User:Ichthyovenator/High Priest of Babylon

The High Priest of Babylon (Akkadian: šešgallu, also read ahu rabû, both literally meaning "big brother"), also known as the High Priest of the Esagila, was the foremost religious leader within the ancient Babylonian religion.

Based in the Esagila, the chief temple of Babylon, dedicated to the city's national deity Marduk, the temple and the High Priest of Babylon retained importance and prominence even during times when Babylonia itself was not a dominant power, having a role resembling that of a Pope. High Priests were continually important from the early years of the Old Babylonian Empire (19th/18th century BC) to the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (539 BC) and continued to be appointed for centuries thereafter. The Esagila continued operation until late in the age of the Parthian Empire, being closed and destroyed at some point in the early 3rd century AD.

History
From the time of Hammurabi, when the Old Babylonian Empire rose to dominate Mesopotamia, the Babylonian chief deity, Marduk, was the supreme god in southern Mesopotamia and beyond. The Esagila, Babylon's great temple, dedicated to Marduk, was the foremost religious centre in all of the Near East from the days of the Old Babylonian Empire to the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire more than a thousand years later, even in times when Babylonia itself was not a dominant power. The High Priest of Babylon was thus the greatest religious leader in the Ancient Near East, having a role resembling that of a Pope. Babylonian kings were also religious leaders in a sense, with the Babylonian kingship essentially being an evolved version of the priest-king rulers of ancient Sumerian city states. Some of the functions performed by the kings during the New Year's Festivals were functions that had been performed by priests in ancient Sumer. As such, the Babylonian kings could, alongside the priests of the Esagila, be seen as another co-lineage of High Priests. Such a situation of shared universal religious rule also existed in medieval Europe, when both the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperors could claim ultimate religious rule as representatives of God on Earth.

The most important duty of the High Priest of Babylon was the enactment and participation in the yearly Babylonian New Year's Festival, which was held to assure the Babylonians that the world as they knew it would remain unchanged, through, among other things, reciting the Babylonian creation myth and parading the Statue of Marduk, the main cultic image of the god, through the city. Though the Babylonian king was required for the rituals, the High Priest could take care of many of the royal duties in the event of the absence of a king, though the the celebrations were then not considered to be conducted completely properly. According to the later Nabonidus Chronicle, this had happened during the reign of Nabonidus ((r. undefined – undefined)556–539 BC), when the king was away from Babylon for several years.

The Esagila was one of the longest enduring temples of the old Mesoptamian religion. Whereas the great temple buildings of Uruk were closed relatively early in the Parthian era, around 100 BC, the temples of Babylon lasted longer. When exactly the temples, and Babylon in general, were abandoned is not clear. Pliny the Elder wrote in AD 50 that proximity to the newer city Seleucia had turned Babylon into a "barren waste" and during their campaigns in the east, Roman emperors Trajan (in AD 115) and Septimius Severus (in AD 199) supposedly found the city destroyed and deserted. Archaeological evidence and the writings of Abba Arikha (c. AD 219) indicate that the temples of Babylon were still active in the early 3rd century AD. Some time before the end of the Parthian Empire in AD 224, the Esagila had been levelled, turned into a mound, with its former location being developed into a residential quartier.

Old Babylonian period

 * 17th century BC: Enlil

Seleucid period (311–141 BC)

 * 285–284 BC: Bel-kusurshu
 * 266–261 BC: Bel-ibni
 * 258–252 BC: Marduk-shumu-iddin and Bel-re’ushunu (= Berossus?)
 * 237–221 BC: Nergal-teshe-etir and Bel-ibni
 * 162–161 BC: Nabu-mushetiq-udi

Parthian period (141 BC – AD 224)

 * 138–137 BC: Marduk-zeru-ibni
 * 127–97 BC: Bel-lumur
 * 96–95 BC: Marduk-shumu-iddin
 * 93–87 BC: Bel-bullissu
 * 78–77 BC: Liblut and Akkudaya