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12138

Ancient Near Eastern Royal Rituals

Claus Ambos*
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen

Abstract
This article deals with royal rituals from the Ancient Near East, focusing on the evidence from cuneiform
sources from Babylonia and Assyria from the first millennium BCE. I will present rituals of coronation
and investiture, which can be reconstructed from various text genres, such as epics, hymns or ritual
handbooks. Royal investiture was not performed only at the beginning of the king’s reign, but took place
regularly during the festivals of the cultic calendar, particularly during the New Year’s festivals in Spring
and Fall. The king, albeit considered a superhuman being by the Mesopotamians, was nevertheless prone
to illness. Illness was caused, according to Ancient Near Eastern ideas, by divine wrath and the alienation
of a person from his or her protective deities. Thus, sickness was treated, among other cures, by rituals to
bring about the reconciliation of the patient with the divine sphere. The performance of healing rituals for
the kings of the Neo-Assyrian empire is well attested from a comprehensive correspondence of kings
Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal with their ritual experts, diviners and physicians. An example from this
correspondence will be presented in this contribution.

Introduction: The Mesopotamian Notions of Kingship

Performing rituals or participating in rituals was an important element of Ancient Near Eastern
kingship. These rituals were of two kinds: There existed rituals pertaining to the field of royal
ideology, which served to legitimate and to express rulership. Among these were the rituals
of (re-)investiture of the king in the course of festivals of the cultic calendar. There also existed
rituals to protect the person of the king against harmful external inf luences, such as demons,
illness, impurity or sorcery. These rituals can be labeled in the broad sense as healing rituals or
rituals of white magic, and they could be performed for any endangered or suffering person,
including the king himself.
According to Mesopotamian royal ideology, the king was created by the gods as a being who,
while not a god, was nevertheless superhuman, and far superior to ordinary men in his bodily
and intellectual faculties. Already before birth and even conception, the future ruler was selected
by the gods to one day become king of his country (Cancik-Kirschbaum 1995; Stol 2000,
pp. 83–89; Wilcke 2002, pp. 70–83; Polonsky 2006, pp. 308f.). Thus, the ruler did not acquire
his royal status by the act of coronation or enthronement at the beginning of his reign, but rather
this investiture was the fulfillment of a destiny decreed by the gods.
Beyond this general concept, we find a very different royal ideology in Assyria and Babylonia,
as can already be deduced by the respective royal titulature (Seux 1967; Magen 1986, pp. 9–19).
The rulers in Babylonia bore traditionally the title ‘king’ (Sumerian lugal, Akkadian šarru). In
Assyria, however, the god Aššur himself was king, whereas the human ruler was his vice-regent
or steward (iššakku). The first human ruler of Assyria who called himself ‘king of Assyria’ was
Aššur-uballit I. (1363–1328 BCE). From this time onwards until the end of the Assyrian empire,
˙ of Assyria called themselves ‘king’, maintaining, however, also the traditional title of
also the rulers
a vice-regent. Still, the idea of the kingship of the god Aššur remained an important ideological

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328 Claus Ambos

element. During rituals of legitimation of the human ruler, the exclamation ‘God Aššur is king!’
was cried. This is attested in the second as well as in the first millennium BCE.
One attestation for this is from the so-called ‘Middle-Assyrian Coronation Ritual’ (Müller
1937; Kryszat 2008). This ritual stems from the Middle Assyrian period (i.e. the second half
of the second millennium BCE) and is preserved on tablets from the times of the successors
of king Tukultī-Ninurta I. (1243–1207 BCE). It is unclear whether this ritual was performed
only once as a kind of coronation at the beginning of the reign or rather regularly in the course
of the festivals of the cultic calendar. It is also unclear whether this ritual was about the
investiture of the human ruler to kingship or rather to the office of the šangû-priest (šangûtu).
Be that as it may, when the king went to the temple of the god Aššur to undergo the
investiture there, the priest of the god Aššur went before him and exclaimed ‘Aššur is king, Aššur
is king!’. This exclamation, emphasizing the god’s kingship, still rang out hundreds of years later
in the so-called Coronation Hymn of Ashurbanipal from the seventh century BCE:

Aššur is king—indeed Aššur is king! Ashurbanipal is the [representative] of Aššur, the creation of his
hands! May the great gods make firm his reign, may they protect the life [of Ashurba]nipal, king of
Assyria! May they give him a straight sceptre to extend the land and his peoples! May his reign be
renewed, and may they consolidate his royal throne forever! May they bless him (by) day, month,
and year, and guard his reign!
(Livingstone 1989, pp. 26f. obv. 15–19).

