Mesopotamia. Most innovations did not survive the crisis at the end of Samsi-Addu’s
reign. Others were kept and mixed with Assyrian elements.
The thirteenth century BCE, again, was a period of strong cultural transfer. The
cult of several Babylonian gods such as Marduk, Nabû and Ninurta, was established
in Assyria, and Ashur was finally identified with Enlil. This transfer culminated in
Tukulti-Ninurta’s attempt to create an Assyro-Babylonian monarchy. After successful
campaigns in the east, north and west, Tukulti-Ninurta’s Babylonian war added the
final piece to his rule over the four regions of the world. Then he moved the centre
of Mesopotamia to his new capital Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta. The south was devastated,
depopulated and heavily plundered. People, material and intellectual wealth were
transferred to Assyria. The new capital showed Assyrian and Babylonian architectural
elements, and its archive stored numerous cuneiform tablets covering all fields of
science and literature that had been taken from Babylon (Machinist 1984 / 85 ; Brinkman
1990 : 89 – 94 ). The Babylonian system of fixed succeeding terms of kingship (palû)
was introduced into Assyrian historiographic literature to explain this shift of power
and, in the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic, the Babylonian gods legitimated the new order
by abandoning their southern homes and siding with the Assyrian king, making the
war between Assyria and Babylonia a juridical ordeal about supremacy in Mesopotamia.
An Assyrian ritual text confirms the presence of the statue of Marduk in Kar-Tukulti-
Ninurta and its prominent role in religious ceremonies.
But, even in Assyria, the traditional Babylonian world view with the city of Babylon
as centre of the earth was too deeply rooted for this political experiment to be successful
(George 1997 ; Maul 1997 ). Five hundred years later, Sennacherib failed in a similar
attempt. After his destruction of Babylon, he introduced the Babylonian New Year’s
festival into the Assyrian cultic calendar and moved earth from the destroyed city to
his newly erected temple for this festival in Ashur, trying to create a new centre of
Mesopotamia literally on the soil of the old one.
In the meantime the Assyrian intellectual elite were strongly attracted by Babylon-
ian culture with its flourishing scribal tradition, its ancient lore and its living
scholarship. Babylonian scientific and literary texts figured prominently in Assyrian
libraries.
When Ashurbanipal enlarged the palace library of Nineveh to make it the greatest
tablet collection in the known world, his scholars not only collected or copied cunei-
form texts within Assyria but also searched Babylonian temple libraries and private
collections for new material. Acquisition lists show that the tablets were gathered
from official and private collections throughout Babylonia after the conquest of Babylon
in 648 BCE, and a letter from Ashurbanipal to the governor of Borsippa contains the
order to confiscate the private and temple libraries of that city. The celebrated library
of Ashurbanipal included literary, scientific, medical, juridical, religious, mantic, eso-
teric and historical texts comprising the totality of Assyrian and Babylonian erudition
and learning. Modern interpretations of this transfer of knowledge to Nineveh range
from mere personal interests – Ashurbanipal was one of the few Mesopotamian kings
who boasted of their literacy – to an excess of Assyrian centralism or to a final effort
to preserve the dying cuneiform tradition (Parpola 1983 ; Leichty 1988 ; Lieberman
1990 ).
— Hannes D. Galter —