Reconstructing The Temple The Royal Rhetoric of Temple Renovation in The Ancient Near East and Israel Andrew R Davis All Chapter

Reconstructing the Temple: The Royal
Rhetoric of Temple Renovation in the

Ancient Near East and Israel Andrew R.
Davis
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Reconstructing the Temple
Reconstructing
the Temple
The Royal Rhetoric of Temple
Renovation in the Ancient Near
East and Israel
zz
ANDREW R. DAVIS
1
1
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For Richard J. Clifford, SJ
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
1. Introduction to Temple Renovation in the Ancient Near East

and Beyond 1
2. Temple Renovation in Neo-Assyrian Records and the Book of Kings 21
Esarhaddon’s Reports of Temple Renovation 25
The Renovation of Ešarra 28
The Renovation of Esagil 39
Temple Renovation and Priests’ Letters 55
Accounts of Temple Renovation in 2 Kings 57
Jehoash’s Renovation (2 Kgs 12:5–17) 59
Ahaz’s Renovation (2 Kgs 16:10–18) 69
Josiah’s Renovation (2 Kgs 22–23) 79
3. Persian Temple Renovations and the Rebuilding of
the Jerusalem Temple 88
Temple Renovations by Cyrus II 90
The New Capital at Pasargadae 91
Restoration of Babylonian Temples 94
Temple Renovations under Cambyses II 106
Temple Renovations under Darius I 115
The Renovation of Susa 116
Temple Renovation in the Bisitun Inscription 120
Temple Renovations in Egypt 127
The Second Temple in Light of Persian Temple Renovations 133
viii Contents
4. The Renovations of Dan and Bethel 155

1 Kings 12:25–33 as a Renovation Text 157
The Eighth Century bce as the Background of 1 Kings 12:25–33 168
Joash, Jeroboam II, and the Rhetoric of Renovation 177
Comparison to the Panamuwa and Bar-Rakib Inscriptions 185
5. Temple Renovation in Later Periods 197
Selected Bibliography 205

Index of Biblical Texts 215
Index of Other Ancient Texts 219
Subject Index 221
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank here the family, friends, and colleagues who have
helped me write this book. Numerous colleagues generously helped me pro-
duce this book, whether discussing the project with me or giving me feed-
back on drafts of its chapters: Kieran Campbell, Corrine Carvalho, Richard
Clifford, Peter Dubovský, Christopher Frechette, Garrett Galvin, Leslie
Hoppe, Dale Launderville, Mahri Leonard-Fleckman, John McLaughlin,
Chris Polt, Steve Ryan, Mark Smith, David Vanderhooft, and two anony-
mous Oxford reviewers. All of these colleagues helped me enhance my argu-
ment and saved me from errors in style and judgment; the ones that remain
are my responsibility alone.
I am also grateful to my Oxford editor, Steve Wiggins, who shepherded this
book toward publication, and to my colleagues at the Boston College School of
Theology and Ministry, who have discussed this project with me over the years.
Parts of this book have been presented at various conferences over the last
few years: early versions of Chapter 2 at the 2013 CBA meeting and the 2012
SBL meeting, and an early draft of Chapter 4 at the 2017 gathering of the
Catholic Old Testament Colloquium. The conversations that followed each
of these presentations were helpful.
I am thankful, as always, for the love and friendship of my wife Emily and
our sons Michael and Peter. Their support makes everything possible, in-
cluding this book.
Lastly, I would like to reiterate my thanks to Dick Clifford, not just for
his help with this book, but for all the guidance he has given me since I took
my first course with him in 2002. That Isaiah seminar opened my eyes to the
richness of the Hebrew Bible, and in Dick I found a model teacher and exe-
gete whom I aspired to emulate. In the years since he continues to be a model
of wisdom, wit, and kindness, and one of the great blessings of my joining
the BC STM faculty has been the opportunity to work alongside him. This
book is no match for the support and counsel I have received from Dick over
the years, but I dedicate it to him all the same with affection and admiration.
List of Abbreviations
AASOR Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research

AB Anchor Bible
ABD Anchor Bible Dictionary
ADPV Abhandlungen des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins
AIL Ancient Israel and Its Literature
ALASP Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syrien-Palästinas und Mesopotamiens
ANEM Ancient Near East Monographs
Ant. Jewish Antiquities
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
ATANT Abhandlungen zur Theologie des Alten und Neuen Testaments
ATD Das Alte Testament Deutsch
AYBRL Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library
BA Biblical Archaeologist
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BETL Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium
Bib Biblica
BJS Brown Judaic Studies
BKAT "Biblischer Kommentar, Altes Testament"
BWANT Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten (und Neuen) Testament
BZAW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
CAD The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of
Chicago
CAH Cambridge Ancient History
CANE Civilizations of the Ancient Near East
CBET Contributions to Biblical Exegesis and Theology
CBOTS Coniectanea Biblica: Old Testament Series
CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CHANE Culture and History of the Ancient Near East
CM Cuneiform Monographs
COS Context of Scripture
DB Bisitun Inscription (Darius)
DMb Trilingual inscription from Pasargadae (Darius)
xii List of Abbreviations
DMc Elamite and Akkadian inscription from Pasargadae (Darius)

DMOA Documenta et Monumenta Orientis Antiqui
DNa Trilingual inscription from Naqsh-i Rustam (Darius)
DPf Elamite inscription from Persepolis (Darius)
DSaa Akkadian inscription from Susa (Darius)
DSe Trilingual inscription from Susa (Darius)
DSf Trilingual inscription from Susa (Darius)
DSz Elamite inscription from Susa (Darius)
EI Eretz-Israel
ETS Erfurter theologische Studien
FAT Forschungen zum Alten Testament
FOTL Forms of Old Testament Literature
FRLANT Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen
Testaments
HBAI Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel
HS Hebrew Studies
HSM Harvard Semitic Monographs
HSS Harvard Semitic Studies
HThKAT Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament
HTR Harvard Theological Review
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual
IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
JANES Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Society
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society
JARCE Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature
JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JHS Journal of Hebrew Scriptures
JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies
JNSL Journal of Northwest Semitic Language
JSJSup Supplements to Journal for the Study of Judaism
JSOT Journal for the Study of the Old Testament
JSOTSup Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series
JTS Journal of Theological Studies
J.W. Jewish War
KAI Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften
KAT Kommentar zum Alten Testament
LAOS Leipziger altorientalistische Studien
LCL Loeb Classical Library
LHBOT The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
MOS Mittheilungen aus den Orientalischen Sammlungen
NABU Nouvelles assyriologiques brèves et utilitaires
List of Abbreviations xiii
NEA Near Eastern Archaeology

NEchtB Neue Echter Bibel
NICOT New International Commentary on the Old Testament
OAC Orientis Antiqui Collectio
OBO Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
OEANE Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East
OLA Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta
OtSt Oudtestamentische Studiën
PEQ Palestinian Exploration Quarterly
RA Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale
RIMA "The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Assyrian Periods"
RINAP Royal Inscriptions of the Neo-Assyrian Period
SAA State Archives of Assyria
SAAB State Archives of Assyria Bulletin
SBLABS SBL Archaeology and Biblical Studies
SBLMS SBL Monograph Series
SBLWAW SBL Writings from the Ancient World
SCS Septuagint and Cognate Studies
SSN Studia Semitica Neerlandica
StOr Studia Orientalia
SymS Symposium Series
TA Tel Aviv
TAD Textbook of Aramaic documents from Ancient Egypt
TSAJ Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
VAB Vorderasiatische Bibliothek
VT Vetus Testamentum
VTSup Vetus Testamentum Supplement series
WAWSup Writings from the Ancient World Supplement
WBC Word Biblical Commentary
WMANT Wissenschaftliche Monographien zum Alten und Neuen Testament
WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes
ZABR Zeitschrift für altorientalische und biblische Rechtgeschichte
ZAW Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft
ZDMG Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft
ZDPV Zeitschrift des deutschen Palästina-Vereins
1
Introduction to Temple Renovation

in the Ancient Near East and Beyond
On September 20, 1999, Pope John Paul II presided over the inaugura-
tion of the newly restored façade of St. Peter’s basilica. After a twenty-minute
display of fireworks, the pope addressed the crowd gathered in the square with
brief remarks in which he thanked the engineers, architects, marble workers,
stonecutters, plasterers, blacksmiths, and other workers who had contributed
to the renovation. He expressed a special gratitude for the Ente Nazionale
Idrocarburi (ENI), the Italian oil and gas company that paid for the $6 mil-
lion renovation and provided some of its own workers at no additional cost.
As some reporters noted, it was a fitting contribution from the company
whose gasoline and diesel fuel were the principal sources of the grime that
had come to coat the façade.
My primary interest in this inauguration, however, lies in another aspect
of John Paul’s remarks, namely his evocation of the basilica’s past as a way
of setting forth a vision of its present and future. This renovation, like all
renovations, is ostensibly about the future; specifically, the new façade was
one of the last preparations before the start of the Jubilee Year that would lead
the Catholic Church into the new millennium. And yet throughout his brief
address, the pope appealed to the basilica’s past. For example, in his speech
he celebrated that the façade has been restored to the “original splendour”
of Carlo Maderno’s design.1 Later, in the face of criticism that restorers had
1. The address is found here: http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1999/

september/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_30091999_basilica-inauguration.html.
2 Reconst ruct ing t he T emple
unjustifiably added new colors to the façade,2 official news reports reiterated
that the renovation was based on Maderno’s “original plans” and “original
design.”3 In his official address John Paul II stated that this recovery of St.
Peter’s original splendor provided a link between the basilica’s past, present,
and future, in that Jubilee Year visitors “will be able to relive the experiences
of pilgrims past who were enthralled by the magnificent and solid structures
of this imposing basilica.” Finally, the pope recommended that the restora-
tion project was an opportunity for the faithful to undertake “a courageous
review” of their own lives. In this way he used the recovery of St. Peter’s archi-
tectural past to invite pilgrims into an examination of their personal histories
and perhaps experience a spiritual renewal parallel to the restoration of the
basilica.
I begin with this account of the St. Peter’s restoration because it represents
a contemporary example of a genre that is the subject of this book, namely,
reports of temple renovation, which are attested in a variety of ancient Near
Eastern sources, including the Hebrew Bible. Perhaps it is a stretch to com-
pare the renovation of St. Peter’s to these ancient accounts, but reading them
together, I was struck by their shared elements, such as the attention paid to
the kinds of workers who contributed to the project and also to the sources
of the project’s funding. Even more significant, I think, is the way the ancient
accounts of temple renovation, like John Paul’s address, display a Janus-like
perspective (i.e., they look back into a temple’s past in ways that illuminate
our understanding of the present). Far from a neutral rehearsal of temple his-
tory, the accounts of temple renovation evoke a selective history: particular
pasts that are remembered to serve present interests. In the ancient examples
we will study in this book, those interests are often related to royal ideology,
rather than the spiritual renewal to which John Paul II aspires. Though we
will find some attempts to establish continuity with religious history, along
the lines of the spiritual kinship the pope hoped to establish between pilgrims
past and present at St. Peter’s, more often the ancient Near Eastern kings use
temple renovation as an instrument of royal propaganda.
Ancient Near Eastern kings were hardly unique in this approach to temple
renovation. Staying in Rome but moving back in time to antiquity, we can
note the attention that the emperor Augustus gives to temple renovations in
2. Richard Boudreaux, “Restoration Brings Color to St. Peter’s Basilica,” Los Angeles Times,
October 1, 1999.
3. Raymond De Souza, “At St. Peter’s Basilica the 2000 Countdown Begins with a Bang,”
National Catholic Register, October 10–16, 1999.
Introduction to Temple Renovation 3
his funerary inscription, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, in which he recounts (in the
first person) his life and achievements:
I restored the Capitoline temple and theatre of Pompey, incurring

great expense for both buildings, without inscribing my name any-
where on them. . . . I restored eighty-two temples of the gods in the
city as consul for the sixth time [28 bc], in accordance with a resolu-
tion of the senate, and I neglected none which needed repair at this
time. (20.1, 4)4
Unlike the new buildings Augustus lists in the preceding Chapter 19, these
renovations are appeals to the great Roman past, which he claims to be
restoring. Although a full analysis of this passage is beyond the scope of this
project, Alison Cooley’s commentary on the text is instructive. She writes that
“it was, therefore, an integral part of Augustus’s claim to be setting Roman so-
ciety to rights that he should depict himself as upholder of traditional Roman
religious practices. His ‘restoration’ of Roman religion involved repairing and
maintaining cult buildings.”5 Especially significant in this regard is his work
on the Capitoline temple, the only one of the eighty-plus renovated temples
that he cites by name. “The Capitoline hill was central to Roman identity. It
was the city’s stronghold and religious centre, and believed to be one of the
earliest areas to be inhabited under Romulus.”6 The temple atop the hill was
likewise essential: “Although vowed and built by the Tarquinian dynasty, the
temple was reputedly dedicated in the first year of the Republic, 509 bc, and
came to symbolize the new political order at Rome.”7
To be sure, Augustus gives plenty of attention to temples that he had
newly built, perhaps even taking credit for founding temples he had in fact
restored,8 but the key point for our purposes is the difference in rhetoric be-
tween temple founding and renovation. Whereas the former seeks to estab-
lish Augustus as the originator of new cultic institutions, the latter attempts
to ground his rule in the foundations of Roman religion. His renovation of
4. Alison E. Cooley, Res Gestae Divi Augusti: Text, Translation, and Commentary
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 80–81.
5. Ibid., 194.
6. Ibid., 188.
7. Ibid., 191–92.
8. Ibid., 182.
the Capitoline temple, in particular, established continuity between his rule

