God and King in Sumeria
by Mark Anthony Signorelli (December 2011)
Gudea was a ruler of evident piety. He performed his own sacrifices in the temple, and cast his own omens, holding the office of a patesi, which was a sort of priestly caste.[x] The god who was the object of his especial devotion was Ningirsu, the god of battles, an unsurprising fact considering the still chaotic and violent state of Southern Mesopotamia at this time. We are informed, in a surviving poem, that Gudea built the temple of Eninnu for his favored deity, after having purified the city by enacting a series of legal and moral reforms; as the poem puts it, “the city prince gave his town instructions…the mother did not scold the child, the child said nothing to upset its mother; the master did not strike the head of the slave who had offended him…No one brought a law suit before Gudea, who was building the temple.”[xi] In the temple, the king erected various ritual weapons, as symbols of Ningirsu’s awesome power, and as a corresponding invocation of that power. The materials out of which Enninu was constructed were carried to Lagash from as far away as Syria and Arabia. This architectural propitiation of the god must have been of some effect, for Gudea ruled long and prosperously, before leaving the kingship to his piously named son, Ur-Ningirsu.
Greenstone seal-(clay impression of the cylinder seal) of Hashhamer Governor of Ishkun-Sin, Third Dynasty of Ur, about 2100 BC, from Babylon
[iii] Saggs, 352.
[vi] Saggs, 164
[viii] Woolley, 69.
[x] Woolley, 128.
[xi] Saggs, 366.
[xii] Kramer, 67-68.
[xiii] Kramer, 84.
[xv] Woolley, 133
[xvi] Kramer, 84.
[xvii] Liverani, 61
[xviii] Postgate, 269.
[xix] Saggs, 359.
[xx] Saggs, 361
[xxi] Woolley, 141
[xxii] Saggs, 211
[xxiii] Saggs, 216, 369-371.
[xxiv] Saggs, 347
[xxv] Saggs, 387
[xxvi] Postgate, 266-267
[xxvii] Kramer, 69.
[xxviii] Postgate, 271.
[xxix] Saggs, 222. To comment on this essay, please click here. If you enjoyed this essay and want to read more by Mark Signorelli, please click here.