).
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KING THE MAN, THE KING-MAN
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NA IøORLD ORDER CHARACTERIZED BY THE GREÄTER AVAILABILITY OF THE DIVINE SOURCE
I ott earth such es the Mesopotamian antediluvian period, or any other manifesrarion of a
golden age in other traditions in which a closeness between men and gods is the case, both
royal power and priestly gnosis may be thought to have been possessed by the same aurhoriry,
and the eventual dissolution of this unity may be thought to have marked a split.' The conceprs
of union and the mixta persona traced in Part II may be thought to be drawing on this ideology
of primeval integriry and its dissolution.
Even though there are two aspects to the ancient Mesopotamian antediluvian tradition in
rhe form of antediluvian sages and antediluvian kings as distinct from one anorher, certain
qualities of the antediluvian kings are suspiciously sagelike. For example, the antediluvian king
Enmeduranki is not only king but also the oil diviner par excellence from whom Mesopotamian
diviner-priests claim descent.' As indicated at the beginning of this part, the merging of the
antediluvian king list and the sage list such that each antediluvain king was matched with a
sage may have been a later development in the ancient Mesopotamian tradition.l Perhaps it
was the câse that during the formulation of the ancient Mesopotamian antediluvian tradition,
the postdiluvian and, later, the historical system in which each king was complemented by a
spiritual advisor, a sage, was retrojected to the antediluvian period as well. In short, in the ideal
system, the king was also the sage, whereas after the split, the royalq, had to depend on a selecr
priesthood in all spiritual matters.
I attempted to trace the iconography of this split in Part IL Another split that I inroduced is
one in the nature and ontology of man - namel¡ one between the initiated and the uninitiated
man. Certain ancient Mesopotamian texts clearly distinguish between two kinds of men, The
SBV of The Epic of Giþarnesh presents Gilgamesh as the perfect man, etlu gitmalu, and twothirds god, whereas Enkidu is presented at the beginningas lullû, "primitive man," even though
we have seen that this dichotomy had great complexiry.
The same dualiry.can be found in a text written in the Neo-Babylonian script VAI r7or9,
pertaining to the creation of "kings" and "men."4 According to the text, there are two creations
performed by the goddess Belet-ili, one is that of the "man," lulhi, and the other maliþu amëlu,
translated as the "circumspect man" by Livingstone:t "Belet-ili, you are the ladylmistress of the
great gods. You have created the lulh)-man: create now the King, the 'circumspect manl"'
(d
Be-
/¿r-DINGIR. MES NIN DINGIR.MES GAL.MES at-ti-ma I at-ti-matab-ni-møLÚ.ULÙr"-o
a-me-lu I pi-it-qí-ma LUGAL ma-li-þu ø-me-lu).6
r67
THE MYTHOLOGY OF KINGSHIP IN NEO-ASSYRIAN ART
T68
The commencary on this text by tùØerner R. Mayer seems to deal with the surface meaning
of the text rather than a possible deeper level of semantics. Mayer states that on account of
the important role played by the king in Mesopotamian culture, he is seen as a special creation of the gods.7 \ü(/ithin thc parameters proposed here, however, maliþu dmelu shouldbe
I
I
understood more specifically as the initiated man, the King-Man, and hence not þing the man.
The ICng-Man is indeed the supreme ummànu, whose mind is broadened by invisible divine
agenrs, the aphallus, rather than the human being who holds the position of "king," not unlike
the "Buddhist distinction," presenred by Coomaraswamy, "of the Brahman by birth (brahmøbandbu) from the Brahman by knowledge, Brahman as brahmauir."s In the SBV of The Epic
of Giþamesh as well, Gilgamesh, whose mind is broadened by the gods, is like the "Brahman
by birth,"r whereas Enkidu who acquires his knowledge along the way is like the "Brahman by
I
knowledge."to
Anqther rexr, a Neo-Assyrian work known as the Coronation Hymn of Ashurbønipal, also
refers ro the forrfier crown prince and now the new king Ashurbanipal as maliþu amèlu.t'
Alasdair Livingstone takes due note of this instance of "intertextualiry" although, surprisingly,
he argues that the connection is artificial, and the rwo texts are in effect unrelated." On the
contrary, I would suggesr that there is a very close connection between the two texts in that
just as a learned amrnanu-like persona was projected onto fuhurbanipal through declarations
ascribing literacy and antediluvian knowledge to him, the designation maliþu ømëlu, which
may essentially be thought to characterize the initiated ummã.nu, is also a perfect indication of
the sacerdotal identity ascribed to this king by his "inner circle."
Livingstone further argues that given the later date of the Babylonian text describing the
creation of "kings" and "men," this text borrowed the phrase m¿liþu amèh from Ashurbanipal's Coronation H1tmn, "an unusual example of transmission of literature from Assyria to
Babylonia."'l Regardless of the chronological sequence of the two texts, from a conceptual
standpoint, both reflect the same fundamental understanding of kingship, one that gives priority to the kingship of the sacerdotium but expresses it within the mold and guise of the actual
reigning king.
