#akitu

[whencyclopedia]

Festivals in Ancient Mesopotamia

Festivals in ancient Mesopotamia honored the patron deity of a city-state or the primary god of the city that controlled a region or empire. The earliest, the Akitu festival, was first observed in Sumer in the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE) and continued through the Seleucid Period (312-63 BCE) along with other religious celebrations.

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[whencyclopedfr]

Fêtes de l'Ancienne Mésopotamie

Les fêtes de l'ancienne Mésopotamie honoraient la divinité protectrice d'une cité-État ou le dieu principal de la ville qui contrôlait une région ou un empire. La plus ancienne, la fête de l'Akitu, fut observée pour la première fois à Sumer au début de la période dynastique (2900-2334 av. J.-C.) et se poursuivit pendant la période séleucide (312-63 av. J.-C.) en même temps que d'autres célébrations religieuses.

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[whencyclopedes]

Festivales de la Antigua Mesopotamia

Los festivales de la Antigua Mesopotamia honraban a los patrones divinos de una ciudad estado o al dios principal de la ciudad que controlaba la región o el imperio. El más antiguo de todos es el festival Akitu, que se llevó a cabo por primera vez en Sumeria durante el periodo dinástico arcaico (2900-2334 a.C.) y siguió celebrándose durante el periodo seléucida (312-63 a.C.) además de otras celebraciones religiosas.

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[dougielombax]

Just leaving this here too.

Wording is a bit odd on that one but still.

[almanach-international]

1er avril : le nouvel an assyrien, la plus ancienne fête du monde

Le Nouvel An assyrien (Kha b-Nisan ou Akitu) est célébré chaque année le 1er avril dans tous les pays où résident les Assyro-Chaldéens, tel qu’on les appelle en France.

Des habitants de la Mésopotamie se sont distingués de leurs voisins zoroastriens ou juifs, le jour où ils ont adopté le christianisme. Ils ont toujours formé une minorité opprimée, surtout depuis que la région a embrassé très majoritairement l’islam comme religion dominante et officielle. Pendant la Première Guerre mondiale, comme les Arméniens, ils ont subi un génocide qui aurait pu les faire disparaître si la diaspora n’avait pas pris le relais de la préservation de leurs particularismes. Ils ont presque disparu de Turquie, seules subsistent des communautés notables de chrétiens d’Orient dans le nord de l’Irak et de la Syrie ainsi qu’en Iran. Mais, on les retrouve aussi au Liban, en Jordanie, en Arménie, aux États-Unis, au Canada, en France, en Allemagne…

Pour cette nation sans État, la célébration du nouvel an est un élément identitaire fort. La date du nouvel an assyrien repose sur le fait que cette fête du printemps, à l’instar de Nowrouz, était fixée le 21 mars selon le calendrier julien. Dans l’Antiquité, le solstice du printemps était l’occasion de célébrer Tammouz, dieu de l’agriculture et Isthar, déesse nourricière, incarnation de la fertilité et de la fécondité. L’adoption du calendrier grégorien, l’a fait glisser au 1er avril. Les Assyriens, dont les racines sont très anciennes possèdent leur propre calendrier qui commence en l’an 4750 av. J.-C. De notre calendrier. De fait, ce 1er avril, les Assyro-Chaldéens entrent dans leur 6774e année. Ce qui fait de cette fête, la plus ancienne au monde.

Dans l'impossibilité de se regrouper, en raison de l'insécurité, dans leurs anciennes capitales de Babylone ou Ninive, les Assyriens parviennent à célébrer leur fête au Kurdistan, en Arménie ou surtout en diaspora. Cette fête est marquée par des défilés en costume traditionnels et des pique-niques, si le temps le permet. Cette fête d’origine païenne, appelée Akitu, durait autrefois 12 jours, du 20 mars au 1er avril du calendrier grégorien. C’est un marqueur identitaire des chrétiens d’Orient.