and some of Rome’s most ancient religious traditions, including an appeal to
its republican past, even as he consolidated his imperial power. The examples
of temple renovation from Augustus’s Res Gestae demonstrate their symbolic
power, especially in service of royal propaganda, and also their difference
from the rhetoric of newly founded temples.
One last example from yet another era and also from a different region
will suffice to demonstrate the symbolic significance of temple renovation
across cultures. The Templo Mayor in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan un-
derwent a series of expansions that have been correlated to the successive
kingships. Johanna Broda’s analysis of the pyramid temple states that “during
the reign of Aztec rulers from Acamapichtli (1375 to 1395) to Motecuhzoma
II (1502 to 1520), the Great Pyramid was rebuilt seven times while its façade
was remodeled six more times.”9 Although the time and place of this temple
lie well beyond our field of study, it offers further evidence of temple reno-
vation as an expression of royal ideology. The successive renovations of the
Templo Mayor, for example, were actually a series of expansions, as each ruler
superimposed his new structure atop previous pyramids.10 These architectural
expansions paralleled the territorial expansion achieved by each new ruler,
such that “the Templo Mayor was a symbol of political power and expressed
an ideology of an expanding warrior state.”11
Thus the Templo Mayor highlights again the particular way that temple
renovation can express royal ideology. Rather than found new temples and
project their reign as a new beginning, the Aztec rulers instead built on the
work of past rulers. Their preservation of past pyramids underscores the con-
tinuity from one ruler to the next. Such continuity symbolized stability at
the core of the empire that counterbalanced the continual expansion of the
periphery. In this way the expanding temple “became the symbol of political
integrity of the Aztec empire, while the successive enlargements of the huge
temple pyramid glorified the expansion of this state.”12
9. Broda, “Templo Mayor as Ritual Space,” in The Great Temple of Tenochtitlan: Center and
Periphery in the Aztec World (ed. J. Broda, D. Carrasco, and E. Moctezuma; Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1987), 67.
10. Unless you count the Spanish destruction of the temple in 1521 and subsequent construc-
tion of a cathedral on its site; see Kelly Donahue-Wallace, Art and Architecture of Viceregal
Latin America, 1521–1821 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008), 82.
11. Broda, “Templo Mayor as Ritual Space,” 69.
12. Ibid., 66.
All of these renovations of sacred buildings represent a category of spa-

tial hermeneutics that Lindsay Jones has defined as “Propitiation: Building as
Offering.” With this language he refers to the role that sacred architecture can
play in “cultivating, maintaining, or restoring some sort of favorable inclina-
tion or condition of harmony.”13 The renovations of Augustus and the Aztec
rulers, more precisely, are examples of “strategic, irregular rebuilding,” which
“are correlated . . . with transitions in political leadership” and “are linked es-
pecially to the commemoration of temporal authority.”14 Sometimes these
renovations “announce emphatically both the end of one era and the fresh
and legitimate beginning of another,” while at other times they “formalize
and legitimate a transfer of authority.”15 A key word in Jones’s definition of
this category is “commemoration,” that is, the way that temple renovation,
whether it marks continuity or discontinuity, is oriented toward the past.
I would even go so far as to describe temple renovation as a kind of histo-
riography. An oft-repeated definition of historiography is Johan Huizinga’s
statement that “history is the intellectual form in which a civilization renders
account to itself of its past.”16 Because a temple enshrines the sensibilities and
ideologies of the past, the renovation of a temple involves confrontation with,
and the modification of, that past according to the sensibilities and ideologies
of the present. Temple renovation is quite literally a reconstruction of the
past. How a king in the ancient Near East goes about renovating a temple
reveals his view of the past as represented by that temple. The decisions to
keep certain features, to change others, and to demolish still others are all part
of the king’s process of rendering the past to himself and his subjects. The ex-
amination of this process of reconstruction is the subject of this book.
Fortunately, the historiographical significance of temple renovation does
not depend solely on archaeological evidence of architectural changes, but is
reinforced by the attention it receives in actual historiographical documents.
Temple renovation is a common trope in royal inscriptions from the ancient
13. Jones, Hermeneutical Calisthenics: A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural Priorities (vol. 2

of The Hermeneutics of Sacred Architecture: Experience, Interpretation, Comparison; 2 vols.;
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 237.
14. Ibid., 249.
15. Ibid.
16. It is cited, for example, in John Van Seters, In Search of History: Historiography in the Ancient
World and the Origins of Biblical History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 1; and
J. J. Finkelstein, “Mesopotamian Historiography,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical
Society 107 (1963): 462.
Near East and in the historical books of the Hebrew Bible. These texts ex-
press in literary form the rendering of the past that was begun in the renova-
tion itself, and they bring our discussion more in line with more conventional
approaches to historiography, which emphasize written documents.17 Thus
temple renovation as an ancient historiography proceeds on two intertwined
paths: there is the actual renovation carried out by the king, which may or
may not be reconstructed from archaeological evidence, and there is the ac-
count of the temple renovation, by which the king uses the achievement to
promote his royal ideology. The present study will focus on the latter and will
argue that temple renovations are a vehicle for ancient Near Eastern kings to
align their reign with a selective history. It is a history that the kings them-
selves have constructed by the continuities or discontinuities they establish in
their renovation reports.
This book builds on the recent attention that scholars of the Hebrew Bible
and its cognate literature have given to the concept of sacred space in general
and the role of the temple(s) in particular.18 This attention has led to studies
from a variety of disciplines on numerous aspects of temple life from its
founding to its destruction. Certainly, a landmark contribution to the study
of temples—one that has played no small role in my development of the pre-
sent book—is Victor Hurowitz’s 1992 volume I Have Built You an Exalted
House.19 Two of Hurowitz’s arguments have been especially influential, and
both are expressed in the following quote:
The building account served primarily and above all as a literary topos
suitable for glorifying kings, and, by analogy, divine kings as well. . . .
17. Cf. J. J. M. Roberts’s definition of historiography as “a literary phenomenon involving the

recording and analysis, explicit or implicit, of past events” (“Myth ‘versus’ History,” CBQ 38
[1976]: 3 n. 15).
18. Some examples of this trend include: John Day, ed., Temple and Worship in Ancient
Israel: Proceedings of the Oxford Old Testament Seminar (rev. ed.; LHBOT 422; New York: T
& T Clark, 2007); Ehrhard Kamlah, ed., Temple Building and Temple Cult Architecture and
Cultic Paraphernalia of Temples in the Levant (2.–1. Mill. b.c.e.) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz,
2014); E. Frood and R. Raja, eds., Redefining the Sacred: Religious Architecture and Text in the
Near East and Egypt, 1000 bc–ad 300 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014); L. M. Morales, ed., Cult
and Cosmos: Tilting toward a Temple-Centered Theology (Leuven: Peeters, 2014); Kai Kaniuth
et al., eds., Tempel im Alten Orient (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013); Peter R. Bedford, Temple
Restoration in Early Achaemenid Judah (Leiden: Brill, 2001). My own contribution to this
trend is Tel Dan in Its Northern Cultic Context (SBLABS 20; Atlanta: Society of Biblical
Literature, 2013).
19. Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in the Bible in Light of
Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings ( JSOTSup 115; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1992)
It is reasonable to surmise that the “building account,” as a recognized,

fixed and well-defined literary form, passed from one culture to an-
other along with and through the same channels as other elements of
royal ideology.20
First, Hurowitz’s work demonstrates that accounts of temple building consti-

tute a genre that is attested across the ancient Near East. The consistency of
the genre’s constitutive elements in various contexts indicates a common cul-
tural heritage and invites comparison of biblical accounts to Mesopotamian
examples of the genre. Second, Hurowitz emphasizes that the building ac-
counts were hardly neutral reports, but reflect the religious and ideological
interests of their authors. In most cases, these interests can be traced back to
the kings who sponsored the (re)building itself and the scribal class that wrote
about the (re)construction. Both of Hurowitz’s points have been guiding prin-
ciples in my study of building accounts from ancient Israel and the Near East.
Where I differ from Hurowitz is in my particular focus on the renovation
of temples, as a distinctive subset of building accounts in the Hebrew Bible
and other ancient Near Eastern sources. Founding and renovating temples
are interrelated efforts, to be sure, but they are not identical. The difference
between them is apparent in the Mesopotamian accounts of temple (re)con-
struction. In Assyrian royal inscriptions, for example, most temple building
involves not the founding of new temples but the renovation of preexisting
ones. In these inscriptions, kings give a detailed history of the temple’s or-
igin, its dilapidation, and previous renovations, all of which provide the
background for the present restoration. Often they instruct later kings to un-
dertake similar restoration in the future and, when they do so, to remember
the efforts of the present king. In this way these renovations look to the past
as much as—perhaps more than—they look to the future.
This orientation toward the past has been noticed also in biblical
depictions of the Jerusalem temple. Mark S. Smith, for example, has suggested
that the pre-deuteronomistic (dtr) material of 1 Kings 6–7 expresses “an 8th-
century nostalgic perception of the power achieved under Solomon” and was
meant to “evoke the Jerusalem temple of an earlier time.”21 Such nostalgia,
he argues, shows that “the presentation of the past was already hostage to the
20. Ibid., 313.

21. Smith, “In Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6–7): Between Text and Archaeology,” in Confronting
the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on Ancient Israel in Honor of William G. Dever
(ed. S. Gitin, J. Wright, and J. Dessel; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 281.
concerns of the present and hopes for the future.”22 Some might protest that
this reading of 1 Kings 6–7 argues against the distinction drawn here, since
those chapters are an account of temple founding rather than renovation, but
Peter Dubovský has recently shown that 1 Kings 6–8 is composed of several
redaction layers that correspond to various renovations of the temple.23 His
conclusion that “the final form of 1 Kgs 6–8 telescopes texts stemming from
different phases of the temple of Jerusalem into one narrative” means that
although this text purports an account of temple founding, it is in fact a pal-
impsest of successive renovations.24 Moreover, Dubovský’s interpretation of 1
Kings 6–8 situates the nostalgia Smith has identified in the redactional his-
tory of the chapters. The import of their work for the present study is their
demonstration that temple renovation in the Hebrew Bible, as in other an-
cient Near Eastern sources, was oriented toward the past. Rebuilding was a
chance for kings to establish their reign in continuity with the past history
of the temple.
By contrast, when it comes to founding new temples, kings emphasize
the novelty of their construction without any reference to earlier kings or
temples. The two best examples of this approach in Mesopotamian sources are
Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 bce) and Sargon II (722–705 bce), two Assyrian
kings who built new capital cities at Calah (modern Nimrud) and Dur-
Sharrukin (modern Khorsabad), respectively. Describing the new Temples of
Enlil and Ninurta, Ashurnasirpal brags that “temples which had previously
not existed . . . I founded” (RIMA 2 A.0.101.30: 53–55). Elsewhere he focuses
just on the Temple of Ninurta, which he “constructed in its entirety” and in
which he “created with [his cunning] that statue of the god Ninurta which
had not existed previously” (RIMA 2 A.0.101.1 ii 132–134). Even this brief
comparison demonstrates that, at least in Assyrian royal inscriptions, temple
building and rebuilding were distinct endeavors, which served different ide-
ological purposes. To conflate the two is to miss the particular religious and
political agendas each is meant to advance.
This is not to say that the renovation or restoration of ancient Near Eastern
temples has gone entirely unnoticed. Richard S. Ellis’s work on foundation
deposits in Mesopotamian buildings is attentive to the distinction process of
22. Ibid.
23. Dubovský, The Building of the First Temple: A Study in Redactional, Text-Critical and
Historical Perspective (FAT 103; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015), 109–212.
24. Ibid., 209.
renovation,25 and studies of the biblical tabernacle sometimes refer to rituals

of restoration.26 A 2010 collection of essays included several on the subject of
temple restoration.27 The essay by Claus Ambos is a précis of his book-length
study of Mesopotamian building rituals, including rituals of restoration.28 Of
special note is the already mentioned monograph by Peter Dubovský, which,
like the present work, is interested in temple renovation as a long-standing and
important practice in the ancient Near East.29 Dubovský’s work has brought
welcome attention to the practice and its depiction in biblical and extra-
biblical sources, and although his book and the present study enlist some of
the same sources, they are directed toward different conclusions. Whereas
Dubovský uses temple renovations in Mesopotamian and dtr traditions (plus
Jeremiah and Ezekiel) to establish redactional layers of 1 Kings 6–8 that
correspond to periodic renovations of the Jerusalem temple, my analysis of
temple renovations is an attempt to show that reports of temple renovation
exhibit a similar royal rhetoric that can be identified in a variety of ancient
Near Eastern contexts, including the Hebrew Bible. The Neo-Assyrian and
dtr sources on which Dubovský draws comprise one of those contexts, but
even then, my analysis remains focused on their contribution to dtr royal ide-
ology in general, rather than their use in reconstructing the redactional his-
tory of 1 Kings 6–8.
This difference between the foundation and renovation of temples is
the basis for the present study, which examines the latter phenomenon in
various regions and time periods of the ancient Near East. In each context
I will show that temple renovation functions as a royal historiography in the
sense that it gives the king an opportunity to reconstruct the past in ways
25. Ellis, Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1968).
26. See Frank H. Gorman, The Ideology of Ritual: Space, Time and Status in the Priestly Theology
( JSOTSup 91; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1990), 55; and Mark K. George, Israel’s Tabernacle as
Social Space (AIL 2; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 58–59, 149–57.
27. See Jamie Novotny, “Temple Building in Assyria: Evidence from Royal Inscriptions,” and
Hanspeter Schaudig, “The Restoration of Temples in the Neo-and Late Babylonian Periods: A
Royal Prerogative as the Setting for Political Argument,” in From the Foundations to the
Crenellations: Essays on Temple Building in the Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible (ed. M.
Boda and J. Novotny; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2010), 109–39 and 141–64, respectively.
28. See Ambos, “Building Rituals from the First Millennium BC: The Evidence from the
Ritual Texts,” in From the Foundations to the Crenellations, 221–37; and idem, Mesopotamische
Baurituale aus dem 1. Jahrtausend v. Chr. (Dresden: Islet, 2004).
29. Dubovský, The Building of the First Temple.
that suit his present interests. In Chapter 2, I will examine Neo-Assyrian ac-
counts of temple renovations, especially those of Esarhaddon, and then turn
to comparable examples from the Deuteronomistic History (DH), namely,
the renovations undertaken by Jehoash (2 Kgs 12:5–17), Ahaz (2 Kgs 16:10–
18), and finally Josiah (2 Kgs 22–23). I will show that both sets of temple
renovations employ a similar rhetoric of discontinuity by which Esarhaddon
and Josiah use their recent predecessors as foils for their rebuilding efforts. At
the same time, both kings employ a rhetoric of continuity to associate their
reign with older and more illustrious past traditions.
In Chapter 3, I will turn my attention to the Persian period and compare
the temple renovations of Cyrus II, Cambyses II, and Darius I to the recon-
struction of the Jerusalem temple after the exile. I will show that, similar to
the royal rhetoric of Esarhaddon, these Persian kings use the renovation of
temples to distance themselves from recent turmoil and to associate instead
with older, more advantageous past traditions. Moreover, the kings depict
the renewal of religious architecture as the beginning of a larger program of
cultic and/or economic restoration. In turn, this analysis of Persian sources
will shed light on our understanding of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, which
serves a similar rhetorical purpose in Ezra 5:7–6:12. For the Jewish elders in
this passage, the renovation of the Jerusalem temple is the symbol through
which they express religious continuity as well as discontinuity.
Chapter 4 will focus on Jeroboam’s building activities at Dan and Bethel
(1 Kgs 12:25–33) but will adopt a different approach to this biblical tradi-
tion. Having established in Chapters 2 and 3 that temple renovation is widely
attested in the ancient Near East as a mode of royal propaganda by which
kings marked a break from recent history and established a recovery of older
traditions, I will argue that 1 Kings 12:25–33 should be read as another biblical
example of this royal rhetoric. In particular, I will make the case that beneath
later dtr polemic is an account of Jeroboam’s cultic transformation of Dan
and Bethel, which dates to the eighth century bce and marks the political
and cultic resurgence in the Northern Kingdom during the reigns of Joash
and Jeroboam II.
Chapter 5 will serve as an epilogue in which I propose some possibilities
for further research on this topic. Indeed, examples of temple renovation
do not stop in the Persian period, but continue into the Hellenistic and
Roman periods. Relevant examples include the Maccabean rededication of
the Jerusalem temple, Josephus’s account of the Herod’s rebuilding of the
Jerusalem temple, and the various references in the Gospels to the temple
being destroyed and rebuilt. Lacking the expertise required to develop a full
chapter on these texts but not wanting to ignore their significance, I have
chosen to discuss them briefly in an epilogue, which I hope will inspire other
scholars more versed in these sources to take up a more serious examination of
them through the rhetorical lens I propose throughout this book.
Wherever possible, I will supplement my analysis of the royal ideology
expressed in accounts of temple renovation with reference to relevant ar-
chaeological data. Although some studies of ancient building accounts have
disavowed the significance of the historical realia that lie behind the ac-
counts,30 the archaeological evidence of temple renovation has an indispen-
sable role in not only this study, but any attempt to analyze the ideological
import of public buildings. However paltry and fragmentary the material
remains of rebuilding may be, they provide a benchmark against which the
renovation accounts can be measured. Mark S. Smith underscores the value of
archaeological data in his analysis of 1 Kings 6–7, writing that
the archaeological approach provides better background for the de-

