#aššurism

[transtheology]

from Lady of the Largest Heart, a poem by High Priestess Enheduanna & translated by Betty De Shong Meador.

[bronzegods]

Aššur, god of the city of Aššur ⛰️

Aššur iconography can be a little elusive. Some depictions alongside Neo-Assyrian kings show what looks like to me like a winged mountain god with a bow and arrow.

I chose osprey details out of pure vibes. Ospreys are native to the area and it makes sense that, if he’s a bird, he’s probably a bird that enjoys high places (large cliff I mean mountain!) and enjoys a good fish out of the river beside his cliff. Osprey markings look nice, too.

Commissioned from Kiwibon

[ancientstuff]

Great find!

[city-of-ladies]

Queen Naqiʾa/Zakūtu

(Relief depicting Naqiʾa and her son Esarhaddon)

"Naqiʾa (c. 730– 668 BCE), wife of Sennacherib (705– 681), mother of the Neo- Assyrian king Esarhaddon (681– 669) and grandmother of Ashurbanipal (668– 627), is the best documented and in all probability most influential royal woman of the Neo- Assyrian period.

It was often suggested that Naqiʾa was the driving force behind Sennarcherib’s installment of Esarhaddon as crown prince. This was a truly exceptional case, as Esarhaddon was one of Sennacherib’s younger sons and most probably, even as a young man, suffered from an illness that would later kill him. Sickness was often interpreted as a sign of divine wrath in Mesopotamia; therefore, it was a severe obstacle for a claimant to the throne and any sickness of the king could be used to question his status as the darling of the gods. Maybe we will never know what the reasons for Esarhaddon’s promotion were, but we are sure about the results of Sennacherib’s decision.

Sennacherib was assassinated by his other sons and Esarhaddon had to fight his brothers in order to be enthroned. While the rebellion was going on, Naqiʾa explored the future of her son by asking for prophetic messages, something that was usually a privilege of the kings. The answer highlights the role of Ishtar, here called the Lady of Arbela, and the privileged position, of Naqiʾa:

I am the Lady of Arbela! To the king’s mother, since you implored me, saying: “The one on the right and the other on the left you have placed in your lap. My own offspring you expelled to roam the steppe!” No, king, fear not! Yours is the kingdom, yours is the power! By the mouth of Aḫat- abiša, a woman from Arbela.

Seemingly, the prophecy was right: it took Esarhaddon only two months to defeat his brothers and he was enthroned as Assyrian king. In this text Naqiʾa is already designated as queen mother; according to Melville this was “the highest rank a woman could achieve.”

In earlier research Naqiʾa was often seen as the strong woman behind a weak, sick, and superstitious king. Newer research has demonstrated that despite all of his problems, Esarhaddon was a capable ruler, who brought the Neo-Assyrian Empire to its maximal extension and pacified Babylonia, at least for a while. 

During his reign Naqiʾa became really powerful and commissioned her own building inscription. To undertake large building projects and praise them in inscriptions is typical for kings, but extraordinary for a royal woman. The inscription introduces Naqiʾa in a bombastic tone, which is quite typical for inscriptions commissioned by kings:

I, Naqiʾa … wife of Sennacherib, king of the world, king of Assyria, daughter- in- law of Sargon [II], king of the world, king of Assyria, mother of Esarhaddon, king of the world [and] king of Assyria; the gods Aššur, S.n, Šamaš, Nab., and Marduk, Ištar of Niniveh, [and] Ištar of Arbela … He [Essarhaddon] gave to me as my lordly share the inhabitants of conquered foes plundered by his bow. I made them carry hoe [and] basket and they made bricks. I … a cleared tract of land in the citadel of [the city of] Nineveh, behind the temple of the gods Sîn and Šamaš, for a royal residence of Esarhaddon, my beloved son …

We can clearly see that Naqiʾa held an extraordinarily powerful position during the reign of her son and this continued even after Esarhaddon’s death. She was eager to assure the enthronement of her grandson Assurbanipal. The loyalty treaty that was intended to secure his reign is called the treaty of Zakutu, another name of Naqiʾa. Its first lines read:

The treaty of Zakutu, the queen of Sannacherib, king of Assyria, mother of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, with Šamaš- šumu- ukin, his equal brother, with Šamaš- metu- uballiṭ and the rest of his brothers, with the royal seed, with the magnates and the governors, the bearded and the eunuchs, the royal entourage, with the exempts and all who enter the Palace, with Assyrians high and low: Anyone who (is included) in this treaty which Queen Zakutu has concluded with the whole nation concerning her favorite grandson Assurbanipal […]

That Naqiʾa was able to conclude a treaty with the most powerful persons throughout the empire and to establish her favorite grandson on the throne is clear evidence for her powerful position, even if she simply continued the plans she had made earlier with Esarhaddon. It seems that Naqiʾa died shortly after Assurbanipal was enthroned as king."