Un article de l'Almanach international des éditions BiblioMonde, 31 mars 2024

[graceandpeacejoanne]

Isaiah 46: Incomparable God

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “Well, that is just life?” It is what it is. #Isaiah64 #IncomparableGod #Akitu

Have you ever caught yourself saying, “Well, that is just life?” It is what it is. I say it a lot, but after reading today’s passage, I have been weighing that phrase a little bit more thoughtfully. There is truth to it. Our planet has been loaded under a curse since the dawn of civilization. The first people who inhabited earth took a pivotal turn in the course of human history, which ushered…

[rojinfo]

Les Assyriens célèbrent l'Akitu dans le nord de la Syrie

L’Akitu, nom donné à la fête du Nouvel An dans l’ancienne Mésopotamie, est l’une des plus anciennes fêtes du monde. Elle tire son nom du mot “orge”, emblème de la civilisation et de la vie florissante dans toute la région. Le 1er avril, les Assyriens du monde entier ont célébré la fête du printemps Akitu pour marquer le début de la nouvelle année. Les populations chrétiennes de la région…

[cursed-40k-thoughts]

What would the Emperor think of Big D

He'd hate him, I think. Someone who refuses to listen to him, is as stubborn as him, and loudly shouts him down as an "OSSEOUS SPECTRE OF AKITUS PAST" or something

[artifacts-archive]

Panel with Striding Lion

Babylonian, ca. 604–562 BCE

The most important street in Babylon was the Processional Way, leading from the inner city through the Ishtar Gate to the Bit Akitu, or "House of the New Year's Festival." The Ishtar Gate, built by Nebuchadnezzar II, was a glazed-brick structure decorated with figures of bulls and dragons, symbols of the weather god Adad and of Marduk. North of the gate the roadway was lined with glazed figures of striding lions. This relief of a lion, the animal associated with Ishtar, goddess of love and war, served to protect the street; its repeated design served as a guide for the ritual processions from the city to the temple.

[yamayuandadu]

do you have any sources on the worship of the goddess inanna/Ishtar during the Seleucid/Hellenistic period to the Parthian period? i dont recall stumbling upon anything talking about her.

even though from what I've been reading mesopotamian deities were still popular (like bel-marduk in Palmyra and nabu in Edessa or shamash in hatra and mardin or sin in harran etc etc.. ) i dont recall reading anything about her or anything mention her worship (other than theories of the alabaster reclining figurines being depictions of her)

A good start when it comes to late developments in Mesopotamian religion is Religious Continuity and Change in Parthian Mesopotamia. A Note on the survival of Babylonian Traditions by Lucinda Dirven.

Hellenistic Uruk, and by extension the cult of Ishtar, is incredibly well documented and the most extensive monograph on this topic, Julia Krul’s The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk, is pretty much open access (and I link it regularly here, and it's one of my to-go wiki editing points of reference as well); it has an extensive bibliography and the author discusses the history of research of the development of specific cults in Uruk in detail. The gist of it is fairly straightforward: her status declined because with the fall of Babylon to the Persians the priestly elites of Uruk decided it’s time for a reform and for the first time in history Anu’s primacy moved past the nominal level, into the cultic sphere, at the expense of Ishtar and Nanaya. Even the Eanna declined, though a new temple, the Irigal, was built essentially as a replacement; we know relatively a lot about its day to day operations. An akitu festival of Ishtar is also well documented, and Krul goes into its details. All around, I don’t think the linked book will disappoint you.

An important earlier work about the changes in Uruk in Paul-Alain Beaulieu’s Antiquarian Theology in Seleucid Uruk. There’s also Of Priests and Kings: The Babylonian New Year Festival in the Last Age of Cuneiform Culture by Céline Debourse which covers Uruk and Babylon, but there is less material relevant to this ask there. Evidence from Upper Mesopotamia and beyond is more fragmented so I’ll discuss it in more detail under the cut. My criticism of this take on the reclining figures is there as well.

