Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bidmead, Julye M

Titel

The akitu festival: Religious continuity and royal legitimation in Mesopotamia

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2002

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• The akītu festival is one of the oldest recorded religious festivals in the ancient Near East. The festival was celebrated for several millennia, developing from a semiannual agricultural celebration to an annual Spring New Year's national event. This study demonstrates how the akītu festival became a propagandistic tool wielded by the monarchy and ruling class to promote state ideology. In first millennium B.C.E. Babylonia, when the festival was at its most advanced stage, the celebration involved elaborate rituals, prayers, sacrifices, royal processions of the king and of the deities, recitation of the Babylonian creation epic, and the issuance of prophecies and oracles for the upcoming year—ritualistic elements which symbolized the correct religious, social, political, and economical order of Babylon. The akītu was more than just a religious ceremony—it acted as a political device employed by the monarchy and/or the central priesthood to ensure the supremacy of the king, the national god, and his capital city and was an integral component in royal politics.