The akītu Festival

On the 18^th of Adar a further section of the ritual complex ended, beginning again on the 2^nd of Nisan with the akītu festival. The Assyrian endeavor to reformulate older rituals and imbue them with new meaning also applies to the Assyrian akītu festival. As with the tākultu ritual, the earliest evidence for an Assyrian akītu festival dates from the period of Šamšī-Adad I (1808-1776 BCE), who ordered his son Yasmah-Adad in Mari to send mules and horses for an akītu festival in Assur on the 16^th of Adar.^[[90]] There is no other evidence for such a festival in Assur until the reign of Sennacherib, who reintroduced the akītu festival following his destruction of Babylon in 681 BCE.^[[91]] The reincorporation of Babylonia into the Assyrian empire did not only result in the reformulation of Assyrian political ideology. Under Sennacherib, the scholars of the king reinforced and elaborated on the theological discourse centered on Aššur, the chief god of the Assyrian pantheon. From the reign of Tukultī-Ninurta I onward, Aššur, written AN.ŠÁR ('universe of the Heaven'), acquired increasing astral dimensions that matched the king's imperial claim to universal control.^[[92]]

Materializing Aššur's astralization was central to Sennacherib's reorganization of the cult of Aššur and is reflected in the architecture of his temple, as is discussed in detail below. In this endeavor Sennacherib relied to some extent on the Babylonian model of the god Marduk, transferring some of the Marduk theology to the Assyrian god Aššur. Under Sennacherib, Assyrian scholars rewrote the Enūma Eliš so that Aššur rather than Marduk now figured as its protagonist,^[[93]] clutching the Tablet of Destinies to his chest.^[[94]] Furthermore, Sennacherib institutionalized the annual performance of the akītu festival, for which he reshaped Assur's cultic topography^[[95]] Sennacherib added the Eastern Annex to Aššur's cella in the Aššur temple in order to house the dais of destinies, where the fates were determined. This architectural undertaking is described at length in several inscriptions and the required changes to the layout of Aššur's cella could only be implemented after the permission of the gods had been obtained by means of extispicy, as the following passage relates:^[[96]]

In his inscriptions, Sennacherib strives to present his cultic reforms as religiously motivated and embeds them in a new astral-cosmic symbolism. This astral symbolism applies to his capital Nineveh, the plan of which was said to be drawn for eternity in the constellations (šiṭir burumme, lit. "writing of the firmament").^[[102]] It also characterizes the toponymy of the newly annexed courtyard in Assur, which represents an astral commentary on the determination of destinies during the akītu festival and simultaneously emphasizes Aššur's universal rulership (bāb šarrūti "gate of royalty").^[[103]] The external gate in the southeast of the annexed courtyard (bāb burumme "gate of the firmament") and the southeast gate leading into the temple complex called "the door of the road of Enlil" (bāb harrān šūt ^dEnlil) reflect the astral aspect of Aššur, who is said to dwell in the shining firmament in the inscriptions of Sennacherib.^[[104]] Aššur's consort Mullissu is referred to in the name of the "gate of the wagon star" (bāb ^mulEreqqi). The astronomical manual MUL.APIN associates the ^mulEreqqi with the Sumerian goddess Ninlil, the consort of Enlil, who was equated with Mullissu in the Neo­Assyrian period. As is discussed above, on the twentieth of Shebat Aššur took his seat on the "socle of destinies" (parak šīmāte, no. 9 i 23) together with Mullissu and Bēl-Agû. The courtyard name "courtyard of the row of the stations of the Igigi" (kisal sidir manzāz ^dIgigi) and the gate names "gate of the entrance of the Igigi" (bāb nēreb ^dIgigi) and "gate of the prostrating Igigi" (bāb kamṣū ^dIgigi) refer to the great gods' attendance during Aššur's procession to the akītu house and, according to Enūma Eliš, to the acclamation of Marduk/Aššur as king of the gods.

As it was celebrated in Babylonia, the akītu festival originally served to visualize and commemorate the victory of the chief god Marduk over the forces of chaos. Marduk's victory resulted in the creation of the cosmos and his uncontested rise to the position of chief god of the Babylonian pantheon. The text was rewritten with Aššur replacing Marduk as the chief protagonist and the ritual, in addition, provided the perfect foil for the king who, while accompanying the chief god in his cosmic role as defender of the civilized world against the forces of chaos, annually reconsolidated his own position and concomitantly stabilized and consolidated the existing social and civic order. Cultic performance thus established a timeless continuity between the mythic past and the present, and history was, in a sense, abolished.

