The Birth of Kingship

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If you read later Sumerian literature, you will think that Sumer was always a monarchy ruled by a king. That is what these later kings wanted you to believe. But this is not necessarily so. How monarchy came to Sumer is in fact a fascinating, if somewhat obscure, historical development.

Sumer was an early civilization in southern Babylonia, now southern Iraq. The Sumerians were a small but ambitious and enlightened group, whose most important cultural achievement was the invention and development of cuneiform writing. The Sumerian language is unrelated to any known language family, but the style of writing—cuneiform—was later adopted for many other languages, such as the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian, and, in an alphabetic form, Ugaritic.

Historians usually divide Sumerian history into three major periods. They would be much easier to remember if they were called simply early, middle and late. But for complicated reasons related to the history of scholarship, they are called by the less mnemonic names shown in the second sidebar to this article.

The gap between the early and middle periods was a “period of darkness.” In the first, greater part of this dark period, Sumer was conquered and ruled by the Akkadians, a Semitic people, who occupied the northern part of Babylonia. The last 50 years of so of this historical gap experienced the occupation of Sumer by the Guteans, a “barbaric” people from the east, who brought about the downfall of the Akkadian Empire and disrupted all civilized life in Sumer.

According to the standard Sumerian king list (see the second sidebar to this article), a list of royal dynasties that was composed in the Ur III period and revised at the end of the Isin-Larsa period, kingship was sent down from heaven. Indeed, it was sent down twice, once before the great flood, when it landed in Eridu, and again after the flood, when it landed in Kish. Obviously, these later kings wanted their subjects to believe that kingship was a divinely ordained institution that existed from time immemorial. The hoary antiquity of kingship is also implied by many Sumerian myths and stories, which tacitly assume that urban civilization in general, and kingship in particular, were created by the gods at the time of the creation of mankind. This, however, is royal propaganda.

In fact, in the early part of the Early Dynastic period, Sumer consisted of independent city-states. Each city-state included the area surrounding it, with the city itself 018functioning as a kind of capital. The economy was based primarily on agriculture and small industry. These city-states were governed by a form of primitive democracy. The ruler of the prehistoric city-state was presumably elected by a general assembly of the elders and the male arms-bearing citizens, perhaps with the participation of the priestly representatives of the city god. The city-states, in turn, were organized in an amphictyony (a league of allied powers), whose members in times of emergency selected their leader in a democratic assembly at Nippur, with the sanction of the supreme god, Enlil.

The evidence for much of this comes from later periods—after the emergence of kingship—and requires an inference backward, to an earlier time: References to councils of various sorts imply a prior time when some kind of primitive democracy must have existed.¹

For example, an inscription of Naram-Sin of Akkad (2254–2218 B.C.E.) tells us that when the entire empire rebelled against him, all the citizens of Kish—seemingly a council of some sort—assembled and raised to kingship one of their fellows.

Even more telling is an episode from a Sumerian short story about Gilgamesh, the legendary ruler of Uruk. In this story we are told how Gilgamesh rebelled against his overlord, Aka, king of Kish, thereby freeing Uruk from Aka’s rule. Before doing so, however, Gilgamesh sought support for his plan from the council of elders that governed the everyday affairs of the city. Surprisingly, the prudent elders turned him down. He then assembled the young men of the city, the ones who performed corvée and army service for Aka; they approved of his plan and acknowledged him as independent ruler, king of Uruk. This seems to imply some kind of early two-chambered assembly.

Incidentally, we find a similar implication in connection with the Israelite monarchy. After King Solomon’s death, the question of his successor arose. Indeed, the kingdom split in two over this issue, with Israel in the north under a new dynasty initiated by Jeroboam, and Judah in the south under Solomon’s son Rehoboam, thus continuing the Davidic dynasty there. The text tells us that before rejecting Rehoboam as king, the northern tribes of Israel (kol qahal yisroel) requested that he lighten the burdens his father had imposed on the country (1 Kings 12:1–4). Before giving his answer, Rehoboam decided to consult the council of elders, or hazkanim (1 Kings 12:6). They advised Rehoboam to yield, but Rehoboam ignored their advice, accepting the counter advice of the council of “the young men who had grown up with him.” This led to the secession of the north and a bloody civil war. Here, too, we seem to have some kind of elementary democratic institutions.

Another bit of evidence concerning early democracy in Sumer involves judicial authority. In Old Assyrian merchant colonies established in Asia Minor during the Isin-Larsa period, the highest judicial authority was vested in a general assembly of all colonists (kaµrum in Assyrian).

