tu Chaldean, Babylonian New Year Festival

tu Chaldean, Babylonian New Year Festival


Sam Gammo
For centuries the Akitu Festival marked the
changing of the seasons in ancient Mesopotamia, the calendar of the ancient Near
East was usually replete with festivals that honoured the gods according to the
season. One of the most famous of these festivals was the Akitu Festival of
Babylon. The festival began on the first day of the month of Nisanno and lasted
for 12 days. Nisanno, which coincides with April, traditionally marked the
beginning of the year as it followed the vernal/March equinox.
Akitu Festivals
In Babylon the Akitu Festival was held to honour
Marduk, the patron deity of the city. Throughout Mesopotamia other cities held
their own Akitu festivals and in some places, such as Ur, the festival was
celebrated in the spring and fall at each equinox. The archaeological evidence
of the Babylonian festival goes back to the early second millennium BCE; around
the time that Hammurabi and the Old Babylonian Empire set the city on its nearly
2000 year long path to greatness.
The 12 days of the Akitu Festival were each marked
by special ceremonies and observances. The most basic and foundational ceremony
marked the spring barley harvest wherein the king usually took on a symbolic
role of presiding over the harvest. This aspect of the festival led to the
formal resetting of the yearly calendar in accord with the solar cycle.
Enuma Elish
The Babylonian Creation Epic, the Enuma Elish,
describes how Marduk put all of the cosmos into motion and defined the rhythm of
the calendar. Accordingly Marduk is given special credit during the Akitu
festival. The birth of the New Year itself was seen as ritually connected with
the original creation of the cosmos by Marduk. One day of the festival was
marked by a ceremonial reading of the Enuma Elish. It is possible that this epic
was also symbolically re-enacted in a ritual performance.
At a certain point n the festival the king would
enter into the temple of Marduk known as the Esagila, and surrender his regalia
of office to the high priest. The king would then undergo a reaffirmation of his
right to rule as a divine representative. After being found worthy in the eyes
of Marduk the king would receive his sceptre, loop, mace and crown back from the
high priest.
Taking the Lord by Hand
The king then led a procession transporting the
god Marduk known as “taking Bel (the Lord) by the hand.” The king would
officially escort the statue of the god, presumably carried in a specially
designed litter, down the processional way out of the Esagila temple and through
the Ishtar Gate to the Akitu temple which lay beyond the city walls. One part of
this procession led down a 200 m corridor that was flanked by the palace wall on
one side and a city wall on the other. This corridor was called Aibur-shabu,
which means ‘the enemy shall never pass.’ The walls of the Aibur-shabu were
decorated with 120 lions, symbolic of the protective powers of the goddess
Ishtar.
The king of Babylon was also responsible for
escorting the god Nabû, from nearby Borsippa, to the Akitu festival. Nabû was a
god of scribes who ascended in rank to a god of wisdom and joined Marduk at top
of the pantheon, first as his assistant then as his son. At times when Babylon
held dominion over Sumer and Akkad other gods from more distant cities would
travel, in the guise of their statues, to Babylon to reside for a few ceremonial
days in the Akitu temple.
During this time there was a ceremony called
hašadu. This involved what has been called a sacred or ritual marriage between
two gods. In this case between Marduk and his consort Sarpanitu. During the
ceremony the statues of the two deities would be placed for a time on a ritual
bed designed for the occasion.
Happy Chaldean new
year