scription of the temple features as iconic and ideological. Even if the
temple never existed except as a verbal icon and as ideology, it seems,
based on the information available from the archaeological record,
that the description of the temple in 1 Kings 6–7 drew on known ar-
chaeological phenomena.31
Moreover, comparison of the historical and literary evidence of temple ren-

ovation can reveal discrepancies between the two that are instructive for un-
derstanding the ideological import of the building accounts. The absence
of such comparison, which is sometimes unavoidable because the archaeo-
logical evidence is itself absent or mixed, leaves ideological analysis with no
grounding in the historical context of the renovation texts.
The correlation of history and ideology is not the only methodological
issue that needs to be addressed before we conclude this introductory chapter.
Each of the following issues will be discussed within the following chapters,
whenever they are relevant, but it will be worthwhile to set forth here some of
30. For example, Clifford Mark McCormick, in his comparison of the Jerusalem temple and
Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh as “verbal icons,” writes that “the icon embodies the [Dtr]
historian’s own ideology. . . . There is no value in recreating the appearance of the structure as a
historical presentation of the temple since it is the creation of the [Dtr] historian” (Palace and
Temple: A Study of Architectural and Verbal Icons [BZAW 313; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2002], 41).
31. Smith, “In Solomon’s Temple (1 Kings 6–7): Between Text and Archaeology,” 280–81.
my presuppositions about the ancient sources I will use in the book. The first
issue concerns the influence of ancient Near Eastern sources on the Hebrew
Bible. As the preceding summaries of Chapters 2 and 3 indicate, I identify a
comparable rhetoric of renovation in the royal inscriptions of Neo-Assyrian
and Persian kings and in certain biblical texts. One explanation for these
rhetorical similarities is that the biblical writers were familiar with imperial
propaganda and used it in their own writing. Such familiarity would de-
pend on two premises, neither of which is certain. First, it assumes that royal
inscriptions were accessible to and consumed by the public. But many scholars
doubt that they were known outside the elite scribal circles that produced
them in Assyria and Persia, never mind the far-flung Levantine provinces.
Reasons for this doubt include the inaccessibility of the inscriptions, which
were often displayed in temples or palaces out of public view, or else they were
written as building inscriptions, which were buried within the foundations of
the buildings themselves and therefore accessible to no one except the gods
and any later king or archaeologist who would happen to excavate them.32
Even when royal inscriptions were made public, they often remained inac-
cessible, either because the public display was remote (e.g., the Bisitun in-
scription inscribed cliff face) or because of widespread illiteracy. Given these
limitations, we are right to question the public circulation of royal ideology
throughout the Assyrian and Persian empires.
This question is answered in part by evidence showing that royal
inscriptions reached an audience beyond the palace and scribal elite. Barbara
Porter, for example, has cited the prevalence of duplicate building inscriptions
found in cities other than the one where the construction took place.33 In
these cases, the original was likely buried in the building and the copies
disseminated to a secondary audience. Moreover, there is good reason to be-
lieve that the royal inscriptions (or something like them) were proclaimed in
a public setting.34 The case for such proclamation includes comparison to lit-
erary texts and treaty tablets that are known to have been read aloud, as well as
32. See A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (rev. ed.;
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 146–48; Richard S. Ellis, Foundation Deposits in
Ancient Mesopotamia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 166–67.
33. Barbara Nevling Porter, Images, Power, and Politics: Figurative Aspects of Esarhaddon’s
Babylonian Policy (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993), 110–11.
34. Ibid., 112–15; see also Marc Van De Mieroop, Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History
(London: Routledge, 1999), 57; Mario Liverani, “The Ideology of the Assyrian Empire,”
Power and Propaganda: A Symposium on Ancient Empires (ed. M. Larsen; Mesopotamia
7; Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1979), 302; and Luis Robert Siddall, The Reign of
Sargon II’s account of his eighth campaign, which is written in the form of a
letter to the god Ashur but also to the city of Ashur and its inhabitants.35 This
explicit address to the people and other rhetorical features in the letter have
been taken as evidence of a public reading in the city.36 Moreover, letters from
the reign of Tiglath-pileser III and Sennacherib indicate that royal ideology
was promulgated orally.37 Lastly, the speeches of the rab šāqê in 2 Kings 18–19
(Isa 36–37) offer a vivid depiction of such imperial propaganda and suggest
one way that western provinces like Judah would have encountered the ide-
ology that is found in royal inscriptions.38
However, this biblical account is by no means the only evidence we have
for the widespread dissemination of imperial propaganda, and by happy
coincident, some of the best evidence comes from the kings under exam-
ination in this book. For example, Chapter 2 focuses on the Neo-Assyrian
king Esarhaddon, whose succession treaty has numerous parallels in biblical
Adad-nīrārī II: An Historical and Ideological Analysis of An Assyrian King and His Times (CM
45; Leiden: Brill, 2013), 149.
35. See column I, lines 1–4 in Walter Mayer, Assyrien und Urarṭu I: Der Achte Feldzug Sargon
II. Im Jahr 714 v. Chr. (AOAT 395/1; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag, 2013), 96–97.
36. See A. Leo Oppenheim, “The City of Assur in 714 b.c.,” JNES 19 (1960): 133–47; and
Porter, Images, Power, and Politics, 113. For arguments against this public setting, see Pongratz-
Leisten, Religion and Ideology in Assyria (Boston: de Gruyter, 2015), 327–32; and Siddall, The
Reign of Adad-nīrārī II, 143–44.
37. The letter to Tiglath-pileser III (ND 2632 = SAA XIX, 98) is a report from an Assyrian
prefect on his efforts to persuade residents of Babylon to abandon support of the rebel Mukin-
zeri. In his public address from the city gate, the prefect twice invokes the king’s power (lines
27–28, 38) (see H. W. F. Saggs, “The Nimrud Letters, 1952: Part I,” Iraq 17 [1955]: 23–26; Mikko
Luukko, Correspondence of Tiglath-pileser III and Sargon II from Calah/Nimrud State Archives
of Assyria [SAA 19; Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2012], 104–105). The
letter to Sargon II (SAA V, 210) reports a governor’s address to an assembly of deportees in
Media. He likewise appeals to royal ideology by reminding the people of the king’s benev-
olence and their status as his servants (lines 5–7) (see Giovanni B. Lanfranchi and Simo
Parpola, The Correspondence of Sargon II, Part II: Letters from the Northern and Northeastern
Provinces [SAA 5; Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1990], 151; and William R. Gallagher,
“Assyrian Deportation Propaganda,” SAAB 8 [1994]: 57–65). Both letters are discussed in Peter
Dubovský, Hezekiah and the Assyrian Spies: Reconstruction of the Neo-Assyrian Intelligence
Services and its Significance for 2 Kings 18–19 (Roma: Pontificio Istituto biblico, 2006), 162–66
and 235, respectively.
38. Writing on this episode and other texts from First Isaiah, Peter Machinist raises “the distinct
possibility that Isaiah’s knowledge of Assyria was gained not merely from actual experiences
of Assyrians in Palestine, but from official Assyrian literature, especially of the court . . . the
image of Assyria to which [Isaiah and/or his circle] were responding was also that defined and
promulgated in the official literature of the Neo-Assyrian kings. In other words, in Isaiah we
are evidently dealing with the effects of propaganda” (“Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,”
JAOS 103 [1983]: 729).
texts, such as Deuteronomy 13 and 28, and Ezekiel 37.39 The recent discovery
of a copy of this treaty at Tell Tayinat in southeastern Turkey indicates that
Esarhaddon’s treaty had a Levantine audience.40 Especially intriguing is a re-
gional variant in the Tell Tayinat copy invoking the “Queen of Ekron” (i.e.,
the goddess Pythogaia who is attested as “Lady of Ekron” in an inscription
from that city).41 This variant is important because it shows that Esarhaddon’s
royal ideology not only reached the western provinces, but also was adapted
to a Levantine audience. Such adaptation presumes that the treaty would be
read or heard by at least the provincial leaders and perhaps local populations.
Persian royal inscriptions, which are the subject of Chapter 3, seemed to have
had a similar reach. The best evidence here is the Bisitun Inscription of Darius
I, which he inscribed in three languages (Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian)
on a cliff wall and claims to have broadcast throughout the kingdom on clay
tablets and parchment (§ 70). This claim is supported by the copies of the
inscription, which have been found in other parts of the empire, namely
Elephantine in Egypt and Babylon.42 The Elephantine copies are especially
significant because they were written in Aramaic, thus providing a literal ex-
ample of imperial ideology being translated for local reception.
39. See Hans Ulrich Steymans, Deuteronomium 28 und die adê zur Thronfolgeregelung
Asarhaddons: Segen und Fluch im Alten Orient und in Israel (OBO 145; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck
& Ruprecht, 1995); Bernard M. Levinson, “Esarhaddon Succession Treaty as the Source for the
Canon Formula in Deuteronomy 13:1,” JAOS 130 (2010): 337–47; and Eckart Otto, “Treueid
und Gesetz: Die Ursprünge des Deuteronomiums im Horizont neuassyrischen Vertragsrechts,”
ZABR 2 (1996): 1–52; and Andrew R. Davis, “A Near Eastern Treaty Parallel to Ezekiel’s Dry
Bones,” VT 68 (2018): 337–45.
40. Jacob Lauinger, “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty at Tell Tayinat: Text and Commentary,”
JCS 64 (2012): 87–123. The editio princeps of this treaty is D. J. Wiseman, “The Vassal-Treaties
of Esarhaddon,” Iraq 20 (1958): 1–99, which has long been abbreviated “VTE.” However, a
more recent edition of the text prefers the designation “Esarhaddon’s Succession Treaty,” since
the treaty requires the entire population of Assyria, not just the vassals named in its surviving
copies, to recognize Ashurbanipal as Esarhaddon’s legitimate successor (see Simo Parpola
and Kazuko Watanabe, Neo-Assyrian Treaties and Loyalty Oaths [SAA 2; Helsinki: Helsinki
University Press, 1988], xxx).
41. She is mentioned in §54B (= vi 47). For the text, see Lauinger, “Esarhaddon’s Succession
Treaty at Tell Tayinat,” 102, 113, and his comment on p. 119.
42. For the copies found in Elephantine, see Jonas Greenfield and Bezalel Porten, The Bisitun
Inscription of Darius the Great: Aramaic Version (Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, pt.
I, vol. 5, text 1; London: Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, 1982). For the copies found in
Babylon, see Ursula Seidl, “Ein Relief Dareios’ 1. in Babylon,” Archäologische Mitteilungen aus
Iran 9 (1976): 125–30; eadem, “Ein Monument Darius’ 1. aus Babylon,” ZA 89 (1999): 101–14;
eadem, “Eine Triumphstele Darius’ 1. aus Babylon,” Babylon: Focus mesopotamischer Geschichte,
Wiege fruher Gelehrsamkeit, Mythos in der Moderne (ed. J. Renger; Saarbrücken: Saarbrücker,
Druckerei und Verlag, 1999), 297–306.
Altogether, this evidence from various Near Eastern sources presents a

compelling case for the public dissemination of royal inscriptions and the
ideology they express. The inscriptions were undoubtedly best known by a
small circle of palace and scribal elites in the imperial capitals, but there is
good reason to believe that the inscriptions’ ideology and rhetoric reached
well beyond that circle, extending as far as the Levantine provinces, where
they influenced local elites, such as the biblical writers residing in Judah.43 In
the following chapters, I avoid arguing for direct dependence between rhetor-
ical strategies of royal inscriptions and their biblical parallels. Although such
dependence cannot be ruled out, my main argument is that the royal rhetoric
of temple renovation found in Near Eastern inscriptions can be discerned in
certain biblical texts. We may never know the precise channels by which that
rhetoric came to influence the biblical writers, but there is ample evidence
that such channels existed.44
A related issue has to do with the composition of Near Eastern royal
inscriptions. As this introductory preview shows, and as will become clear
in the chapters that follow, I presume that these inscriptions reflect the royal
ideology of the kings to whom they are attributed. However, this attribution
is not without complications. Because the first-person voice of this king him-
self dominates the royal inscriptions, it is sometimes easy to forget that he
had little or no role in their actual production. Rather, they were written by
professional scribes in the palace, whom Beate Pongratz-Leisten calls “the
hidden agents of royal representation.”45 Her book Religion and Ideology in
Assyria explores the role of these scholars, including scribes, in the produc-
tion of Assyrian ideological discourse, and her assessment of their influence is
worth quoting at length:
Within the political, bureaucratic, and religious social strata of an-

