Eje 4. Educación y difusión

In Mesopotamian society ties were not severed with a family member after his or her death.370 The living descendants were required not only to bury their corpse according to custom, but also to provide ongoing care for their ghost, relieving the harsh conditions of the Underworld.371 Nabonidus’ report on his mother’s devotion to deceased kings indicates the kind of attention a king may enjoy after his death:

I every month without interruption in my finest garments made them a funerary offering of oxen, fat sheep, bread, best beer, wine, sesame oil, honey and all kinds of garden produce, and established abundant offerings of sweet smelling incense as a regular due, and placed it before them.372

Memorial rites needed to be completed in proximity to the interment and an appropriate burial place where the bones could rest peacefully and the ghost receive his or her food was necessary prerequisite for their correct performance.373 The sub-floor burial chambers at Nimrud and Aššur with their monolithic sarcophagi and even vaults underneath family homes demonstrate that ensuring a suitable place for interring family members often demanded forethought.374 Texts bear witness to the importance of ancestors’ physical remains and their burial location. For example, after his defeat by Sennacherib in 700, the king of Babylonia, Merodach-baladan II, collected the bones of his ancestors and fled with them to safety across the Persian Gulf (appx. 2, text 14).375 Later we hear of Assyrian king Ashur-etil-ilani (626- 618) organising for the remains of his officer Shamash-ibni to be sent in a coffin to his native town, Bit-Dakur, and placed “in the house of the fortress” (appx. 2, text 15).376 Deliberate violation of ancestors’ bones as a punishment for rebellion is attested twice in the records of

369

Simo Parpola (1983, 194-5) suggests that after a period of liminality, during which the king stayed in isolation, the wearing of white was involved in the reintegration into normal life (Parpola believes that white was a symbol of a “merry life”).

370

Skaist 1980, 123.

371

Sürenhagen 2002, 325.

372

Bayliss 1973, 123-4. These are possibly Assyrian kings, indicating that the rites could be performed by non- kin. No other references to the burning of incense as part of the funerary cult are known.

373

Bottéro 1992, 280; Cooper 1992, 27. For an opposing argument, which highlights that the cult of the dead could be performed away from the grave in the presence of a figurine of the dead person see Katz (2003, 200, 210-12).

374

Interestingly we find that for some house purchases the transfer of the ownership of the tombs was also specified in the contract (Sürenhagen 2002, 326).

375

Luckenbill 1924, 99 (lines 6-10). See also Potts 1999, 268; Dalley 2007, 21.

376

Ashurbanipal (appx. 2, texts 1 and 16).377 This punishment would conceivably affect both the dead individuals, who must wander eternally without rest or sustenance, and the living family (or wider society) who will be plagued by illness and misfortune at the ‘hand of ghost'. Furthermore, it removed an important part of the ideological foundation for the power of the dead person’s family.378

The inheritors (pāqidu) were responsible for making funerary offerings (kispu), pouring fresh water (me naqui) and calling the dead person’s name to perpetuate their memory.379 There is debate over precisely what “kispu” implied, but it certainly involved the feeding and watering of the dead, and is characterised by its regularity.380 Jean Bottero interprets it as a periodical offering made during a family ceremony in a designated part of the house, usually at the end of the month.381 These ceremonies were held for both family members in living memory and earlier ancestors collectively referred to as kimti.382 The precise logistics of the feeding of the dead are not certain, but openings on the earth’s crust were thought to allow contact between the earth’s surface and the Underworld, and the pipes (arūtu) described in texts as being inserted into the tomb for the pouring of liquids may have relied on this principle.383 The occasional presence of clay or lead pipes leading into tombs seems to reinforce the idea of conduits for nourishing the dead (fig. 49).384

377 Strawn et al 2006, 362, 368; Dalley 2007, 21. 378 Cooper 1992, 28; Henkelman 2011b, 117. 379

Bayliss 1973, 116-17; Bottéro 1992, 280-1; Cooper 1992, 29; Jonker 1995, 2.

380

The dead needed to be provided with their food and drink according to an as-yet unknown schedule (Bottéro 1992, 281). According to Cooper (1992, 29) kispu can refer to either the food offerings made to the dead or to the ceremony itself. Sürenhagen (2002, 325) understands kispu as referring to a broader range of responsibilities toward the dead: equipping them with appropriate status symbols; supplying provisions for the journey to the Underworld; providing gifts for the Underworld gods; regularly sacrificing; protecting the grave to ensure the peace of the dead.

381

This timing is associated with the disappearance of the moon (Bottéro 1992, 282). Postgate (2008, 180) postulates that at Nimrud the kispum may have taken place in rooms directly above the tombs, in two of which were found brick boxes thought to have held food and drink offerings.

382

Bottéro 1992, 279-80.

383

Horowitz 1998, 361. Texts indicate that water and warm soup were poured via a pipe “in the dust of the

netherworld” (Katz 2003, 207). 384

Bottéro 1992, 281; For arūtu see CAD A2 324. It may be possible that the circular hole in the lid of Ashurnasirpal’s coffin (Grufte V) at Aššur (Lundström 2009, abb. 70.4), which is about 5 cm in diameter, was used for the delivery of sustenance. The grain bin “coffin” from Khirbet Katouniyeh has a 1.5cm diameter “drain plug” at front bottom (Curtis & Green 1997, 11), and it seems possible that if the coffin were placed over the dead (rather than in it), this could have served as a libation hole.