Fink Sebastian, “Invisible Mesopotamian royal women?”, in: The Routledge companion to women and monarchy in the ancient mediterranean world

[st-just]

The destruction of Elam was not the Holocaust, just as the Rwandan Genocide wasn’t the Holocaust or the Cambodian Genocide. The destruction of Elam wasn’t the Rwandan Genocide. The destruction of Elam wasn’t even the Assyrian destruction of Israel a century or so beforehand. The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, the anti-Huguenot pogrom that killed between 5,000 and 20,000 people in France in 1572, differed meaningfully from the many anti-Jewish pogroms in the later Russian Empire. The Holocaust wasn’t the same as the Herero and Namaqua Genocide, the mass murder of indigenous people in what is now Namibia by the German Empire between 1904 and 1907, despite the fact that both were carried out by German authorities just a generation apart. Each of those incidents and campaigns of mass violence stands on its own. Their logic was different. They proceeded in different ways, with death tolls ranging from the dozens to the millions. Some were straightforward land grabs in which killing was incidental. Others were ideologically motivated campaigns of murder for which the groundwork had been laid for decades or centuries. Still others were the result of sudden explosions of ethnic or religious hatred against a background of oppression or conflict. But what ties them together, aside from the mass violence, is the fact that utterly ordinary people participated in all of them. It doesn’t take all that much for a baker from Aššur or a truck-driver from Hamburg to turn into a willing enslaver and killer, even a mass murderer who pulled a lethal trigger hundreds of times, under the right circumstances. If those in positions of authority tell them that it’s acceptable or even admirable, if they’re given the tools and the opportunity to do so, then even the most average people can commit horrifying acts.

-Patrick Wyman, Ordinary People Do Terrible Things

[yamayuandadu]

Did ancient near east have any equivalent supernatural beings to nymphs

Overall not really, with small exceptions restricted pretty much just to Hittite Anatolia.

Jenniffer Larson in Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore (p. 33) suggests the notion of nymphs - or rather of minor female deities associated specifically with bodies of water and with trees - was probably an idea which originated among early speakers of Indo-European languages. While I often find claims about reconstructed “PIE deities” and whatnot dubious, I think this checks out and explains neatly why despite being a vital feature of Greek local cults nymphs have little in the way of equivalents once we start moving further east.

Mesopotamian religion wasn’t exactly strongly nature-oriented. Overall even objects were more likely to be deified than natural features; for an overview see Gebhard J. Selz’s ‘The Holy Drum, the Spear, and the Harp’. Towards an understanding of the problems of deification in Third Millennium Mesopotamia. It should be pointed out that in upper Mesopotamia mountains were personified quite frequently, but mountain deities (Ebih is by far the most famous) are almost invariably male (Wilfred G. Lambert’s The God Aššur remains a pretty good point of reference for this phenomenon) Rivers are a mixed bag but in Mesopotamia the most relevant river deity was the deified river ordeal (idlurugu referred to both the procedure and the god personifying it), who was also male, and ultimately an example of a judiciary deity rather than deified natural feature.  Alhena Gadotti points out that there is basically no parallel to dryads, and supernatural beings were almost never portrayed as residing in trees in Mesopotamia (‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld’ and the Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle,  p. 256). You can find tree deities like Lugal-asal (“lord of the poplar”) but there’s a decent chance this reflects originating in an area named after poplars and we aren’t dealing with something akin to a male dryad (also, Lugal-asal specifically fairly consistently appears in available sources first and foremost as a local Nergal-like figure).

All around, it’s safe to say there’s basically no such a thing as a “Mesopotamian nymph”. Including Hurrian evidence won’t help much either - more firmly male deified mountains, at least one distinctly male river, but no minor nature goddesses in sight.

