Another quotepost.
By 1863 bce, King Sumu-El of Larsa had been dead for three years. Larsa was rising in power and importance under his successor. King Sumu-la-El of Babylon was in his seventeenth year and busily expanding the borders of his own kingdom. Meanwhile, previously dominant Isin faced one defeat after another. And then something remarkable happened there. Or rather, it may have happened. We only know about this episode from a much later chronicle, but the names are right, so perhaps it really took place.
It seems that an eclipse of the moon occurred, terrifying everyone who witnessed it. The Mesopotamians had no way to know that the eclipse happened because the Earth passed between the moon and the sun and cast its shadow across the moon. To Mesopotamian eyes, the bright, reassuring face of the moon gradually seemed to be swallowed up by darkness and was replaced by a round red shadow in the sky. Diviners believed that it signaled the death of the king.
Erra-imitti acted in his own self-interest, and he may have been the first king to come up with a solution to the threat of his imminent death. At any rate, he’s the first one that we know of to do this (there were others who followed his lead in later centuries). According to the later chronicle, “Erra-imitti, the king, installed Enlil-bani, the gardener, as a substitute king on his throne. He placed the royal diadem on his head.”52 The plan was that this gardener, Enlil-bani, would serve as king in place of Erra-imitti—living in the court, being served by attendants—and that the gods could go right ahead and carry out their threat to kill the king, but they would choose the gardener-king instead of the real king, Erra-imitti. Just in case the gods failed to follow their cue, the real king would have the substitute king killed, after which Erra-imitti would retake the throne, the prophecy having been properly fulfilled. This, at least, is what happened in later centuries when a substitute king was installed in order to fulfill, and outwit, a prophecy of death to the king.
But the gods seem to have been wiser than Erra-imitti anticipated. Instead, “Erra-imitti [died] in his palace when he sipped a hot broth. Enlil-bani, who occupied the throne, did not give it up (and) so was sovereign.”53 Fact or fable? It seems like a fairy tale, and yet it may well have happened. There is no record from the time of this remarkable occurrence, only ones that were written much later. But then, not many royal records survive from this period; it might simply be lost. Enlil-bani is unlikely to have bragged in a royal inscription about this odd way of coming to power. Being a gardener was not a normal preparation for the throne, after all.
So perhaps the real king did die, as the gods had foretold with the lunar eclipse. One can imagine Erra-imitti sipping his hot broth and then suddenly falling to the ground. Did he choke to death, or have a heart attack, or was he perhaps even poisoned? At this point the gardener, Enlil-bani, who had been placed on the throne simply as a convenience in order to spare the king, could have justifiably argued that the gods had wanted him to rule. What were the chances? There he was, ready to give up his life for the gods and the kingdom, and suddenly it was clear that he was the gods’ choice, after all. They had seen through Erra-imitti’s ruse and killed him anyway.
In the end, Enlil-bani (1860–1837 bce) left far more evidence of his reign than did the ill-fated Erra-imitti. He commissioned an inscription to be impressed onto the bricks of a building that he constructed in Isin. It began, “Enlil-bani, shepherd who makes everything abundant for Nippur, farmer (who grows) tall grain for Ur,”54 which sounds like a slight nod to his humble agricultural beginnings. But he also claimed religious powers. He “purifies the mes (cosmic truths) of (the city of) Eridu,” and was the “favorite en-priest of Uruk.” At this point he came to his titles: “king of Isin, king of the land of Sumer and Akkad,” the latter being the title given to the kings who claimed to control all of Mesopotamia. He was their rightful successor. Note that, unlike most kings, he didn’t name his father. Why would he? His father had not been royal. Instead he emphasized that he was the “spouse chosen by the heart of the goddess Inana.” And, like Erra-imitti and the other kings of Isin before him, Enlil-bani added the divine symbol in front of his name. Notwithstanding his humble start in life, he asserted that he was himself a god, an appropriate husband for the goddess Inana.
No commentary because this - from Amanda Podany's lovely Weavers, Scribes, and Kings - stands as gamefuel on its own.
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