The God Asar/Asalluhi in the Early Mesopotamian Pantheon PhD thesis (original) (raw)
2022
The aim of this paper is to survey the attestations of gods in the Middle Assyrian archival texts as a preliminary contribution to future, more indepth studies on religion during the MA period. In doing so, a series of problems regarding these attestations will be evidenced.
Aah and Aker: Two Ancient Egyptian Gods
This paper consists of two monographies, each dealing with one Egyptian god. One is a god of the moon (Aah), the other a god of the earth (Aker). Their being treated here together is purely coincidental. The original plan was to write a series of monographies of 81 Egyptian gods: 9 enneads of 9 gods each. This was the first part of the first ennead.
Here a God, There a God: Conceptions of Divinity in Ancient Mesopotamia
Much ink has been spilled on the examination of Mesopotamian conceptions of the divine in the past, and the topic has received renewed attention in the present. The following article offers yet another synthetic analysis of the Mesopotamian divine sphere, amassing in one place a vast array of data and the scholarly assessments of that data. More particularly, after examining what constitutes a god in ancient Mesopotamia and the essential and characteristic qualities of Mesopotamian deities, the article attempts to sort the divine sphere, focusing on the relationship between the various beings that populate the divine world and between a single deity and its various aspects. However, although synthetic, the present contribution offers several new insights. Most prominently, it posits the concept of divine constellations as a model for understanding Mesopotamian deities, in which the major Mesopotamian deities are presented as a constellation of aspects that may be treated as (semi-)independent beings or as a unity depending on the context.
"A Community of People" Studiers on Society and Politics in the Bible and Ancient Near East in Honor of Daniel E. Fleming, 2022
It gives me the greatest pleasure to dedicate this article to Daniel Fleming, with whom I share a longstanding friendship, going back to our days as students at Harvard and our studies under Bill Moran.1,2 Over the years, Bill became a dear friend to both Daniel and me and generated the scholarly and intellectual bond between us. Today, I am moved by, grateful for, and continue to be nurtured by this intellectual bond with Daniel, which has carried us from Boston to our shared academic home at New York University.3 1 Cosmic Order and Human-divine Interdependency In ancient Mesopotamia, cosmic order was equated with cosmic stability (kittu), which was decreed by the gods, while civic order, or "straightness" (mīšaru) was maintained by the king through the passing of judgments (dīnu dânu; purussâ parāsu).
Tallay Ornan 2013, A Silent Message: Godlike Kings in Mesopotamian Art
Standing at the head of the social hierarchy, the Mesopotamian king had a close relationship with the gods and was considered a mediator between the earthly and divine spheres. The interaction between kings and gods had a supreme role in ensuring social welfare and a vital function in the empowerment of the ruler. The worldly needs of the ruler led to continuous efforts to upgrade him by comparing him to the divine, as epitomized in the unique representation of Naram-Sin. As a one-time representation, however, this portrayal emphasizes how ambivalent and restrained the display of godlike kings in Mesopotamia was in general. The qualified approach of Mesopotamian iconography to royal deification is expressed in the consistent use of implicit and indirect measures to convey the godlike image of the king. A comparison between selected Mesopotamian pictorial and textual records sheds light on the difference between these two modes of expressions in conveying the divine status of the king, the visual mode being much more limited than the written one. It was perhaps the immense power of the visual mode, and its potentially explosive nature in relation to the fate of all mortals, including kings, that prevented direct and explicit representation of quasi-divine kings in the art of ancient Mesopotamia.