cient Near Eastern society, leading scholars can be regarded as the
“intellectuals” of their time; they shaped the weltanschauung and the
perception of the king’s body politic, compiled the religious, historical,
juridical and lexical knowledge, expounded ritual and religious texts,
and determined the thought patterns for the ideological education of
43. See David M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 304–38.
44. See Machinist, “Assyria and Its Image in the First Isaiah,” 730–31.
45. Pongratz-Leisten, Religion and Ideology in Assyria, 223.
the bureaucratic elite. As such, scholars acted not only as the ideolog-
ical custodians of the central institutions of temple and palace. Rather,
by reaffirming, transmitting, and modifying inherited social, cultural,
and political traditions, scholars also fulfilled authoritative and power-
exercising functions on the higher levels of state administration. They
acted as personal agents, counselors, and tutors to the crown prince
and king and their advice was sought perpetually in all state affairs.
Hence, beyond formulating the ideological basis for royal authority,
scholars were also directly involved in the exercise of authority in ways
that reached beyond their particular skills and expertise as astrologer,
exorcist, and diviner.46
Thus when speaking of royal rhetoric in Mesopotamia, we should be mindful

that the author(s) of that rhetoric may be not only the king, but also his chan-
cellery of scribes.
Their influence during the Sargonid period is reflected in an unusual text
called the “Sin of Sargon,” which was written by Esarhaddon (or his scribes)
but features the voice of his father Sennacherib describing in the first person
his efforts to avoid the sin of his predecessor Sargon, who had offended the
gods. Nevertheless, Sennacherib repeats Sargon’s offense but, in his words,
only because “Assyrian scribes wrongfully prevented me from working [on
the statue of Marduk]” (rev. 22’).47 This account is obviously self-serving for
both Sennacherib and Esarhaddon, but despite its prevarication, the text
sheds light on the power of scribes during this period, because it assumes that
scribes exerted influence over key issues in the royal administration. The text
only makes sense if the intended readers recognize the scribes’ power to drive
the king’s agenda.
We should be careful, however, not to overstate the influence of these
scholars. Perhaps the best view of their power comes from the over three
hundred surviving letters between Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal and their
scholars. From these letters, Simo Parpola has concluded that the scholars’
“services were simply indispensable to the king” and that they “came to
play an important role in the political decision-making process,” but he
also emphasizes “the overwhelmingly passive and ‘academic’ nature of their
46. Ibid., 35.

47. See Hayim Tadmor, Benno Landsberger, and Simo Parpola, “The Sin of Sargon and
Sennacherib’s Last Will,” SAAB 3 (1989): 14–15.
advisory role.”48 Moreover, “the scholar’s role was basically that of an auto-
mate or robot anabling [sic] the ruler to protect his personal desires (ṣibūtu)
with the help of Mesopotamian wisdom.”49
This issue is relevant for us because it affects how we understand the rhet-
oric of the royal inscriptions. The present study is interested, above all, in
the rhetoric of continuity and discontinuity as it relates to temple renova-
tion in the ancient Near East—how does a renovation attach a king to cer-
tain traditions and break from other traditions? Such rhetoric depends in
large part on the scribes who were custodians of the traditions that a king
could choose to employ or discard. Indeed, the scribes not only preserved the
traditions, but even embodied them. Parpola has shown that some scholars,
including scribes, in the Sargonid period had careers spanning multiple kings,
and it is not uncommon to see fathers and sons serve as scholars in the same
royal court.50 They were able to preserve literary patterns and rhetorical style
from reign to reign because at least some of the scribes or their sons were
bridging them.
This insight into the world of scribes helps us appreciate their role in
facilitating continuity in royal ideology, especially as it is expressed in royal
inscriptions, and it also helps us identify unique features of a particular king’s
ideology. For example, when we look at Esarhaddon’s building inscriptions
in Chapter 2, we will find many traditional tropes and stereotyped phrases,
which are the scribes’ stock-in-trade, but we will also encounter some remark-
able innovations, which probably reflect the distinctive style of Esarhaddon
himself.51 It is hard to imagine royal scribes choosing to deviate from certain
traditions without the king’s impetus, especially since these deviations repre-
sent a break from Sennacherib, Esarhaddon’s father and predecessor and the
erstwhile ruler of at least some of the scribes (or their fathers). In this case,
the king’s rhetoric of temple renovation is best recognized from the ways it
breaks with scribal conventions. But as our analysis of the Cyrus Cylinder in
Chapter 3 will show, kings could also rely on these conventions to establish
48. See Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian Scholars to the Kings Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal
(2 vols; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2007), 2:ix–xx.
49. Ibid., 2:ix.
50. Ibid., 2:xvii–xix, 471. See also Porter, Image, Power, and Politics, 109–10 n. 236.
51. See Hayim Tadmor, “Propaganda, Literature, Historiography: Cracking the Code of the
Assyrian Royal Inscriptions,” in Assyria 1995 (ed. S. Parpola and R. Whiting; Helsinki: Neo-
Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 1997), 328–29; and Peter Machinist, “The Voice of the Historian
in the Ancient Near East and Mediterranean World,” Int 57 (2003): 123–24.
a rhetoric of continuity. In this cylinder inscription, the Persian king Cyrus

draws heavily on the language and style of Mesopotamian royal inscriptions in
order to portray himself as temple restorer in the tradition of Assyrian kings.
It is unlikely that Cyrus himself knew these tropes and phraseology; instead
he relied on the Babylonian chancellery of scribes for this content, and they
were no doubt happy to oblige. But it is equally unlikely that these scribes
employed this Assyrian style without Cyrus’s authorization. As Pierre Briant
writes, “the Cylinder does more than represent the opinion of the Babylonian
elites; it also transmits the imperial program of Cyrus.”52
These two examples will be discussed at greater length in their relevant
chapters; this brief treatment is sufficient to demonstrate that kings depended
on their scribes for their incomparable knowledge of Mesopotamian
traditions, but this expertise does not itself constitute royal ideology. As we
will see, the royal rhetoric of temple renovation is a mix of continuities and
discontinuities, and each king represents a distinctive blend. Whatever in-
fluence scribes enjoyed within the palace, their power was circumscribed by
the king, who decided which traditions would be enlisted in his royal ide-
ology, which would be modified, and which would be abandoned. Thus we
can reasonably assume that the royal rhetoric expressed in royal inscriptions
represents the king’s own style and perspective.
The question of scribal influence and royal authority pertains not just to
Mesopotamian royal inscriptions but also to biblical texts, as recent studies
have shown the role that scribal training and techniques played in the com-
position of the DH.53 In particular, David Carr has argued that when scribes
transmitted older sources, they relied not so much on the written sources
themselves but on their internalization of the sources through a process of
“enculturation.” Emphasizing the importance of memorization in the trans-
mission of texts, Carr writes that
“sources” generally were not incorporated in written form, nor

did editors juggle multiple copies of manuscripts in the process
of producing their conflated text. . . . [Israelite authors’] training in
52. Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (trans. P. Daniels; Winona
Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 44.
53. William M. Schniedewind, How the Bible Became a Book: The Textualization of Ancient
Israel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture
and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007);
Sara J. Milstein, Tracking the Master Scribe: Revision through Introduction in Biblical and
Mesopotamian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
verbatim memorization in a text-supported environment gave them

tools for exact or semiexact repetition that allowed them to produce
works that featured remarkably precise parallels.54
According to Carr’s theory, the scribes who produced these narratives had,
through their scribal training, committed to memory a repertoire of textual
templates on which they drew in their composition of new texts. Instead of
producing exact copies of the originals, the scribes’ use of these templates from
memory entailed “quoting, borrowing from, or significantly revising them.”55
Carr’s theory has implications for how our analysis of the accounts of
temple renovation in Kings (Chapters 2 and 4) and Ezra (Chapter 3). Scholars
agree that these books contain material drawn from official archives, and it is
reasonable to assume that records of temple renovation were among these ar-
chival texts. Besides simply the administrative advantage of such records, the
best evidence for this assumption is the shared language of the renovation ac-
counts in 2 Kings 12:5–17 and 22:3–10, especially verses 11–13 and 3–6, respec-
tively. These identical features suggest that both are based on a standardized
account of renovation, but the transmission from archival record to the his-
toriographical narrative of Kings remains to be explained. Although some
have argued that the editors of the DH made use of a hard copy of a renova-
tion inscription,56 Carr’s theory recommends a more fluid process in which
the editors’ training in renovation reports (among other official documents)
enabled them to employ their conventions when the reports were useful for
the history they were constructing. Likewise, the letters recorded in Ezra
5:7–6:12 may or may not be authentic, but authenticity is not essential for
the comparison made in Chapter 3. For even if the letters were fabricated,
they were written by scribes who knew Persian official correspondence well
enough to imitate its style and who were also familiar enough with the royal
rhetoric of Persian accounts of temple renovation to employ some of the same
rhetorical patterns.
54. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), 159–60. On the importance of memorization in ancient Near Eastern
scribal training, see also van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible,
55–59, 68–69, 72, 98, 101, 103.
55. Ibid., 162.
56. E.g., Nadav Na’aman, “Royal Inscriptions and the Histories of Joash and Ahaz, Kings of
Judah,” VT 48 (1998): 343.
This approach accounts for what we find among the biblical accounts of
temple renovation: rhetorical and lexical similarities, but not strict adherence
to a fixed pattern. Unlike the formal structure identified by Hurwitz in ac-
counts of temple building, the similarities at the heart of this study are rhe-
torical.57 Although we will encounter formal similarities, this book focuses on
how the biblical accounts participate in a common royal rhetoric that can also
be observed in Near Eastern royal inscriptions.58 According to Carr’s theory
of enculturation, the biblical writers had been trained in official records of
the renovation and had internalized them, so that their compositions came
to employ comparable royal rhetoric, if not exact parallels. I am interested
in showing how biblical writers “quot[ed], borrow[ed] from, or significantly
revis[ed]” this rhetoric of renovation in the historical narratives they were
composing.
The next question to ask is how this rhetoric operates within the histor-
ical narratives of Kings and Ezra. The rest of this book offers my answer to
that question. As such, I will not answer the question here, but instead let it
provide a segue from this introductory chapter to the chapters that follow. By
the end of this book, I hope to have demonstrated that accounts of temple
renovation employ a distinctive rhetoric that was used by kings (and their
scribes) throughout the ancient Near East and across several centuries to ad-
vance their religious and political agendas.
57. On the differences between literary genre and rhetorical genre, see Andrew Knapp, Royal
Apologetic in the Ancient Near East (WAWSup 4; Atlanta: SBL Press, 2015), 31–42.
58. Admittedly, the formal features are more pronounced in the Near Eastern evidence, espe-
cially the Assyrian royal inscriptions, which are often rigid in their adherence to set structures
and formulas. Although these Assyrian inscriptions also show innovations, in general they
are more fixed than the biblical accounts of renovation. This difference is consistent with the
recent work of Seth L. Sanders, in which he sets in opposition “Babylonian scribal culture’s
ideology of continuity and Judean scribal culture’s ideology of reinvention” (From Adapa to
Enoch: Social Culture and Religious Vision in Judea and Babylon [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2017], 22).
2
Temple Renovation in Neo-Assyrian

Records and the Book of Kings
Our analysis of temple renovation in the ancient Near East and the
Hebrew Bible begins with a comparison of examples from Neo-Assyrian
royal inscriptions and the book of Kings. The Assyrian royal inscriptions were
chosen as a backdrop for the renovation accounts in Kings for several reasons.
For one thing, renovation accounts are a standard feature of the inscriptions
and thus supply us with a large corpus that can be analyzed for rhetorical
patterns and tendencies that may resonate with the examples in Kings. In fact,
the abundance of Assyrian royal inscriptions dealing with temple renovation
requires that we make selections within the corpus. I have done so by focusing
on the inscriptions of the Assyrian king Esarhaddon, who reigned in the sev-
enth century bce (680–669). His inscriptions are of particular interest to our
study not only because the written records from his reign have shed impor-
tant light on other aspects of the DH,1 but also because his accounts of temple
renovation are among the most innovative, as we will see in the following.2
Second, the Neo-Assyrian accounts of temple renovation come primarily
from royal inscriptions and thus promote royal propaganda in ways that will
be illuminating for our interpretation of the Kings accounts, which likewise
concern the role of the king in renovations. After outlining some of the gen
eral features of temple renovation as described in Assyrian royal inscriptions,
I will look more closely at the royal rhetoric embedded in Esarhaddon’s
1. See Chapter 1, p. 14 notes 39–41.

