Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Hossein Badamchi ¹
• Tavakoli Tavakoli ²

¹ University of Tehran

² Department of History, University of Tehran

Abstract

Divine kingship is a form of claiming legitimacy in the Ancient Near East. The ruler in this format, goes beyond claiming divine representation or decent and direclty introdcues himself a god. According to historical records, the first formal example of divine kingship is attested in the Old Akkadian perion by Naram-Sin who rules approximately from 2261 to 2206 BC. The Sargonic or the Old Akkadian period witnessed the first attempt at the political unification in the ancient Mesopotamia and created a political tradition of kingship. Thus divine kingship is of especial interest when one studies the political tradtions of that period. Furthermore, Naram-Sin as the founder of such ideoplogy makes it more intersting since it created a mave although superficial of divine kingship. Although the research on Naram-sin’s divinty is scarce and the scholars have focused more on the later tradition, the present research intends to focus on Naram-sin as the founder of that tradition to highlight various aspects of divine kingship during the Old Akkadian period in terms of causes and consequences. The poliitcal process that led to the claim of divinty by Naram-sin, the nature of his divintiy, goals he hoped to achieve, origins and caused that led him there, and the long term imprints that he left on the Mesopotamian political tradition will be examined in this paper.

Keywords

• Naram-sin
• Akkad
• divine kingship
• Mesopotamia
• legitimacy