will never be possible to excavate all ancient sites systematically. Akkad, for one, has not
been discovered, and if it lies under the current water table, it never will be.
Royals were distinguished from their entourage mainly by context and only
sporadically by distinct attires and attributes. Through their link with the transcendent
sphere, they could adopt god-like features, yet even self-deified kings were always
recognisable as terrestrials; they merely emphasised their god-likeness more and moved
further away from reality. Monuments like Naramsin’s victory stela, on which the king
wears horns, rises like the sun-god and flaunts his body like a nude hero while
triumphing over defeated foes, must have had their share in sparking off the parodic
portrayal of hero-king Gilgamesh who overwhelms the besieging Kishite army by
nothing other than his radiating aura.^10
NOTES
1 Examples in literature are: Isˇme-Dagan K = ETCSL 2. 5. 4. 11 , l. 24 ; Ur-Namma A = ETCSL 2. 4. 1. 1 ,
ll. 88 – 131 ; Shu-Suen A = ETCSL 2. 4. 4. 1 , ll. 5 – 6. For grave goods, see Pollock 1991 : 372 – 379.
2 Inana B = ETCSL 4. 7. 2. For this composition reflecting ideology of the establishment, see
Glassner 2009.
3 Much discussion has ensued about whether the female figure depicts the goddess herself or a
priestess as her representative (most recently, Braun-Holzinger 2007 : 8 – 10 ; Asher-Greve 2008 :
126 – 127 ; Nunn 2010 : 248 note 35 ). I agree with Donald Hansen (in Zettler and Horne 1998 : 46 ),
who argued that the issue is irrelevant, since in ritual performance the participants become
godhead. If the image alludes to a rite, the representative of the goddess cannot have been one
of those high priestesses whose installation in office are recorded in later year names, since they
were daughters of the king and the marriage would thus have entailed a ritual incest (Cooper
1993 ). More likely would be a situation as in later Lagash, where the governor’s wife was the
priestess of Baba and, together with her husband, probably represented Baba and Ningirsu at
the annual festival celebrating their marriage (Sallaberger 1999 : 155 ).
4 Garments are common gifts for gods in offering lists from the Early Dynastic period on.
Moreover, textiles were an important product of animal husbandry. Although Strommenger’s
( 2008 ) criticism of Czichon is more than justfied, he may be correct in this one point that the
ruler took a textile to the goddess. Strommenger’s reconstruction with the ruler carrying a peg
makes no sense in the present scene, since such pegs were used in rituals that sealed transfers of
property as shown, for example, on the Blau Monuments (Gelb et al. 1991 ).
5 Despite newer literature on the Sacred Marriage (e.g., Nissinen and Uro 2008 ), Cooper’s article
remains the most perceptive. I find neither the separation of theogamy and hierogamy and the
emphasis on verbal communication useful for early Mesopotamia, nor the mystified correlation
of Inana with the human soul. For the Ur III period, see also Sallaberger 1999 : 155 – 156.
6 The lack of evidence for a general New Year festival may be due in part to the autonomy of local
cults, in part to the vagaries of our sources. In the Ur III period, “new year” (zag-mu) designated
the climax of the year in the cult of a deity rather than a fixed point in time (Sallaberger 1993 :
310 ), although the year started generally in spring, coinciding with the harvest (Cohen 1993 : 14 ).
7 An inlay from Tello depicts Akurgal with a shaven head (Braun-Holzinger 2007 : pl. 19 no. FD
8 ). Braun-Holzinger’s arguments for seeing a man in Abda (ibid.: 40 note 38 , and 60 note 142 )
do not convince me.
8 For more examples of such images, see Suter 2010 : 329 – 330 , 335 – 337 , 345 – 346.
9 It is no coincidence that his apology for self-deification is inscribed on the statue of a nude hero
(Braun-Holzinger 1984 : no. 61 ).
10 Gilgamesh and Aka = ETCSL 1. 8. 1. 1 ; for this understanding of the composition, see Civil
1999 – 2000.
–– Claudia E. Suter ––