ABSTRACT
Ancient city-states typically had sacred edifices as their focal point. These buildings often combined the houses of gods (often a city’s patron deity), the residences of earthly rulers with heavenly connections, and their tombs. Like other traits of the ancient world, such an arrangement was so common that we take it for granted, failing to ask if perhaps such a feature of early city life carries a significance not yet fully appreciated. In this chapter, I explain how sacred monuments functioned as broadcasting stations of sacred messages, that is, the gods’ voice–volitions originated from temples and were heard by the town’s rulers. The king and priests then relayed, whether directly or indirectly (i.e., by the sheer power of their assumed presence), divine messages to the town’s inhabitants. Those dwelling under the god’s purview in the local villages and settlements that ringed the town would also receive the divine messages. Temples, then, were transmission centers of theopolitical ideology; tools for transmitting divine instructions. Some “royal inscriptions claim that a temple was built following a divine command that had been conveyed, for example, in a dream message.” 1