Probably the category of deities most similar to nymphs would be various minor Hittite goddesses representing springs - Volkert Haas in fact referred to them as Quellnymphen (“spring nymphs”). Ian Rutherford (Hittite Texts and Greek Religion: Contact, Interaction, and Comparison, pp. 199-200) points out that the descriptions of statues of deities belonging to this class indicate a degree of iconographic overlap with nymphs in Greek art. Notably, in both cases depictions with attributes such as shells, dishes or jugs are widespread. There’s even a case of possibly cognate names: Hittite Kuwannaniya (from kuwanna, “of lapis lazuli”) and Kuane (“blue”) worshiped in Syracuse. They aren’t necessarily directly related though, since arguably calling a water deity “the blue one” isn’t an idea so specific it couldn’t happen twice.

There is also one more case which is considerably more peculiar - s Bronze Age Anatolian goddess seemingly being reinterpreted as a nymph by Greek authors: it is generally accepted that Malis, a naiad mentioned by Theocrtius, is a derivative of Bronze Age Maliya, who started as a Hittite craftsmanship goddess (she appears in association with carpentry and leatherworking, to be specific). There is pretty extensive literature on her and especially her reception after the Bronze Age, I’ve included pretty much everything I could in the bibliography of her wiki article some time ago. Note that there is no evidence the Greek interpretation of Maliya/Malis as a nymph was accepted by any inhabitants of Anatolia themselves. While most Bronze Age Anatolian deities either disappeared or remained restricted to small areas in the far east of Anatolia in the first millennium BCE, in both Lycia and Lydia there is quite a lot of evidence for the worship of Maliya. In both cases there is direct evidence for local rulers considering her a counterpart of Athena (presumably due to shared civic role and connection to craftsmanship; or maybe they simply aimed to emulate Athens). There’s even at least one instance of Maliya appearing in place of Athena in a depiction of the judgment of Paris (or rather, appearing in the guise of Athena, since the iconography isn’t altered).

[artifacts-and-arthropods]

Gold Tablet from the Temple of Ištar in Aššur, Assyria (modern-day Iraq) c.1243-1207 BCE: this tablet was discovered within the foundations of the ancient temple; it measures just over 3cm (1in) in length

The cuneiform inscription honors King Tukulti-Ninurta I, who had ordered the construction of the temple, and describes how the building was constructed. This is just one of the many items that had been buried around the temple with similar inscriptions.

As this article explains:

Most of [the inscriptions installed in the temple] would not have been visible while the temple was still in use, as they were laid into the sanctuary’s foundations or walls. Tukulti-Ninurta commissioned a great number of objects carrying variations of the inscription commemorating his achievement of erecting the new temple.

The practice of depositing inscriptions directed at the gods as well as future generations had become a central element of the temple building process since the Early Dynastic Period, and was employed to immortalize the ruler by eternally associating his name with a monumental building such as the Ištar temple - a process that also transformed a sanctuary into a votive object dedicated to a deity.

It took several hours of searching (i.e. scouring through old artifact catalogs) for me to find a direct translation of the inscription on this particular tablet, and I could basically only find it in a PDF of an old bibliographic manuscript that isn't even in print anymore, but here it is:

Tukulti-Ninurta, king of the universe, king of Assyria, son of Shalmaneser, king of Assyria: at that time the temple of the goddess Ištar, my mistress, which Ilu-šumma, my forefather, the prince, had previously built — that temple had become dilapidated. I cleared away its debris down to the bottom of the foundation pit. I rebuilt from top to bottom and deposited my monumental inscription. May a later prince restore it and return my inscribed name to its place. Then Aššur will listen to his prayers.

This tablet was stolen from the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin back in 1945, during the chaotic final days of WWII. It was then lost for almost 60 years before it finally re-emerged in 2006, when a Holocaust survivor named Riven Flamenbaum passed away and the tablet was found among his belongings. According to his family, Flamenbaum had gotten the tablet from a Soviet soldier (in exchange for two packs of cigarettes) at the end of the war.

In 2013, following a lengthy legal battle between Riven Flamenbaum's family and the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Germany, a court in New York ordered the family to return the tablet back to the museum.

Sources & More Info:

Albert Kirk Grayson: Assyrian Rulers of the Third and Second Millennia BC (to 1115 BC) (the translation appears on p.261)

Daniel Luckenbill: Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Volume 1 (PDF download; p.65 contains relevant info)

CTV News: 3,000-year-old Assyrian Gold Tablet Returned to German Museum

[archaeocommunologist]

this is sooooo funny. oh, you have something mean to say about poor ol' Israel? well what about Aššur-dān II, King of the Universe, who reigned in glory in the first millennium before christ?

[adubsar]

The coronation of the king of Assyria by the gods

The Assyrian king receives the insignia of power from the gods Aššur (Ashur) and Ištar (Ishtar).

Ashur is in front of the Assyrian king and Ishtar is behind him and puts the king's hat on the king's head.

Read More:

What does ashurbanipal name mean (Text Post)

How does Ashurbanipal introduce himself (Text Post)

[sag-dab-sar]

Goddess Tiāmat

Akkadian Goddess in the Enūma Eliš

Goddess of the primordial salt sea. She does not seem to have ever been worshipped in Mesopotamia.

*That is Akkadian cuneiform, her name does not seem to be recorded in any Sumerian resource.

—How to use Internet Archive link

🔵 Information

Tiāmat information on the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (Oracc)

From A Handbook of Gods and Goddesses of the Ancient Near East by Frayne & Stuckey [Google Book Link]:

Ti'amat, Tâmtum (page 345)

Primeval goddess, personification of the sea, in the Enuma eliš. Attested as early as the Ur III period in a theophoric name of one of the wives of Šu-Sîn. The goddess's name means "Sea" ti'amtu(m). At first, according to the Enuma eliš, Ti'amat's salt waters were co-mingled with those of her husband Apsû, the fresh waters, and together they engendered various deities, including the sky god Anu. Eventually, Ea, Anu's son, slew Apsû. Then, in a heroic battle, Ea's son, Marduk, slew Ti'amat, splitting her body in half. Marduk made one part into the vault of the heavens and the other into the surface of the earth. He made the clouds from her spittle, the mountains from her head, and the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers from her tears. She had bestowed the Tablet of Destiny on Qingu, but when Marduk defeated Qingu, he gave the tablet to Anu. There was a "seat" of Ti'amat in the temple of Marduk in Babylon, and Marduk's "seat" there was named Ti'a mat An Ugaritic lexical text equates Ti'amatu to the Mesopotamian goddess Antu(m). She occurs in an Ugaritic god list as Tihāmātu / Tamatu.

From Gods Demons & Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamian by Black & Green [Internet Archive Link]:

Tiāmat (page 177)

In the unique version of the creation of the gods preserved in the Babylonian Epic of Creation, after the separation of heaven and earth the only entities in existence were Apsû [...] and Tiamat. Apsû personified the fresh subterranean waters and Tiāmat the salt waters: the name is a form of the word tiamtum, 'sea'. Apsû and Tiāmat were envisaged as a male-female pair, although it is said that 'their waters mingled together'. They engendered a line of gods including Anu (An), Anu's son Ea (Enki) and (apparently) other deities, whose activities so disturbed Apsû that he planned to exterminate them (despite Tiāmat's protests). When Ea slew Apsû, Tiāmat determined to be avenged and created eleven monsters [...] with, as her champion, the god Qingu, described as her 'lover'. Eventually, after a heroic contest, Marduk, champion of the younger gods (in the Assyrian version his name is substituted with that of Aššur), defeated the monsters and Qingu and destroyed Tiāmat by splitting her skull with his mace, while standing on her 'lower parts'. He broke her in two 'like a dried fish', using one half to roof the heavens and the other to surface the earth: her breasts formed mountains, Tigris and Euphrates flowed from her eyes, her spittle formed clouds. While in some respects Tiāmat, like other deities, is described in anthropomorphic terms, it is difficult to form a precise picture of how the author of the Epic envisaged her. In other passages it seems to be implied that the salt sea waters were inside her.

Tiāmat's Creatures (pages 177-178)

In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, in order to avenge herself on the younger gods, Tiāmat gives birth to eleven monsters, or groups of monsters (bearing some resemblance to the Slain Heroes defeated by Ningirsu or Ninurta in a story of earlier origin). The eleven are:

the mušmahhu, ušumgallu and bašmu (three types of horned snake)

the mushuššu (a snake-dragon)

the lahamu (possibly identical to Lahmu, the long-haired ‘hero' figure)

the ugallu ('great storm-beast', the lion-demon)

the uridimmu ('raging lion', the lion humanoid)

the girtablullû ('scorpion-man': see scorpion-people)

ūmu dabrūtu ('fierce storms')

kulullû ('fish-man': see merman and mermaid)

kusarikku (a mythical beast probably derived from the bison: see bull man).

All of these are defeated by Marduk (in the Assyrian edition, Aššur) in a great battle. Images of them were placed by Marduk in the apsû (abzu) as a monument to the victory. The creatures of Tiāmat were sometimes invoked in magical incantations [...], and figurines of some of them were among those used in Neo-Assyrian protective magic, as a consequence of which their distinctive iconography can in most cases be determined.

🔵 Myth: Enūma Eliš

The myth she appears in. It was a very political myth used to justify Marduk as chief deity and therefore the government (at a later date it was for Aššur)

Read it:

L W King Translation from 1902

Translation on Electronic Tools and Ancient Near East Archives (ETANA)

Compiled translation primarily based on E.A Speiser

E.A Speiser's translation is available in The Ancient Near East an Anthology of Texts and Pictures by James Pritchard page 28. Available on Internet Archive Library (How to use the internet archive Link)

Interesting analysis of how it represented the creation of government

Analysis from Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jacobsen also available on Internet Archive Library

🔵 Iconography

These are academically debated as to whether or not they are Tiāmat but they are possibilities so I've included them. I have increased the contrast in both photos for visibility.

Faience, now cream probably originally glazed, cylinder seal; a standing archer (Marduk?) aims an arrow at a serpent (Tiamat?) with a crested head which rises before him. The figure wears a horizontally-striated robe and lines above his shoulder indicate arrows in a quiver. There are groups of wedges between the figures and above the serpent's coiled tail. Line border at top and bottom. — British Museum Asset Number 159745001

Black or dark brown and pale brown serpentinite cylinder seal in the linear style; a snout-nosed, horned reptile (Tiamat as a dragon?) faces left; the upper third of it's long, cross-hatched body rises vertically from two front paws or hands, one of which is raised; the remainder of the body runs around the bottom of the seal and supports three figures; there are no hind legs. A bearded god (Ninurta?) runs along the reptile's body towards the left; he wears a feather-topped head-dress and a vertically-striated, tiered and fringed open robe over a fringed kilt and has crossed, wedge-tipped quivers on his back. His arms are stretched out on either side, and in his right hand he holds a six-pronged thunderbolt below which is a rhomb, while in his left he holds two arrows. Behind the god, and advancing towards the left, is a smaller bearded god in a horned (?) head-dress with a long, tasselled streamer or necklace counterweight hanging down behind; he wears an open robe similar to that of the running god and holds a spear before him in both hands. On the tail of the reptile, with her back to the smaller god, stands an even smaller goddess, who wears a feather-topped, horned head-dress with a short tassel or necklace counterweight hanging behind, and a belted, vertically striated, tiered robe; she holds her arms open to seize the snout of the reptile. To the left of her head is a small globe-with-rays and to the right, a crescent. Line borders at top and bottom broken by the running god's head-dress. The seal may illustrate a scene from the epic of creation in which the forces of chaos, led by Tiamat, are defeated by a god representing cosmic order, probably Ninurta. Shiny, some chipping and weathering; note that there is a chip by the smaller god's shoulder and the tassel of his streamer may mask damage. — British Museum Asset Number 159863001

🔵 Please Avoid

Because she was not worshiped in history (as far as we know) there is little info available. So people often turn to other sources, as you try to research yourself I ask you to keep these in mind as warning signs.

⚠️The book "Grimoire of Tiāmat" is bullshit, and from a Mesopotamian religious point of view completely dangerous

Anything that uses her with dragon magick & neo-pagan/witch sources in general

Feminist & Jungian sources, they twist Goddesses' stories for their, usually westernized, agenda, and preconceived archetypes

-not audio proof read sorry-

-overhauled post-

[blueiscoool]

AN ASSYRIAN INSCRIBED GYPSUM FRAGMENT REIGN OF ASHURNASIRPAL II, CIRCA 883-859 B.C.

7 3/4 in. (19.6 cm.) high.

Known as the "Slab Back Text" this cuneiform fragment preserves a section from the back of a larger relief once reading (the preserved portions highlighted): "Ashurnasirpal, great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Tukulti-Ninurta (II), great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria, son of Adad-narari (II) (who was) also great king, strong king, king of the world, king of Assyria; valiant man who acts with the support of Aššur, his lord, and has no rival among the princes of the four quarters, marvelous shepherd, fearless in battle, mighty flood-tide which has no opponent, the king who subdued (the territory stretching) from the opposite bank of the Tigris to Mount Lebanon and the Great Sea, the entire land Laqû, (and) the land Su?u including the city Rapiqu. He conquered from the source of the River Subnat to the interior of the land Nirbu..."

