Adoration of Oath Documents in Assyrian Religion and its Development

Abstract

The recent discovery (2009) and publication (2012) of the Tayinat version of Esarhaddon’s Succession Oath Documents (ESOD, promulgated in 672 BC) have enabled us to imagine much more vividly than before how every tablet of the documents was adored as a god in the temples of each district under the Assyrian dominion. The Documents ex- plicitly demanded that the tablets be treated as gods by all oath takers. This adoration had a precedent in Assyrian history. Apparently, under Tukultui-Ninurta I, the Assyrian king in the 13th century BC, the adoration of the ‘Tablet of Destinies’ was already being practiced, and the ‘Tablet of Destinies’ was assumed to have been sealed by the god Aššur. Three seals of the god Aššur used for the sealing the tablets of ESOD also show depictions of ‘worship- ping scenes’ on them. The wide dissemination of these documents and their deification indicate a form of a globalized ‘Tablet of Destinies’ as well as a new religious and cultural policy in the Assyrian dominion