Passages from Thorkild Jacobsen, “Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia”
Jacobsen traces his inquiry backward in time, in a hunt for the oldest sources of Mesopotamian justification for democratic assembly.
Only recently [in history] has it been stressed that what is deeply valued will be discovered and is attainable in the future.
The great ancient civilizations tended to think otherwise, expecting to discover the good most fully in the continuous, sacred dimensions of life, and in origins.
In this article, Jacobsen is not making a reactionary case that the best democracy was in the oldest stages of Mesopotamian civilization. Instead, he’s up to something else: by working with his evidence in reverse chronological order, he is encouraging his reader to try on the point of view of Mesopotamians, to search back in time to the origins of the most powerful articulation of ancient Mesopotamian belief in democratic action.
We shall use “democracy” in its classical rather than its modern sense as denoting a form of government in which internal sovereignty resides in a large proportion of the governed, namely in all free, adult, male citizens without distinction of fortune or class. That sovereignty resides in these citizens implies that major decisions—such as the decision to undertake a war—are made with their consent, that these citizens constitute the supreme judicial authority in the state, and also that rulers and magistrates obtain their positions with and ultimately derive their power from that same consent…
We should perhaps add that the contrast with which we are primarily concerned is the one between “democracy” as defined above, on the one hand, and “autocracy,” used as a general term for forms which tend to concentrate the major political powers in the hands of a single individual on the other. “Oligarchy,” which so subtly merges into democracy and which so often functions in forms similar to it, can hardly, at the present stage of our knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia, be profitably distinguished….
[In the first centuries of Mesopotamian history] the country formed a mosaic of diminutive, self-sufficient, autonomous city-states, and in each such state one individual, the ruler, united in his hands the chief political powers: legislative, judiciary, and executive. Only he could promulgate and carry into effect new law; he alone was personally responsible by contract with the city-god for upholding justice and righteousness; as supreme commander of all armed forces, he led the state in battle; and as administrator of the main temple complex, he controlled the most powerful single economic unit within the state…But the momentum of the autocratic idea was still far from spent with the realization of this idea within small separate areas. …From before the dawn of history through the soldier-kingdoms of the Lugalzagesi and the early Sargonids to the highly organized bureaucratic state of the Third Dynasty of Ur, we watch these efforts toward ultimate centralization steadily grow in power, in intensity, and in efficiency.
To find in a world so singularly autocratic in outlook, propelled in its domestic and foreign policies by the one urge for concentration of power, institutions based on diametrically opposite concepts is somewhat unexpected. Yet in the judiciary branch of the government, as a heterogeneous, unassimilated block, appear, even in the latest period of Sumero-Akkadian civilization, features of a distinct and democratic character. [Jacobsen thereafter provides examples of judicial proceeding by assembly in Assyrian colonies in Asia Minor and in Hammurabi’s Babylonia]
It is worth noting that alongside of, and integrated with, this judiciary organization centered in the king stands another having its center in the Babylonian city. The city as such deals out justice according to its own local ideas of right and wrong. …That the Old Babylonian assembly comprises, as already mentioned, the citizens of a given town or village is apparent from the use of “town” or “assembly” as alternatives in our documents…In interpreting this evidence, there is naturally some danger of going too far. Though citizens, and therefore part of the alum, “the town,” women are not likely to have participated in the assembly. Even the men may not always have put in an appearance in numbers which we should consider adequate representation of the citizenry. One inference, however, may be drawn from the fact the puhrum can alternate with the highly comprehensive term alum: participation in the puhrum and in the judicial functions which it exercised did not constitute the prerogative of some small favored class or group; it must have been open to the citizenry at large…
Judicial powers are vested in the community as a whole, in an assembly open to all citizens. Such institutions are manifestly not of a piece with the period in which they are found—a period dominated by the very opposite principle: that of concentration of powers in the hands of one single individual. The question then arises whether these institutions represent new ideas which are just beginning to gain momentum or something old which has been retained from earlier times.
The first alternative seems not very plausible, since the entire drift of Mesopotamian political life and thought in the historical periods is wholeheartedly in the other direction. Throughout we find no signs of growing democratic ideas. The second alternative, therefore, seems the more likely: these judiciary institutions represent a last stronghold, a stubborn survival, of ideas rooted in earlier ages.