In the Old Babylonian kingdom during the reign of Hammurabi (1792–1750 B.C.E.), a local assembly (puhÉ rum in Akkadian) in each major city had the authority to decide both criminal and civil cases, and even to pronounce death sentences. This assembly was open to all free citizens.

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Democratic institutions like these are probably not innovations but vestiges of an old system, which must have been retained from earlier times.

Other indications of early Sumerian democracy come from their myths. Early Sumerians projected their beliefs and customs onto the world of their gods, whom they depicted as largely anthropomorphic. If the gods had such institutions, probably mankind did as well. In Mesopotamian mythology, the world of the gods is organized politically along democratic lines; the gods made their decisions on all matters of importance in a divine assembly that included all the important gods and goddesses and was presided over by the celestial god, An, and the storm god, Enlil. The assembly debate was dominated by the senior gods, whose number was usually 50. Decisions in this assembly, made by unanimous agreement, were reached as a result of persuasion.

From evidence like this we can conclude that in prehistoric Sumer the city-states were governed by a system of primitive democracy, in which ultimate authority and sovereignty resided in a general assembly of citizens. The opinions of the older, experienced members carried 020particular weight in the discussions, and decisions were approved by vote. The assembly was summoned whenever a crisis threatened the community.

With the emergence of hereditary kingship, the kings who aspired to unite the Sumerian city-states under their rule had to conquer the land by military power. But on the ideological level, they derived their authority from the divine assembly and its executive director, the storm god, Enlil. And they retained, in one form or another, vestiges of earlier democratic institutions.

Autocratic monarchy in the small Sumerian city-states developed gradually during the latter part of the Early Dynastic period, as a result of political and military pressures from the Akkadian north. At this time, the city-states, together with their people, were regarded as the estate of their respective patron deities, who were worshiped in a central temple. The city was governed by a secular or religious leader, who was considered the earthly representative of the city god.

In Uruk (biblical Erech) the ruler carried the title en (high priest or lord) and lived in the temple. This suggests a system of sacral kingship. The political ruler was also the supreme religious authority of the state. Indeed, in later times the early kings of Uruk were remembered as the human husbands of Inanna, the love and fertility goddess; an annual sacred marriage rite with the goddess sought to ensure prosperity for the land.

A similar system of government seems to have prevailed in pre-Israelite (Canaanite) Jerusalem, where the king also carried the title of high priest. The Bible tells us that after Abraham (and his retainers) defeated a coalition of four kings from the east, Abraham was blessed by Melchizedek, king of Salem (Jerusalem). Melchizedek was also designated a priest: “And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine; he was a priest of God Most High (El ‘Elyon). He blessed him [Abraham], saying, ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, / Creator of heaven and earth’ ” (Genesis 14:18–19).

In some Sumerian cities, the ruler lived in a palace of his own, rather than in the temple. In such cases, he is called lugal (king) or ensik (city-ruler or governor), titles that point to a more secular status. Historians generally agree that the institution of en-ship preceded the institution of kingship.

According to one recent study,² the early Sumerian city-states were dominated by mother-goddess figures. The male priestly rulers with the title en were regarded as spouses of the mother goddess, while the goddess herself functioned as a kind of patron saint of the city.

When male deities replaced the mother goddesses as city gods, the form of government changed as well. The priestly rulers were replaced by secular political-military leaders, who were regarded as stewards of the city gods. The new leaders (who bore the title lugal, instead of en) resided in royal palaces outside the old temple quarter of the city. These rulers became hereditary monarchs who established royal dynasties. Once this shift took place, the office of the en became a purely religious, priestly function. The en was still the consort of the female goddess, but he lost his political and administrative power.

Although kingship arises in the latter part of the Early Dynastic period, the king is not yet divine. True, Sumerian literature from the Ur III period assumes that the Early Dynastic priestly kings of Uruk were divine or semidivine beings, descended from gods. Whether they actually were so considered at the time, however, remains a question. The later literature may well have been generated by ideological interests. The few Early Dynastic sources we have suggest a different picture.

Likewise, some later literature from 021Lagash, the only southern independent city-state in the pre-Ur III period, seems to contradict the views of other Ur III sources.³ The likely situation is that these late Early Dynastic rulers were considered ordinary human beings who had a special relationship to the city god. As the earthly administrators of the estates of the city gods, they formed a link between human society and supernatural powers.