So the kingship of the god Aššur was a salient feature in Assyrian religion and ideology
throughout its history.

Rituals of Coronation
The most obvious royal rituals seem indeed to be rituals of investiture and coronation (Ben-Barak
1980). A broad spectrum of textual evidence informs us about these rites. The extant sources
include literary texts and ritual handbooks. An epic text describes the coronation of Nabopolassar,
the founder of the Chaldean Dynasty of Babylon:

The princes of the land being assembled, Nab[opolassar they bless], opening their fists [they …] the
sovereignty. Bēl, in the assembly of the gods, [gave] the ruling-power to [Nabopolassar]. The king,
the reliable command […] “With the standard I shall constantly conquer [your] enemies, I shall place
[your] throne in Babylon.” The chair-bearer, taking his hand, … […] They kept putting the standard
on his head. They had him sit on the royal throne […] They took the royal seal […] The eunuchs, the
staff-bearers […] The officers of Akkad approached in the cella/private room. When they had drawn
near, they sat down before him [(and)] the officers in their joy [exclaimed]: “O lord, o king, may you
live forever! [May you conquer] the land of [your] enemies! May the king of the gods, Marduk, rejoice
in you …[…]! May Nabû, the scribe of (Marduk’s temple) E[sagil], make your days long! May Erra,
your sword, Nergal […]! [May you av]enge Akkad, … […]!”
(Grayson 1975, pp. 84f. col. iii [?] 3–21)

Although the passage quoted here is damaged, we can identify the sequence of events of a
coronation and various levels of royal legitimation. The most important element of legitimation
of rulership is the predestination and election of the king by the gods. Bēl or Marduk himself,
the god of Babylon and head of the pantheon, had chosen Nabopolassar with a ‘reliable
command’ to kingship in the assembly of the gods, and he had promised to him to conquer
his enemies, the Assyrians. Nabopolassar was not from a royal family, and his rise to power took

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place in a period of political confusion. After the death of Kandalanu, a puppet king established
in Babylon by the Assyrians, there was no immediate successor to the throne. In Assyria, several
pretenders fought for power. At this time, the promise, which Marduk had uttered in the
assembly of the gods, fulfilled itself. Nabopolassar prevailed against the Assyrians and was
crowned king in Babylon in 626 BCE. In the following years, he succeeded, together with
his allies the Medes, to conquer the Assyrian empire itself and thus to extend his realm over
all of the Near East.
After the promise of Marduk had fulfilled itself, the magnates and nobles of the empire
convened to render homage to Nabopolassar. The courtiers are called ‘officers of Akkad’ in
the text cited here. Akkad was a city in Babylonia, where in the third millennium BCE a
dynasty rose to power and founded the first empire in the Ancient Near East. The rulers of this
dynasty and their realm remained a paradigmatic point of reference for the Mesopotamians of
the second and first millennia BCE. Here in this quoted passage, Akkad stands for Babylonia.
Nabopolassar is prompted by his magnates to avenge Akkad, thus Babylonia. This was a
summons to fight against the Assyrians, who had ruled over Babylonia in the preceding generations.
As mentioned above, Nabopolassar successfully complied with this exhortation of his nobles.
Finally, the courtiers invoke the gods to bless the king. These gods are Marduk, god of Babylon
and head of the pantheon; his son Nabû, the god of scribal arts; and Erra and Nergal, two gods
of death who had been syncretized with each other.
A part of the coronation ceremony takes place in a private room of a palace or in a temple
cella (the Babylonian term kummu used in the text in fact denotes a private room in a temple
or in a palace). The enthronement thus is not performed in public but rather in seclusion, but
we may assume that the king subsequently presented himself to the people.