'What
rc as maliþu amëlu may in fact be thought to refer to an idea of the
King-Man, as I have already proposed, or the "magus man," to put it in Hermetic Renaissance
terms, "who was created divine, with divine powers, and is in the process of again becoming
divine, with divine power5."r4 The distinction drawn berween this kind of man, and just "man"
is reminiscent of the "ontological classism" that also characterizes the Indian caste system that
places the brahma above the k;atra.'s On the divine level, this is in fact the pattern in certain
Gnostic systems as well. In Christian Gnosticism, for instance, there exists the understanding
of the first man, who directly emanates from God himself, whereas a demiurge, a creator god,
creares the biological man later from clay in the image of the former.'6 It is on account of
such an ontological split that the Assyrian king is surrounded by his inner circle. Kingship is
unable to exist all by itself in a "postdiluvian" context. Insofar as the maintenance of the original
antediluvian kingship is concerned, the king is dependent on the informed sacerdotal elite for
instruction.
The special manner and circumstances in which the royal person is created and raised is a
long-standing literary topos throughout ancient Mesopotamian histor¡ examples of which go
back to the Early Dynastic period (ca. zgoo-2134 ncr). This artificial rhetoric that often makes
a divine hero out of the king, in close parallelism with many myths and legends from the ancient
these texrs refer
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KING THE MAN, THE KING.MAN
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r69
world, has been duly noted, especially by Mario Liverani.'7 tVhat has not been emphasized
enough, however, is again the authentic voice behind this rhetoric, which clearly belongs to
the scholarly elite, responsible for the formulation and expression of these accounts, who may
again be thought to have projected their own positive and divine qualities and privileges onto
the king through these topoi.
The so-called Sargon legend, a birth legend in Alkadian from the ûrst millennium nc¡ writren as if told by Sargon himselfi, is a classic example of this phenomenon:
Sargon, the strong king, the king of Alkad, am I. My mother was a high priestess, my
father I do not know. My paternal kin inhabit the mountain region (and) my home city is
Azupiranu ("Saffron City"), which lies on the bank of the Euphrates fuver. My mothe¡ a
high priestess, conceived me (and) bore me in secret. She placed me in a reed basket and
caulked my hatch with pitch, (then) she abandoned me to the river, from which I could not
escape. The ríve¡ carried me along (and) brought me to Aqqi, the water drawer.'8
t¡
The themes of growing up without parents in the wilderness, being taken care of by wild beasts,
le
ta-
or being brought up by kind strangers are all literary topoi that may be thought to stand for the
spiritual development of the candidate.'e Through means that are outside the ordinary world,
the candidate rhus receives a special kind of instrucrion sometimes in the hands of divinities.
In ancient Greek culture, for instance, in the first four books of the Odyssey known also as the
Tþlemachia, Odysseus's son Telemachus, in the absence of his father, receives this special guidance from the disguised Athena. In the Hymn to Demeter, the goddess comes to Metaneira's
house disguised as an old woman, stays there as the caretaker of the family's child, and secretly
attempts to make the child immortal through extraordinary means such as placing it in
to
fire.
ral
kes
In Assyria itself, in certain royal hymns, Ashurbanipal is described as sitting in the laps of
goddesses as a child. Inhis Hymn to the lítørs of Nineueh andArbek, the king declares: "I knew
no father or mother, I grew up in the lap of my goddesses. As a child the great gods guided
me, going with me on the right and the left. They established at my side a good genie and a
good angel, assigned my life to guardians of well-being and health."'o This elect nature of the
potential adept is expressed not only in terms of upbringing but also in terms of divine intervention at birth, resulting in the perfection of the candidate spiritually as well as somatically. In
aroyal inscription from the reign of Adad-nirari II (9rr-89r ncn), the king declares that the
great gods assigned him a "royal birth," perfecting his physical form and imparting wisdom to
his lordly body."'
Parpola takes due note of this special rhetoric as well and states that these assertions have
to be taken seriously: "They imply that he [the king] was more than a normal man: a semidivine being selected and called by gods and miraculously perfected for his office in the womb
of his mother - a crearure 'rwo-thirds god and one-third man,' like Gilgamesh, the prototype of the perfect king."" One may again take this a step further and consider all these
topoi as selÊreferential on the part of the philosophical poets who composed them; the latter are in fact describing their own development as spiritual adepts, just as when Ashurbanipal
declares that he can read very difficult texts of antediluvian origin, it is again as if the scribes
made this declaration from the mouth of the king."r In other words, most of these accounts
describe tbe man the king is not, and reflexively refer to their composers and the creators of
ent
ideology.
