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Updated: May 6, 2025
This council chamber was situated at the eastern end of the great mountain, and was known as Du-azagga, that is, 'brilliant chamber. The chamber itself constituted the innermost recess of the eastern limit of the mountain, and the special part of the mountain in which it lay was known as Ubshu-kenna, written with the ideographic equivalents to 'assembly room. It will be apparent that such a view of the papakhu is the result of theological speculation, and is not due, as is the conception of the zikkurat, to popular beliefs.
He addresses the assembled gods: When I shall have become your avenger, Binding Tiâmat and saving your life, Then come in a body, In Ubshu-kenna, let yourselves down joyfully, My authority instead of yours will assume control, Unchangeable shall be whatever I do, Irrevocable and irresistible, be the command of my lips. The declaration foreshadows the result.
The Du-azagga is older than the Ubshu-kenna. Situated in the extreme east, the 'brilliant chamber' is evidently the place whence the sun rises in the morning. A hymn to Shamash expressly speaks of the sun rising out of the Du-azagga, and, since the sun also appears to rise up out of the ocean, the Du-azagga is placed at a point close to the great Apsu, which flows underneath the mountain.
In their desire to make Marduk the central figure of the pantheon, they bring all the gods to his side. The Ubshu-kenna is thus transferred to the region whence the sun issues on his daily journey. The 'chamber' of Marduk becomes the most sacred spot in this region, and the Ubshu-kenna the general name for the region itself.
But the same conception would hold good of Shamash, of Ninib, and of some other solar deities, though not of all. That Du-azagga came to be especially associated with Marduk is due simply to the preëminent rank that he came to occupy. Whether there was also a popular basis for the conception of an Ubshu-kenna, an 'assembly room' of the gods, is a question more difficult to answer.
The assembly of the gods presupposes a systematization of the pantheon, and the fact that it is only the papakhu in Marduk's temple which is known as Du-azagga is a sufficient indication of the influences at work which produced this conception. In the creation epic, there is a reference to the Ubshu-kenna which shows the main purpose of a divine assembly in the eyes of the priests of Babylon.
On these days all the gods were brought together in the "chamber of fates" of Marduk's temple. In symbolical imitation of the assembly of the gods in Ubshu-kenna, Marduk sits on his throne and the gods are represented as standing in humble submission before him, while he decrees the fates of mankind for the coming year.
As Marduk in Babylon was surrounded by his court, so in Ubshu-kenna the gods assemble to pay homage to the one freely acknowledged by them as the greatest, and who is pictured as sitting on his throne in Du-azagga.
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