The Re-Investiture of the King During the New Year’s Festivals

Both in Babylonia and in Assyria, the human king obtained divine confirmation of his rule
twice a year during the New Year’s festivals in spring and autumn. Royal legitimation was
therefore not a unique act, but rather a constant process during the king’s reign.
Since I will now present rituals of the cultic calendar, I will give a short overview on the
Mesopotamian calendar. The so-called Standard Mesopotamian Calendar, which had evolved
from various local or regional calendar systems, comprised the following months:
I. Nisannu = March–April
II. Ayyaru = April–May
III. Simanu = May–June
IV. Du’ūzu = June–July
V. Abu = July–August
VI. Ulūlu = August–September
VII. Tašrītu = September–October
VIII. Arah samna = October–November
IX. ˘ = November–December
Kislīmu
X. Ṭebētu = December–January
XI. Šabatu = January–February
XII. ˙ = February–March
Addaru
The year began in spring around the time of the spring equinox. A month began when the
moon became visible again after the conjunction of sun and moon and a period of invisibility;
thus, a month lasted for 29 or 30 days. A year composed of 12 lunar months is, however, ca.
11 days shorter than a solar year. Thus, in the course of time, the monthly festivals and the

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seasonal events (as for example the f looding of the rivers or the periods of sowing and harvest) will
migrate through the year. So an intercalary month was inserted from time to time (Steele 2011).
In Nisannu (I), the spring equinox occured, and in Tašrītu (VII), the autumn equinox took
place. In both months, New Year’s festivals were celebrated. Maybe, in some Mesopotamian
calendrical systems prior to the Standard Calendar, the autumn month Tašrītu (and not the
spring month Nisannu) had been originally the beginning of the year (Cavigneaux & Donbaz
2007; Ambos 2013a, pp. 19–27).
I will now discuss the re-investiture of the king during the New Year’s festivals in Babylonia:
The sequence of events in both festivals ref lected each other. On the eighth day of the month of
Nisannu (I) in spring and on the eighth day of the month of Tašritu (VII) in autumn the most
important gods of the pantheon (for example, Marduk in the city of Babylon or Anu in the city
of Uruk) decreed the fate of the king. Then, the gods, accompanied by the king, left their
temples and moved in procession to their so-called akītu-houses outside the city (see on the
Nisannu-festival Cohen 1993; Bidmead 2004; Pongratz-Leisten 1998–2001; Sallaberger
1998–2001; Zgoll 2006; see on the Tašrītu festival Ambos 2010, 2013a).
Both festivals featured a peculiar ritual sequence of status reversal: In spring, in the month
Nisannu (I), the Babylonian king entered Esagil, the temple of the god Marduk in Babylon,
and was divested of his royal insignia by the high priest. The priest slapped the king’s face and
made him recite a negative confession of his sins, that is, that he had not neglected the rites
and the temples of the gods or the privileges of the citizens of Babylon. Only then did the priest
present the insignia to the king, again slapping his face until tears ran:

When (the king) has arrived [before] Bēl, the high priest will go out (of the cella) and lift up the sceptre,
the loop, the mace [of the king (?)]. He will (also) lift up the crown of kingship. He will make them enter
[before Bē]l (and), in front of Bēl, he will place them [on] a seat. He will go out and strike the cheek of the
king. He will place [the king (?)] behind him. He will make him enter before Bēl. [After this (?)] he will
pull his ears, make him kneel on the ground. [Together w]ith the king he will say this once:
“[I have not] sinned, lord of the lands, I have not neglected your divinity, [I have not] ruined Babylon,
I have not ordered its dissolution, [I have not] made Esagil tremble, I have not forgotten its rites, [I have
not] struck the cheek of any privileged subject, […] I have [not] brought about their humiliation, [I have
been taking ca]re of Babylon, I have not destroyed its outer walls!” (…)
(The high priest) will bring out the sceptre, the loop, the mace (and) the crown and [will give] (them)
to the king. He will strike the king’s cheek (again). When [he has struck] his cheek, if his tears flow, Bēl is
well disposed, if his tears do not flow, Bēl is angry, the enemy will rise and bring about his downfall.
(Linssen 2004, pp. 231f. ll. 415–452)

A temporary status reversal including the removal of the king’s insignia also took place during
the Babylonian autumn festival in the month of Tašrītu (VII) (Ambos 2010, 2013a). For the
performance of the ritual, the king went to a specially arranged space in the countryside where
he stayed for one night and the following morning. This ritual space was a complex of buildings
made of reeds. It consisted of a so-called ‘prison’ made of reeds and of a reed hut, which served as
a temporary shrine. These two buildings were situated in a courtyard, which was surrounded by
a reed fence. The prison was very small, measuring only three cubits long and three wide. The
whole complex measured about thirteen by thirteen cubits—this is at least the measure given for
the surrounding reed fence.
The king passed through this ritual space during the night and the morning from west to east.
In the evening, at sunset, the king and the ritual experts entered this reed building by the
western door. The king was not wearing his royal insignia. During the night, he stayed in the
prison made of reeds and recited prayers to various heavenly bodies and to the gods of the cities

