The Substitute King Ritual
Returning to acts of human sacrifice in the material world, we come to the only other clear example of human sacrifice in ancient Mesopotamia, the substitute king ritual. This ritual was designed to save the king whom the gods had marked out for death by presenting an eclipse in the heavens.
To protect the king from such a fate, Mesopotamian scholars devised a strategy to excise the evil portent from the king by replacing him on the throne with a substitute who acted as a scapegoat by taking on the curse. In doing so, the gods' requirement of the sacrifice of a king was satiated while at the same time the life of the king was spared and his reign could continue. In this way, the records of the substitute king ritual reveal an altogether different relationship between the office of kingship in the Assyrian and Babylonian periods from the early Sumerian dynasty at Ur, in that we find the king was very much at the mercy of the gods and magical rituals and sacrificed humans to spare his own life. This is in contrast to the royal graves at Ur, where it seems the dead king took many to the netherworld with him for his own power and glory. However, it cannot be overlooked that the substitute king ritual demonstrates that the royal persona was the most important human in the land, as was the case in the funerary cult at Ur.The substitute king ritual has a long history, although it is recorded only sporadically from the second millennium bce through to the reign of Alexander the Great. The period best attested to is the Neo-Assyrian.[934] It is uncertain if the increased practice of the substitute king ritual during the Assyrian Empire is the result of the availability of a greater number of texts, or whether it reflects a shift in Mesopotamian scholarship with a rise in interest in astrology at the royal court equal to the traditional discipline of extispicy.
Indeed, by the first millennium bce astrology was a leading discipline in Mesopotamian scientific thought. Observing the movement of the planets and other astral phenomena had been the focus of generations of Babylonian scholars, who recognised patterns and, in turn, established a series of predictions that were then interpreted as omens about politics, economics and social relations. A great number of reports to the Assyrian imperial court from astrologers have survived, which demonstrate the kings' dependence on these reports for all manner of decisions.[935] Particularly fruitful are the reigns of Esarhaddon (r. 681-669 bce) and Ashurbanipal (r. 660-c. 627 bce), from which the scholarly correspondence furnish us with the procedural details of the ritual and thus best illustrate its nature and purpose.As indicated above, the need for the ritual was triggered by a solar, lunar or planetary eclipse. An eclipse visible in the Near East could be observed, of course, by any number of polities, and the interpretation as to which king must die depended on its time and date, the nature of the eclipse, and which part of the heavenly body was obscured.[936] For example, the scholar Mar- Issar, who acted as Esarhaddon's agent in Babylonia, suggested the following interpretations of an eclipse that designated a king of the ‘Westland' must die: ‘Perhaps the scholars can tell something about the (concept) of “Westland” to the king, my lord. Westland means the Hittite country (Syria) and the nomad land or, according to another tradition, Chaldea. Someone of the kings of Hatti, Chaldea or Arabia will carry this sign. With the king, my lord, all is well.'[937] However, if the planets Jupiter or Venus were present at the time of the eclipse, the fate would befall either a senior official in the administration or the land of the king would be attacked by an invading army.24 In such cases, no substitute was organised.
Some letters from the Neo-Assyrian period indicate that when scholars predicted an eclipse they would take precautionary action, such as installing a substitute prior to the eclipse to completely shield the king from any danger.25In the normal course of events, when the ritual was performed after an eclipse was observed, a substitute had to be selected, but who this should be is one of the more inconsistent aspects of the ritual. In the Hittite version and the accounts from the reign of Alexander the Great, a criminal and a prisoner of war were respectively chosen as the substitute.[938] However, this was not the practice of the Assyrians and Babylonians. In the Assyrian sources, the substitute was often referred to as a saklu, a term that has a broad range of meanings and has been interpreted as meaning ‘idiot' or ‘commoner'.[939] No doubt the interpretation of the Akkadian saklu has been influenced by modern scholarly assumptions about the sort of person who would be credulous enough to participate in the substitute king ritual. It is suggested here that the English pejorative use of the word ‘common' probably best translates saklu and does not assume the substitute was necessarily mentally impaired. Yet, from the first millennium bce there is firm evidence that the ritual required the substitute to be of noble stock. A ritual tablet from Ashurbanipal's reign states that the person should be from the royal family.[940] At least one of the substitutes from the Assyrian era was definitely from a noble family, and a letter from Mar-Issar to the king reports on a substitute who was the son of the prelate of Babylon.[941] On another occasion, it is stated that the saklu had to have the high temple office of prelate ordained upon him before taking on the role as substitute to fulfil the criteria of being a substitute worthy of a king of the Near East.[942] Hence, no mere commoner would do. A king needed a worthy substitute and it seems if a commoner were selected, he needed to be appointed to a high position to fulfil the criteria of a substitute for the king.