As J.M. Russell informs (pp. 19-23 in The Writing on the Wall: Studies in the Architectural Context of Late Assyrian Palace Inscriptions), the “Slab Back Text” was carved on the backs of every wall relief panel of Ashurnasirpal II’s Northwest Palace. These were among the first inscriptions discovered by Sir Austen Henry Layard in the mid-19th century during his excavations of the palace. Given the thickness and weight of these relief panels, most of the examples now in European and North American collections had their backs removed by local stonecutters in order to facilitate their transport abroad. In the process, many of the Slab Back Texts were discarded.

[transtheology]

One of the oldest goddesses in the historical record is Inanna of Mesopotamia, who was referred to, among other honorifics, as “She who makes a woman into a man, she who makes a man into a woman.” The power to alter such fundamental categories was evidence of her divine power. Inanna was served by at least half a dozen different types of transgendered priests, and one of her festivals apparently included a public celebration in which men and women exchanged garments. The memory of a liminal third-gender status has been lost, not only in countries dominated by Christian ideology, but also in many circles dedicated to the modern revival of goddess worship. Images of the divine feminine tend to appear alone, in Dianic rites, surrounded only by other women, or the goddess is represented with a male consort, often one with horns and an erect phallus. But it is equally valid to see her as a fag hag and a tranny chaser, attended by men who have sex with other men and people who are, in modern terms, transgendered or intersexed.

— Speaking Sex to Power: The Politics of Queer Sex by Patrick Califia

[bronzegods]

And just for fun, the Bronze Age equivalent of “do it for her.”

[fallowhearth]

The group of ten men who profited from the sale of Nanaya-ila’i and her daughter in the city of Aššur were entirely ordinary. That group included a baker, a weaver, a cook, a shepherd, an ironsmith, and a goldsmith, some of whom worked for a local temple. The most likely explanation for how they came into the possession of Nanaya-ila’i and her daughter is that these ten men formed a kisru, or “knot,” the standard unit in which Assyrians performed their required services to the king. These ten ordinary men were thus part-time soldiers, called up for the campaign to Elam, and Nanaya-ila’i and her daughter were their payment for their service on that campaign. When they got back to Aššur, the ten-man kisru couldn’t easily divide up two captives, so they sold her and split the profits: about 50 grams of silver per man, which they then took back to their homes, families, and occupations as iron- and goldsmiths, bakers, and cooks. The two Elamite women were enslaved, and the ten Assyrian men benefited directly from their participation in that campaign.

Did the weaver and cook talk about it, we might wonder? Did they tell their wives and children about what they had seen during the vicious sack of the Elamite capital of Susa, the fire and the ransacked royal tombs and desecrated temples that the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal bragged about in his account of these events, the wanton killing and sexual assault, the enslaved who died on the march back to Aššur? Were they proud of what they’d done, did they feel shame, or did they even think about those events? Did they seem like the actions of other people in other lives, unconnected to the workaday existence of an ironmonger and a baker going about their lives in the spiritual home of the Assyrian Empire?

We simply don’t know the answers to those questions, and we never will. The source material that would allow us to formulate an answer doesn’t exist.

Patrick Wyman, Perspectives: Past, Present, and Future Substack, 2024

[urlasage]

÷

               ·

𒀭𒀀𒉣𒈾 ANUNNAKI   ·    

                                ·

                  šakkanakki Bābili · King of Babylon ·

                                     ·

                       ·                         ·

                                Sumu-abum

Sumu-la-El                                 Sabium 

                               Apil-Sin

Sin-Muballit                             Hammurabi

                            Samsu-iluna

Abi-Eshuh                                    Ammi-Ditana

         Ammi-Saduqa            Samsu-Ditana

 Dynasty I   · Amorite ·   1894–1595 BC

                      .                               .

                                     .