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Nippur and Babylon, the two cities of Babylonian kingship. These were the very gods who had
granted rulership to him. The king presented himself to these gods as a miserable and guilty
individual and asked them to intercede on his behalf with his personal tutelary gods, who had
turned away from him. As a result, the king now suffered from physical and mental illness, social
exclusion, and financial disaster, in short, the foundations of his rulership had been shattered.
Consequently, it was the intention of the king to restore harmony between him and the divine
sphere in order to strengthen his endangered rulership.
In the morning at sunrise, the king left the prison and entered the reed hut. This building was
a temporary shrine where many gods, present in their divine images or insignia, had assembled
to decide the request of the king. There were present the gods Ea, Šamaš, and Asalluhi, the
divine board, which brought about the success of a ritual performance. Also present were ˘ the
personal tutelary gods of the king. All these deities were addressed by the king with prayers
and sacrifices. Thanks to divine intercession, the angry gods had been reconciled, and thus
harmony between the king and the divine sphere had been restored.
It seems that in the reed hut, the king also underwent an ablution, stripped off the clothes he
had worn in prison, and put on his royal garment. Then, he placed himself before the rising sun
in the eastern door of the complex of reed buildings. Two exorcists stood to his left and right,
and by means of conifer cones, they sprinkled him with holy water. The royal insignia were also
sprinkled with water, and finally, the king was invested with his regalia in front of the rising sun.
Immediately afterwards, the king returned from the reed building in the steppe to the city.
After some concluding rites there, the king was now able to take part in the events of the
New Year’s festival.
A spring and an autumn festival are also attested in Assyria. The spring festival was performed
in the months Šabat u (XI), Addaru (XII), and Nisannu (I). The autumn festival took place in the
months Ulūlu (VI)˙and Tašrītu (VII).
The festivals took place in the old capital Aššur. Although the actual royal residence had
shifted in the course of time first to Kalhu, then to Dūr-Šarrukīn and finally to Nineveh, the
˘ and religious center of Assyria. Aššur also remained
city of Aššur always remained the ideological
the traditional burial place of Assyrian kings, whereever they had resided during their lifetimes.
It seems that both festivals were very similar and that the sequence of events ref lected each
other. This fact sometimes makes it difficult to assign a fragmentarily preserved pertinent
cuneiform text to the one or the other festival.
In both festivals, the human Assyrian king merged with the god Aššur. The human ruler
went into the temple, put the god’s crown on his own head, and presented himself to the
people. The following passage is from a ritual handbook describing the rites of the eighth
day of the month Addaru:

The priests bring Bēl-agû (“Lord Crown”) and place it on the cult dais. The king comes out (from the
side wing from the Aššur-temple). He performs a sheep offering, libates the pagulu-vessel completely,
sits down and lifts Bēl-agû (“Lord Crown”) on his head. He goes out by the Kalkal-gate and enters by
the Kalkal-gate. The exorcists recite the incantation “The crown’s splendor” and the incantation
“Weapon endowed with awe-inspiring radiance”.
(Menzel 1981, vol. II pp. T49f. ll. 20–26; see also Maul 2000, p. 398)

The Kalkal-gate opens from the temple proper to the great forecourt of the Aššur-temple
(van Driel 1969, p. 47; Frahm 1997, p. 172). Thus, the king exited the building with the divine
crown on his head and entered the forecourt of the sanctuary and consequently left the court by
the same gate. The passage quoted here does not mention who was present on the forecourt
during this occasion. We know, however, that during special events such as festivals, the subjects

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and magnates of the king convened there. To give an example, king Esarhaddon celebrated the
renovation of the Aššur-temple with a grand party lasting for several days:

I, together with my nobles (and) the people of my land, held a celebration in the courtyard of Ešarra
(=the Aššur-temple) for three days.
(Leichty 2011, p. 128 vii 26–30)

