On the Solar Aspect of the King in Ur III Royal Ideology

Abstrakt

The paper has studied the status and role of the sun-god in Mesopotamian royal ideology. It scrutinized the development of the sun-god’s image from Early Dynastic times until the Old Babylonian period and discussed its dependence on current ideological schemes.

The focus of the paper was the Ur III image of the sun-god: in this period, the deification of kings resulted in a merge of king and sun-god, with the former replacing the latter. Since this merge was a by-product of the notion of divine kingship, it was abandoned during the Old Babylonian period together with the concept of royal divinity as a whole, in favour of traditional ideology.