2. For other innovative aspects of Esarhaddon’s reign, see Beate Pongratz-Leisten, Religion and
Ideology in Assyria (Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 6; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), 323–
24, 334–35.
renovations, especially his rebuilding of the temple Ešarra in his native Assyria
and of the temple Esagil in Babylon.3 His accounts of these two renovations
show a careful effort to distance himself from the destructive legacy of his
father Sennacherib and to associate his reign instead with more venerable his-
torical traditions. Such rhetoric was best achieved through the renovation of
existing temples rather than the founding of new ones. Whereas the latter
only look forward to the future, the former look back to the past as well, and
since Esarhaddon’s aim was to revise the recent past, the restoration of reli-
gious architecture played a key role in the royal rhetoric of his inscriptions.
Before comparing this rhetoric to the examples of temple renovation from
Kings, there will be one more set of data that will be instructive for our analysis
of biblical evidence. Letters from temple priests to the king are an invaluable
resource for understanding temple renovation because they provide insight
into the practical challenges of such reconstruction. On the one hand, the
correspondence affirms the official version of renovation. In their depiction
of the king as the ultimate arbiter of issues related to the temple, the letters
support the rhetoric of renovation we find in the royal inscriptions. On the
other hand, the letters also show the practical limitations on the king’s cultic
authority by revealing the ways in which he was dependent on the priesthood
for the maintenance and repair of temples.
Against this backdrop of Assyrian royal ideology and competing claims of
religious authority, I will turn my attention to the three accounts of temple
renovation that are preserved in Kings. For now we will postpone an exam-
ination of the book’s most famous temple renovation, which I will argue in
Chapter 4 is the lens through which we should read Jeroboam I’s building at
Dan and Bethel (1 Kgs 12:25–33). Instead, this chapter will focus on the ac-
counts of three temple renovations that were undertaken by Judahite kings
during the Neo-Assyrian period. The best known of these examples is prob-
ably the one reported in 2 Kings 22:3–10, in which Josiah’s renovation of the
Jerusalem temple becomes the occasion for the discovery of “the book of the
law.” But this renovation is actually the last of the three. Prior to his efforts,
kings Jehoash (2 Kgs 12:5–17) and Ahaz (2 Kgs 16:10–18) both undertook
renovations of the temple. In this chapter, I will examine these three accounts
of renovation, first individually and then as a set of interrelated texts that to-
gether advance the religious agenda of the editors who produced the book of
3. Sumerian é.šár.ra means “House of the Universe,” and Sumerian é.sag.íl means “House Whose
Top is High” (see Andrew George, House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia
[Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1993], 139–40, 145).
Neo-Assyrian Records and the Book of Kings 23
Kings. In particular, I will argue that these editors included the renovations
of Jehoash and Ahaz as negative examples that would make Josiah’s exemplary
efforts stand out all the more.
Furthermore, I will compare these biblical accounts of renovation to the
Assyrian evidence and show that they employ a similar royal rhetoric. Just as
Esarhaddon’s reconstruction of Ešarra and Esagil was an opportunity to present
his reign as the correction of his father’s failings and to associate himself with
earlier, more illustrious histories, Josiah’s renovation of the Jerusalem temple in
2 Kings 22 represents the correction of previous kings’ shortcomings and the re-
establishment of proper worship. For Josiah, the renovation also marked the resto-
ration of accord between the throne and the priesthood. The temple renovations
of both Esarhaddon and Josiah entail historiography; their reports are not neu-
tral rehearsals of temple history, but rather selective histories—particular pasts
that are remembered in order to shape present and future perceptions of the
temple according to the kings’ interests, which do not always correspond with
the interests of the temple priesthood.
From this introduction, it is clear that my analysis of the three accounts of
temple renovations in 2 Kings presumes a Josianic setting for their arrange-
ment in the Deuteronomistic History (DH). Although the Josianic edition
of the DH has not been the focus of recent scholarship,4 most scholars still
recognize Josiah’s reign as a defining period in its composition.5 Indeed, even
scholars who doubt that there was a unified edition of the DH produced in
4. More recent trends include the identification of editions of the DH prior to Josiah (e.g.,
Jeremy Hutton, The Transjordanian Palimpsest: The Overwritten Texts of Personal Exile and
Transformation in the Deuteronomistic History [BZAW 396; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2009];
Benjamin D. Thomas, Hezekiah and the Compositional History of the Book of Kings [FAT/II
63; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014]); the regional diversity among the sources that comprise
the DH (e.g., Daniel E. Fleming, The Legacy of Israel in Judah’s Bible: History, Politics, and the
Reinscribing of Tradition [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012]); and a shift away
from the term “DH” and interest in alterative models for understanding the composition of
Gen–Kgs (e.g., Erik Aurelius, Zukunft jenseits des Gerichts: Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Studie
zum Enneateuch [BZAW 319; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2003]; Thomas B. Dozeman, Thomas Römer,
and Konrad Schmid, eds., Pentateuch, Hexateuch, or Enneateuch?: Identifying Literary Works
in Genesis through Kings [AIL 8; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011]).
5. The argument for a Josianic edition of the DH is most associated with the double re-
daction theory of Frank Moore Cross (Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic [Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1973], 274–89; see also Richard D. Nelson, The Double
Redaction of the Deuteronomistic History [ JSOTSup, 18; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1981]). For
more recent works that accept Josiah’s reign as a crucial setting for the DH, see Marvin A.
Sweeney, King Josiah of Judah: The Lost Messiah of Israel (New York: Oxford University Press,
2001); and Konrad Schmid, “Hatte Wellhausen Recht? Das Problem der literarhistorischen
Anfänge des Deuteronomismus in den Königebüchern,” in Die deuteronomistischen
this period assume the existence of documents from his reign that were ulti-
mately collected in the history we now have.6 The Josianic setting is relevant
for this present study because it highlights royal propaganda as a driving force
behind the DH. The goal of this propaganda was “to present King Josiah’s
reign and reform as the culmination of Israel’s history in the reunification of
the people of Israel around the Jerusalem Temple as YHWH’s central sanc-
tuary and the house of David as YHWH’s designated dynasty.”7 This goal is
achieved by presenting Josiah in 2 Kings as the ideal king (23:25), the reali-
zation of the Davidic promise (22:2), the decisive correction of Jeroboam’s
sin (23:15, 19–20), and reaching even further back in Israel’s history, the one
who fulfilled Moses’s command by “turn[ing] to YHWH . . . with his whole
heart, his whole being and his whole strength, in accord with the entire law of
Moses” (23:25; cf. Deut 6:5).
The accounts of temple renovation in 2 Kings (12:5–17; 16:10–18; 22:3–10)
contribute to this royal ideology not only as individual reports, but also in their
combination. One might argue that the accounts are not royal propaganda,
but simply official reports with no ideology, except perhaps the self-interest
of the scribes who wrote them, but analysis of the accounts themselves and
comparison to Assyrian examples indicate otherwise. For one thing, the pau-
city of examples in 2 Kings suggests their ideological significance. The temple
was probably repaired on a regular basis, but the three texts examined in this
chapter (plus 1 Kgs 12:25–33) are the only times it is mentioned in Kings.8
Such selectivity suggests that these accounts serve a purpose within the larger
narrative of 2 Kings, one that goes beyond the purview of whatever scribe(s)
composed the texts themselves. Just as Assyrian scribes were indispensable for
the composition of royal inscriptions but nonetheless remained subject to the
king, who authorized the ideology expressed in the inscriptions, the editors
who composed 2 Kings were subject to the agenda of the royal authority who
Geschichtswerke: Redaktions-und religionsgeschichtliche Perspektiven zur “Deuteronomismus”-

Diskussion in Tora und Vorderen Propheten (ed. M. Witte et al.; BZAW 365; Berlin: de Gruyter,
2006), 19–43.
6. See Thomas Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical and
Literary Introduction (London: T & T Clark, 2007), 67–106.
7. Sweeney, King Josiah of Judah, 10.
8. Carol Meyers has noted that “the Temple underwent countless changes, some directly re-
corded in the Bible, some tangentially indicated, and others no doubt left unmentioned. All of
these alterations were related to some extent to the waxing and waning of monarchic power”
(“Temple, Jerusalem,” ABD 6 [1992]: 362).
sponsored their work.9 The goal of this chapter, after establishing the royal
rhetoric of Assyrian temple renovations as an interpretive framework, is to
show how the accounts of temple renovation in 2 Kings contribute, individu-
ally and collectively, to Josiah’s royal ideology.
Esarhaddon’s Reports of Temple Renovation

The exaltation of building projects was a standard feature of Assyrian royal
inscriptions and one that can be found among some of our earliest examples of
such inscriptions.10 The exaltation corresponds to the primary objective of these
inscriptions: the glorification of the king.11 This self-glorification remained con-
stant across centuries of kings and inscriptions, and as it did, certain features
were repeated so often that they eventually became stereotypes. This is true for
the overall structure of Assyrian royal inscriptions, which usually begin with a
description of a royal hunt, followed by reports of military conquest, and con-
clude with temple (re)building. The placement of temple renovation in this
arrangement shows that “the conquest of the ‘chaotic’ outer world was an es-
sential prerequisite for the construction of the empire’s cultic infrastructure.”12
Indeed, some renovation accounts make this connection explicit by depicting
the reconstructed temple as the keystone of the cosmic order.
Within the larger typology of Neo- Assyrian royal inscriptions, ac-
counts of temple renovation follow a regular pattern that includes some
or all of the following elements: the reasons for rebuilding; the initiation
of the project; the preparation of the site and building materials; the in-
spection of the foundations; the reconstruction itself; and the concluding
9. On the relationship between scribes and royal authority under Josiah, Römer writes that
“the Neo-Assyrian edition of the book of Kings, exactly like that of Deuteronomy, Joshua
and Samuel, was composed by the scribes of the royal court in Jerusalem and was intended to
support the politics of the administrative, economic and religious centralization of the court
under the reign of Josiah” (The So-Called Deuteronomistic History, 104).
10. See Hayim Tadmor, “History and Ideology in the Assyrian Royal Inscription,” in Assyrian
Royal Inscriptions: New Horizons in Literary, Ideological, and Historical Analysis (OAC 17; ed.
F.M. Fales; Rome: Istituto per l’Oriente, 1981), 21–25.
11. Scholars have long recognized temple building and rebuilding as important vehicles of
royal ideology. See, for example, Henri Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient
Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978 [1948]), 267–74; A. Leo Oppenheim, Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead
Civilization (rev. ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 108–109.
12. Pongratz-Leisten, Religion and Ideology in Assyria, 217.
ceremonies.13 At every stage of these reports we find formulaic language that

a king inherited from his predecessors. As an example of this generic lan-
guage, here is Adad-nerari II’s (911–891 bce) report of renovating the temple
of Gula:
At that time the ancient temple of the goddess Gula, my mistress,

which previously Tukulti-Ninurta (I), my forefather, vice-regent of
Aššur, had built—this temple had become dilapidated and I removed
its debris down to the bottom of the foundation pit. I greatly enlarged
this temple beyond previous extent. I completed it from top to bottom
and deposited my monumental inscriptions. May a later prince restore
it (and) return my inscribed name to its place. (Then) Aššur and the
goddess Gula will listen to his prayers. (RIMA 2 A.0.99.2:128–132)
Adad-nerari II’s reference to Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 bce) is just the

beginning of his reliance on the example set by his predecessor. Comparison
with Tukulti-Ninurta’s inscriptions shows that Adad-nerari II’s account
includes almost verbatim Tukulti-Ninurta I’s own description of rebuilding
the temple of Sin and Shamash (see RIMA 1 A.0.78.6:27–38). Thus Adad-
nerari II fulfilled his predecessor’s request to “restore the temple and return
his inscribed name to its place,” and he requests that a future prince do the
same for him.
The renovation project ensured a king’s divine favor in the present and
future by honoring the work of a great king who came before him, though we
should note that Adad-nerari II’s self-aggrandizement also entails an implicit
critique of more recent predecessors. His emphasis on the dilapidated state
of the temple highlights how many kings between him and Tukulti-Ninurta
I failed to fulfill the centuries-old mandate. He alone has corrected this long-
standing neglect and in doing so has drawn a comparison between his reign
and his illustrious predecessor. In fact, he has improved on Tukulti-Ninurta
I’s initial effort. Not only has he matched the original project by removing the
temple’s debris and rebuilding from the foundations, he has “greatly expanded
13. See Victor Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House: Temple Building in Light of
Mesopotamian and Northwest Semitic Writings ( JSOTSup 115; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1992), 68–80; Jamie Novotny, “Temple Building in Assyria: Evidence from Royal
Inscriptions,” in From the Foundations to the Crenellations: Essays on Temple Building in the
Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible (AOAT 366; ed. R. Ellis et al.; Münster: Ugarit-Verlag,
2010), 109–39; Richard S. Ellis, Foundation Deposits in Ancient Mesopotamia (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1968), 5–34.
this temple beyond previous extent.” This inscription captures well the com-
plex rhetoric embedded in royal Assyrian accounts of temple renovation; at
the same time that this account appeals to the temple’s past and establishes
continuity between Adad-nerari II and Tukulti-Ninurta I, the account subtly
criticizes other past kings and even shows how Adad-nerari II has surpassed
Tukulti-Ninurta I.
Such rhetoric was not possible with newly constructed temples, whose
descriptions focused only on the buildings’ present and future. The con-
trast can be demonstrated with some inscriptions from the Assyrian king
Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 bce), which often boast of the new temples he
founded in Calah. Although the new capital was built on an existing city,
Ashurnasirpal II’s reports of its construction stress the novelty of its buildings,
including temples:14
I founded [in Calah] the temple of the god Ninurta, my lord. At that
time I created with my skill this statue of the god Ninurta which had
not existed previously as an icon of his great divinity out of the best
stone of the mountain and red gold. . . . I constructed this temple in its
entirety. (RIMA 2 A.0.101.1 ii 132–134)
In the city Calah, the centre of my dominion, temples which had pre-
viously not existed (such as) the temple of the gods Enlil and Ninurta
I founded. (RIMA 2 A.0.101.30:53–55)
For Ashurnasirpal II, the temples’ lack of precedent is a point of pride. As

vehicles of royal ideology, these brand-new temples convey a message quite
different from that of renovated temples. Ashurnasirpal II’s temples have no
past; there is only the new beginning, symbolized by the unprecedented con-
struction. Here there is no prolegomenon reporting on the temple’s origins
and previous refurbishments by royal predecessors because there is no such
history. A renovated temple, by contrast, has a long tradition that kings are
eager to rehearse according to their political and religious interests.
Against the backdrop of kings inheriting and repeating formulaic language
in their accounts of temple renovation, Esarhaddon’s inscriptions stand out
for his innovative approach, which included expansions on and modifications
of earlier traditions. As we will see later, some innovations reflect the specific
challenges that he faced in his reign, in particular his ambivalence toward his
14. See also his list of newly founded temples in RIMA 2 A.0.101.28 v 7–13.
father and predecessor Sennacherib. The reasons for their strained relation-
ship, which Esarhaddon more or less acknowledges, are complex and need
not be examined here.15 What is important for us is the effect of this estrange-
ment on Esarhaddon’s self-presentation in his royal inscriptions, especially his
accounts of temple renovation. Barbara Porter has shown how Esarhaddon’s
inscriptions project two different royal personas. His building program in
Babylon, a city that Sennacherib had demolished just eight years before his
son’s accession to the throne, was his attempt to reverse his father’s policy
of antagonism and to foster renewal in Babylon; meanwhile, in his native
Assyria, Esarhaddon stressed his fidelity to past royal tradition.16 In the fol-
lowing analysis of his inscriptions, I will show that Esarhaddon’s renovation
of Ešarra in Aššur and Esagil in Babylon played a key role in his self-depiction
vis-à-vis his father. Because a temple renovation, in contrast to a new con-
struction, is oriented toward the past, it was an ideal way for Esarhaddon to
construct an alternative royal and cultic tradition for himself. The temple
renovations were a chance to establish discontinuity between his reign and
his father’s and to attach his reign to a more illustrious past. Although the
rhetoric of the two renovation reports is particular to each temple, in both
rebuilding projects Esarhaddon attempts to revise the past in ways that will
serve his present interests.
The Renovation of Ešarra