It seems very probable, that people, magnates, and delegates from other countries were
assembled in the courtyard also during the Spring festival in Aššur to witness, when the human
and the divine ruler of Aššur merged with each other.
A cultic commentary for the Fall festival in Aššur mentions the fact that the king ‘wears the
crown’ also for the months of Ulūlu (VI) and Tašrītu (VII) (Livingstone 1989, p. 104 obv. 13
and p. 105 rev. 16). Since the ritual actions described in this commentary resemble those of
the Spring festival, they have been interpreted by some scholars as being related to this cultic
event (Menzel 1981, vol. II p. T30; Livingstone 1989, p. 102f.; Maul 2000). However, the
epigraphic evidence makes it clear that the text comments on cultic actions performed during
the months of Ulūlu and Tašrītu (Cohen 1993, pp. 324f. and 328; Hecker 2008, pp. 91f.).
The fundamental difference between Assyrian and Babylonian kingship is thus not only
expressed by different traditional titles of rulership, but the different relationship between ruler
and god is also expressed in ritual.

Healing and Purification Rituals

As any other human, the king was prone to illness. The Ancient Near Eastern concept of illness
differs from our modern idea.
A person became susceptible to illness because he or she was estranged and alienated from his
or her personal gods or if the personal gods had left him or her due to the intervention of a
higher-ranking deity. The anger of the gods could be aroused easily and unwittingly even
without intending to do so. Even if the king (or any person) had behaved in a manner, which
he conceived to be pious and pleasing to the gods, no one could know with certainty if they would
accept this behavior or consider it a transgression. This does not mean that pious deeds or
god-fearing behavior were not regarded as morally relevant, but it does illustrate the Mesopotamian
belief that humans had no real insight into the intentions of the gods (Ambos 2007).
Personal gods were the protective deities of human beings, who guaranteed their physical and
material well-being, success, and luck. They constantly kept watch over a person, walking as
guardian angels at his side and staying inside his body, and warded off external evil inf luences
(von Soden 1964; Vorländer 1975; Oppenheim 1977, pp. 198–206). These inf luences were
of various kinds. They did not just happen, but were often intentionally inf licted by sorcerers
hired by the person’s enemies, economic competitors, and legal adversaries at court.
If a person was without divine protection, the effects of the evil machinations attached
themselves like a miasma or material matter to the victim’s body (Ambos 2012). Affected by this
black magic, the person was virtually bound and fettered and so lost his or her agency and ability
to act. This loss of agency led to a susceptibility to mental and physical illness, financial losses,
economic misfortune, and social exclusion. Demons, free-lancing or by the command of the
affected person’s enemies, constantly harassed the victim. This was a terrible situation for any
private person since he or she could no longer occupy his or her previous social position. Under
such circumstances, a king was no longer able to rule.
By means of rituals, the affected person was able to remedy this terrible situation. The strategy
employed by the ritual expert was twofold: Impurity and evil matter could be physically

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removed from the patient’s body and carried away. Often, this physical removal of impurity was
connected with actions of analogical magic. The protection achieved by such a measure,
however, was not sustainable if the person was not in harmony with his or her personal gods
and protective spirits.
So the efforts of the ritual expert were focused on bringing about reconciliation between the
affected person and the divine sphere. This was done by the ritual expert in pointing out to the
gods that his client had not committed any willful transgression against the divine sphere and that
rather the person’s enemies had behaved sinfully. All this was achieved by bringing the patient’s
case to (a ritual) court to appeal against the miserable fate that the gods had decreed for him.
The mechanisms of Ancient Near Eastern ritual were in general deeply inf luenced by the use
of forms stemming from legal procedures (Maul 1994, pp. 60–71). If one felt oneself treated
unjustly by a higher authority (for example unjustified divine anger or a bad fate ordained by
the gods), one could go to court in order to appeal. A ritual performance had, in other words,
the characteristics of a trial. This can be made clear by looking at the role of the human and
divine participants. There was a ‘judge’—the sungod Šamaš, who pronounced the concluding
verdict, and there was a ‘lawyer’—the ritual expert—acting on behalf of his ‘client’. Since ritual
could not work against the will of the gods, it would have been regarded as pointless to perform
a ritual when several gods were angry and had turned away. So, the king had to produce other
deities as powerful intermediaries, who interceded on his behalf with the angry gods. The
affected person’s enemies, the sorcerers hired by them, and their evil machinations were present
at court in the form of figurines.
Impurity that affected a person was considered a physical ‘thing’ that had entered his or her
body from the outside and could be removed physically by washing it away with water,
stripping it off with the old clothes, or transmitting it to a carrier. It is interesting that according
to Ancient Near Eastern belief, it was not possible to annihilate evil matter, which could only be
removed and sent away with a carrier or vehicle, or converted into some other state.
How healing rituals were applied to the king, I will demonstrate with a letter sent by an
exorcist (āšipu) to the Assyrian king Esarhaddon. This letter belongs to a large corpus of letters
and reports written by ritual experts, diviners, and priests to the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and
Ashurbanipal in the seventh century BCE (Parpola 1983, 1993). Through these letters and
reports, we can obtain a rather vivid picture of ritual and religious life in the Ancient Near East.
In the letter quoted below, the exorcist Nabû-nādin-šumi outlines the performance of a
ritual to Esarhaddon:

To the king, my lord: your servant Nabû-nādin-šumi. Good health to the king, my lord! May Nabû
and Marduk greatly bless the king, my lord! Concerning what the king, my lord, wrote to me: “Write
me what the treatment is”—it is said in the relevant apotropaic ritual text (as follows): “He (the king)
sits 7 days in a reed hut, and purification rites are performed upon him; he is treated like a sick person.
During the 7 days ‘hand-lifting’ prayers before the nighttime deities and the apotropaic ritual against
evil of any kind are performed as well, and the seven days he sits in the reed hut, he recites benedictions
for his god and his goddess.” Thus (is it). Perhaps the king will say, “Perform it today”—the 8th day is
suitable for performing it.
(Parpola 1983, Nr. 203; 1993, Nr. 277)

The rite to be performed by the exorcist is called ‘apotropaic ritual’, Namburbi. Namburbi-rituals
were performed to ward off an evil, which had been announced by an inauspicious omen or
portent. The rite described in this letter has not been identified. The pertinent elements and
paraphernalia, however, are well known from Ancient Near Eastern rituals. The king stays in
a temporary structure, a hut made of reeds, specifically built for the performance of the ritual

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(Ambos 2013b). He addresses his personal god and his personal goddess with prayers and also
prays to the gods who manifest themselves as stars and planets during the night. The ritual could
not just be performed any time; an auspicious date had to be determined beforehand.
There was evil that could beset the king, however, of such enormity that the performance
of an apotropaic ritual was of no avail. Much more drastic measures had to be taken then.
This was the ritual of the substitute king (Kümmel 1967; Parpola 1983, pp. XXII–XXXII
and pp. 402–408; Ambos 2013c). When—to be very brief—an eclipse of the moon or sun
occurred during which the planet Jupiter was not visible, this was taken as a very bad and
inauspicious portent announcing the death of the king. A living person was then enthroned
as a substitute king in the ruler’s stead. This substitute absorbed all evil portents by incorporating
them in the true sense of the word: With his mouth by eating them, with his ears by hearing
them when a list of all evil omens was read to him, and with his whole body when the omen
carriers (or texts listing them) were affixed to him. The substitute king ‘ruled’ for about 100 days
and then died or was killed. Thus, the bad portent had come true and the king was dead. The
real king, who was called ‘farmer’ during the ‘reign’ of the substitute king, then resumed his
royal dignity.

Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be stated that rituals dominated the life and reign of an Ancient Near Eastern
ruler—both in his capacity as a king as well as a human being. By performing rituals, he
legitimated his kingship, and he averted evil and illness from his person. Both rituals of kingship
and rituals of healing or averting evil strove to guarantee a good relationship between the
human and divine spheres. Only this harmony brought about a successful reign and a long
healthy life for the king.

Short Biography

Claus Ambos is Heisenberg Fellow at the Seminar für Altorientalistik at Göttingen University.
He studied Assyriology, Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology and Indology at Berlin, Leipzig,
and Heidelberg. Claus Ambos has written a doctoral thesis on building rituals from Ancient
Mesopotamia (Heidelberg 2002); his habilitation thesis dealt with the Babylonian New Year’s
festival in Fall and the investiture of the king during this important event of the cultic calendar
(Heidelberg 2010). Claus Ambos has published intensively on ritual and religion in Ancient
Mesopotamia.

Note
* Correspondence: Claus Ambos, Seminar für Altorientalistik, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, ‘KWZ / Grotefend-Haus’,
Heinrich-Düker-Weg 14, D-37073 Göttingen, Germany. E-mail: claus.ambos@phil.uni-goettingen.de

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