This inference is confirmed when we turn to the material which bears on earlier periods, for as we go back in time, the competence and influence of the “assembly” appears to grow and to extend from judiciary functions to other, even more vital aspects of government.
Tradition relating to times no farther back than those of the kings of Akkad already shows that the assembly deemed it within its authority to choose a king…[these, or some of these, were required to] obtain the consent of assembly in matters of peace and war [The author supplies documentary examples such as Gilgamesh’s appeal to the assembly of Uruk for license to go into battle against the ruler of Kish] …Here then, we seem to have portrayed a state in which the ruler must lay his proposals before the people, first to the elders, then to the assembly of the townsmen, and obtain their consent, before he can act. In other words, the assembly appears to be the ultimate political authority.
[Projections of the old assembly into the world of the gods.] …The Sumerians and Akkadians pictured their gods as human in form, governed by human emotions, and living in the same type of world as did men. In almost every particular the world of the gods is therefore a projection of terrestrial conditions. Since this process began relatively early, and since man is by nature conservative in religious matters, early features would, as a matter of course, be retained in the world of the gods after the terrestrial counterpart had disappeared….
[T]he gods are organized politically along democratic lines, essentially different from the autocratic terrestrial states which we find in Mesopotamia in the historical periods. Thus in the domain of the gods we have a reflection of older forms, of the terrestrial Mesopotamian state as it was in pre-historical times.
The assembly which we find in the world of the gods rested on a broad democratic basis; it was, according to the Adad myth n CT, XV, 3, an “assembly of all the gods.” Nor was participation limited by sex: goddesses as well as gods played an active part in its deliberations.
The assembly was usually held in a large court called Ubshuukkina. As the gods arrived, they met friends and relatives who had similarly come from afar to participate in the assembly, and there was general embracing. In the sheltered court the gods then sat down to a sumptuous meal; wine and strong drink soon put them in a happy and carefree mood, fears and worries vanished, and the meeting was ready to settle down to more serious affairs….
The leadership of the assembly belonged by right, it would seem, to An, god of heaven and “father of the gods”; but with him or alone appears also Enlil, god of the storm. An or Enlil usually broached the matters to be considered; and we may assume—our evidence does not allow us to decide the point—that the discussion which followed would be largely in the hands of the so-called ilu rabiutum, the “great gods” or, perhaps better, “the senior gods,” whose number is said to have been fifty. In this discussion it was the intrinsic merit of a proposal which gave it weight: wise council, testifying to “intelligence, profundity, and knowledge” is much admired; and ability to make the others listen to one’s words is a prized gift. Through such general discussion—“asking one another” as the Babylonians expressed it—the issues were clarified and the various gods had opportunity to voice their opinions for and against…
A group of seven powerful gods, “the seven gods who determine the destinies”—that is, whose words is decisive—had, it would seem, the final say, and when an agreement had at last been reached in this manner—voting is a technique of much later origin—it was announced by An and Enlil as “the verdict, the word of the assembly of the gods, the command of An and Enlil.” The executive duties, carrying into effect the decisions of the assembly, seem to have rested with Enlil.
The functions of this divine assembly were in part those of a court of law…But the functions of the divine assembly which go beyond those of a court of law are the ones that command our greatest attention: the assembly is the authority which grants kingship. [Here follow the legends of the Enuma Elish, in which the gods appoint Marduk king so that he may battle Tiamat.] As the assembly is the authority which grants kingship, it can also take it back…
________________________________
From:
Thorkild Jacobsen, “Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July, 1943, 159-172).
More:
Geoffrey Evans, “Ancient Mesopotamian Assemblies,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1958), pp. 1-11.
Geoffrey Evans, “Ancient Mesopotamian Assemblies-An Addendum,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 78, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1958), pp. 114-115. Evidence showing that ancient Mesopotamians voted in their assemblies.
Abraham Malamat, “Kingship and Council in Israel and Sumer: A Parallel,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4. (Oct., 1963), pp. 247-253.
Marc van de Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Source:
aliraqi forums > Cultural > History & Heritage >
Happy Birthday Iraq I:
Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia
Jacobsen traces his inquiry backward in time, in a hunt for the oldest sources of Mesopotamian justification for democratic assembly.