Ilum-ma-ili                                        Itti-ili-nibi

                            Damqi-ilishu

Ishkibal                                            Shushushi

                              Gulkishar

DIŠ-U-EN                                     Peshgaldaramesh

                          Ayadaragalama

Akurduana                                    Melamkurkurra

                             Ea-gamil

Dynasty II · 1st Sealand · 1725–1475 BC

                                     ·                      

                   ·                                       ·

                   ·                                          ·

                                  Gandash

Agum I                                             Kashtiliash I

Abi-Rattash                                    Kashtiliash II

                            Urzigurumash

Agum II                                             Harba-Shipak

                               Shipta'ulzi

Burnaburiash I                                Ulamburiash

                                                         Kashtiliash III

Agum III

                            Kadashman-Sah

Karaindash                                    Kadashman-Harbe I

                                 Kurigalzu I

Kadashman-Enlil I                        Burnaburiash II

                              Kara-hardash

Nazi-Bugash                                   Kurigalzu II

                             Nazi-Maruttash

Kadashman-Turgu                        Kadashman-Enlil II

                                 Kudur-Enlil

Shagarakti-Shuriash                    Kashtiliash IV

                           Enlil-nadin-shumi

Kadashman-Harbe II                        Adad-shuma-iddina

                                  Adad-shuma-usur

Meli-Shipak

                              Marduk-apla-iddina I

                                                              Zababa-shuma-iddin

 Enlil-nadin-ahi

          Dynasty III ·  Kassite ·  1729–1155 BC

                               .                            .

                                              .

                                              ·

                      ·                                                ·

                           Marduk-kabit-ahheshu

Itti-Marduk-balatu                             Ninurta-nadin-shumi            

                                                       Nebuchadnezzar I

Enlil-nadin-apli                                      Marduk-nadin-ahhe

        Marduk-shapik-zeri                  Adad-apla-iddina

                Marduk-ahhe-eriba           Marduk-zer-X

                                Nabu-shum-libur

              Dynasty IV  ·  2nd Isin   ·     1153–1022 BC

                   ·                                                                ·

                                     ·                           ·

                                                  ·

                                     Simbar-shipak

Ea-mukin-zeri                                           Kashshu-nadin-ahi

                                                   .

          Dynasty V  ·  2nd Sealand  · 1021–1001 BC

                        ·                                                  ·

    ·                                                                                            ·

Eulmash-shakin-shumi                         Ninurta-kudurri-usur I     

                                  Shirikti-shuqamuna

                 Dynasty VI · Bazi · 1000–981 BC

                                                                                                         ·

                                         ·                       ·

                                                    ·

                                      Mar-biti-apla-usur

                 Dynasty VII · Elamite · 980–975 BC

                                                     ·

                        ·                                                       ·

                                                       ·

                  ·                                                                            ·

Nabu-mukin-apli                                                          Ninurta-kudurri-usur II

                Mar-biti-ahhe-iddina               Shamash-mudammiq

Nabu-shuma-ukin I                                                Nabu-apla-iddina

Marduk-zakir-shumi I                                   Marduk-balassu-iqbi

                                            Baba-aha-iddina

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.

.

                                          at least 4 years

                                Babylonian interregnum

Ninurta-apla-X                                                        Marduk-bel-zeri

Marduk-apla-usur                                          Eriba-Marduk

Nabu-shuma-ishkun                                      Nabonassar

Nabu-nadin-zeri                                                      Nabu-shuma-ukin II

                         Dynasty VIII ·  E · 974–732 BC

                                       ·                                        ·

                                                             ·

                                                               ·

                                                                ·

Nabu-mukin-zeri                                              Tiglath-Pileser III

Shalmaneser V                                                Marduk-apla-iddina II

Sargon II                                                                        Sennacherib

Marduk-zakir-shumi II                                              Marduk-apla-iddina II

Bel-ibni                                                                        Aššur-nādin-šumi

Nergal-ushezib                                            Mushezib-Marduk

Sennacherib aka Sîn-ahhe-erība

Esarhaddon aka Aššur-aḫa-iddina

                                                                                   Ashurbanipal

Šamaš-šuma-ukin

Aššur-bāni-apli                                                      Sîn-šumu-līšir

                                                                           Sîn-šar-iškun

                   Dynasty IX · Assyrian · 732–626 BC

                                      .                        .

                                                           .

                                                                     .