The situation in the Ur III period is much clearer because rich comprehensive information regarding Sumerian royal ideology is available. In the Ur III period, the institution of kingship underwent radical political and religious changes, including the introduction of divine kingship.

The notion of divine kingship was introduced in Sumer by Shulgi, the second and greatest king of the Ur III dynasty, who ruled between 2094 and 2047 B.C.E. Shulgi’s royal inscriptions, royal hymns and regnal dates indicate that he assumed his divinity toward the middle of his reign. Henceforth, all Sumerian kings were deified from the day of their coronation.⁴

The main evidence attesting to the deification of Sumerian kings is the writing of their names with the determinative dingir. A determinative is a sign (in this case a cuneiform sign, but determinatives are also used in other languages, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics) without phonetic value that indicates what kind of word is attached to it. The determinative dingir signifies that the word attached to it refers to a god. The practice of adding the determinative dingir to royal names was introduced into Sumer by King Shulgi and taken over by all subsequent kings of the Ur III dynasty. In addition, each of the Ur III kings, beginning with Shulgi, was referred to in inscriptions and hymns as “the god of his land.”

From archaeological excavations as well as contemporaneous administrative texts and votive inscriptions, we learn that, already in their lifetime, kings like Shulgi and his grandson Shu-Suen were worshiped in their own temples and that various lower-ranked priests were assigned to their cult. Temples in honor of the deified king were often built by a local governor. Shulgi himself had a temple or shrine in Ur. One surviving hymn is dedicated to a temple called the “Temple-Mount of Shulgi of Ur.”

Deified Sumerian kings were represented by statues of themselves erected in their own shrines and in the temples of major gods. These royal statues, just like the divine ones, were sanctified and animated in a series of ritual acts. They received regular libations and food offerings, as did the statues of the genuine 022gods. Normally, when the political king was represented in his own temple, he was shown seated, to demonstrate his superiority over subjects who came to worship him. When the deified king was represented in a temple of a genuine god, however, he was depicted standing, to symbolize his inferiority and submission to the deity whose favor he was seeking.

In the Early Dynastic period, festivals and months were often named after deities—for example, the “Great Festival of [the god] Nanna.” In the Ur III period, the names of the seventh and eighth months were changed to the “Festival of Divine [king] Shulgi” and the “Festival of Divine Shu-Suen [Shulgi’s grandson].”

The royal hymns that were composed in honor of the Neo-Sumerian kings also reflect the divine nature of the kings. Some of these were commissioned to be recited in the royal temples, both in the king’s lifetime and after his death. Shulgi is the first king in history to express the wish that his hymns be transmitted to posterity. To this end, Shulgi supported scribal schools in the two most important centers of the state, the political capital of Ur and the religious capital of Nippur.

In royal inscriptions from the Ur III period, kings boasted of having divine lineage. Shulgi counts among his ancestors the god and goddess who supposedly gave birth to the legendary king Gilgamesh, the hero of the epic that bears his name. Hence, Shulgi describes himself as “the brother and friend of Gilgamesh.” In one hymn, Shulgi and Gilgamesh meet in person and alternate in singing each other’s praise and glory.⁵

Although Ur III kings claim divine parentage, they never deny their human fathers explicitly and on rare occasions refer to them along with their divine parents in their inscriptions or hymns. Moreover, these kings occasionally refer to their divine “parents” simply as “my god” or “my goddess,” instead of calling them by the corresponding parental terms, “mother” (ama) or “father” (aya). This suggests that either the claim of divine parentage was a metaphor referring to the personal patron deity of the king, or the king was adopted as a son by a particular divine pair when he was crowned. This same duality can be seen in the intimate relationship between the Davidic kings and God in the 023Bible. In Psalm 2:7, for example, God addresses the king as his genetic offspring: “The Lord said to me: ‘You are my son, / I have fathered you this day’.” In the Second Book of Samuel (7:14), on the other hand, God speaks in terms taken from the realm of legal adoption: “I will be a father to him [David], and he shall be a son to Me. When he does wrong, I will chastise him” (compare Psalm 89:27–28).

