Kingship and the Gods: a Review

Extract

Every schoolboy knows that King Rimush of Agade was struck down in a Palace revolt-some say pierced to death by sharp bodkins, others that his skull was smashed by heavy stone tablets. And it is now almost common knowledge that Bur-Sin died of a pinched shoe-it may have been following on a septic foot contracted at Eridu, when he was pacing the sand in the precincts of his unfinished Ziggurat. No less undignified was the death of Sin-iddinam of Larsa, crushed to death in his Palace by the fall of a staircase. But who ever heard of a Pharaoh so ludicrously stricken? There lies the difference between the Egyptian and Mesopotamian concept of monarchy. The Pharaoh was a god and the son of a god, made in the image and likeness of Horus, son of Osiris: it is true that was mortal, as was more than one of the ancient gods, but his mortality lay lightly u him because when the time came for his end upon earth he was predestined to rebirth as Osiris. In the Tigris-Euphrates valley a king, whatever else he might be, was pre-eminently a man, even if only a little lower than the angels, and even the mighty Sargonid Kings of Assyria, could on occasion receive and accept a rebuke from their subjects. Indeed the Assyrian kings, whom we are accustomed to think of as arrogant warriors, were no less the slaves of the society they served than the humblest members of their realm.