                                              Nabopolassar

                                            Nabû-apla-uṣur

Nebuchadnezzar II Nabû-kudurri-uṣur

                                                                          Amēl-Marduk

Neriglissar

Nergal-šar-uṣur

                                          Lâbâši-Marduk

                                                                                      Nabonidus                                                                             

                                                                                     Nabû-naʾid

                 Dynasty X · Chaldean · 626–539 BC

                                      .                            ·

                                      .                           ·

                                      .                           ·

                                      .                           ·

                                      .                           ·

                                      .                           ·

Cyrus II the Great · Kuraš · 𐎤𐎢𐎽𐎢𐏁 Kūruš · 

Cambyses II ·  Kambuzīa ·

Bardiya · Barzia ·

Nebuchadnezzar III · Nabû-kudurri-uṣur ·

·

Darius I the Great · Dariamuš · 1st reign

·

Nebuchadnezzar IV · Nabû-kudurri-uṣur

Darius I the Great · Dariamuš · 2nd reign

·

Xerxes I the Great · Aḫšiaršu · 1st reign

·

Shamash-eriba · Šamaš-eriba

Bel-shimanni · Bêl-šimânni

·

Xerxes I the Great · Aḫšiaršu · 2nd reign

·

Artaxerxes I · Artakšatsu

Xerxes II

Sogdianus

Darius II

Artaxerxes II

Artaxerxes III

Artaxerxes IV

Nidin-Bel

Darius III

Babylon under foreign rule · 539 BC – AD 224

                   Dynasty XI · Achaemenid · 539–331 BC

                          ·.                           ·

                          ·.                           ·

                          ·.                           ·

                          ·.                           ·

                          ·.                                ·

                                                  ·.

Alexander III the Great     ·     Aliksandar

Philip III Arrhidaeus           ·       Pilipsu

Antigonus I Monophthalmus         ·       Antigunusu

Alexander IV                        ·            Aliksandar

Dynasty XII  · Argead ·  331–305 BC

                            ·.

                            ·.

                            ·.

                            ·.

                            ·.

Seleucus I Nicator     ·   Siluku

Antiochus I Soter   ·   Antiʾukusu

Seleucus · Siluku

Antiochus II Theos · Antiʾukusu

Seleucus II Callinicus · Siluku

Seleucus III Ceraunus · 

Antiochus III the Great · Antiʾukusu

Antiochus · 

Seleucus IV Philopator · Siluku

Antiochus IV Epiphanes · 

Antiochus

Antiochus V Eupator

Demetrius I Soter

Timarchus

Demetrius I Soter

Alexander Balas

Demetrius II Nicator

Dynasty XIII · Seleucid ·  305–141 BC

                          ·                           ·.

.                           ·                           ·

.                           ·                           ·

.                           ·                           ·

                          ·                           ·.

                          ·                           ·.

Mithridates I

                                          Phraates II

Rinnu

Antiochus VII Sidetes

                                           Phraates II

Ubulna

Hyspaosines

Artabanus I

Mithridates II

Gotarzes I

Asi'abatar

Orodes I

Ispubarza

Sinatruces

Phraates III

Piriustana

Teleuniqe

Orodes II

Phraates IV

Phraates V

Orodes III

Vonones I

Artabanus II

Vardanes I

Gotarzes II

Vonones II

Vologases I

Pacorus II

Artabanus III

Osroes I

Vologases III

Parthamaspates

Vologases IV

Vologases V

Vologases VI

Artabanus IV

Dynasty XIV · Arsacid ·  141 BC – AD 224

·   9 centuries of Persian Empires ·  until AD 650

Trajan  in AD 116

mid-7th-century    Muslim Empire

                          ·.

                          ·.

                          ·.

               1921 Iraqi State

                          ·.

                          ·.

1978 · 14th of February · Saddam Hussein

                          ·.

                          ·.

2009 · May · the provincial government of Babil

                          ·.

                          ·.

                          ·.

                          ·.

.                           ·

                          ·.

                          ·.

                          ·.

                          ·.

so many kings

and just one queen

                                       semiramis 

                                                              ··                        · 

              ·                        SEMIRAMIS                       ·

                                                    ··

                                     .

               .

     .

.

····  Βαβυλών ··· ΒΑΒΥΛΩΝ ····

Babylonia 

Gate of the Gods

بابل Babil 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠 · 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠 · 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ·  ܒܒܠ ·  בָּבֶל 

Iraq ·  55 miles south of Baghdad

near the lower Euphrates river

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[ancientoriginses]

¡Una adorable tablilla asiria de oro con una inscripción de hace unos 3.300 años! Encontrada debajo del Templo de lštar en Aššur, Irak, esta inscripción cuneiforme de 1 pulgada de largo describe su construcción y honra al rey asirio Tukulti-Ninurta. 🏛️ Museo Vorderasiatisches Crédito: @TheClassicalCo