Bibliographic Essay

For a general coverage of the beliefs and practices in Mesopotamian religion see the following: Benjamin R. Foster, ‘Mesopotamia', in John R. HinneUs (ed.), A Handbook of Ancient Religions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp.

Excellent English translations of the mythological texts cited in this chapter can be found in Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd edn (Bethesda, MD: CDL Press, 2005); Stephanie M. Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); A. R. George, The Epic of Gilgamesh: A New Translation (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999); and W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths, Mesopotamian Civilizations 16 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2013). The corpus of letters from the Assyrian Empire that provides details about the substitute king ritual can be found in Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars, State Archives of Assyria 10 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1993). Analytical commentaries on these letters, together with a succinct and indispensable account of the substitute king ritual, can be found in Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.

The royal graves at Ur have been the focus of a number of studies. The excavations and original interpretations are presented in C. Leonard Woolley, The Royal Cemetery: A Report on the Predynastic and Sargonid Graves Excavated between 1926-31, Ur Excavation Reports 2 (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1934). Recommended too is Woolley's more popular yet still detailed account of the entire excavations at Ur, which included some of the more tendentious conclusions, Ur of the Chaldees: A Record of Seven Years of Excavations (London: Pelican Books, 1938). More recent critical assessments of Woolley's work with an incorporation of later trends in scholarship are found in Richard L. Zettler and Lee Horne (eds.), Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1998).

Recent studies of power, religion and kingship in Mesopotamia and Egypt that have a significant bearing on the topics covered in this chapter can be found in Jane A. Hill, Philip Jones and AntonioJ. Morales (eds.), Experiencing Power, Generating Authority: Cosmos Politics and the Ideology of Kingship in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 2011).

Beate Pongratz-Leisten, ‘Ritual Killing and Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East', in K. Finsterbusch, A. Lange and K. F. Diethard Romheld (eds.), Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 3-33 surveys a wider range of the topic than is covered here, extending to understanding how Near Eastern practices relate to Christianity, while an excellent coverage of the use of animals, including ritual sacrifice and substitution, in Mesopotamian religion is JoAnn Scurlock, ‘Animals in Ancient Mesopotamian Religion' and ‘Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Mesopotamian Religion', in Billie Jean Collins (ed.), A History of the Animal World in the Ancient Near East, Handbook of Oriental Studies 64 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 361-403.