The matter is briefly discussed in Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra by Enrico Marcato (p. 168; search for “Iššar” within the file for theophoric name attestations). References to a deity named ʻIššarbēl might indicate Ishtar of Arbela fared relatively well (for her earlier history see here and here) in the first centuries CE. The evidence is not unambiguous, though. This issue is discussed in detail in Lutz Greisiger’s Šarbēl: Göttin, Priester, Märtyrer – einige Probleme der spätantiken Religionsgeschichte Nordmesopotamiens. Theophoric names and the dubious case of ʻIššarbēl aside, there are basically no meaningful attestations of Ishtar from Hatra, but curiously “Ishtar of Hatra” does appear in a Mandaic scroll known as the “Great Mandaic Demon Roll”. According to Marcato this evidence should not be taken out of context, and additionally it cannot be ruled that we’re dealing with a case of ishtar as a generic noun for a goddess (An Aramaic Incantation Bowl and the Fall of Hatra, pages 139-140; accessible via De Gruyter). If this is correct, most likely Marten (the enigmatic main female deity of the local pantheon), Nanaya or Allat (brought to Upper Mesopotamia by Arabs settling there in the first centuries CE) are actually meant as opposed to Ishtar. 

Joan Goodnick Westenholz suggested that Mandaic sources might also contain references to Ishtar of Babylon: the theonym Bablīta (“the Babylonian”) attested in them according to her might reflect the emergence of a new deity derived from Bēlet-Bābili (ie. Ishtar of Babylon) in late antiquity (Goddesses in Context, p. 133)

In addition to Marcato’s article listed above, another good starting point for looking into Mesopotamian religious “fossils” in Mandaic sources is Spätbabylonische Gottheiten in spätantiken mandäischen Texten by Christa Müller-Kessler and Karlheinz Kessler; Ishtar is covered on pages 72-73 and 83-84 though i’d recommend reading the full article for context. The topic is further explored here.

In his old-ish monograph The Pantheon of Palmyra, Javier Teixidor proposed that the sparsely attested local Palmyrene goddess Herta (I’ve also seen her name romanized as Ḥirta; it’s agreed that it’s derived from Akkadian ḫīrtu, “wife”) was a form of Ishtar, based on the fact she appears in multiple inscriptions alongside Nanaya (p. 111). She is best known from a dedication formula where she forms a triad with Nanaya and Resheph (Greek version replaces them with Hera and Artemis, but curiously keeps Resheph as himself). However, ultimately little can be said about her cult beyond the fact it existed, since a priest in her service is mentioned at least once.

I need to stress here that I didn’t find any other authors arguing in favor of the existence of a supposed Palmyrene Ishtar. Joan Goodnick Westenholz mentioned Herta in her seminal Nanaya: Lady of Mystery, but she only concluded that the name was an Akkadian loanword and that she, Resheph and Nanaya indeed formed a triad (p. 79; published in Sumerian Gods and their Representations, which as far as I know can only be accessed through certain totally legit means). Maciej M. Münnich in his monograph The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East doesn’t seem to be convinced by Teixidor’s arguments, and notes that it’s most sensible to assume Herta seems to be Nanaya’s mother in local tradition. He similarly criticizes Teixidor for asserting Resheph has to be identical with Nergal in Palmyrene context (pages 259-260); I’m inclined to agree with his reasoning, interchangeability of deities cannot be presumed without strong evidence and that is lacking here.

I’m not aware of any attestations from Dura Europos. Nanaya had that market cornered on her own. Last but not least: I'm pretty sure the number of authors identifying the statuettes you’ve mentioned this way is in the low single digits. The similar standing one from the Louvre is conventionally identified as Nanaya (see ex. Westenholz's Trading the Symbols of the Goddess Nanaya), who has a much stronger claim to crescent as an attribute (compare later Kushan and Sogdian depictions, plus note the official Seleucid interpretatio as Artemis for dynastic politics purposes), so I see little reason to doubt reclining figures so similar they even tend to have the same sort of gem navel decoration are also her, personally.

A great example of the Nanaya-ish statuette from the Louvre (wikimedia commons). To sum everything up: while evidence is available from both the south and the north, the last centuries BCE and first centuries CE were generally a time of decline for Ishtar(s); for the first time Nanaya was a clear winner instead, but that's another story...

[jeannereames]

Easter PSA

If you run across a post about Easter and Ishtar, Babylon, rabbits, and red eggs...DON'T REPOST THAT SUCKER. It's wrong. And it goes around Every Damn Year with people getting suckered in by apparent homonyms that linguistically have nothing to do with each other.