In this way, the substitute king ritual was not designed to fool the gods, but to appease their capricious interests by sacrificing a human of suitable status who could take on the king's curse.The process of the ritual saw the king removed from the throne and become a ‘farmer' while a substitute took the throne having been purified and dressed in the king's attire. The substitute was appointed a queen and the pair occupied the throne for a period of up to 100 days. During this time the substitute and his queen would undertake a series of apotropaic rites (namburbu) which aimed to excise the evil portent from the body of the king and attach them to the substitute and possibly his queen. This was done through the recitation of incantations, a text of the incantations having been
Ritual Killing and Human Sacrifice in the Ancient Near East sewn into his garments, and even ingesting copies of the incantations.[943] This process is evidence that the substitute understood the nature of his (and his queen's) role and duties in the ritual.[944]
During their term in office the substitute played a public ceremonial role but wielded no real political power. The Assyrian letters show that Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal continued to run the empire while they played the role of ‘farmer' away from court. Hence, the substitute appeared as a king, probably administering the cultic rites and other religious duties during his time in office and, as Jean Bottero puts it, serving as a ‘lightning rod' to take upon himself the evil that threatened the real king.[945] Having made this point, there were times when the substitute king did not act as a mere patsy. On one occasion the substitute uncovered a conspiracy among the officialdom and requested that the ‘farmer' be informed.[946] Further, the earliest account of a substitute king ritual ends quite poorly for the existing king. According to The Chronicle of Early Kings, Erra-imitti, installed Ellil-bani, a gardener, as a substitute.
However, while in exile Erra-imitti died after ‘he sipped a hot broth' and Ellil-bani remained on the throne![947] If this is a true account, then one wonders if Ellil-bani had Erra-imitti poisoned. In all other cases we find that after the allotted time was up the substitute and his queen were put to death. The method of sacrifice is not stated in any surviving text; we are told only that the substitute died. To ensure that the substitute king took the curse with him and his queen to the netherworld, a series of religious rituals and ceremonies were undertaken.[948] Upon completion of the burial and rites of the substitute, the ‘farmer' would undergo purification rituals and return to the throne freed from the curse to continue his reign.The rationale behind the substitute king ritual is identifiable in what Jean Bottero calls the ‘doctrine of substitution' in broader Mesopotamian practices of religion and medicine.[949] As noted, the ritual was an apotropaic ritual that excised evil from one individual to another, which could be done by contact, by resemblance, or both. Other instances of ritual substitutions attest to ill or
cursed people transferring their misfortune to a fashioned figurine, which would act as a substitute. These figurines could also be fed to dogs and other animals to transfer the malady to the creature, which would then be killed.[950] A particularly relevant example is found in the reigns of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal, where we find they used a ritual associated with the goddess of the netherworld, Eriskigal, to transfer their illness to a goat that would then be killed and buried to rid the kings of their illness.[951] There are further instances where it can be observed that animals were used to excise maladies from humans through direct contact in confined spaces, and rituals and rites using the clippings of fur and hair.[952]
The doctrine of substitution is also found in mythology, particularly in traditions about the goddess Inanna (Istar in Akkadian).
In myths about the goddess's journey to the netherworld substitution is the climax of the narrative.[953] An epithet of the netherworld is ‘The Land of No Return', and this is the crux. In order to leave the netherworld, as Inanna inevitably wanted to once she reached its depths, a suitable substitute had to be found. For Inanna, the perfect substitute turned out to be her husband, Dumuzi.Thus, this background of the legitimacy of substitution, of transferring illness of a curse from one person to an object or animal, in Mesopotamian religion shows that the substitute king ritual was not a fabricated scheme but a part of a genuine tradition. It did not aim to cheat the fate set upon the king; rather, rituals of substitution enabled the court to fulfil the divinely appointed destiny as closely as possible to the one they originally had in mind, even if it was materially different.[954]