For the Babylonians, on the other hand, Ashur had never been part of their pantheon.
He was solely the god representing the political and military power of Assyria, and
was just ignored (Frame 1999 ). Sennacherib’s son, Esarhaddon, started rebuilding the
destroyed sanctuaries of Babylon, especially Esangila, the temple of Marduk. Most of
the booty from his campaign against Egypt went into this project. Nevertheless, the
building process went on slowly and with many setbacks (Landsberger 1965 ;
Chamazada 2002 : 178 – 185 ). So it was Ashurbanipal who returned the statues of
Marduk and other gods to their Babylonian temples, thus laying the foundations for
the final rise of the Marduk cult in the sixth century BCE.
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— Looking down the Tigris —