The Mesopotamian God Image, from Womb to Tomb

Bibliographic Data

ID4998608
AuthorsVictor Avigdor Hurowitz (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume123
Issue1
Pages147
Publication date2003-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of the American Oriental Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0279 • E-ISSN: 2169-2289
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3217848
OpenAlexW1995743485
LanguageEN
Citations received9

From the end of the third millennium B.C. onward, Mesopotamian gods were worshipped in their temples in corporeal manifestations as living, anthropomorphic cult statues. Given the centrality of these statues to the cult, it may be assumed that a ritual for assimilating the finite, physical image to the transcendent, intangible god and transforming the humanly manufactured icon into a living deity was one of the most significant practices in Mesopotamian religion. In fact, there were two such rituals that worked in tandem-one called (mis pi; 1 u h. k a; k a. 1 u h . i. d a) and another designated (pit pi; k a. d u h . i. d a). Mouth-opening, done by application to the mouth (and nose?) of tasty and fragrant substances (honey, ghee, cedar and cypress [resin?]), had the purpose of enlivening and sensitizing the god, and enabling it to eat food and smell incense, while mouth-washing, done with water enhanced with numerous purifying agents and collected in a special vessel, was aimed at achieving total purity and permitting the god to assume his position in the company of the other gods. The mouth-washing ritual has been known to Assyriologists for slightly over a century, ever since Heinrich Zimmern published parts of it in 1901 (BBR II 31-37, 38, 39). A separate mouth-opening ritual is rare, and since opening the mouth was usually performed along with mouth-washing as a complementary act, and is mentioned frequently throughout the incantations of the mouth-washing ritual, it may be assumed to have become subsumed in that ritual. In fact, it is hard to imagine that in the case of cult statues the rituals existed independently, as if one could be performed without the other. Since the initial publication, numerous additional fragments or partially preserved manuscripts of the mouth-washing ritual and its incantations have been discovered, as well as references to the ceremonies' performance in historical texts. The most important have been a complete tablet of the Babylonian version of the ritual published by Sidney Smith in 1925,1 and the incantation tablets from Huzirina (Sultantepe). Nonetheless, the ceremonies have been given scant attention in Assyriological literature, and were practically unknown to biblical scholars for whom they should have been of utmost importance.2 The major treatment of the Mesopotamian cult statue in general and the

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