As is discussed above, similar mythic concepts are articulated in the festive cycle of Aššur; the Assyrians, however, used the akītu ritual to legitimize changed political arrangements. Esarhaddon chose the akītu festival as the moment for the performance of the loyalty oath on behalf of his younger son and future king Assurbanipal, whom Esarhaddon favored at the expense of his older brother Šamaš-šum-ukīn. The swearing of the oath probably took place in the Nabû temple in the presence of Marduk and Nabû, as is suggested by a letter sent to Esarhaddon regarding Assurbanipal's appointment as crown prince and by the ivories found in the so-called throne room of the Nabû temple that depict the performance of the loyalty oath:^[[105]]

In Babylonia, the performance of the akītu festival extended over a period of eleven or twelve days. Its climax was the procession of the gods who, after having assembled on the dais of destinies in Marduk's temple in Babylon in order to determine the fate of the king of the gods, left the temple and proceeded toward the akītu house located outside the city. The procession symbolized Marduk's battle against Tiāmat, as is apparent in the ceremonial name of the akītu house, which is "House that binds the sea (Tiāmat)" (É.(A).AB.BA.UG₅.GA).^[[107]]

In order to enact the procession according to the Babylonian model in Assyria, Sennacherib had to build the akītu house outside of Aššur, an act that he presents as a restoration of ancient customs.^[[108]] There are no surviving Assyrian ritual texts that describe the procession in detail. The Calendar of Psalms and Lamentations in the Aššur Temple,^[[109]] the tablet of the Cultic Reforms and Religious Practices at Aššur,^[[110]] a text similar to it,^[[111]] and a duplicate^[[112]] do, however, list the gods that accompany Aššur into the akītu house while marching in front or behind his chariot.

The mythological connotations of the procession in Assur are more or less identical to those of the procession in Babylonia, the only major difference being the substitution of Aššur for Marduk as the champion who defeats Tiāmat. In contrast to the Babylonian tradition, there is no evidence for the splitting of the Assyrian procession into a number of different stages,^[[113]] nor is there any attestation of gods visiting from other cities of the empire in order to attend the procession, as was envisioned in the centripetal Babylonian model. Instead, the spatial focus in the Assyrian procession is on the god Aššur as patron deity of the city of Assur and as chief god of Assyria. The procession of the gods led through the city walls to the outskirts of the city where the festival house was located, generally at a distance of less than half a mile from the city itself.^[[114]] The festival house for the city of Assur was newly built by Sennacherib despite the fiction that he merely renovated it.^[[115]] Because of its location outside of the city walls, the akītu house was symbolically associated with the steppe, the realm of chaos. Although in reality the festival house was located in the suburbs or in the agricultural belt surrounding the city, any site outside of the city walls was symbolically associated with the notion of chaos, a point underscored by the name of the festival house, sometimes called 'akītu house of the steppe' (bīt akīti ša ṣēri). In the mental mapping of the festival, land beyond the city walls is not considered part of the territory controlled by the king and the god. Therefore, the steppe as the realm of chaos functions as the perfect setting for the battle against Tiāmat,^[[116]] since this battle could not take place in the city itself, which was of course the paradigm of both social and cosmic order.

This interpretation of the procession as a performative setting for some kind of "cultic drama" is supported by the Assyrian ritual texts of the akītu-festival, which mention a monster.^[[117]] Instead of performing the battle in mimetic representation as known from the Greek model, Assyro-Babylonian tradition appears to associatively reenact the cosmic battle by assigning symbolic meaning to ritual gestures and reciting liturgical songs referencing the mythic event. The god's victory over Tiāmat and his procession back to his temple in his city thus symbolize his adventus in the city and serve to visualize and stabilize his supreme position in the divine hierarchy anew, year after year. Accordingly, the procession symbolizes a change in the status of the chief god: by returning to his temple in the city following his victorious excursion beyond the city walls, the chief god can legitimately claim his supreme position within the pantheon.

