Babylon, 689-668 bc
Between 689 bc and 668 bc, the people of Babylon went from suffering the destruction of their city at the hands of the Assyrian emperor Sennacherib to celebrating simultaneously the return of the statue of their patron god Marduk and the installation of Sennacherib’s grandson, Samas-suma-ukin, as their new king.
Sennacherib had destroyed the city of Babylon in 689 bc after five years of Babylonian revolt against Assyrian rule. During that rebellion, the Babylonians had handed over Sennacherib’s own son, Assur-nadin-sumi, whom Sennacherib had placed on the Babylonian throne, to the Elamites, Babylonia’s frequent allies in their resistance to Assyrian rule. Sennacherib’s anger toward Babylon was understandable, but the Assyrians had traditionally held Babylon and its gods in high esteem. The Assyrian respect for Babylon made the sacking of the city all the more dramatic; it was certainly the most severe punitive measure taken by the Assyrians in their efforts to control their Babylonian subjects. Based on his own inscription, it is clear that Sennacherib wanted to make an impression. He claims to have slaughtered the inhabitants of Babylon, destroyed its gods, razed it to the ground, and flooded the ruins, causing so much debris to float downstream on the Euphrates that it was still visible when it reached the Persian Gulf.21 Among the gods destroyed was Marduk, the chief of the Babylonian pantheon. The destruction of the cult statue of Marduk did not mean that the god had been destroyed, but represented a removal of the divine presence and signified Marduk’s displeasure with his city,22 themes that were already centuries old in Mesopotamia by the first millennium.23 Marduk’s absence meant that the rites of his cult, most notably observances of the akitu festival, ceased, a tragedy that would be commemorated by later Babylonian chroniclers looking back on the event.24Yet after only eight years, circumstances had changed.
Sennacherib had been assassinated by his second-eldest son in 681, and in the resulting power struggle his younger, favoured son, Esarhaddon, prevailed.25 Soon after succeeding his father to the throne, Esarhaddon began the complicated task of reversing Assyrian policy toward Babylon. Unlike his father, he adopted Babylonian titulary and inaugurated the rebuilding of Babylon. Esarhaddon’s programme was clearly a conciliatory gesture meant to regain and strengthen Babylonia’s loyalty to Assyria by communicating to them Assyria's renewed respect for the city and its institutions.26 In spite of his good intentions, Esarhaddon’s rule seems to have been accepted by the Babylonians with a degree of wariness; he encountered some armed resistance in Babylonia,27 and dating practices on economic tablets suggest some reluctance on the part of Babylonian scribes to give to Esarhaddon the title ‘king of Babylon’.28 Likewise, there may have been factions within the Assyrian court and in other Babylonian cities that did not embrace Esarhaddon’s attitude toward Babylon,29 contributing to Esarhaddon’s belief that his position was tenuous and threatened by conspiracies.30 For imperial policy to change toward Babylon and for the Babylonian people to embrace an Assyrian monarch, the narratives surrounding the previous events would have to be altered. An explanation that cleared Sennacherib of any guilt in Babylon’s destruction would have to be created, suitable substitute narratives would have to be found that placed both the city’s destruction and Marduk’s return in a more favourable light, and there would be a need to transmit the new narratives to the broadest population possible.Under Esarhaddon, Assyrian scribes engaged in an effort to minimize Sennacherib’s agency in the destruction of Babylon. Whereas Sennacherib boasted in his inscriptions that he had destroyed the gods of Babylon and diverted the Euphrates to flood Babylon,31 Esarhaddon claimed that Babylon was destroyed by a flood (with no mention of his father’s agency) and that the flight of its gods was divine punishment for the sins of the Babylonians, specifically their unwillingness to heed admonitory omens and their decision to use the wealth of Marduk’s temple to purchase Elamite aid in their rebellion against Assyria.32 The scribes attached to Esarhaddon’s court drew upon the emperor’s interest in omens and divination to compose royal inscriptions that presented Esarhaddon’s rebuilding of Babylon and Esagil as consistent with the wishes of the gods.33 Esarhaddon’s correspondences with officials at Babylon alluded to the remaking of the Marduk statue and preparations for its returns.34 These efforts found expression in Esarhaddon’s own inscriptions, which describe Marduk as having been reborn in Assyria.35 Court scribes also expanded on this theme by promoting the literary fiction that Sennacherib had intended to remake the image of Marduk.36
Esarhaddons ultimate goal was to return the Marduk statue to Babylon, but he died while on campaign against Egypt in 669 before his plans could come to fruition.37 He had, however, been careful to establish the royal succession: Ashurbanipal was crowned king of Assyria and Samas-suma-ukin was placed on the Babylonian throne.38 Even though Samas-suma-ukin brought the statue of Marduk with him to Babylon in the second month of 668 bc,39 both brothers continued their father's work in Babylonia and both took credit for rebuilding Esagil and returning Marduk in their Babylonian inscriptions.40 References to the refashioning of the Marduk statue, which implied that it had been destroyed, disappear from Ashurbanipal's inscriptions and instead Ashurbanipal claims that Marduk resided in Assur during his exile ‘in the presence of the father who created him'.41 This change further alleviated Sennacherib's sin by promoting the fiction that Sennacherib had not destroyed Marduk, but instead brought the statue back to Assur.