The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Power, economy and social organisation in Babylonia —
administration but had strong roots in a centuries old tradition, and were normally
just modified and adapted to the needs of the day. Such images were spread by various
forms of what we would term propaganda – and the bulk of our so-called ‘historical’
sources are in fact that: propaganda. Therefore, when we read ancient sources
and look at the surviving pictures, we need to question their historical value. Letters,
administrative texts, legal decisions, as well as remnants of the material culture, help
to balance our historical account. However, the factor of propaganda and ideological
distortion of social reality is important in itself: every ruler and every ruling class is
bound to the images they propagate or create.
IMAGES OF THE RULER
Sure enough, every Babylonian king had to adhere to his own proclamations, at least
to some degree; otherwise he would soon have lost any credibility. Among Hammurabi’s
lengthy and flowery self-description as a king we find the following words:
I am Hammurabi, noble king, I have not been careless or negligent toward humankind,
granted to my care by the god Enlil with whose shepherding the god Marduk
charged me . . . I removed serious difficulties, I spread light over them.
As the king was commissioned by the gods to ‘direct the land along the course of
truth and the correct way of life’, he published a collection of regulations, the socalled
‘Laws of Hammurabi’, stating as their purpose:
In order that the mighty not wrong the weak, to provide just ways for the waif
and the widow, I have inscribed my precious words upon my stele and set it up
before the statue of me, the king of justice, in the city of Babylon.
(Roth 1995: 133)
The main metaphor for the ruler in the epilogue of Hammurabi’s laws is that of
the ‘Righteous Shepherd’, which is central to the Babylonian concept of kingship
and has survived well into the Christian era. In the prologue of his laws, Hammurabi
focuses on another equally important image, that of the ruler as builder of temples,
cities and palaces (cp. Z. Bahrani’s contribution in this volume). In this function he
is receiving the measuring rope and the rod from his god, as depicted on the sculptured
top of Hammurabi’s stele. Three centuries earlier, the founder of the so-called Ur
III-Dynasty, Ur-Nammu, had been portrayed in much the same way (Figure 19.1).
Indeed, the rod and the measuring rope, regula and norma, are the royal insignia that
connect the ruler’s building activities – and perhaps the surveying of land – with
the realm of law and order, as it is still reflected in the modern usage of these terms.
All Babylonian kings stress their piety towards the deities, and in this respect they
depict themselves as humble servants. Since all building activities involved the
movement of huge amounts of material, especially earth and bricks, the number of
basket carriers needed was very high and this heavy work earned little respect. Already
from the third millennium onwards there are many figurines depicting the king as
basket carrier. In Babylonia this tradition was so strong that the Assyrian king
Ashurbanipal, as well as his brother Shamash-shumu-ukin, who reigned in Babylon,
was depicted in this manner (see Bahrani’s contribution and Figure 10.1 in this volume).
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