Like its Babylonian counterpart, the Assyrian akītu festival appears to have extended over eleven days. More detailed information is available in only two texts, one of which belonged to Marduk-kabti-ilāni, chief šangû of Aššur and offspring of a family of priests in Assur,^[[118]] and the other of which is a text fragment^[[119]] similar to the Cultic Reforms and Religious Practices at Assur.^[[120]] No. 53 i 16'-ii 30' begins with a ritual prescription for the 2^nd of Nisan, the day on which the king offers cooked meat before Aššur. Subsequently, the chariot driver (mukīl appāte) carries the god on his chariot, drawn by white horses, in a ceremonial procession to the akītu-house while a singer intones several songs. The text is very fragmentary, but it seems that the god Aššur does not remain in the akītu-house and returns to his own temple in the city of Assur. In a very fragmentary section, mention is made of the Ubšukkinakku and the monster. The respective exegetical comment in the cultic commentary reads as follows:

[The chariots] which they dispatch, and the 'third man' who [puts] the whip in [the king's] hand, takes him by the hand, leads him into the presence of the god and shows the whip to the god and the king, is Nabû, who is sent against Enlil and defeats him, whom Nergal to[ok] by the hand, introduced into Esaggil and showed the weapon in his hand to Marduk, king of the gods, and Zarpanitu, while they kissed and blessed [him]. (SAA 3 37 24'-28')

Here the commentary appears to conflate the combat myth and parricide, or at least the demotion of an older god. Theogony involving parricide or the demotion of the ancestor gods by a god representing the younger generation is a mythic stratagem used as an explanatory pattern for the organization of power and perhaps even for the fact of usurpation. While this stratagem is not indigenous to Sumero-Babylonian thought, it does appears to structure the myth of the Theogony of Dunnu,^[[121]] which is linked to the mythology centered on the Hurrian god Kumarbi.^[[122]]

The high priest's tablet (no. 15) appears to have been some kind of an excerpt tablet combining ritual prescriptions for the 7^th and 8^th of Nisan and for the tākultu ritual, with the latter listing the same sequence of cities that is displayed in other tākultu texts, i.e. Nineveh, Aššur, Kilizi, Arbela, Calah, Tarbiṣu, Kurbail, Tue, Harran, and Nineveh again. The text then covers days seven and eight of the akītu-festival, noting intriguingly that the ritual performance could be carried out 'whether in Nineveh, or in Calah, or in an enemy country' (no. 15 i 55'-56'). This suggests that the king did not necessarily have to remain in Assur for the entirety of the akītu-festival. Unfortunately, the beginning of the tablet is destroyed; it does, however, look like the gods had already entered the akītu-house by the 7^th of Nisan at the latest, as the first date mentioned in the following is the 8^th of Nisan (no. 15 i 55'), which according to the information gleaned from the cultic commentary SAA 3 37, includes a number of the ritual gestures performed by the king, which symbolically reflect Marduk's cosmic battle. From Sennacherib's description of Aššur's battle against Tiāmat as depicted on the gate of the akītu­ house, we know that the gods accompanied Aššur into battle in a prescribed order. Because this battle ultimately entails Marduk's/Aššur's ascent to the position of supreme deity of the Babylonian pantheon and the relegation of both the older generation of gods (including Anu, Enlil and Ea) and their sons to an inferior position, the commentaries explain the king's ritual performance as mirroring Marduk's performance of parricide.

An interesting detail in the ritual prescriptions is the reference made to the pectoral "of the gods" that the king wears around his neck during the ritual performance. This pectoral appears to be similar to the one Ashurnasirpal II wears on his stele from Calah^[[123]] (fig. 56) and on the relief representing him in front of the sacred tree in the throne room of his palace (fig. 22).^[[124]] In both cases the pectoral consists of a row of divine symbols like those generally depicted on the Assyrian victory steles, thus conjuring the presence of the most important deities of the Assyrian pantheon: Sîn, Šamaš, Ištar, Aššur-Enlil-Anu^? and Adad. The commentary elucidates the pectoral's protective power in the following terms:

In the ritual text fragment no. 15, the king lights a censer and steps upon a pedestal, following which a man-woman (LÚ^!.SAL) raises the weapon and shouts "Ebirna! Ebirna!" opposite Ištar (15 i 1'-5'). Subsequently the king goes to a spring close to the akītu-house and performs offerings of sheep and blood before throwing a fish and a crab into the spring and pouring oil, honey, and wine into it. He then appears before the public swinging a purification device (15 i l'-13').

