CHAPTER 4: POLYTHEISM, MULTIPLICITY, AND ASSYRIOLOGY Recognizing the difference between official religion and non-official religion not
F. George Barton
It was along these lines that over a century ago G. Barton, entertained the idea that “Ištar” should be interpreted as a title like “Baal” rather than as a personal divine
93 Beckman 1998, 6.
94 In Boğazköy, Šaušga is spelled syllabically in no fewer than nine ways. Three logograms – dIŠTAR, dGAŠAN, and dLIŠ – also receive various phonetic compliments. For a list of attested spellings in Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and northern Syria, see Wegner 1981, 21-23.
name,95 but this is something that Beckman does not consider in his discussion of the Hittite pantheon as it relates to Ištar/Šaušga-of-Nineveh.
Writing near the end of the 19th century C.E., Barton surveyed “the great mass of material extant in the Assyrian language” and concluded that these texts needed to be classified in order to reconstruct the history of Ištar in the Mesopotamian pantheon.96 His interest in classification arose primarily in response to the three local Ištar-associated goddesses in the Neo-Assyrian period, namely, Ištar-of-Nineveh, Ištar-of-Arbela, and The Assyrian Ištar. Barton suggested two possible systems. The first relied upon the assumed link between the local goddess and her cult, and it assumed that each of these three Ištar goddesses possessed her own unique personality and characteristics. Each of these Ištars was to be considered independent of the others until Barton demonstrated otherwise. If a text could undoubtedly be traced to a particular temple (TN) or to a
particular city (GN), he identified that Ištar as Ištar-of-TN/GN. After sorting the texts into three different collections according to their cults of origin, he used each collection to reconstruct an individual personality for each local Ištar-associated goddess.
Barton based his second system on the texts’ historical settings rather than their geographical provenance. This approach downplayed the need to assign a provenance or origin to any texts in order to decide which Ištar a given text refers since provenance and origins were irrelevant when compared to when the text was written. Moreover, it
avoided another primary assumption of the first because it did not assume that these Ištars’ personalities could be differentiated. Depending on historical texts rather than cultic or mythic texts, this method linked the king to a particular Ištar. His main
95 G. A. Barton, “The Semitic Ištar Cult (Continued),” Hebraica 10 (1893-1894): 68-71. 96 G. A. Barton, “The Semitic Ištar Cult,” Hebraica 9 (1893): 131.
assumption here was that a king would invoke the Ištar of his capital city rather than any other Ištar. Because the Ištar from his capital was geographically closer to the king than any other localized Ištar, the king must have addressed her, regardless of the provenance of a given text. Had the king meant to address a different Ištar, he would have expressly indicated this in the inscription.97 Barton considered this latter method the more reliable of the two because it provided “a tangible rather than a speculative basis on which to rest, and in investigations of such antiquity such a basis should always be sought.”98 This speculative basis of the former method was the idea that divine personalities were distinct enough to accurately distinguish between two gods.
Barton’s reconstruction began with the various Ištar-associated goddesses with Ištar-of-Nineveh because she was first invoked by Aššurnāṣirpal I, son Šamši-Adad IV, whom Barton dated to the Old Assyrian period.99 Though Assur served as the Assyria capital during Aššurnāṣirpal’s reign in the eleventh century, Barton considered this a Ninevite text because of its provenance. Moreover, this psalm refers to Ištar as the lady of Nineveh (a-nabe-leturuNINA, AfO 25 38, l. 5) who dwells in the Emašmaš temple (a-na a-ši-bate2-maš-maš, l. 3).100 According to Aššurnāṣirpal’s psalm, Ištar-of-Nineveh is Sȋn’s daughter and the beloved sister of Šamaš (DUMU.MUNUS d30 ta-li-matdšam-ši, l. 6), as well as the wife of the supreme god Aššur (na-ra-mi3-ki AD DINGIRmeš…q[u?-ra]-
dudaš-šur, 42, l. 81). Elsewhere, Aššurnāṣirpal claims to be the one who introduced the
97 Barton 1893, 131. This method allows Barton to attribute the myth “Ištar’s Descent” and, as a corollary of this myth, other texts discussing Tammuz and Ištar to the Ištar-of-Nineveh because the tablets were recovered from Ashurbanipal’s library in Nineveh (pp. 150 and 153). Barton does, however, recognize that the tradition behind this myth likely predates the Neo-Assyrian period, but, because he lacked the much earlier Sumerian version, he could not provide a definite period for its composition (p. 150).