Only recently [in history] has it been stressed that what is deeply valued will be discovered and is attainable in the future.
The great ancient civilizations tended to think otherwise, expecting to discover the good most fully in the continuous, sacred dimensions of life, and in origins.
In this article, Jacobsen is not making a reactionary case that the best democracy was in the oldest stages of Mesopotamian civilization. Instead, he’s up to something else: by working with his evidence in reverse chronological order, he is encouraging his reader to try on the point of view of Mesopotamians, to search back in time to the origins of the most powerful articulation of ancient Mesopotamian belief in democratic action.
We shall use “democracy” in its classical rather than its modern sense as denoting a form of government in which internal sovereignty resides in a large proportion of the governed, namely in all free, adult, male citizens without distinction of fortune or class. That sovereignty resides in these citizens implies that major decisions—such as the decision to undertake a war—are made with their consent, that these citizens constitute the supreme judicial authority in the state, and also that rulers and magistrates obtain their positions with and ultimately derive their power from that same consent…
We should perhaps add that the contrast with which we are primarily concerned is the one between “democracy” as defined above, on the one hand, and “autocracy,” used as a general term for forms which tend to concentrate the major political powers in the hands of a single individual on the other. “Oligarchy,” which so subtly merges into democracy and which so often functions in forms similar to it, can hardly, at the present stage of our knowledge of ancient Mesopotamia, be profitably distinguished….
[In the first centuries of Mesopotamian history] the country formed a mosaic of diminutive, self-sufficient, autonomous city-states, and in each such state one individual, the ruler, united in his hands the chief political powers: legislative, judiciary, and executive. Only he could promulgate and carry into effect new law; he alone was personally responsible by contract with the city-god for upholding justice and righteousness; as supreme commander of all armed forces, he led the state in battle; and as administrator of the main temple complex, he controlled the most powerful single economic unit within the state…But the momentum of the autocratic idea was still far from spent with the realization of this idea within small separate areas. …From before the dawn of history through the soldier-kingdoms of the Lugalzagesi and the early Sargonids to the highly organized bureaucratic state of the Third Dynasty of Ur, we watch these efforts toward ultimate centralization steadily grow in power, in intensity, and in efficiency.
To find in a world so singularly autocratic in outlook, propelled in its domestic and foreign policies by the one urge for concentration of power, institutions based on diametrically opposite concepts is somewhat unexpected. Yet in the judiciary branch of the government, as a heterogeneous, unassimilated block, appear, even in the latest period of Sumero-Akkadian civilization, features of a distinct and democratic character. [Jacobsen thereafter provides examples of judicial proceeding by assembly in Assyrian colonies in Asia Minor and in Hammurabi’s Babylonia]
It is worth noting that alongside of, and integrated with, this judiciary organization centered in the king stands another having its center in the Babylonian city. The city as such deals out justice according to its own local ideas of right and wrong. …That the Old Babylonian assembly comprises, as already mentioned, the citizens of a given town or village is apparent from the use of “town” or “assembly” as alternatives in our documents…In interpreting this evidence, there is naturally some danger of going too far. Though citizens, and therefore part of the alum, “the town,” women are not likely to have participated in the assembly. Even the men may not always have put in an appearance in numbers which we should consider adequate representation of the citizenry. One inference, however, may be drawn from the fact the puhrum can alternate with the highly comprehensive term alum: participation in the puhrum and in the judicial functions which it exercised did not constitute the prerogative of some small favored class or group; it must have been open to the citizenry at large…
Judicial powers are vested in the community as a whole, in an assembly open to all citizens. Such institutions are manifestly not of a piece with the period in which they are found—a period dominated by the very opposite principle: that of concentration of powers in the hands of one single individual. The question then arises whether these institutions represent new ideas which are just beginning to gain momentum or something old which has been retained from earlier times.
The first alternative seems not very plausible, since the entire drift of Mesopotamian political life and thought in the historical periods is wholeheartedly in the other direction. Throughout we find no signs of growing democratic ideas. The second alternative, therefore, seems the more likely: these judiciary institutions represent a last stronghold, a stubborn survival, of ideas rooted in earlier ages.
