ABSTRACT
Power derives from many sources: physical strength, personal charisma, economicand social influence, or from legal or conventional traditions, such as inheritance. In the Babylonian world view, natural causes were not clearly distinguished from supra-natural influences and so the different sources of power remained intertwined despite the development of a legal system based on writing, and the mythical roots of power were never neglected. The ruler’s main task was to mediate between different social groups as well as between deities and human beings. The proof for the divine mandate of the ruler was the efficiency of his government, the welfare of the people being its outward sign (Selz 2004). Economical and social organisations, therefore, had to be at the centre of Babylonia’s royal ideology. No legitimate or lasting power could permanently ignore the welfare of its subjects or of a substantial group that supported the government. Therefore, different interests had to be taken into account and antagonistic forces had to be restricted and controlled. Adversaries from within society were as dangerous as enemies from the outside. Not surprisingly though, official inscriptions deal primarily with the latter and information about conflicts within Babylonian society remains scarce. As a result of this unbalance in the original sources, modern historiographers often tend to reiterate the official ancient Mesopotamian account of historical events. It focuses on the various kings and their deeds, and often attempts to ascribe dramatic historical changes, and even the decline of a whole dynasty, to one major outside cause. Our picture of Mesopotamian history is formed by a number of outstanding rulers, some being examples of efficient, some of unsuccessful governments. However, their reigns cover only a limited period of time. There are many examples where the influence of a dynastic family or a single ruler resulted just in a rather short-lived period of stability. Even the dynasty of the famous Hammurabi was already in decline during the reign of his successor and son Samsu-iluna. The stability of a government did not result from the efficient management of the different groups of the society alone, but also depended on the rulers’ or the ruling elite’s ability to generate support in the society by conjuring a vision of an ideal society. Such images were not simply ‘created’ by the kings and their
administration but had strong roots in a centuries old tradition, and were normally just modified and adapted to the needs of the day. Such images were spread by various forms of what we would term propaganda – and the bulk of our so-called ‘historical’ sources are in fact that: propaganda. Therefore, when we read ancient sources and look at the surviving pictures, we need to question their historical value. Letters, administrative texts, legal decisions, as well as remnants of the material culture, help to balance our historical account. However, the factor of propaganda and ideological distortion of social reality is important in itself: every ruler and every ruling class is bound to the images they propagate or create.
