Nabonidus repaired the head of a statue of Sargon of Akkad
by
Damien F. Mackey
“[Nabonidus] saw in this sacred enclosure [Ebabbar] a statue of Sargon …
half of its head was missing …. Given his reverence for the gods and
his respect for kingship, he … restored the head of
this statue, and put back its face”.
According to a late chronographic document concerning Babylon emanating from either the Seleucid or Parthian age, King Nabonidus had found a damaged statue of Sargon of Akkad the head of which he had carefully restored by his artisans.
In this particular document, Sargon of Akkad is distinguished from his “son”, Naram-Sin - though I believe, and have written to the effect (e.g. article below), that Sargon and Naram-Sin were one and the same powerful king.
We read from this late document: https://www.livius.org/sources/content/mesopotamian-chronicles-content/cm-53-chronographic-document-concerning-nabonidus/
…. [3] in the month of Ululu, [...] of this same year, in the Ebabbar, the temple of Šamaš, which is in Sippar, and in which kings among his predecessors had searched in vain for ancient foundation - the ancient dwelling place [...] of his kingship that would make his heart glad - he revealed to him, to his humble servant who worshiped him, who was constantly in search of his holy places, the sacred enclosure of Naram-Sin, Sargon's son, and, in this same year, in a propitious month, on a favorable day, he laid the foundations of the Ebabbar, the temple of Šamaš, above the sacred enclosure of Naram-Sin, Sargon's son, without exceeding or shrinking a finger's breadth.
He saw Naram-Sin's inscription and, without changing its place, restored it and appended his own inscription there.
[4] He saw in this sacred enclosure a statue of Sargon, the father of Naram-Sin: half of its head was missing, and it had deteriorated so as to make its face hardly recognizable. Given his reverence for the gods and his respect for kingship, he summoned expert artisans, restored the head of this statue, and put back its face. He did not change its place but installed it in the Ebabbar and initiated an oblation for it. ….
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Now, King Nabonidus of Babylon was none other than Nebuchednezzar ‘the Great’ according to my revision. And Sargon of Akkad, the ancient ‘Humpty Dumpty’, whose head the eccentric Babylonian king was, however, able to ‘put back together again’, was the biblical Nimrod himself, perhaps the world’s first dictator-emperor.
See e.g. my article:
Nimrod a "mighty man"
Nimrod and Nebuchednezzar, though well separated in time the one from the other, do compare well to the extent of they both being great builders of a “Babel”, of a Babylon, who regarded themselves as gods, who defied the One God, and who were punished – perhaps even while their lips were bespeaking their own praises (cf. Genesis 11:6-7; Daniel 4:31).
King Nebuchadnezzar was a despot who would tolerate no rivals or equals, a man who had deified himself and demanded to be worshipped as a god.
He was a ruler who manifested the character of Nimrod himself who originally founded Babylon [sic] and Assyria and built the Tower of Babel.
Babylon in fact had its roots in Nimrod’s ancient empire. In Babylon you could have any religion you liked, and there were many religions, provided the god you worshipped was not greater than the King himself.
Nebuchadnezzar was the head of the pantheon of gods in Babylon. In his estimation of himself there was no other god higher than himself. Nebuchadnezzar, like many other rulers in the Bible and in history, was a major type of the Antichrist ….
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In “Nimrod a "mighty man"” I argued that, just as the biblico-historical Nebuchednezzar requires a handful of mighty kings, his alter egos, in fact, to complete the awesome potentate, so, too, does biblical Nimrod require to be united to his various ‘parts’ (‘faces’) comprising some of the most famous names from early dynastic history (Sargon, Naram-Sin, Shulgi, etc.). Thus I wrote:
The biblical Nimrod has, at least as it seems to me, multi historical personae, just as I have found to have been the case with the much later (Chaldean) king, Nebuchednezzar.
The historical Nebuchednezzar - as he is currently portrayed to us - needs his other ‘face’, Nabonidus of Babylon, for example, to complete him as the biblical “King Nebuchadnezzar” (or “Nebuchadrezzar”); Nabonidus being mad, superstitious, given to dreams and omens, statue-worshipping, praising the god of gods (ilani sa ilani); having a son called “Belshazzar”.
The biblico-historical Nebuchednezzar also needs Ashurbanipal to fill out in detail his 43 years of reign, to smash utterly the nation of Egypt – Ashurbanipal also having a fiery furnace in which he burned people.
But Nebuchednezzar also needs Esarhaddon (conquering Egypt again) whose mysterious and long-lasting illness is so perfectly reminiscent of that of Nebuchednezzar in the Book of Daniel; Esarhaddon especially being renowned for his having built Babylon.
Nebuchednezzar has other ‘faces’ as well, he being Nabopolassar, the careful archaeologist (like Nabonidus), fussing over the proper alignment of temples and other buildings, and as the so-called Persian king, Cambyses, also named “Nebuchednezzar”, again quite mad, and being a known conqueror of Egypt. And we need to dip into Persia again, actually the city of Susa, to find Nebuchednezzar now in the Book of Nehemiah as the “Artaxerxes king of Babylon” reigning in his 20th to 32nd years (cf. Nehemiah 2:1 and 13:6).
Extending matters yet still further, our necessary revisionist folding of ‘Neo’ Babylonia with ‘Middle Kingdom’ Babylonia has likely yielded us the powerful (so-called) Middle Babylonian king Nebuchednezzar I as being another ‘face’ of the ‘Neo’ Babylonian king whom we number as Nebuchednezzar II.
In similar fashion, apparently, has our conventional biblico-history sliced and diced into various pieces, Nimrod the mighty hunter king.
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