Shulgi also celebrated the sacred marriage rite in Uruk, playing the role of Dumuzi, the beloved spouse of the love and fertility goddess, Inanna. (Incidentally, Dumuzi and Inanna find their way into the Bible as Tammuz and Ashtoreth, the latter via the Semitic Ishtar.) In Sumerian mythology Inanna was the daughter of the moon god, Nanna, and the sister of the sun god, Utu; Shulgi thus became the “son-in-law” and the “brother-in-law” of these two important deities. A beautiful hymnal epic describes the pilgrimage of King Shulgi to Inanna of Uruk on the occasion of his coronation. While watching him enter with lavish marriage gifts, Inanna utters a sumptuous love song for her royal bridegroom (see the last sidebar to this article). In another hymn, Shulgi and Inanna engage in dialogue, inviting each other to Shulgi’s fields and gardens, presumably to fructify them by means of various cultic rites.

The festivities of the sacred marriage usually end in the union between the divine couple, in the course of which Inanna blesses the king with fertility for his land and with a long and prosperous reign. What actually happened during the long night? Most probably, the rite took a purely symbolic form, with the king spending the night of the sacred wedding in the bedchamber of the goddess, accompanied solely by the goddess’s statue.

In numerous Sumerian hymns, the king is portrayed as a unique combination of the perfect sage, soldier, sportsman, diviner, diplomat, patron of learning and provider of all good things for his land and people—a kind of Sumerian superman. One of his most important tasks was to administer justice to his people, much like the divine judges. He was required to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak and to ensure that children honored their parents. For this purpose, the Sumerian kings occasionally enacted social reforms; indeed, they promulgated the earliest law codes in history. The first socioeconomic reform in history was enacted by Urukagina of Lagash (c. 2350 B.C.E.). Urukagina abrogated the custom of unlawful seizure of domestic animals and property of common people by the nobility and high administration officials. He reduced or abolished taxes on basic services such as the shearing of sheep, burials and divorces. He forbade the custom of “sharing of profits and wages” of craftsmen by officials—that is, bribes. He freed some slaves and improved the working conditions of others. He protected the poor, orphans and widows from exploitation.

The great Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer described the proclamation containing Urukagina’s reforms this way:

This document records a sweeping reform of a whole series of prevalent 025abuses, most of which could be traced to a ubiquitous and obnoxious bureaucracy consisting of the ruler and his palace coterie; at the same time it provides a grim and ominous picture of man’s cruelty toward man on all levels—social, economic, political and psychological … It is in this document that we find the word “freedom” used for the first time in man’s recorded history.⁶

The Sumerian word for freedom is amargi, which literally means “return to the mother.” The Akkadian equivalent is anduraru, which is the cognate of the Hebrew dror. This is the word that is translated as “liberty” on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land” (Leviticus 25:10). More accurately, the word means “release,” as it is commonly rendered in modern Bible translations, referring to the release from debts incurred prior to a jubilee year, particularly to debts secured by land.^a A careful listener will hear resonances with the literal meaning of the Sumerian word meaning “return to the mother.”

Divine kingship in Sumer was probably connected with the formation of the empire: The constant unrest of the Sumerian cities (formerly independent city-states) prompted the kings to assume divine status so that they could appoint the city rulers (ensiks) themselves, an act formerly believed to be the prerogative of the city god. In fact, the deification of the king not only made him overlord of the local governors but also allowed him to usurp much of the economic power of the Sumerian temples. By assuming divinity, the Neo-Sumerian king rose above the people and the other city rulers who were formerly his equals and above the religious hierarchy.

In the final period of Sumerian survival, the Isin-Larsa period, Sumerian culture gradually declined. The kings themselves now spoke Akkadian (rather than Sumerian) and were of Amorite (Semitic) origin. With the decline of Sumerian culture in the Old Babylonian period (c. 1900–1595 B.C.E.), the institution of divine kingship was abandoned and the king was again considered human, albeit invested with a special aura of sanctity and enjoying an intimate relationship with the gods. This was true not only in Sumer but in Old Babylonian society and in the Assyrian Empire as well. The most that can be said is that some of the Babylonian and Assyrian kings referred to themselves as the “sons” of their national god, stressing their close relationship, thus following an old Sumerian tradition—a tradition that, as we have seen, survived even into the biblical period.

If you read later Sumerian literature, you will think that Sumer was always a monarchy ruled by a king. That is what these later kings wanted you to believe. But this is not necessarily so. How monarchy came to Sumer is in fact a fascinating, if somewhat obscure, historical development. Sumer was an early civilization in southern Babylonia, now southern Iraq. The Sumerians were a small but ambitious and enlightened group, whose most important cultural achievement was the invention and development of cuneiform writing. The Sumerian language is unrelated to any known language family, but the style of writing—cuneiform—was […]