98 Barton 1893, 131.
99 Barton dated this psalm by Aššurnāṣirpal I to Ištar to ca. 1800 B.C.E. (Barton 1893, 135), but
Aššurnāṣirpal I is now known to have reigned during the second half of the eleventh century (Kuhrt 1998, 1:362). Barton did note that the text only survived in a Neo-Assyrian copy from Ashurbanipal’s library. 100 W. von Soden, “Zwei Königsgebete an Ištar aus Assyrien,” AfO 25 (1974): 38.
worship of Ištar to the people of Assyria (39, 24-25), which Barton rightly regarded a royal hyperbole.101
Like the extant copy of this psalm to Ištar-of-Nineveh, the remainder of the material available to Barton belongs to the Neo-Assyrian period, beginning with texts dating to Aššurnāṣirpal II’s ninth-century reign.102 The Ištar-of-Nineveh statements from Aššurnāṣirpal II’s reign indicate that she was a warrior goddess, alongside Aššur, and his patron goddess (e.g., RIMA 2 A.0.101.1 i 70).103 None of these texts explicitly refer to her as Ištar-of-Nineveh; rather, the earliest text specifically invoking Ištar-of-Nineveh that was available to Barton dates to the end of the eighth century,104 during the reign of Sennacherib. Significantly, Sennacherib is the king who moved the Assyrian capital moved to Nineveh, and this is also, according to Barton, when Ištar-of-Nineveh joined Aššur as chief deity.105
Texts invoking other Neo-Assyrian period Ištars were limited compared to those invoking Ištar-of-Nineveh,106 so Barton concluded little more than that these Ištars were warrior goddesses. Because he accepted that The Assyrian Ištar was Aššur’s wife during Tiglath-Pileser I’s reign at Assur and because Ištar-of-Ninveh was Aššur’s wife during Sennacherib’s reign at Nineveh, Barton concluded these two goddesses should be
101 Barton 1893, 151.
102 Barton mentions texts from Aššur-rēš-iši I’s reign, ca. 1150, and an earlier reference to Ištar in a letter from Tušratta of Mitanni to Amenhotep III of Egypt, ca. 1400, but he is forced to overlook them because he cannot definitively determine to which city or shrine – and thus to which Ištar – these texts may refer. This is no problem for him, however, since neither text adds to his knowledge of Ištar (Barton 1893, 137). 103 Barton 1893, 136; RIMA 2 A.0.101.1 i 70: inaqi2-bitaš-šurdINANA DINGIRmeš GALmeš ENmeš-ia TA uruni-nu-aat-tu-muš, “By the command of Aššur (and) Ištar, the great gods, my lords, I departed from Nineveh.”
104 Barton 1893, 138-139.
105 Barton 1893, 152. Barton notes that Ištar-of-Nineveh was already “classed with Aššur as one of the two first gods of the land” (pp. 151-152) when she first reappeared in Aššurnāṣirpal II’s annals, but Sennacherib first describes her as a chief deity.
106 Because Barton recognized Assur as the capital of Assyria between 1800 and 885, he considered any unspecified reference to Ištar from this period as a reference to the Assyrian Ištar (Barton 1893, 151).