This inference is confirmed when we turn to the material which bears on earlier periods, for as we go back in time, the competence and influence of the “assembly” appears to grow and to extend from judiciary functions to other, even more vital aspects of government.
Tradition relating to times no farther back than those of the kings of Akkad already shows that the assembly deemed it within its authority to choose a king…[these, or some of these, were required to] obtain the consent of assembly in matters of peace and war [The author supplies documentary examples such as Gilgamesh’s appeal to the assembly of Uruk for license to go into battle against the ruler of Kish] …Here then, we seem to have portrayed a state in which the ruler must lay his proposals before the people, first to the elders, then to the assembly of the townsmen, and obtain their consent, before he can act. In other words, the assembly appears to be the ultimate political authority.
[Projections of the old assembly into the world of the gods.] …The Sumerians and Akkadians pictured their gods as human in form, governed by human emotions, and living in the same type of world as did men. In almost every particular the world of the gods is therefore a projection of terrestrial conditions. Since this process began relatively early, and since man is by nature conservative in religious matters, early features would, as a matter of course, be retained in the world of the gods after the terrestrial counterpart had disappeared….
[T]he gods are organized politically along democratic lines, essentially different from the autocratic terrestrial states which we find in Mesopotamia in the historical periods. Thus in the domain of the gods we have a reflection of older forms, of the terrestrial Mesopotamian state as it was in pre-historical times.
The assembly which we find in the world of the gods rested on a broad democratic basis; it was, according to the Adad myth n CT, XV, 3, an “assembly of all the gods.” Nor was participation limited by sex: goddesses as well as gods played an active part in its deliberations.
The assembly was usually held in a large court called Ubshuukkina. As the gods arrived, they met friends and relatives who had similarly come from afar to participate in the assembly, and there was general embracing. In the sheltered court the gods then sat down to a sumptuous meal; wine and strong drink soon put them in a happy and carefree mood, fears and worries vanished, and the meeting was ready to settle down to more serious affairs….
The leadership of the assembly belonged by right, it would seem, to An, god of heaven and “father of the gods”; but with him or alone appears also Enlil, god of the storm. An or Enlil usually broached the matters to be considered; and we may assume—our evidence does not allow us to decide the point—that the discussion which followed would be largely in the hands of the so-called ilu rabiutum, the “great gods” or, perhaps better, “the senior gods,” whose number is said to have been fifty. In this discussion it was the intrinsic merit of a proposal which gave it weight: wise council, testifying to “intelligence, profundity, and knowledge” is much admired; and ability to make the others listen to one’s words is a prized gift. Through such general discussion—“asking one another” as the Babylonians expressed it—the issues were clarified and the various gods had opportunity to voice their opinions for and against…
A group of seven powerful gods, “the seven gods who determine the destinies”—that is, whose words is decisive—had, it would seem, the final say, and when an agreement had at last been reached in this manner—voting is a technique of much later origin—it was announced by An and Enlil as “the verdict, the word of the assembly of the gods, the command of An and Enlil.” The executive duties, carrying into effect the decisions of the assembly, seem to have rested with Enlil.
The functions of this divine assembly were in part those of a court of law…But the functions of the divine assembly which go beyond those of a court of law are the ones that command our greatest attention: the assembly is the authority which grants kingship. [Here follow the legends of the Enuma Elish, in which the gods appoint Marduk king so that he may battle Tiamat.] As the assembly is the authority which grants kingship, it can also take it back…
________________________________
From:
Thorkild Jacobsen, “Primitive Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3 (July, 1943, 159-172).
More:
Geoffrey Evans, “Ancient Mesopotamian Assemblies,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 78, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 1958), pp. 1-11.
Geoffrey Evans, “Ancient Mesopotamian Assemblies-An Addendum,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 78, No. 2. (Apr. - Jun., 1958), pp. 114-115. Evidence showing that ancient Mesopotamians voted in their assemblies.
Abraham Malamat, “Kingship and Council in Israel and Sumer: A Parallel,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 22, No. 4. (Oct., 1963), pp. 247-253.
Marc van de Mieroop, The Ancient Mesopotamian City, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Source:
aliraqi forums > Cultural > History & Heritage >
Happy Birthday Iraq I:
Democracy in Ancient Mesopotamia
