Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Zimri-Lim's Palace and the four rivers?


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“The upper register lies behind the lower, in a primitive form of perspective. The lower has two goddesses standing, holding vases, from which streams of water flow. As these blend and fall, they become four streams (one original stream becomes two and then four).
 
Professor Nick Wyatt
 
 
 
In the next extract from professor Wyatt’s article,
 
A Royal Garden: The Ideology of Eden
 
 
we find further possible Genesis-Edenic symbolism. Typically, though, the Mari temple and its wall depictions, conventionally dated here to the C19th BC, are considered to pre-date any text of the Book of Genesis. In this series, on the other hand, we have re-dated Zimri-Lim and his palace to almost a millennium later than this, to the era of King Solomon of Israel, who influenced all of the kings of the earth (I Kings 4:34): “From all nations people came to listen to Solomon's wisdom, sent by all the kings of the world, who had heard of his wisdom”.
This would have included Zimri-Lim king of Mari, an actual biblical character (see below).
 
 
The Garden in the broader Ancient Near Eastern context
 
Let us try to set the Garden of Eden in the broader ancient Near Eastern context. Conceptually, Eden may be identified in principle with other “gardens” in ancient Near Eastern tradition, such as the scene in the Mari coronation painting, as well as with royal Assyrian gardens, throne rooms, and so on. This is because they all shared a common symbolism, without any particular one being derived from any other. Jean Margueron stated that no garden has yet been identified in the palace at Mari, but the investiture painting shows that at least the concept was present, and was evidently important for ritual purposes. It is most likely that the palm court (court 106) was the garden, even if a somewhat unconventional one, used precisely for ritual purposes in conjunction with the throne-room, even if the precise rites have left no record. And the vase and streams motif was common and widespread in ancient Near Eastern glyptic art; moreover, the famous marble statue of the goddess holding a vase from which water flowed was actually situated at the threshold of the throne room, the whole architectural complex thus functioning as a symbolic garden.
 
The famous wall-painting from the royal palace at Mari, already building on a rich tradition, depicts the scene commonly known as the rein-vestiture of King Zimri-Lim of Mari, after he had regained his throne, though Margueron has now argued … that it actually belonged in the reign of his father Yahdun-Lim. Its date is to be estimated as ca
1840-20 BCE, no greater precision being possible.
 
Damien Mackey’s comment: I can be much more ‘precise’ than this, having previously identified Zimri-Lim’s father, Yahdun-Lim, or
 
Iahdulim as Biblical Eliada
 
 
This Eliada was the father of king Solomon’s foe, Rezon (I Kings 11:23): “God raised up Rezon son of Eliada as an enemy against Solomon. Rezon had fled from his master Hadadezer king of Zobah” - Rezon therefore being the historical Zimri-Lim.
His former “master Hadadezer”, mentioned here, we have identified in this series (following Dean Hickman) as the historical Shamsi-Adad I.  
Shamsi-Adad I’s father, Uru-kabkabu or Ilu-Kabkabu becomes:
 
Ilu-Kabkabu as Biblical Rehob
 
 
“Moreover, David defeated Hadadezer son of Rehob, king of Zobah, when he went to restore his monument at the Euphrates River” (2 Samuel 8:3).
Professor Wyatt concludes:
 
The location of the painting is a guide to its spatial interpretation.
 
 It is at the side of the door going from the palm court (court 106) into the throne-room of the palace. This lateral location suggests—and this can only remain within the realm of possibilities—that it may have been duplicated on the other side of the entranceway.
It is reasonable to see it having served as a thematic linkage between the two areas, the court and the throne-room connected by the antechamber, communicating between the two and transferring the symbolism of one into the other, or of each to the other. Thus the spacious courtyard, originally with a palm tree in the middle, seems to have represented a garden, and the painting shows four trees of indeterminate species—though they are probably to be identified as date palms—with figures of a lamassu goddess … standing between each outer pair.
 
The inner two are flanked by winged sphinxes and griffins, above and below respectively,
common motifs in royal palaces, since both mythical animal forms are royal symbols.
 
There are two registers in the central tableau, which, while located in the garden, represent respectively the ante-chamber housing the statue of goddess and vase, and throne room beyond. The upper register lies behind the lower, in a primitive form of perspective. The lower has two goddesses standing, holding vases, from which streams of water flow. As these blend and fall, they become four streams (one original stream becomes two and then four). The upper scene, viewed as it were through the flowing streams, since it lies “behind” them, has the goddess Ishtar hand Zimri-Lim (or if we follow Margueron, Yahdun-Lim) the ring and the rod … symbols of his kingly office. They are flanked by two attendant deities.
 
The diagrammatic treatment given by Margueron suggests that the painting or paintings, if paired, allowed persons entering the throne-room to anticipate their progress towards it from the court. Thus the inner trees (doubled)—correcting Margueron—represent the palm in the centre of the court. The goddess (a single figure) with the vase who stands immediately inside the antechamber leading to the throne-room by its two entrances, one at either end, is preceded by the two vase-holding goddesses of the painting. The painting allows the viewer to “see” through the antechamber wall to the scene in the throne-room beyond. All the motifs here present, the trees, the rivers, the divine figures, the king (robed), and the sphinxes and griffins, which will trigger responses in the reader familiar with the biblical narrative, were already clichés [sic] in Marian and wider ancient Near Eastern iconography. They occurred widely on cylinder seals, on statuary and reliefs, and in derivative forms occur throughout the ancient Near East over a protracted period of time. And wherever found, their significance was not simply decorative, but ideological. Their impact may of course have been limited to the literate classes who formed the palace and temple personnel and the civil service. They would be the people who carried seals, for example. But they had a common vested interest in maintaining the mystique evoked in such devices. However, many royal motifs did filter down in attenuated forms, to be recognised by all as symbols of royal authority. This temporal and spatial ubiquity suggests that the motifs maintained a relatively stable symbolic value throughout the two millennia from at least 2000 BCE. This is significant when it comes to assessing later, apparently quite distinct materials, such as the tree(s) in the biblical Eden narrative. While biblical scholars are generally at pains to insist on the sui generis nature of this tradition, it is more consistent with our broad understanding of ancient Near Eastern culture to think in terms of a common repertoire, a koine. ….

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