Sunday, June 30, 2019

Esarhaddon a tolerable fit for King Nebuchednezzar. Part Three: ‘The Marduk Prophecy’

Esarhaddon - promotional material for theatre by ElynV

 
Esarhaddon a tolerable fit

for King Nebuchednezzar

 

Part Three:
‘The Marduk Prophecy’

 

by

 
Damien F. Mackey

 

 

“The original work was almost certainly written during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (1125-1104 BCE) as a propaganda piece. Nebuchadnezzar I defeated the Elamites and brought the statue back to Babylon, and the work was most likely commissioned

to celebrate his victory”.
 


  

 

‘The Marduk Prophecy’, although conventionally dated to the neo-Assyrian era (c. 700 BC), is thought to pertain originally to the so-called ‘Middle’ Babylonian period centuries earlier. 

That is what we read, for instance, at:

Ancient Encyclopedia


 

by Joshua J. Mark
published on 14 December 2016

 

The Marduk Prophecy is an Assyrian document dating to between 713-612 BCE found in a building known as The House of the Exorcist adjacent to a temple in the city of Ashur. It relates the travels of the statue of the Babylonian god Marduk from his home city to the lands of the Hittites, Assyrians, and Elamites and prophesies its return at the hands of a strong Babylonian king. The original work was almost certainly written during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar I (1125-1104 BCE) as a propaganda piece. Nebuchadnezzar I defeated the Elamites and brought the statue back to Babylon, and the work was most likely commissioned to celebrate his victory.

 

The author would have constructed the narrative to place the events in the past in order to allow for a 'prophetic vision' in which the present king would come to restore peace and order to the city by bringing home the statue of the god. This form of narrative was commonplace in the genre now known as Mesopotamian Naru Literature where historical events or individuals were treated with poetic license in order to make a point. In a work such as The Curse of Akkad, for example, the historical king Naram-Sin (2261-2224 BCE), known for his piety, is presented as impious in an effort to illustrate the proper relationship between a monarch and the gods. The point made would be that if a king as great as Naram-Sin of Akkad could fail in piety and be punished, how much more would a person of lesser stature fare. In The Marduk Prophecy, the events are placed far in the past in order for the writer to be able to 'predict' the moment when a Babylonian king would return Marduk to his rightful home. This piece, then, also deals with the responsibility a monarch has to his god.  ….

 

[End of quote]

 

According to Takuma Sugie, this document, supposed to have been written during the reign of the Babylonian king Nebuchednezzar I, who conquered Elam, was “re-interpreted” to apply prophetically to Ashurbanipal of Nineveh, who conquered Elam:


 

The Reception of the Marduk Prophecy in

Seventh-Century B.C. Nineveh

 

The Marduk Prophecy is a literary composition in the guise of prophetic speech by Marduk. It is supposed to be written to praise Nebuchadnezzar I’s triumph over Elam during his reign. However, all the three surviving exemplars of this text are from the seventh-century B.C. Assyria: two from Nineveh and another from Assur. This article discusses how the Marduk Prophecy was read and re-interpreted in Nineveh at that time. Between the Marduk Prophecy and the royal literature during the reign of Ashurbanipal, the following common themes can be recognized: (1) reconstruction of the Babylonian temples, above all Esagil; (2) conquest of Elam; and (3) fulfillment of divine prophecies. On the basis of these, the author proposes that in the seventh-century Nineveh the Marduk Prophecy was regarded as an authentic prophecy predicting the achievements of Ashurbanipal, and that this is the main reason why this text was read at his court. ….

 

[End of quote]

 

The simple answer, I think, as to why a document written in praise of a Babylonian king was later considered to apply to an Assyrian ruler reigning about four centuries after the Babylonian king, is that Nebuchednezzar I and Ashurbanipal were one and the same king.

See e.g. my article:

 

Nebuchednezzar - mad, bad, then great

 


 

Our necessary ‘folding’ of conventional C12th BC Assyro-Babylonian history into the C8th-C7th’s BC serves to bring great kings into their proper alignment.

Nebuchednezzar I’s conquest of Elam now sits in place, where it should, as Ashurbanipal’s famous devastation of Elam in 639 BC (conventional dating), when “the Assyrians sacked the Elamite city of Susa, and Ashurbanipal boasted that “the whole world” was his”.


 

 

Striking parallels with Esarhaddon

 

 

“[Matthijs J. de] Jong lists the motifs shared by the Marduk Prophecy

and Esarhaddon’s inscriptions …”.

 


 

 

 

Nor is there any surprise in learning that ‘The Marduk Prophecy’ bears striking parallels with Esarhaddon’s inscriptions for the same reason (Esarhaddon is Ashurbanipal).

And, according to this present series, Esarhaddon (Ashurbanipal) is Nebuchednezzar.

 

Takuma Sugie continues on, writing of the similarities that de Jong has picked up between the ‘Prophecy’ and the inscriptions of Esarhaddon:

 

III. Were Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal Interested in the Marduk Prophecy?

 

Recently, Matthijs J. de Jong inferred that two [sic] Assyrian great monarchs in the seventh century, Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, had a particular interest in the Marduk Prophecy.13

He draws parallels between the Marduk Prophecy and the inscriptions of Esarhaddon. To take the most striking similarity, the Marduk Prophecy iii 25'-30' foretells that an ideal king “will make the great king of Dēr (šarra rabâ ša urudēr) stand up from a place not his dwelling … and bring him into Dēr and eternal Ekurdimgalkalama (ana urudēr u é-kur-UD(dimx?)-gal-kalam-ma ša dā[r]âti ušerrebšu).”14 This closely resembles a phrase recurring in Esarhaddon’s inscriptions, which represents this king as the one who “brought the god Great-Anu (i.e., Ištarān) into his city Dēr and his temple Edimgalkalama and had (him) sit upon eternal dais (danum rabû ana ālišu dērki u bītišu é-dim-gal-kalam-ma ušēribuma ušēšibu parakka dārâti).”15 In addition to this, de Jong lists the motifs shared by the Marduk Prophecy and Esarhaddon’s inscriptions: (1) ascension of the Babylonian gods to heaven;16 (2) fulfillment of the days of absence;17 (3) renovation of the Esagil temple in Babylon;18 (4) Babylon’s tax exemption;19 (5) gathering of the dispersed Babylonian people;20 and so on. Furthermore, de Jong points out a community of themes shared between the Marduk Prophecy and Ashurbanipal’s inscriptions too; Ashurbanipal continued and completed his father’s [sic] project to send back Marduk’s statue and restore Esagil. Ashurbanipal also conducted several military campaigns against Elam. In the light of these parallels, de Jong supposes that Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal were profoundly interested in the Marduk Prophecy, and he proposes the possibility that the Marduk Prophecy was elaborated during the reign of one of these kings. ….

 

 


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