Looking first at Esarhaddon’s building efforts in his native Assyria, especially
his renovation of Ešarra, the main temple of Aššur, we should first note that,
unlike in Babylonia where he refurbished only temples, Esarhaddon’s program
of reconstruction in Assyria included not just temples like Ešarra but a range
of public buildings.17 His account of Ešarra’s reconstruction includes not only
many of the standard elements of the form, but also a number of innovations.
These new features provide an important window into the political agenda
that accompanied Esarhaddon’s architectural efforts. The following analysis
15. See Andrew Knapp, Royal Apologetic in the Ancient Near East (WAWSup 4; Atlanta: SBL
Press, 2015), 301–307.
16. Barbara Nevling Porter, Images, Power, and Politics: Figurative Aspects of Esarhaddon’s
Babylonian Policy (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993), 41– 75; eadem,
“Politics and Public Relations Campaigns in Ancient Assyria: King Esarhaddon and
Babylonia,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 140 (1996): 164–74.
17. See Porter, Images, Power, and Politics, 66–67.
of his account of rebuilding Ešarra will show that the temple’s renovation was
an opportunity to associate his reign with illustrious kings of Assyria’s past, as
well as to distance himself from the ignominy of his father Sennacherib’s reign.
The principal sources for Esarhaddon’s renovation of Ešarra are sev-
eral inscriptions that were found at Aššur: Aššur A and Aššur B (RINAP 4
57; 58; 59), whose reports of the temple’s restoration comprise most of the
inscriptions; and Aššur-Babylon E (RINAP 4 60), which begins with reports
of military campaigns before describing the restoration of Ešarra in Aššur
and Esagil in Babylon. Of these inscriptions, Aššur A is the longest and most
detailed account and will be the focus of our analysis, though we will also
refer to the other texts.18 A fragment of Aššur-Babylon E found at Nineveh
notwithstanding, all of the accounts of Ešarra’s restoration come from the
temple’s own city, Aššur, which had been the Assyrian capital from the late
fourteenth century to the ninth century bce, when the capital was moved
to Calah. Even after this and subsequent relocations of the Assyrian capital,
Aššur remained an important religious center that was home to the empire’s
chief deity as well as the site of royal rebuilding and burial.19
A key feature of Esarhaddon’s rhetoric in Aššur A comes from the be-
ginning of his account of Ešarra’s renovation, where he rehearses the various
kings who had worked on the temple. The main purpose of this catalogue
of predecessors in temple rebuilding, which is a familiar feature of renova-
tion reports, is to situate the building project in the long history of Assyrian
kingship.20 A closer look at Esarhaddon’s list of predecessors, however, shows
that this history is a selective one that serves rhetorical ends. He begins with
Ešarra’s original builder and continues with three other kings who played a
role in the temple’s (re)construction:
The former temple of the god Aššur,

which Ušpia, my ancestor [Akk. abī], priest of the god Aššur, first
built, became dilapidated
18. See Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 76–78.

19. See Michael Roaf, Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (New York: Facts on File,
1990), 148.
20. See Hannes Galter, “Geschichte als Bauwerk: Der Aššurtempel und das assyrische
Geschichtsbewusstsein,” in From the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea: Studies on the History of
Assyria and Babylonia in Honour of A. K. Grayson (ed. G. Frame; Leiden: Nederlands Instituut
voor het Nabije Oosten, 2004), 124.
and Erišum (I), son of Ilu-šūma, my ancestor [Akk. abī], priest of

the god Aššur, (re)built (it); one hundred and twenty-six years passed
and it became dilapidated again,
and Šamši-Adad (I), son of Ila-Kabkabī, my ancestor [Akk. abī],
priest of the god Aššur, (re)built (it); four hundred and thirty-four
years passed and that temple was destroyed in a conflagration,
(and) Shalmaneser (I), son of Adad-nārārī (I), my ancestor [Akk.
abī], priest of the god Aššur, (re)built (it); five hundred and eighty
years passed and the inner cella, the residence of the god Aššur, my
lord, the bīt-šaḫūru, the temple of the god Kubu, the temple of the god
Dibar, (and) the temple of the god Ea became dilapidated, aged, (and)
antique. (RINAP 4 57 iii 16–41)21
Altogether this history covers over a thousand years by Esarhaddon’s reck-

oning, and while he is hardly the first Assyrian king to mention former
renovators, his list is exceptional for the number of predecessors he mentions
and the time span it covers.22
The predecessors cited by Esarhaddon stretch back to important kings of
the Middle Assyrian Period (Shalmaneser I), the Old Assyrian period (Erišum
I and Shamshi-Adad I), and even earlier (Ušpia). Of course, Esarhaddon did
not pull these names out of thin air, but more likely came upon them in the
course of his renovation, as he exposed their earlier foundation inscriptions.
It is also important to note that archaeological data support the (re)building
history that Esarhaddon has asserted. The temple’s earliest mud- brick
foundations cut through a third millennium bce stratum, which is con-
sistent with Ušpia’s reign,23 and inscriptions from the reigns of Erišum I and
Shamshi-Adad I corroborate their work on the temple.24 In terms of rhetoric,
21. All translations of Esarhaddon’s royal inscriptions are taken from Erle Leichty, The
Royal Inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria (680–669 bc) (RINAP 4; Winona Lake,
IN: Eisenbrauns, 2011).
22. Indeed, the Distanzangaben in this passage have attracted a lot of attention because of their
implications for Mesopotamian chronology. See Johannes Boese and Gernot Wilhelm, “Aššur-
Dan I, Ninurta-apil-ekur und die mittelassyrische Chronologie,” WZKM 71 (1979): 33–
35; Nadav Na’aman, “Statements of Time-Spans by Babylonian and Assyrian Kings and
Mesopotamian Chronology,” Iraq 46 (1984): 118–19; Julian Reade, “Assyrian King-Lists, the
Royal Tombs of Ur, and Indus Origins,” JNES 60 (2001): 4–5.
23. Galter, “Geschichte als Bauwerk,” 125.
24. In his account of rebuilding the Ehursagkurkurra (the cella of the god Aššur within
Ešarra) after a fire, Shalmaneser I also cites Ušpia and Erišum I as his previous (re)builders of
the temple (see RIMA 1 A.0.77.1:112–128; and A.0.77.2:5–21). Inscriptions from the reign of
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we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing,
when the need shall arise, to stake everything on the supreme
arbitrament of war, and to pour out its blood, its treasure, and its
tears like water, rather than submit to the loss of honor and renown.
In closing, let me repeat that we ask for a great navy, we ask for
an armament fit for the nation’s needs, not primarily to fight, but to
avert fighting. Preparedness deters the foe, and maintains right by
the show of ready might without the use of violence. Peace, like
freedom, is not a gift that tarries long in the hands of cowards, or of
those too feeble or too short-sighted to deserve it; and we ask to be
given the means to insure that honorable peace which alone is worth
having.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] Address as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, before the
Naval War College, June, 1897.
XIII
NATIONAL LIFE AND CHARACTER[21]
In National Life and Character; a Forecast, Mr. Charles H.