Only the reference to the spring corresponds to a section in a cultic commentary — SAA 3 37: 3'-4' — that in fact refers to a well rather than a spring and compares the king's action with "[Marduk] who cast a spell against Enlil in the Abyss (Apsû), and consi[gned him] to the Anunnaki." The king's visit to the spring is followed by a visit to the akītu-house, where he offers salt and sheep before the gods of heaven and then returns to the palace. Subsequently, the king once again visits the akītu-house and provides cooked meat. After a broken passage, ritual performance resumes with further offerings of sheep and cooked meat. Additionally, the king burns a female goat kid before the gods (no. 15 i 46'), a ritual gesture that, as mentioned above, is encoded with the mythic meaning of killing the sons of Enlil and Ea. Creative engagement with mythic knowledge is further apparent in the interpretation of the ensuing rite, the 'opening of the vat,' as Marduk defeating Tiāmat with his penis (SAA 3 37: 18'). As Simo Parpola demonstrates, the penis is to be equated with the bow (qaštu) as the weapon of Ištar:

The king continues with the last rite performed over the defeated animal, which stands in for the subdued enemy. After performing further libations and showing himself to the public, the king pours a libation of water, beer, wine, milk, and blood upon the heads of the animals; he then sprinkles flour and swings the purification device, places a head before the gods, and libates again before stepping on a pedestal and being given something to eat (no. 15 ii 10'-19'). The head in this case probably represents the head of the monster referred to in the ritual text, so that the ritual of libation over the head itself represents the concluding cultic act familiar from Assyrian reliefs of the lion hunt and from battle scenes like those of Shalmaneser III's (858-824 BCE) Black Obelisk, which signal the reestablishment of cosmic order to the gods.^[[127]]

The text is very fragmentary at this point, but it appears that the king finishes the libations of the vat. While the king stands on the pedestal a singer intones "To (Ištar)-Amurrītu," which, according to the commentary, associates the king with "Marduk [who] with his bow in his hand cast down Ea, while Venus was ascendant in front of him" (SAA 3 37: 20'-22'). The ensuing sections on the reverse of the tablet pertain to the tākultu ritual.

As is clear from the above discussion, various mythic stratagems inform ritual performance and its exegesis in the cultic commentaries. It is only possible to penetrate the meaning of Assyrian state rituals with a multi-layered perspective that draws from all the extant mythic narratives dealing with the battle against chaos and cultic commentaries. On the basis of cultic commentary SAA 3 37, the following ritual gestures can be understood as signaling various steps in the process of defeating the forces of chaos and securing the rank of rulership:

The interconnectedness between myth and ritual discussed above transcends Edmund Leach's dictum that "myth implies ritual, ritual implies myth, they are one and the same."^[[128]] It also transcends the relationship between myth and ritual originally outlined by representatives of the Myth and Ritual school,^[[129]] since my emphasis is on the notion of myth as plotline and on the process of mythologization versus myth as a closed narrative, which allows ritual to be flexible in its adaptation of mythic traditions. The most important state rituals revolved around the "political" myth centered on the warrior god Ninurta. These rituals annually cemented the institution of kingship in society and the incumbent king's occupation of his office. The paradigm of the combat myth formed the core of the ancient political belief system and served to explain and justify royal action, but at some point the paradigm of theomachy — including parricide and the notion of a generational change of leadership — was incorporated into the prevailing political ideology. Sennacherib's murder might account for this, as it probably engendered ritualized comment and explanation in order to harmonize it with the cosmic order.

In myth, changes at the top of the pantheon took place when Marduk relegated his father to the Apsû and replaced Enlil in supreme leadership. State rituals and commentaries reveal that in their adoption of Babylonian and Hurrian tradition (see the Kumarbi Cycle), Assyrians deemed it important to include the notion of parricide in their state rituals as a potential component in the king's rise to power, reenacting it on an annual basis. Although the murder of Sennacherib may have prompted a reworking of ritual performance, it is also interesting to note that already in the Assyrian coronation ritual the deposed gods (ilū darsūte) in the Aššur temple are listed among the divinities to whom the future king offers stones as gifts (no. 7 ii 4), evoking the notion of generational change as a model.

90 ARM 150.

91 K 1356: 2-3; KAH 122: 24 ff.; KAH 117-119; SVAT 1; ARRIM 3, 5 ff.

92 On the interaction of political ideology and religion see Lanfranchi 1995; on the astralization and solarization of Aššur see Pongratz-Leisten 2011, 175ff.

