RELIGIONThe thoughts outlined above can also be seen in the field of religion. Neither Babylon
nor Ashur played an important role before the second millennium BCE. Therefore,
their main gods – Marduk and Ashur – were not part of the traditional Mesopotamian
pantheon and had to be incorporated slowly.
Marduk, originally a North Babylonian deity (see Oshima in this volume), who
may have been associated in the beginning with the water ordeal and divine justice,
was at an early stage identified with the Sumerian god Asalluhi, and thus entered
the traditional Mesopotamian pantheon. The development of the cult of Marduk is,
so far, unparalleled in the Ancient Near East. As the city of Babylon gained political
importance, Marduk rose from a mere local deity to a major god, his cult spread over
all of Babylonia and he assumed the name Bel ‘lord’. During the second half of the
second millennium BCE, he became the overall lord of heaven and earth and the
organiser of the universe. By the end of the second millennium BC, he had replaced
the Sumerian god Enlil as supreme god of the Babylonian pantheon (Lambert 1964 ;
Sommerfeld 1982 ).
The god Ashur was very closely connected with his city. Both were known by the
same name and some scholars think that Ashur originally was the deified city itself
(Lambert 1983 ). But it is similarly conceivable that the city – often written URU
assur.KI – got its name from the god as ‘city of (the god) Ashur’. There is only little
evidence for temples dedicated to Ashur outside his city. An Old Assyrian letter from
the nineteenth century BCEmentions an Ashur temple in the Syrian town of Urshu.
Tukulti-Ninurta I had a sanctuary for Ashur built in his new capital Kar-Tukulti-
Ninurta, and texts from the first millennium BCErefer to an Ashur shrine in Nineveh
(Frame 1999 ). Like Marduk, Ashur had no specific function although he is associated
with law and order already in Old Assyrian texts. His importance rose as the political
power of the city Ashur increased. In the eighteenth century, Samsi-Addu introduced
the cult of Enlil to Upper Mesopotamia. When he made the city of Shechna his residence
he changed its name to Shubat-Enlil ‘Seat of Enlil’ and he added an Enlil-shrine to
the temple of Ashur. He thus initiated a syncretistic process during which several
aspects of Enlil were transferred to Ashur, especially his function as lord of the civilised
world and bestower of kingship. His main temple in Ashur was called Esharra
‘Universe-House’, Ekur ‘Mountain-House’, Ehursagkalama ‘Mountain of the Land-
House’ or Ehursagkurkurra ‘Mountain of all countries-House’. Originally all these
were names of the Enlil-Temple in Nippur. Ashur, who initially had no family connec-
tions, was then associated with Enlil’s wife Ninlil, who was venerated in Assyria under
the name Mulissu, and with Enlil’s sons Ninurta and Zababa (Frame 1997 , 1999 ).
Tukulti-Ninurta I in the second half of the thirteenth century exalted Ashur as
‘Assyrian Enlil’ and, in his attempt to build an empire equally on Assyrian and
Babylonian traditions, he promoted Ashur as supreme god for the whole of Meso-
potamia. This brought Ashur into competition with Marduk, who is also called ‘Enlil
of the gods’ in the apologetic text Enuma elish, which was read during the New Year’s
festival in Babylon. At the end of the epic, the fifty names of Marduk are invoked
thus transferring the holy number of Enlil – fifty – to the god of Babylon.
But as the Tukulti-Ninurta Epic relates, Marduk and other Babylonian gods left
Babylonia for Assyria, thus acknowledging the supremacy of the ‘Assyrian Enlil’. The
— Looking down the Tigris —