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Updated: June 17, 2025
Esarhaddon devotes himself to the improvement of the old temple at Erech, and Ashurbanabal prides himself upon having rescued out of the hands of the Elamites a statue of Ishtar or Nanâ of Erech that had been captured 1635 years previous. Anu.
We certainly may conclude from these references that the people were taxed in some way for the support of the temples. Ashurbanabal in one place speaks of reimposing upon the population of the south the provision for the sattûku and ginû due to Ashur and Belit and the gods of Assyria; but, for all that, it is not certain that the regular sacrifices at the temples partook of a popular character.
Dating from the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanabal we have an elaborate series of prayers addressed to the sun-god, all dealing with questions of a political import. These prayers, so admirably edited and analyzed by Knudtzon, are all arranged according to a single pattern. Each one opens with a question or series of questions which Shamash, the sun-god, is asked to answer.
It would seem as though, through the influence of Sargon, a revival of the Nergal cult took place. His successor, Sennacherib, erects a temple in honor of the god at Tarbisu, a suburb to the north of Nineveh proper, and Ashurbanabal, who dwells at Tarbisu for a while, is engaged in adding to the beauty of the edifice, an indication of the honor in which the god continued to be held.
It mattered little to whom the dream was sent. Ashur, on one occasion, chose to reveal himself to an enemy of Ashurbanabal with a message. He appears in a dream before Gyges, the king of Lydia, and tells him, "Pay homage to Ashurbanabal, the king of Assyria, and by the power of his name conquer thine enemies." Gyges obeys and sends a messenger to the Assyrian monarch to inform him of the dream.
Sin, the moon-god, on one occasion writes his message on the moon's disc: Against all who have evil designs And hostile sentiments towards Ashurbanabal, the king of Assyria, Will I send a miserable death. Every dream was of course sent by some god, but the dreams of others than those who acted as mediators between the gods and men were of a different character. They were omens.
Apart from the formal lists of gods drawn up by Sargon and his successors, Shalmaneser II. and Ashurbanabal are the only kings who make special mention of Nusku. The former calls him the bearer of the brilliant sceptre, just as Nabu is so called; and again, just as Nabu, he is termed the wise god.
On the other hand, the confusion that took place in Ashurbanabal's days is foreshadowed by the title of 'Bêlit mâti, i.e., 'mistress of the land, by which Ashurbanabal appears to designate some other than Ishtar.
At Borsippa, likewise, Rawlinson and Rassam recovered a large number of clay tablets, most of them legal but some of them of a literary character, which proved to be in part duplicates of those in the royal library of Ashurbanabal.
He carries his arms to the banks of the Nile, and succeeds in realizing the dreams of his ancestors of a direct control over the affairs of Egypt. A patron of science and literature, as so many great conquerors, Ashurbanabal succeeds in making Nineveh a literary as well as a military center.
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