(Yes, the Babylonian New Year Festival--called Akitu--was around the same time as Easter, but the word Easter doesn't owe anything to Ishtar or Akitu. A number of world cultures began the new year on the Spring Equinox. It makes sense when you think about it. Romans gave us the Winter Solstice. The Greeks had new year on the Summer Solstice. Cultures vary.)

[zonedelicious]

The Rogues celebrating Akitu, the Babylonian-Assyrian new years.

[armyiraq]

يصادف اليوم رأس السنة في بلاد الرافدين عيد الاكيتو ( Akitu Mesopotamian New Year

عيد أكيتو هو عيد رأس السنة البابلية و الآشورية .

الذي يعتبر اهم الاعياد في العراق القديم ، وأحد أقدم الأعياد والاحتفالات في التاريخ.

حيث يعود تاريخ هذا العيد وبدايته لمنتصف الألفية الثالثة قبل الميلاد في مدينة أور السومرية جنوب العراق.

ففي كل سنة كان سكان بلاد الرافدين يحتفلون ب��ذا العيد الذي يصادف في التقويم البابلي 1 نيسان كمحصلة للاعتدال الربيعي و زيادة مياه نهر دجلة وبعد اسبوعين من ذلك زيادة مياه نهر الفرات حيث تبدأ كل الاعمال الزراعية في هذا الموعد.

و كان هذا العيد يستقبل من قبل العراقيين القدماء بالفعاليات و الحفلات التنكرية و الغناء والرقص وكذلك النواح و البكاء في بعض طقوسه ، ويستمر الاحتفال بهذا العيد لمدة 12 يوم ( بالتقويم البابلي من 1 نيسان الى 12 نيسان ( حيث يبدأ في اول الاعتدال الربيعي اي في بداية الاعمال الزراعية.

[dougielombax]

Since I mentioned it earlier.

Feel free to reblog.

[travellogambercarranza]

I traveled to a Festival in Ancient Mesopotamia, this artifact shows them with instruments and celebrating. The Akitu Festival is the earliest document Festival of this time in Sumer. Akitu Festivals were to legitimize the King's ruling! Akitu also included harvesting the food, and celebrating the New Year. They celebrated all kinds of events during these festivals including God's birthday, New Years, Harvest Festivals, and more. A big purpose of these festivals were also to maintain their relationship with God and the King to make sure the kingdom remained perfect and holy. The Gods were seen as the true monarchs of this time, while the King was the physical being who ruled. The way the maintained their King status they had remain good with the Gods, with that being said ways that this was shown was by military victories, big harvest, and great trades. Festivals were either political, religious, or seasonal. These festivals would also be combined in some cases. For example the seasonal festivals happened twice a year and they would harvest the food, the Assyrians would celebrate for twelve days and represent twelve different Gods. Seasonal festivals were part of Akitu, so the purpose was not only to harvest but a political purpose. It is said that Akitu is the oldest observance of a New Years celebration. There was also a celebration of Zagmuk which was the celebration of New Years, this became included with Akitu. Zagmuk was a holiday created not only for New Years but a historical victory Marduks victory over Tiamat. Tiamat created distruction and war, so the God Marduk defeated him and was celebrated, which created Zagmuk. The twelve days of Akitu are mainly to worship Marduk and it is still a practice now. Till this day Assyrians still celebrate Akitu, it is not exactly the same now but it has been a tradition since the early Mesopotamian days.

Mark, J. J. (2023, March 8). Festivals in Ancient Mesopotamia. World History Encyclopedia. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/2185/festivals-in-ancient-mesopotamia/

Muhammed, S. (2014, August 31). Assyrian Wall Relief Depicting Musical Instruments. World History Encyclopedia. https://www.worldhistory.org/image/2996/assyrian-wall-relief-depicting-musical-instruments/

[ancientoriginses]

El festival Akitu era uno de los festivales más antiguos de Mesopotamia, remontándose hasta mediados del tercer milenio antes de Cristo.