identified: “We may hence infer that the myths connected with these two Ištars were the same.”107 Ištar-of-Arbela, on the other hand, had her own mythology and familial relationships that contradict those of the other Ištars, including her lack of any known consort.108
In his second essay, Barton examined the goddess Ištar-of-Babylon, whose antiquity was indicated by a hymn from ca. 2000, according to Barton.109 She was a mother goddess, merciful to those who appeal to her in times of stress, and she was the planet Venus.110 Such statements should have led Barton to accept that there were, in fact, multiple distinct goddesses with the divine first name Ištar. However, he instead concluded: “When we remember that Zarpanit was a mother goddess, and that as the wife of Marduk, the chief Babylonian deity she occupied the same position in Babylon that Ištar did at Nineveh, the conclusion cannot be escaped that Ištar and Zarpanit were one.”111 (This is all the more surprising given that Barton knew of texts wherein Ṣarpānītu and Nanaya were asked to intercede with Ištar on the supplicant’s behalf.112) Furthermore, Barton notes that because Nebuchadnezzar called Ṣarpānītu a “merciful mother” and “my lady,” the mother epithet resembles Ištar-of-Babylon’s in her hymn, while “my lady” is reminiscent of Ištar-of-Nineveh’s epithet, “Lady,” (bēlet-).113 This similarity to Ištar-of-Nineveh solidified Barton’s supposition that Ištar-of-Babylon was Ṣarpānītu. Ištar-of-Nineveh/Assur was the spouse of the chief deity of Nineveh/Assur
107 Barton 1893, 158.
108 Barton 1893, 165. Barton noted that Ištar-of-Uruk is the daughter of Anu and Antu which suggests that this is also a different Ištar from Ištar-of-Nineveh and Ištar-of-Arbela (Barton 1893-1894, 14).
109 Barton 1893-1894, 15.
110 Barton 1893-1894, 22. Barton credits Babylon and its astrological reputation for associating Ištar-of- Babylon with the planet Venus.
111 Barton 1893-1894, 21.
112 Barton 1893-1894, 22. Barton also adds that, like Ṣarpānītu, Nanaya is also another form or personality of Ištar, as described in the Hymn to Ištar.
113 Barton 1893, 151-152.
Aššur, so Ištar-of-Babylon must also be the spouse of the chief god of Babylon
Marduk.114 Because Ṣarpānītu appeared as Marduk’s spouse in the HymntoIštar and was paired with him elsewhere along with other couples, she, too, was his spouse, and rather than allow Marduk two wives, Barton equated the two goddesses.
Though Barton recognized that bēlet- was merely the feminine form of bēl
(“lord”), itself a title,115 he allowed this epithet to color his view of the relationship between the goddesses.116 However, the epithet is too generic to be used to equate deities, just as using the generic titles “king” or “lord” would be inadequate to equate human kings, or using ummu (“mother”) to equate various goddesses.117 Such a liberal method of divine equation would inevitably lead to the identification of any deity with any and all others, a tendency that has, unfortunately, already crept into many facets of modern Assyriology and biblical scholarship.
Furthermore, Barton’s diachronic analysis of the Ištar-associated goddesses is also highly problematic. Barton’s willingness to draw conclusions about a goddess based on a couple of texts from (according to his chronology) the late third millennium and another from the middle of the first millennium skewed his conclusions. This may have seemed necessary to him given the relatively sparse data in his day, but scholars occasionally still supplement their conclusions drawn about a deity from one body of evidence with a text
114 Interestingly, the fact that Herodotus mentioned that Ištar was called Μύλιττα at Babylon, which Barton identified with the Assyrian Mulittu – though erroneously derived from walādu – does not inspire Barton to identify Ištar-of-Babylon with the Assyrian goddess Ištar-of-Nineveh (Barton 1893-1894, 22).
115 Barton 1893, 156.
116 Another epithet-like issue that Barton considers is whether the name Ištar is itself a title, which would explain for him why there are so many Ištars throughout the ancient Semitic world (Barton 1893-1894, 68- 70). However, he ultimately decided that the original Ištar was the primary mother goddess of the early Semitic people and their queen, representing a primitive matriarchal government, before patriarchy became the standard form of society and Ištar was reduced to the status of the supreme deity’s wife (Barton 1893- 1894, 72).
117 Aya, Bau, Bēlet-ilī, Gula, Ningal, Mullissu/Ninlil, Ninmaḫ, and Ištar are all called “mother” in Akkadian texts (Tallqvist 1938, 21).
that is from another period and provenance. Diachronic studies of deities are helpful and necessary, but the additional information that diachronic studies provide can confound results when scholars expect a uniform treatment of the deity by its devotees.