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9 All the King’s Men: Authority, Kingship, and the Rise of the Elites in Assyria beate pongratz-leisten In an article published in 1986, Hayim Tadmor with great sagaciousness discussed the question of the accountability of the king to the elites in the heyday of the Assyrian Empire (8th and 7th centuries BCE). In his investigation of the roles played by the nobility and the scholars, he moved beyond the figure of the king and addressed the crucial aspect of the organization of power in the monarchical system of Assyria in the 1st millennium BCE (Tadmor 1986:203–24). The structure of the elites and their interaction with one another and the king are very difficult to discern, as royal commemorative inscriptions barely mention any representatives of these groups. Nonetheless, as Tadmor points out, allusions in the Babylonian Chronicle (Grayson 2000:iv, 29; Glassner 2004:202, no. 16) referring to Esarhaddon’s killing of numerous magnates who had conspired against him, and in texts such as the Sin of Sargon in which the scholars impose their will onto the king (Tadmor, Landsberger, and Parpola 1989:3-51) provide an inkling of the role which the nobility and the scholars must have played in state affairs (Tadmor 1986:207). In his article dedicated to Tadmor in an anniversary volume, Giovanni Lanfranchi (2003:100–110) approached the question of monarchical power while exploring the notion of royal responsibility . His point of departure is the hierarchical order of power structures as conveyed in the order of responsibilities prescribed in the Assyrian international treaties and loyalty oaths: these put the king on top, followed by his family and his entourage which included the scholars, and only at the end, his people. Lanfranchi argues that in the Sargonid Period various 286 Beate Pongratz-Leisten cultural strategies served to strengthen “the independence of the king from his contemporary political and social framework” and, consequently, “institutionally , the king would be provided” with what he calls a “protected non-responsibility” as he was not subject to any political judgment. Thus politically, the king “would assume a totally independent and practically tyrannical position” (2003:106). With their respective approaches Tadmor and Lanfranchi have broadened the study of the nature of Mesopotamian kingship which used to focus primarily on the question of whether the king was divine or not (Labat 1938, Engnell 1943, Frankfort 1978, Jones 2005:330-342; Brisch 2008). The role of the elites in a monarchical system is a fascinating question and, as illuminated by the foregoing discussion, very much depends on the philosophical underpinnings of the respective scholar. While Tadmor begins with the notion of the king’s accountability to the elites, Lanfranchi brings the concept of the king’s responsibility for his actions to the fore which, according to his view, eventually results in the total independence of royal power. Nevertheless the question remains, who were the agents creating the cultural strategies destined to protect the king from any open disapproval, and what was the nature of the king’s relationship with these people? In tackling this question I would like to take still another view and introduce the notion of power and authority. As demonstrated by Max Weber, it is important to keep in mind that power and authority are not necessarily combined in one agency. Instead they are relational concepts which even in a monarchical system are built on constellations and interdependencies (1976:28). Although in Mesopotamia kingship is considered to be of divine origin, and although in the ideological discourse, power and authority are combined in one agency and the king is presented as the sole agent, in reality he had to rely on professional experts for mundane and religious matters. In other words, the king had to defer authority and rely on expert advice. This also pertains to the central building blocks of royal self-representation composed of text, image, and ritual. A glance at the history of Assyria reveals that the king cannot be held solely responsible for the discourse surrounding his supreme status or even deification within society. Here, the scholars partake in the authoritative voice by shaping the image of the king and defining his alliances with the divine world generated by means of kinship relations and intense communication (Machinist 2003:117–37). While circumscribing his distinct status and Authority, Kingship, and the Rise of the Elites in Assyria 287 presenting his actions as divinely inspired, religious and scholarly authority, consequently, reinforces the image of a pyramidal...

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