ABSTRACT
International negotiations require that authority be vested in the person or group representing each party. The practical nature of this authority and its theoretical basis varied widely with their social and ethnic origins. Whereas the tribal hierarchy of the Amorites conforms quite well to what we know of similar societies at other times and places, the urban culture of the old sedentary population had developed an explicit ideology to describe the relationships between ruler and ruled, and between politics and religion. Religion as such is not our subject, but in the spheres reflected in our documents Mesopotamian religion is politics. From the earliest times historical statements are couched in religious metaphors, and this alone is enough to show that their ideological statements were important on a purely secular level. While most such statements concern the king or kingship, this is by no means the only political concept in play:the system has to incorporate the ideas of territory, of popular will, of tribe and dynasty. Statements, whether in ‘literary’ or ‘historical’ texts, may reflect popular belief, scholastic speculation or blatant propaganda, and we do not really have the insight into the context of such texts which would enable us to discern their true nature. Nevertheless, even blatant propaganda tells us something: it shows the climate of opinion and how much attention the rulers paid to it, and it reveals the importance attached to tradition and precedent in the maintenance of the order on which their civilization depended. Thus their political philosophy needs to be understood for two reasons, rather like the system of writing: partly because it is the filter through which the record of historical events is transmitted to us, but partly also because it was itself one integral cog in the mechanism of society.