Pearson, late fellow of Oriel College, Oxford, and sometime Minister
of Education in Victoria, has produced one of the most notable books
of the end of the century. Mr. Pearson is not always quite so careful
as he might be about his facts; many of the conclusions he draws
from them seem somewhat strained; and with much of his forecast
most of us would radically disagree. Nevertheless, no one can read
this book without feeling his thinking powers greatly stimulated;
without being forced to ponder problems of which he was previously
wholly ignorant, or which he but half understood; and without
realizing that he is dealing with the work of a man of lofty thought
and of deep and philosophic insight into the world-forces of the
present.
Mr. Pearson belongs to the melancholy or pessimist school, which
has become so prominent in England during the last two or three
decades, and which has been represented there for half a century. In
fact, the note of despondency seems to be the dominant note among
Englishmen of high cultivation at the present time. It is as marked
among their statesmen and publicists as among their men of letters,
Mr. Balfour being particularly happy in his capacity to express in
good English, and with much genuine elevation of thought, a
profound disbelief in nineteenth century progress, and an equally
profound distrust of the future toward which we are all travelling.
For much of this pessimism and for many of the prophecies which
it evokes, there is no excuse whatsoever. There may possibly be
good foundation for the pessimism as to the future shown by men
like Mr. Pearson; but hitherto the writers of the stamp of the late
“Cassandra” Greg who have been pessimistic about the present,
have merely betrayed their own weakness or their own incapacity to
judge contemporary persons and events. The weakling, the man
who cannot struggle with his fellow-men and with the conditions that
surround him, is very apt to think these men and these conditions
bad; and if he has the gift of writing, he puts these thoughts down at
some length on paper. Very strong men, moreover, if of morose and
dyspeptic temper, are apt to rail at the present, and to praise the past
simply because they do not live in it. To any man who will consider
the subject from a scientific point of view, with a desire to get at the
truth, it is needless to insist on the fact that at no period of the
world’s history has there been so much happiness generally diffused
among mankind as now.
At no period of the world’s history has life been so full of interest
and of possibilities of excitement and enjoyment as for us who live in
the latter half of the nineteenth century. This is not only true as far as
the working classes are concerned, but it is especially true as
regards the men of means, and above all of those men of means
who also possess brains and ambition. Never before in the world’s
history have there been such opportunities thrown open to men, in
the way of building new commonwealths, exploring new countries,
conquering kingdoms, and trying to adapt the governmental policy of
old nations to new and strange conditions. The half-century which is
now closing, has held out to the people who have dwelt therein,
some of the great prizes of history. Abraham Lincoln and Prince
Bismarck have taken their places among the world’s worthies.
Mighty masters of war have arisen in America, in Germany, in
Russia; Lee and Grant, Jackson and Farragut, Moltke, Skobeleff,
and the Red Prince. The work of the chiefs of mechanical and
electrical invention has never been equalled before, save perhaps by
what was done in the first half of this same century. Never before
have there been so many opportunities for commonwealth builders;
new States have been pitched on the banks of the Saskatchewan,
the Columbia, the Missouri, and the Colorado, on the seacoast of
Australia, and in the interior of Central Africa. Vast regions have
been won by the sword. Burmah and Turkestan, Egypt and
Matabeleland, have rewarded the prowess of English and Russian
conquerors, exactly as, when the glory of Rome was at its height,
remote Mediterranean provinces furnished triumphs to the great
military leaders of the Eternal City. English administrators govern
subject empires larger than those conquered by Alexander. In letters
no name has been produced that will stand with the first half-dozen
of all literature, but there have been very many borne by men whose
effect upon the literatures of their own countries has been profound,
and whose works will last as long as the works of any men written in
the same tongues. In science even more has been done; Darwin has
fairly revolutionized thought; and many others stand but a step below
him.
All this means only that the opportunities have been exceptionally
great for the men of exceptionally great powers; but they have also
been great for the men of ordinary powers. The workingman is, on
the whole, better fed, better clothed, better housed, and provided
with greater opportunities for pleasure and for mental and spiritual
improvement than ever before. The man with ability enough to
become a lawmaker has the fearful joy of grappling with problems as
important as any the administrators and legislators of the past had to
face. The ordinary man of adventurous tastes and a desire to get all
out of life that can be gotten, is beyond measure better off than were
his forefathers of one, two, or three centuries back. He can travel
round the world; he can dwell in any country he wishes; he can
explore strange regions; he can spend years by himself in the
wilderness, hunting great game; he can take part in a campaign here
and there. Withersoever his tastes lead him, he finds that he has far
greater capacity conferred upon him by the conditions of nineteenth-
century civilization to do something of note than ever a man of his
kind had before. If he is observant, he notes all around him the play
of vaster forces than have ever before been exerted, working, half
blindly, half under control, to bring about immeasurable results. He
sees going on before his eyes a great transfer of population and
civilization, which is making America north of the Rio Grande, and
Australia, English-speaking continents; which has filled Central and
South America with States of uncertain possibilities; which is
creating for the first time a huge Aryan nation across the entire north
of Asia, and which is working changes in Africa infinitely surpassing
in importance all those that have ever taken place there since the
days when the Bantu peoples first built their beehive huts on the
banks of the Congo and the Zambezi. Our century has teemed with
life and interest.
Yet this is the very century at which Carlyle railed: and it is strange
to think that he could speak of the men at that very moment engaged
in doing such deeds, as belonging to a worn-out age. His vision was
clear to see the importance and the true bearing of England’s civil
war of the seventeenth century, and yet he remained mole-blind to
the vaster and more important civil war waged before his very eyes
in nineteenth-century America. The heroism of Naseby and
Worcester and Minden hid from him the heroism of Balaklava and
Inkerman, of Lucknow and Delhi. He could appreciate at their worth
the campaigns of the Seven Year’s War, and yet could hardly
understand those waged between the armies of the Potomac and of
Northern Virginia. He was fairly inspired by the fury and agony and
terror of the struggle at Kunnersdorf; and yet could not appreciate
the immensely greater importance of the death-wrestle that reeled
round Gettysburg. His eyes were so dazzled by the great dramas of
the past that he could not see the even greater drama of the present.
It is but the bare truth to say that never have the rewards been
greater, never has there been more chance for doing work of great
and lasting value, than this last half of the nineteenth century has
offered alike to statesman and soldier, to explorer and
commonwealth-builder, to the captain of industry, to the man of
letters, and to the man of science. Never has life been more
interesting to each to take part in. Never has there been a greater
output of good work done both by the few and by the many.
Nevertheless, signs do not fail that we are on the eve of great
changes, and that in the next century we shall see the conditions of
our lives, national and individual, modified after a sweeping and
radical fashion. Many of the forces that make for national greatness
and for individual happiness in the nineteenth century will be absent
entirely, or will act with greatly diminished strength, in the twentieth.
Many of the forces that now make for evil will by that time have
gained greatly in volume and power. It is foolish to look at the future
with blind and careless optimism; quite as foolish as to gaze at it only
through the dun-colored mists that surround the preachers of
pessimism. It is always best to look facts squarely in the face,
without blinking them, and to remember that, as has been well said,
in the long run even the most uncomfortable truth is a safer
companion than the pleasantest falsehood.
Whether the future holds good or evil for us does not, it is true,
alter our duty in the present. We must stand up valiantly in the fight
for righteousness and wisdom as we see them, and must let the
event turn out as it may. Nevertheless, even though there is little use
in pondering over the future, most men of intelligence do ponder
over it at times, and if we think of it at all, it is well to think clearly.
Mr. Pearson writes a forecast of what he believes probably will, or
at least very possibly may, happen in the development of national life
and character during the era upon which we are now entering. He is
a man who has had exceptional advantages for his work; he has
studied deeply and travelled widely; he has been a diligent reader of
books and a keen observer of men. To a careful training in one of the
oldest of the world’s universities he has added long experience as an
executive officer in one of the world’s youngest commonwealths. He
writes with power and charm. His book is interesting in manner, and
is still more interesting in matter, for he has thought deeply and
faithfully over subjects of immense importance to the future of all the
human race. He possesses a mind of marked originality. Moreover,
he always faithfully tries to see facts as they actually are. He is, it
seems to me, unduly pessimistic; but he is not pessimistic of set
purpose, nor does he adopt pessimism as a cult. He tries hard, and
often successfully, to make himself see and to make himself state
forces that are working for good. We may or may not differ from him,
but it behooves us, if we do, to state our positions guardedly; for we
are dealing with a man who has displayed much research in getting
at his facts and much honesty in arriving at his rather melancholy
conclusions.
The introduction to Mr. Pearson’s book is as readable as the
chapters that follow, and may best be considered in connection with
the first of these chapters, which is entitled “The Unchangeable
Limits of the Higher Races.” I am almost tempted to call this the most
interesting of the six chapters of the book, and yet one can hardly do
so when absorbed in reading any one of the other five. Mr. Pearson
sees what ought to be evident to every one, but apparently is not,
that what he calls the “higher races,” that is, the races that for the
last twenty-five hundred years (but, it must be remembered, only
during the last twenty-five hundred years) have led the world, can
prosper only under conditions of soil and climate analogous to those
obtaining in their old European homes. Speaking roughly, this means
that they can prosper only in the temperate zones, north and south.
Four hundred years ago the temperate zones, were very thinly
peopled indeed, while the tropical and sub-tropical regions were
already densely populated. The great feature in the world’s history
for the last four centuries has been the peopling of these vast,
scantily inhabited regions by men of the European stocks; notably by
men speaking English, but also by men speaking Russian and
Spanish. During the same centuries these European peoples have
for the first time acquired an enormous ascendency over all other
races. Once before, during the days of the Greco-Macedonian and
Roman supremacy, European peoples possessed a somewhat
similar supremacy; but it was not nearly as great, for at that period
America and Australia were unknown, Africa south of the Sahara
was absolutely unaffected by either Roman or Greek, and all but an
insignificant portion of Asia was not only without the pale of
European influence, but held within itself immense powers of
menace to Europe, and contained old and peculiar civilizations, still
flourishing in their prime. All this has now been changed. Great
English-speaking nations have sprung up in America north of the Rio
Grande, and are springing up in Australia. The Russians, by a
movement which has not yet fired the popular imagination, but which
all thinking men recognize as of incalculable importance, are building
a vast State in northern Asia, stretching from the Yellow Sea to the
Ural Mountains. Tropical America is parcelled out among States
partly of European blood, and mainly European in thought, speech
and religion; while tropical Asia and Africa have been divided among
European powers, and are held in more or less complete subjection
by their military and civil agents. It is no wonder that men who are
content to look at things superficially, and who think that the
tendencies that have triumphed during the last two centuries are as
immutable in their workings as great natural laws, should speak as if
it were a mere question of time when the civilized peoples should
overrun and occupy the entire world, exactly as they now do Europe
and North America.
Mr. Pearson points out with great clearness the groundlessness of
this belief. He deserves especial praise for discriminating between
the importance of ethnic, and of merely political, conquests. The
conquest by one country of another populous country always attracts
great attention at the time, and has wide momentary effects; but it is
of insignificant importance when compared with the kind of armed
settlement which causes new nations of an old stock to spring up in
new countries. The campaigns carried on by the lieutenants of
Justinian against Goth and Vandal, Bulgarian and Persian, seemed
in the eyes of civilized Europe at that time of incalculably greater
moment than the squalid warfare being waged in England between
the descendants of Low Dutch sea-thieves and the aboriginal British.
Yet, in reality, it was of hardly any consequence in history whether
Belisarius did or did not succeed in overthrowing the Ostrogoth
merely to make room for the Lombard, or whether the Vandal did or
did not succumb to the Roman instead of succumbing to the
Saracen a couple of centuries later; while it was of the most vital
consequence to the whole future of the world that the English should
supplant the Welsh as masters of Britain.
Again, in our own day, the histories written of Great Britain during
the last century teem with her dealings with India, while Australia
plays a very insignificant part indeed; yet, from the standpoint of the
ages, the peopling of the great island-continent with men of the
English stock is a thousand fold more important than the holding
Hindoostan for a few centuries.
Mr. Pearson understands and brings out clearly that in the long run
a conquest must fail when it means merely the erection of an
insignificant governing caste. He shows clearly that the men of our
stock do not prosper in tropical countries. In the New World they
leave a thin strain of their blood among and impose their laws,
language, and forms of government on the aboriginal races, which
then develop on new and dimly drawn lines. In the Old World they
fail to do even this. In Asia they may leave a few tens of thousands
or possibly hundreds of thousands of Eurasians to form an additional
caste in a caste-ridden community. In tropical Africa they may leave
here and there a mulatto tribe like the Griquas. But it certainly has
not yet been proved that the European can live and propagate
permanently in the hot regions of India and Africa, and Mr. Pearson
is right in anticipating for the whites who have conquered these
tropical and sub-tropical regions of the Old World, the same fate
which befell the Greek kingdoms in Bactria and the Chersonese. The
Greek rulers of Bactria were ultimately absorbed and vanished, as
probably the English rulers of India will some day in the future—for
the good of mankind, we sincerely hope and believe the very remote
future—themselves be absorbed and vanish. In Africa south of the
Zambezi (and possibly here and there on high plateaus north of it,)
there may remain white States, although even these States will
surely contain a large colored population, always threatening to
swamp the whites; but in tropical Africa generally, it does not seem
possible that any white State can ever be built up. Doubtless for
many centuries European adventurers and Arab raiders will rule over
huge territories in the country south of the Soudan and north of the
Tropic of Capricorn, and the whole structure, not only social, but
physical, of the negro and the negroid peoples will be profoundly
changed by their influence and by the influence of the half-caste
descendants of these European and Asiatic soldiers of fortune and
industry. But it is hardly possible to conceive that the peoples of
Africa, however ultimately changed, will be anything but negroid in
type of body and mind. It is probable that the change will be in the
direction of turning them into tribes like those of the Soudan, with a
similar religion and morality. It is almost impossible that they will not
in the end succeed in throwing off the yoke of the European
outsiders, though this end may be, and we hope will be, many
centuries distant. In America, most of the West Indies are becoming
negro islands. The Spaniard, however, because of the ease with
which he drops to a lower ethnic level, exerts a much more
permanent influence than the Englishman upon tropic aboriginal
races; and the tropical lands which the Spaniards and Portuguese
once held, now contain, and always will contain, races which, though
different from the Aryan of the temperate zone, yet bridge the gulf
between him and the black, red, and yellow peoples who have dwelt
from time immemorial on both sides of the equator.
Taking all this into consideration, therefore, it is most likely that a
portion of Mr. Pearson’s forecast, as regards the people of the tropic
zones, will be justified by events. It is impossible for the dominant
races of the temperate zones ever bodily to displace the peoples of
the tropics. It is highly probable that these people will cast off the
yoke of their European conquerors sooner or later, and will become
independent nations once more; though it is also possible that the
modern conditions of easy travel may permit the permanent rule in
the tropics of a vigorous northern race, renewed by a complete
change every generation.
Mr. Pearson’s further proposition is that these black, red, and
yellow nations, when thus freed, will threaten the dominance of the
higher peoples, possibly by military, certainly by industrial, rivalry,
and that the mere knowledge of the equality of these stocks will cow
and dispirit the higher races.
This part of his argument is open to very serious objections. In the
first place, Mr. Pearson entirely fails to take into account the
difference in character among the nationalities produced in the
tropics as the result of European conquest. In Asia, doubtless, the
old races now submerged by European predominance will reappear,
profoundly changed in themselves and in their relations to one
another, but as un-European as ever, and not appreciably affected
by any intermixture of European blood. In Africa, the native States
will probably range somewhere between the Portuguese half-caste
and quarter-caste communities now existing on certain of the tropic
coasts, and pastoral or agricultural communities, with a
Mohammedan religious cult and Asiatic type of government,
produced by the infusion of a conquering semitic or hamitic caste on
a conquered negro people. There may be a dominant caste of
European blood in some of these States, but that is all. In tropical
America, the change has already taken place. The States that there
exist will not materially alter their form. It is possible that here and
there populations of Chinese, pure or half-caste, or even of coolies,
may spring up; but taken as a whole, these States will be in the
future what they are now, that is, they will be by blood partly white,
but chiefly Indian or negro, with their language, law, religion,
literature, and governmental system approaching those of Europe
and North America.
Suppose that what Mr. Pearson foresees comes to pass, and that
the black and yellow races of the world attain the same
independence already achieved by the mongrel reddish race. Mr.
Pearson thinks that this will expose us to two dangers. The first is
that of actual physical distress caused by the competition of the
teeming myriads of the tropics, or perhaps by their invasion of the
Temperate zones. Mr. Pearson himself does not feel any very great
anxiety about this invasion assuming a military type, and I think that
even the fear he does express is unwarranted by the facts. He is
immensely impressed by the teeming population of China. He thinks
that the Chinese will some day constitute the dominant portion of the
population, both politically and numerically, in the East Indies, New
Guinea, and Farther India. In this he is probably quite right; but such
a change would merely mean the destruction or submersion of
Malay, Dyak, and Papuan and would be of hardly any real
consequence to the white man. He further thinks that the Chinese
may jeopardize Russia in Asia. Here I am inclined to think he is
wrong. As far as it is possible to judge in the absence of statistics,
the Chinaman at present is not increasing relatively as fast as the
Slav and the Anglo-Saxon. Half a century or so more will put both of
them within measurable distance of equality with him, even in point
of numbers. The movement of population in China is toward the
south, not the north; the menace is real for the English and French
protectorates in the south; in the north the difficulty hitherto has been
to keep Russian settlers from crossing the Chinese frontier. When
the great Trans-Siberian railroad is built, and when a few millions
more of Russian settlers stretch from the Volga to the valley of the
Amoor, the danger of a military advance by the Chinese against
Asiatic Russia will be entirely over, even granting that it now exists.
The Chinaman never has been, and probably never will be, such a
fighter as Turk or Tartar, and he would have to possess an absolutely
overwhelming superiority of numbers to give him a chance in a war
of aggression against a powerful military race. As yet, he has made
no advance whatever towards developing an army capable of
offensive work against European foes. In China there are no roads;
the military profession is looked down on; Chinese troops would be
formidable only under a European leader, and a European leader
would be employed only from dire necessity; that is to repel, not to
undertake an invasion. Moreover, China is merely an aggregate of
provinces with a central knot at Pekin; and Pekin could be taken at
any time by a small trained army. China will not menace Siberia until
after undergoing some stupendous and undreamed-of internal
revolution. It is scarcely within the bounds of possibility to conceive
of the Chinaman expelling the European settler from lands in which
that settler represents the bulk of a fairly thick population, not merely
a small intrusive caste. It is, of course, always possible that in the
far-distant future (though there is no sign of it now) China may travel
on the path of Japan, may change her policy, may develop fleets and
armies; but if she does do this, there is no reason why this fact
should stunt and dwarf the people of the higher races. In Elizabeth’s
day the Turkish fleets and armies stood towards those of European
powers in a far higher position than those of China, or of the tropics
generally, can ever hope to stand in relation to the peoples of the
Temperate zones; and yet this did not hinder the Elizabethan Age
from being one of great note both in the field of thought and in the
field of action.
The anticipation of what might happen if India became solidified
seems even more ill-founded. Here Mr. Pearson’s position is that the
very continuance of European rule, doing away with war and famine,
produces an increase of population and a solidity of the country,
which will enable the people to overthrow that European rule. He
assumes that the solidified and populous country will continue to
remain such after the overthrow of the Europeans, and will be
capable of deeds of aggression; but, of course, such an assumption
is contrary to all probabilities. Once the European rule was removed,
famine and internecine war would again become chronic, and India
would sink back to her former place. Moreover, the long continuance
of British rule undoubtedly weakens the warlike fibre of the natives,
and makes the usurer rather than the soldier the dominant type.
The danger to which Mr. Pearson alludes, that even the negro
peoples may in time become vast military powers, constituting a
menace to Europe, really seems to belong to a period so remote that
every condition will have changed to a degree rendering it
impossible for us to make any estimate in reference thereto. By that
time the descendant of the negro may be as intellectual as the
Athenian. Even prophecy must not look too many thousand years
ahead. It is perfectly possible that European settlements in Africa will
be swamped some time by the rising of natives who outnumber them
a hundred or a thousand to one, but it is not possible that the
negroes will form a military menace to the people of the north, at
least for a space of time longer than that which now separates us
from the men of the River Drift. The negroid peoples, the so-called
“hamatic,” and bastard semitic, races of eastern middle Africa are
formidable fighters; but their strength is not fit for any such herculean
tasks.
There is much more reason to fear the industrial competition of
these races; but even this will be less formidable as the power of the
State increases and especially as the democratic idea obtains more
and more currency. The Russians are not democratic at all, but the
State is very powerful with them; and therefore they keep the
Chinese out of their Siberian provinces, which are being rapidly filled
up with a population mainly Slav, the remainder of which is being
Slavicized. From the United States and Australia the Chinaman is
kept out because the democracy, with much clearness of vision, has
seen that his presence is ruinous to the white race.
Nineteenth century democracy needs no more complete
vindication for its existence than the fact that it has kept for the white
race the best portions of the new worlds’ surface, temperate America
and Australia. Had these regions been under aristocratic
governments, Chinese immigration would have been encouraged
precisely as the slave trade is encouraged of necessity by any slave-
holding oligarchy, and the result would in a few generations have
been even more fatal to the white race; but the democracy, with the
clear instinct of race selfishness, saw the race foe, and kept out the
dangerous alien. The presence of the negro in our Southern States
is a legacy from the time when we were ruled by a trans-oceanic
aristocracy. The whole civilization of the future owes a debt of
gratitude greater than can be expressed in words to that democratic
policy which has kept the temperate zones of the new and the
newest worlds a heritage for the white people.
As for the industrial competition, the Chinaman and the Hindoo
may drive certain kinds of white traders from the tropics; but more
than this they cannot do. They can never change the status of the
white laborer in his own home, for the latter can always protect
himself, and as soon as he is seriously menaced, always will protect
himself, by protective tariffs and stringent immigration laws.
Mr. Pearson fears that when once the tropic races are
independent, the white peoples will be humiliated and will lose heart:
but this does not seem inevitable, and indeed seems very
improbable. If the Englishman should lose his control over South
Africa and India, it might indeed be a serious blow to the Englishman
of Britain; though it may be well to remember that the generation of
Englishmen which grew up immediately after England had lost
America, accomplished feats in arms, letters, and science such as,
on the whole, no other English generation ever accomplished. Even
granting that Britain were to suffer as Mr. Pearson thinks she would,
the enormous majority of the English-speaking peoples, those whose
homes are in America and Australia, would be absolutely unaffected;
and Continental Europe would be little more affected than it was
when the Portuguese and Dutch successively saw their African and
Indian empires diminish. France has not been affected by the
expulsion of the French from Hayti; nor have the freed negroes of
Hayti been capable of the smallest aggressive movement. No
American or Australian cares in the least that the tan-colored
peoples of Brazil and Ecuador now live under governments of their
own instead of being ruled by viceroys from Portugal and Spain; and
it is difficult to see why they should be materially affected by a similar
change happening in regard to the people along the Ganges or the
upper Nile. Even if China does become a military power on the
European model, this fact will hardly affect the American and
Australian at the end of the twentieth century more than Japan’s
effort to get admitted to the circle of civilized nations has affected us
at the end of the nineteenth.
Finally, it must be borne in mind that if any one of the tropical
races ever does reach a pitch of industrial and military prosperity
which makes it a menace to European and American countries, it will
almost necessarily mean that this nation has itself become civilized
in the process; and we shall then simply be dealing with another
civilized nation of non-aryan blood, precisely as we now deal with
Magyar, Fin, and Basque, without any thought of their being
ethnically distinct from Croat, Rouman, or Wend.
In Mr. Pearson’s second chapter he deals with the stationary order
of society, and strives to show that while we are all tending toward it,
some nations, notably France, have practically come to it. He adds
that when this stationary state is reached, it will produce general
discouragement, and will probably affect the intellectual energy of
the people concerned. He further points out that our races now tend
to change from faith in private enterprises to faith in State
organizations, and that this is likely to diminish the vigorous
originality of any race. He even holds that we already see the
beginning of a decadence, in the decline of speculative thought, and
still more in the way of mechanical inventions. It is perfectly true that
the laissez-faire doctrine of the old school of political economists is
receiving, less and less favor; but after all, if we look at events
historically, we see that every race, as it has grown to civilized
greatness, has used the power of the State more and more. A great
State cannot rely on mere unrestricted individualism, any more than
it can afford to crush out all individualism. Within limits, the
mercilessness of private commercial warfare must be curbed as we
have curbed the individual’s right of private war proper. It was not
until the power of the State had become great in England, and until
the lawless individualism of feudal times had vanished, that the
English people began that career of greatness which has put them
on a level with the Greeks in point of intellectual achievement, and
with the Romans in point of that material success which is measured
by extension through settlement, by conquest, by triumphant
warcraft and statecraft. As for Mr. Pearson’s belief that we now see a
decline in speculative thought and in mechanical invention, all that
can be said is that the facts do not bear him out.
There is one side to this stationary state theory which Mr. Pearson
scarcely seems to touch. He points out with emphasis the fact, which
most people are prone to deny, that the higher orders of every
society tend to die out; that there is a tendency, on the whole, for
both lower classes and lower civilizations to increase faster than the
higher. Taken in the rough, his position on this point is undoubtedly
correct. Progressive societies, and the most progressive portions of
society, fail to increase as fast as the others, and often positively
decrease. The great commanders, great statesmen, great poets,
great men of science of any period taken together do not average as
many children who reach years of maturity as a similar number of
mechanics, workmen, and farmers, taken at random. Nevertheless,
society progresses, the improvement being due mainly to the
transmission of acquired characters, a process which in every
civilized State operates so strongly as to counterbalance the
operation of that baleful law of natural selection which tells against
the survival of some of the most desirable classes. Mr. Balfour, by
the way, whose forecast for the race is in some respects not unlike
Mr. Pearson’s, seems inclined to adopt the view that acquired
characteristics cannot be inherited; a position which, even though
supported by a few eminent names, is hardly worthy serious
refutation.
The point I wish to dwell upon here, however, is that it is precisely
in those castes which have reached the stationary state, or which
are positively diminishing in numbers, that the highest culture and
best training, the keenest enjoyment of life, and the greatest power
of doing good to the community, are to be found at present.
Unquestionably, no community that is actually diminishing in
numbers is in a healthy condition: and as the world is now, with huge
waste places still to fill up, and with much of the competition between
the races reducing itself to the warfare of the cradle, no race has any
chance to win a great place unless it consists of good breeders as
well as of good fighters. But it may well be that these conditions will
change in the future, when the other changes to which Mr. Pearson
looks forward with such melancholy, are themselves brought about.
A nation sufficiently populous to be able to hold its own against
aggression from without, a nation which, while developing the virtues
of refinement, culture, and learning, has yet not lost those of
courage, bold initiative, and military hardihood, might well play a
great part in the world, even though it had come to that stationary
state already reached by the dominant castes of thinkers and doers
in most of the dominant races.
In Mr. Pearson’s third chapter he dwells on some of the dangers of
political development, and in especial upon the increase of the town
at the expense of the country, and upon the growth of great standing
armies. Excessive urban development undoubtedly does constitute a
real and great danger. All that can be said about it is that it is quite
impossible to prophesy how long this growth will continue. Moreover,
some of the evils, as far as they really exist, will cure themselves. If
towns-people do, generation by generation, tend to become stunted
and weak, then they will die out, and the problem they cause will not
be permanent; while on the other hand, if the cities can be made
healthy, both physically and morally, the objections to them must
largely disappear. As for standing armies, Mr. Pearson here seems
to have too much thought of Europe only. In America and Australia
there is no danger of the upgrowing of great standing armies: and,
as he well shows, the fact that every citizen must undergo military
training, is by no means altogether a curse to the nations of
Continental Europe.
There is one point, by the way, although a small point, where it
may be worth while to correct Mr. Pearson’s statement of a fact. In
dwelling on what is undoubtedly the truth, that raw militia are utterly
incompetent to make head against trained regular forces, he finds it
necessary to explain away the defeat at New Orleans. In doing this,
he repeats the story as it has been told by British historians from Sir
Archibald Alison to Goldwin Smith. I hasten to say that the
misstatement is entirely natural on Mr. Pearson’s part; he was simply
copying, without sufficiently careful investigation, the legend adopted
by one side to take the sting out of defeat. The way he puts it is that
six thousand British under Pakenham, without artillery, were hurled
against strong works defended by twice their numbers, and were
beaten, as they would have been beaten had the works been
defended by almost any troops in the world. In the first place,
Pakenham did not have six thousand men; he had almost ten
thousand. In the second place, the Americans, instead of being twice
as numerous as the British, were but little more than half as
numerous. In the third place, so far from being without artillery, the
British were much superior to the Americans in this respect. Finally,
they assailed a position very much less strong than that held by
Soult when Wellington beat him at Toulouse with the same troops
which were defeated by Jackson at New Orleans. The simple truth is
that Jackson was a very good general, and that he had under him
troops whom he had trained in successive campaigns against
Indians and Spaniards, and that on the three occasions when he
brought Pakenham to battle—that is, the night attack, the great
artillery duel, and the open assault—the English soldiers, though
they fought with the utmost gallantry, were fairly and decisively
beaten.
This one badly-chosen premise does not, however, upset Mr.
Pearson’s conclusions. Plenty of instances can be taken from our
war of 1812 to show how unable militia are to face trained regulars;
and an equally striking example was that afforded at Castlebar, in
Ireland, in 1798, when a few hundred French regulars attacked with
the bayonet and drove in headlong flight from a very strong position,
defended by a powerful artillery, five times their number of English,
Scotch, and Irish militia.
In Mr. Pearson’s fourth chapter he deals, from a very noble
standpoint, with some advantages of national feeling. With this
chapter and with his praise of patriotism, and particularly of that
patriotism which attaches itself to the whole country, and not to any
section of it, we can only express our hearty agreement.
In his fifth chapter, on “The Decline of the Family” he sets forth, or
seems to set forth, certain propositions with which I must as heartily
disagree. He seems to lament the change which is making the
irresponsible despot as much of an anomaly in the family as in the
State. He seems to think that this will weaken the family. It may do
so, in some instances, exactly as the abolition of a despotism may
produce anarchy; but the movement is essentially as good in one
case as in the other. To all who have known really happy family lives,
that is to all who have known or have witnessed the greatest
happiness which there can be on this earth, it is hardly necessary to
say that the highest ideal of the family is attainable only where the
father and mother stand to each other as lovers and friends, with
equal rights. In these homes the children are bound to father and
mother by ties of love, respect, and obedience, which are simply
strengthened by the fact that they are treated as reasonable beings
with rights of their own, and that the rule of the household is changed
to suit the changing years, as childhood passes into manhood and
womanhood. In such a home the family is not weakened; it is
strengthened. This is no unattainable ideal. Every one knows
hundreds of homes where it is more or less perfectly realized, and it
is an ideal incomparably higher than the ideal of the beneficent
autocrat which it has so largely supplanted.
The final chapter of Mr. Pearson’s book is entitled “The Decay of
Character.” He believes that our world is becoming a world with less
adventure and energy, less brightness and hope. He believes that all
the great books have been written, all the great discoveries made, all
the great deeds done. He thinks that the adoption of State socialism
in some form will crush out individual merit and the higher kinds of
individual happiness. Of course, as to this, all that can be said is that
men differ as to what will be the effect of the forces whose working
he portrays, and that most of us who live in the American democracy
do not agree with him. It is to the last degree improbable that State
socialism will ever be adopted in its extreme form, save in a few
places. It exists, of course, to a certain extent wherever a police
force and a fire department exist; and the sphere of the State’s
action may be vastly increased without in any way diminishing the
happiness of either the many or the few. It is even conceivable that a
combination of legislative enactments and natural forces may greatly
reduce the inequalities of wealth without in any way diminishing the
real power of enjoyment or power for good work of what are now the
favored classes. In our own country the best work has always been
produced by men who lived in castes or social circles where the
standard of essential comfort was high; that is, where men were well
clothed, well fed, well housed, and had plenty of books and the
opportunity of using them; but where there was small room for
extravagant luxury. We think that Mr. Pearson’s fundamental error
here is his belief that the raising of the mass necessarily means the
lowering of the standard of life for the fortunate few. Those of us who
now live in communities where the native American element is
largest and where there is least inequality of conditions, know well
that there is no reason whatever in the nature of things why, in the
future, communities should not spring up where there shall be no
great extremes of poverty and wealth, and where, nevertheless, the
power of civilization and the chances for happiness and for doing
good work shall be greater than ever before.
As to what Mr. Pearson says about the work of the world which is
best worth doing being now done, the facts do not bear him out. He
thinks that the great poems have all been written, that the days of
the drama and the epic are past. Yet one of the greatest plays that
has ever been produced, always excepting the plays of
Shakespeare, was produced in this century; and if the world had to
wait nearly two thousand years after the vanishing of the Athenian
dramatists before Shakespeare appeared, and two hundred years
more before Goethe wrote his one great play, we can well afford to
suspend judgment for a few hundred years at least, before asserting
that no country and no language will again produce another great
drama. So it is with the epic. We are too near Milton, who came
three thousand years after Homer, to assert that the centuries to