at
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THE MYTHOLOGY OF KINGSHIP IN NEO-ASSYRIAN ART
r7o
In light of this discussion, we cen then review the meaning of the formulaic scene as rePking flanked and
resented byAshurnasirpalt Panels F 3 and + (Fig. rrr), which show the
goll
,,fertilized"
The
by the apkallus. One can suggest two levels of meaning:
the
oní
Figure Kitg
Level r King the man,
head of the State
of Assyria
]level
2
Members of the king's inner
circle, the ummànus,heits
to the antediluvian wisdom
Activity Depicted
The instruction and perhaps
initiation of the king to the
mysteries and matters of the
of the aPhallus under whose
guise they are shown
sacerdotium guarded by the
ummanus and to which the
APballus
the
who
age,
a
of
golden
the Magus man, spirits
are invisible and exist in
the periect
occultation
ummanu
The
King-Man,
The antediluvian sages,
F
are
the
oft
are
king himself does not have
dor
offi
full
wh,
access
The "alchemical" processing
of the soul of the candidate;
and
fact
alsc
the initiation of the
ummãnu by invisible
woi
tediluvian spirits
the
cor
the
To sum up this discussion, rwo principal points can be highlighted. The first is that
chart
is
foregoing
image of the Assyrian king as it appears in visual formulas as addressed in the
pertaining to the spiritual privileges of a scribal-sacerdotal
primarily a self-referenti"l
"pp"r"t.rs
from the
elite. This idea does ¡-ro, -.".r, however, that there is no autonomy to royal rhetoric
of a group of
point of view of the king himself or that the king is a mere puPpe! in the hands
for the expression
scholars. This image and royal rhetoric in general are produced by the elite
by the former'
of both their own and the king's authoriry with the prioriry however, possessed
The second point is that as far as the transmission of antediluvian lore to the humaniry
of the current cosmos is concerned, a multistep Process seems to emerge from the relevant
realm' such as
sources. Knowledge is first imparted by beings or spirits belonging to a divine
in that they in
the aphallus,to personages or beings of an intermediate character, intermediate
it on to a full-fledged
a sense become increasingly h,r-"nlik. as time Progresses' who then pass
humanity. To quote Kvanvig:
The list in Brt Mëseri seems in fact to have a th
origin in the sea, the abode of Ea. They are ac
to reveal the wisdom of the gods' The next st
"four apkallus' of human descent whom th
he is only
The fo,rrth sage seems to be in a stage of transition between the period afterwards:
"rwo third apkallu.""a
as
human can
This final contact point, or juncture, in the gradation between the divine and the
men but still
be understood as the stage belonging to a culture hero, who is very much among
is comparable
somewhat divine. In this regard, ih.-fo,rrth sage's being only "rwo third apkallu"
before
ro the rwo-thirds divine .t",ur. of Gilgamesh. As a hero who brings knowledge from
tradition and
rhe flood and establishes civic foundations in Uruk, the Mesopocamian aphøllu
Gilgamesh
the Gilgamesh tradition may here be thought to converge. This understanding of
within
is al.o Ãngruent with the position of this hero in the Sumerian King List, emphatically
start
kings
of
point when the still superhuman reign periods
the postdiluvian period, brrt
"t "
on
orh
KING THE MAN, THE KING-MAN
going do'wn ro reelistic ones.
I submit that it
is precisely this Ênal stage
17T
in the gradation of
which Assyrian scholars would havc associaced themselves mo.st closely and that
the sages with
The Epic of Giþameshwould then have had a special place in their literary repertoire precisely
on account ofthese factors.
Finally, if one were to wonder why it is the sages rather than the scholars themselves who
are shown especially in the palace reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II, a plausible response might lie in
the nature and identity of the domain, or dimension, that is depicted in the reliefs. Because
of the undisputable presence of the narrative, or the "historical," component in the reliefs, we
think of the hieratic reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II as reflecting a realistic worldly
that
feature
the king in his various military and cultic roles along with a number of his
domain
officials. If one looked carefull¡ however, one would notice that except for the king himself,
whose image is highly formulaic and idealized in any event,, we are left exclusively with eunuchs
and winged sages. Even though eunuch officials were a realiry in the Assyrian bureaucracþ the
are often apt to
fact that the rdlief scenes are populaced solely with such non-mainstream male figures should
also point toward an environment that is to a great extent removed from the mundane. In other
words, the hieratic reliefs of Ashurnasirpal II present an extraordinary or ideal plane in which
the royal figure should be understood as representing the perfect man, or the King-Man, in the
1e
is
:al
he
of
)n
er.
iry
nt
as
in
ed
:efl
rill
ble
ôre
Lnd
esh
hin
rart
company of figures who operate at the same cosmic plane as the mythical øphallus, pointing
on the one hand to the immaterialiry of the domain in which they are represented and on the
other to the realiry of the antediluvian cosmos.
FrcuRE r r r. Ashurnasirpal
author.
II flanked by bird-headed genii, Room
F' Northwest Palace'
Nimrud' Photo: