DeConick A.D

23
THE MATRIX OF ANCIENT SPIRITUALITY
his community. To this end, the king must make sure that human beings
build temples to house the gods and to care for them. He must ensure
that human beings perform the religious rituals that satisfy the gods with
worship and gifts. Since the gods desire that the cyclic structure of creation
and nature be sustained as they had established it originally, the king
must make certain that human beings regularly imitate or duplicate the
establishment of primordial order on the microcosmic, ritual level. All of
this results in governance based upon iterative or repetitive actions of the
king and his subjects, which maintain the traditional state rather than innovate
or develop it in any progressive way.
The king’s other job is to maintain civil order among humans whose
natural state of avarice parallels the proverbial observation that the big fish
will always eat the little fish. The king is expected by the gods to uphold
justice within his community so that the weak are protected against the
strong and the poor against the rich. It becomes the job of the king, then,
to suppress the barbaric and greedy nature of the human being through
strong, even oppressive, governance.
The classic metaphysical orientation that conceives of powerful immortal
deities who harness chaos and create mortal human beings to sustain
cosmic order has its consequences. It results in a picture of the human as
a forced laborer who toils beneath the weight of maintaining the will of
the gods and their creation, endlessly in servitude to the gods and their
king (cf. Assmann 1989, 55–88; Moscati 1960). And to what end? The
afterlife provided no relief. As a shadow, the deceased endured in gloom
and wretchedness, eating dust and drinking dirty water. The only hope
for respite came from the living, who might provide the dead with grave
offerings of food and wine. If the living forgot to assist them, however,
the shades would wander restlessly on the earth and molest the living as
malicious demons.
Life and Death in Babylonia
Servant spirituality was at the heart of the Babylonian religion, as can be
seen in the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish, in which human beings
are viewed as the pinnacle of creation but not as a stunning climax
(Jacobsen 1976, 167–91). They are an afterthought molded to serve the
pantheon of gods in the temples of Marduk. By imposing upon humans