93 Three copies of the Assyrian version are known KAR 117+118, KAR 173 from Aššur and one from Nineveh (CT 13 pl. 24f.); see comments by Frahm 1997, 284ff.

94 George 1986, K 6177 + 8869 Text B 6: ṭuppi šīmāti [š]a Aššur šar ilāni qātuššu iṣbatuma itmuhu [irtuššu].

95 George 1989, 119; Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 60-64.

96 KAH 122, Stele EȘ 7847, ed. by V. Donbaz and H. Galter, ARRIM 3, 1985, 4-7, KAH 117, 118, 119, for all these inscriptions see the comments of Frahm 1997, 173ff.

97 KAH 2 124 10ff.

98 Frahm 1997, 282-288.

99 SAA 3 34:54-55 (Marduk Ordeal).

100 Frahm 1997, T 183:l.

101 Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 115-132.

102 Frahm 1997, T 4:62; T 10:6-7.

103 Lanfranchi 1995, 148.

104 Luckenbill Senn., 149 l. 5: āšib burūmû ellūti; Frahm 1997, T 183.

105 SAA 10 no. 6:6ff; Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 99.

106 Literally "temple-enterers" (^lú[rib-bīti^m]^eš).

107 Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 75 after A. R. George NABU 1993/43. For other readings of the Sumerian ceremonial name of the akītu house see A. Livingstone NABU 1990/87 and Frahm 1997, 224 T 184.

108 E. Ebeling, "Kultische Texte aus Assur," Or 22 (1954) no. 1.

109 2 20 12 r. 19-28.

110 No. 52 iv-v 16'.

111 No. 53 i 1'-ii31'.

112 No. 54.

113 Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 37-84.

114 This is true for Aššur and Uruk, where the precise location of the akītu houses has been identified.

115 KAH 122, Luckenbill Senn., 135-139.

116 Lambert 1963, 189.

117 No. 53 ii 28' and 52 r. v 47-48. In Babylonia, by contrast, it seems to have been evoked by means of songs performed by the kurgarru and assinnu-mimes Pongratz-Leisten 1994, 74ff. For the notion of "drama" in the ancient Near East see B. Pongratz-Leisten, "Drama," Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception, vol. 6 (Berlin and Boston, 2013), 1158-1162.

118 No. 15.

119 No. 53.

120 No. 52.

121 CT 46:43; Lambert and Walcot 1965; Jacobsen 1984; Dalley 2000, 278-281; W W Hallo, The Context of Scripture, vol. 1 (Leiden and New York, 1997) 402-404.

122 See the myth "Lied vom Königtum im Himmel" (Güterbock 1946; Meriggi 1953.

123 W Orthmann, Der Alte Orient (Berlin 1975), figs. 197 and 198.

124 In contrast to the pectoral that is suspended from the back of Assurbanipal's couch in the Banquet Scene, which consists of "seven rows of barrel-shaped beads," see P. Albenda, "Landscape Bas-Reliefs in the Bīt Ḫilāni of Ashurbanipal," BASOR 225 (1977) 29-48.

125 It seems that this pectoral has to be distinguished from the "stones" (NA₄.MEŠ), which are listed among the insignia of the king in a purification ritual and treated in detail by A. Schuster-Brandis, Steine als Schutz-und Heilmittel. Untersuchung zu ihrer Verwendung in der Beschwörungskunst Mesopotamiens im 1. Jt. v. Chr. (Münster, 2008) 162ff.

126 Parpola, SAA 9 (1997), XCI fn. 114.

127 Compare Ashurnaṣirpal II's libation over either the dead bull or lion as represented in his palace in Calah with Shalmaneser III's libation over Jehu of Jerusalem.

128 E. Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma. A Study of Kachin Social Structure (Boston, 1954) 13ff.

129 For a good overview of the contributions made by J. Frazer, J. E. Harrison and S. H. Hook, see Segal 2002); Versnel 1992, 15-88; Ackermann, 2002.

Beate Pongratz-Leisten

Beate Pongratz-Leisten, 'The akītu Festival', Assyrian Royal Rituals and Cultic Texts, SAA 20. Original publication: Winona Laka, IN, Eisenbrauns, 2017; online contents: SAAo/SAA20 Project, a sub-project of MOCCI, 2020 [http://oracc.org/saao/saa20/assyrianstaterituals/theakitufestival/]