prayer,” the king Murshili II acknowledges in the face of a twenty-year plague in the country that his father had sinned by violating a treaty concluded with Egypt and pleads with the storm-god Hatti that “since I have confessed my father’s sin, so let the [storm-god’s] mind be satisfied again. Have mercy on me again, and ban the plague from Hatti-Land again.”[63]

Notes

[1] R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Clarendon, 1946), 12.

[2] Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums (Stuttgard [ed: not Stuttgart?] and Berlin: J. G. Cotta, 1928), 2:285, quoted in The Idea of History in the Ancient Near East, ed. Robert C. Dentan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1955), 38n6.

[3] Daniel Woolf, ed., Oxford History of Historical Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[4] E. A. Speiser, “Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Dentan, Idea of History in the Ancient Near East, 48.

[5] See Speiser, “Ancient Mesopotamia,” 45–49, 60–67; Jean Bottéro, Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 33–38; and J. J. Finkelstein, “Mesopotamian Historiography,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107, no. 6 (1963): 461–72.

[6] See William W. Hallo, “Biblical History in Its Near Eastern Setting: The Contextual Approach,” in Scripture in Context: Essays on the Comparative Method, ed. Carl D. Evans, William W. Hallo, and John B. White (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 10. See also William W. Hallo, “Sumerian Historiography,” in History, Historiography and Interpretation: Studies in Biblical and Cuneiform Literatures, ed.H. Tadmore and M. Weinfeld (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984), 20; and Kirk Grayson and A. K. Grayson, “Assyria and Babylonia,” Orientalia 49, no. 2 (1980): 189.

[7] Mark W. Chavalas, ed., The Ancient Near East: Historical Sources in Translation (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), 7.

[8] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 11. Note that nearly all ancient inscriptions are to some degree damaged and fragmentary, often riddled with lacunae and difficult passages where the text can only be conjectured. In some cases, whole sections may be missing. Scholars, when publishing such texts, typically use a series of symbols such as “< >” to indicate where the text is partially damaged and the editor has supplied the likely reading or “[. . .]” to indicate where the text is too damaged even to guess at its meaning. I have omitted such editorial symbols and have adjusted paragraphing for the sake of readability, but the interested reader can refer to the original translations as referenced in the notes. I do, however, retain a source’s use of parentheses, and I use ellipsis points (. . .), without parentheses or brackets, to indicate where I have omitted sections of text to avoid over-lengthy quotations.

[9] Here I have omitted roughly 50 percent of the complete text of the inscription; note that all the quotations from inscriptions in this section are excerpted from much longer inscriptions.

[10] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 18.

[11] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 24.

[12] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 345–47.

[13] A. K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (Locust Valley, NY: J. J. Augustin, 1975), 88–89.

[14] Grayson, “Chronicle 5,” in Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 101, lines 5–8.

[15] See Caroline Waerzeggers, “Writing History under Empire: The Babylonian Chronicle ��𳦴DzԲ����������,” Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History 8, nos. 1–2 (2021): 279–317.

[16] See Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles, 10.

[17] See the discussion in K. Lawson Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), 165–94.

[18] Herodotus, Histories, trans. Aubrey de Sélincourt (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1972), 131.

[19] John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 168; see Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 165–66.

[20] See Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Royal Annals of Ancient Egypt: The Palermo Stone and Its Associated Fragments (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 60–61, 119–25.

[21] William W. Hallo and K. Lawson Younger, eds., The Context of Scripture: Monumental Inscriptions from the Biblical World, 4 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 2:8–9.

[22] Hallo and Younger, Context of Scripture, 12.

[23] James K. Hoffmeier, “The Structure of Joshua 1–11 and the Annals of Thutmose III,” in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. A. R. Millard, James K. Hoffmeier, and David W. Baker (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns 1994), 172.

[24] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 82.

[25] On the Turin King List and the other king lists, see Barry J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2006), 61–65, 92.

[26] Chavalas, 14–15; see Richard E. Averbeck, “The Sumerian Historiographic Tradition and Its Implications for Genesis 1–11, in Faith, Tradition, and History: Old Testament Historiography in Its Near Eastern Context, ed. Alan R. Millard, James K. Hoffmeier, and David W. Baker (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 79–102; and Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of History (New York: Basic Books, 1981), 29–32.

[27] See S. N. Kramer, “Sumerian Historiography,” Israel Exploration Journal 3, no. 4 (1953): 217–32.

[28] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 340.

[29] James Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955), 277 (emphasis added).

[30] Compare Bertil Albrektson, History and the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and in Israel (Lund, Sweden: Gleerup, 1967), 42.

[31] Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 86.

[32] Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 87.

[33] Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 111.

[34] Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, 120.

[35] Jamie R. Novotny and Joshua Jeffers, The Royal Inscriptions of Ashurbanipal (668–631 BC), Aššur-etal-ilāni (630–627 BC), and Sîn-ŝarra-iškun (626–612 BC), Kings of Assyria (University Park, PA: Eisenbrauns, 2018), 84.

[36] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 340.

[37] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 236, 237, 255.

[38] Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts, 236–37.

[39] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 255.

[40] Hallo, Context of Scripture, 2:17. For a discussion of different view of this “miracle,” see Andreas Winkler, “A Royal Star: On the ‘Miracle of the Star’ in Thutmoses III’s Gebel Barkal Stela and a Note on the King as a Star in Personal Names,” Revue d’Égyptologie 64 (2013): 231–47.

[41] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 104.

[42] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 99.

[43] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 291.

[44] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 365.

[45] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 353; see Martti Nissinen et al., Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL, 2019), 149–53.

[46] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 37.

[47] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 268.

[48] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 366.

[49] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 308.

[50] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 339.

[51] Walter Farber, “Witchcraft, Magic, and Divination in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East, ed. Jack M. Sasson, 4 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 3:1906.

[52] Martti Nissinen, Prophets and Prophecy in the Ancient Near East, 2nd ed. (Atlanta: SBL, 2019), 155.

[53] See Ian Shaw, ed. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 254.

[54] See Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, trans. John Baines (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 130.

[55] See Wilfred G. Lambert, “Destiny and Divine Intervention in Babylon and Israel,” Oudtestamentische Studiën 17 (1972): 65–72; see also Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 63–65.

[56] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 165.

[57] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 167.

[58] As quoted in Dominique Charpin, “‘I Am the Son of Babylon’: Solar Aspects of Royal Power in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia,” in Experiencing Power, Generating Authority: Cosmos, Politics, and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia , ed. Jane A. Hill, Philip Jones, and Antonio J. Morales (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2013), 69.

[59] See Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 32–40.

[60] See J. A. Brinkman, “Through a Glass Darkly: Esarhaddon’s Retrospects on the Downfall of Babylon,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103, no. 1 (January–March, 1983): 35–42.

[61] See Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 383–84.

[62] Butterfield, Origins of History, 57.

[63] Chavalas, Ancient Near East, 265.