cuneiform script and through dialects of the same Akkadian language, their views of
each other were quite different (Machinist 1984 / 85 ).
Southern Mesopotamia had older and more established traditions. It was regarded
as the birthplace of civilisation, the land where the gods themselves roamed during
the times before the Great Flood. Babylon was called the centre of the world (George
1997 ; Maul 1997 ). Assyria left important political imprints in Babylonia but almost
no religious or cultural ones. There seem to be some Assyrian influences in the stylistic
developments of Babylonian glyptic, architecture and ceramics, but these are not
properly studied yet (Brinkman 1984 : 27 ). On the other hand Assyria was more
receptive to Babylonian ideas and innovations. The north had initially been under
southern control and Assyrians adopted from Babylonia religious ideas, cultic practices,
literary traditions and architectural elements. The Assyrian elites have been very
sensitive to Babylonian culture and habits. The official Assyrian texts are written
mainly in literary Babylonian. Assyrian kings regularly adopted Babylonian royal
epithets. The Assyrian pantheon consists to a high degree of gods and goddesses of
Sumero-Babylonian origin. But Babylonian influence seems to have been limited to
the intellectual sphere and to the elite of Assyrian society. Its intensity also fluctuated
during Mesopotamian history.
During the reign of Samsi-Addu, the city of Ashur was exposed to heavy cultural
import (Galter 1986 ). The royal administration of his kingdom shows many similarities
with that of the kings of Akkade. In his royal inscriptions Samsi-Addu copied Old
Akkadian monumental inscriptions. He assumed Babylonian military and imperial
epithets and used the traditional Assyrian religious titles only sporadically. He also
is the only Old Assyrian king of whom a triumphal stele is preserved, and from Mari
we have a text that mentions offerings to the statues of kings of Akkade under his
rule. From all this we can deduce that Samsi-Addu saw himself as heir to the Old
Akkadian empire.
For the city of Ashur this meant severe changes. The delicate equilibrium between
god, king and leading families that characterised the early history of the city gave
way to imperialistic concepts. For the first time, it seems, a palace was built and
royal officials controlled all parts of the political and economic life of the city. The
Assyrian dialect was replaced by the Babylonian in official documents. Samsi-Addu
connected the cult of Ashur with the cult of the Sumerian god Enlil and added an
Enlil sanctuary to the temple of Ashur. He also seems to have added a shrine for the
Sumerian sky-god Anu to the temple of the weather-god Adad. Moreover, texts from
Samsi-Addu’s reign speak for the first time of religious festivals (akitum, humtum),
that are known from the south since the third millennium, and the earliest examples
for Ziqurrati in Assyria also date to the time of Samsi-Addu: Ashur, Tell al-Rimah,
Tell Leilan. The outer walls of the temples in these cities show decorations of projections
and recesses that are known from earlier temples in Ur and Larsa. On the other hand,
the Assyrian dating system with eponyms was exported to other parts of Mesopotamia.
Whereas, in Babylonia, years were named after important events of the preceding
year, Assyrians named them after individuals holding an annual office (limmu). Under
Samsi-Addu’s rule this system was used in several Mesopotamian cities including Mari,
Terqa and Shubat-Enlil. It seems as if he tried to connect his newborn kingdom of
Upper Mesopotamia with the older and more prestigious cultural traditions of Southern
— Looking down the Tigris —