Reconstructing The Temple The Royal Rhetoric of Temple Renovation in The Ancient Near East and Israel Andrew R Davis All Chapter

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Reconstructing the Temple: The Royal

Rhetoric of Temple Renovation in the

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

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1. Introduction to Temple Renovation in the Ancient Near East

4. The Renovations of Dan and Bethel 155

Selected Bibliography 205

AASOR Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research

DMc Elamite and Akkadian inscription from Pasargadae (Darius)

NEA Near Eastern Archaeology

Introduction to Temple Renovation

1. The address is found here: http://​w2.vatican.va/​content/​john-​paul-​ii/​en/​speeches/​1999/​

I restored the Capitoline temple and theatre of Pompey, incurring

the Capitoline temple, in particular, established continuity between his rule

All of these renovations of sacred buildings represent a category of spa-

13. Jones, Hermeneutical Calisthenics: A Morphology of Ritual-​Architectural Priorities (vol. 2

17. Cf. J. J. M. Roberts’s definition of historiography as “a literary phenomenon involving the

It is reasonable to surmise that the “building account,” as a recognized,

First, Hurowitz’s work demonstrates that accounts of temple building consti-

20. Ibid., 313.

renovation,25 and studies of the biblical tabernacle sometimes refer to rituals

the archaeological approach provides better background for the de-

Moreover, comparison of the historical and literary evidence of temple ren-

Altogether, this evidence from various Near Eastern sources presents a

Within the political, bureaucratic, and religious social strata of an-

Thus when speaking of royal rhetoric in Mesopotamia, we should be mindful

46. Ibid., 35.

a rhetoric of continuity. In this cylinder inscription, the Persian king Cyrus

“sources” generally were not incorporated in written form, nor

verbatim memorization in a text-​supported environment gave them

Temple Renovation in Neo-​Assyrian

1. See Chapter 1, p. 14 notes 39–​41.

Geschichtswerke: Redaktions-​und religionsgeschichtliche Perspektiven zur “Deuteronomismus”-​

Esarhaddon’s Reports of Temple Renovation

ceremonies.13 At every stage of these reports we find formulaic language that

At that time the ancient temple of the goddess Gula, my mistress,

Adad-​nerari II’s reference to Tukulti-​Ninurta I (1244–​1208 bce) is just the

For Ashurnasirpal II, the temples’ lack of precedent is a point of pride. As

The Renovation of Ešarra

The former temple of the god Aššur,

18. See Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 76–​78.

and Erišum (I), son of Ilu-​šūma, my ancestor [Akk. abī], priest of

Altogether this history covers over a thousand years by Esarhaddon’s reck-

In National Life and Character; a Forecast, Mr. Charles H.

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1. The address is found here: http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1999/

13. Jones, Hermeneutical Calisthenics: A Morphology of Ritual-Architectural Priorities (vol. 2

verbatim memorization in a text-supported environment gave them

Temple Renovation in Neo-Assyrian

1. See Chapter 1, p. 14 notes 39–41.

Geschichtswerke: Redaktions-und religionsgeschichtliche Perspektiven zur “Deuteronomismus”-

Adad-nerari II’s reference to Tukulti-Ninurta I (1244–1208 bce) is just the

18. See Hurowitz, I Have Built You an Exalted House, 76–78.

and Erišum (I), son of Ilu-šūma, my ancestor [Akk. abī], priest of