how did king ship develop in cities
Answers
Kingship, especially the sacred aspects of the office of a king, has for a long time fascinated scholars in a variety of fields such as history, religious studies, or area studies. Kingship (or any kind of absolutist power) and its close relationship to and use of religion for the purpose of legitimizing power seem an almost universal concept in human history. Frazer’s famous work The Golden Bough: A Study in Religion and Magic has been highly influential on the topic of sacred or divine kingship and continues to be so until today (e.g. Quigley 2005).
The application of Frazer’s study to the civilizations of the ancient Near East is, however, problematical. His interpretation of sacred kingship was strongly influenced by Christian imagery (Feeley-Harnick 1985). Frazer made a certain form of regicide in which the divine king is sacrificed to ensure continued fertility and prosperity for the community a central element of divine kingship. This form of regicide, however, does not seem to play an important role in all of the societies that exhibit the phenomenon of divinization of the king.
Among the earliest civilizations that exhibit the phenomenon of divinized kings are early Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. Therefore it is all the more surprising that ancient Egyptian-to a lesser extent-and ancient Mesopotamian kingship are often ignored in comparative studies of the phenomenon of divine or sacred kingship.
Mesopotamia
The first Mesopotamian ruler who declared himself divine was Naram-Sin of Akkad. Naram-Sin reigned sometime during the 23rd century BCE but the exact dates and duration of his reign are still subject to research. According to his own inscription the people of the city of Akkad wished him to be the god of their city. This first instance of self-deification also coincides with the first world empire of the rulers of Akkad, the first time that a dynasty established a territorial ruler over large parts of Mesopotamia. It was also accompanied by certain changes in religion, in which the king proliferated the cult of the Ishtar, the goddess of war and love. Naram-Sin seems to have emphasized Ishtar in her war-like aspect (‘ashtar annunitum) and began to refer to himself as the husband/warrior of Ishtar.
After Naram-Sin no ruler declared himself divine until about 200 years had passed, when Shulgi (2095–2049 BCE), the second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, took up the custom of self-deification once more. His self-deification may have been viewed in attempts to consolidate the empire he had inherited from his father. The cult of the divine ruler seems to have culminated under Shu-Sin, who was probably Shulgi’s son or grandson and began an extensive program of self-worship (Brisch in press). After Shu-Sin the divinization kings was abandoned once more.
Whether the kings of the Old Babylonian period (c. 2000–1595 BCE) can be considered divine is still subject to debate. Some consider the kings Rim-Sin of Larsa (1822–1763 BCE) and the famous Hammurabi of Babylon (1792–1750 BCE) to have been divine. Both kings struggled to expand their area of influence, and therefore their self-deification may have been part of a strategy to consolidate and legitimize their powers.
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