O rei e os deuses nos anais assírios

• Autor(a) principal: Carreira, José Nunes
• Data de Publicação: 2008
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34632/didaskalia.2008.1886

Despite the differences that exist in conceptions of the exercise of power and of the narrative of successes, it is agreed that for the Egyptians, Hittites and Assyrians wars were won through divine support. The Assyrians are well known for being the first and bloodiest to practice ‘holy war’, with the gods as principal actors and beneficiaries of the wars of conquest. In innumerable passages in the so-called ‘annals’, it seems that war is this exclusive task of the gods. But the same expressions occur with the king as subject. The ‘terror of the splendour of Assur’ co-exists with the terror of the king; Assur’s arms shine in the arms of the king. With all this symbiosis of causalities and divine-human values, one must speak of a synergism between the gods and the king. The function of the annals for legitimisation and propaganda did not quash the evident intervention of human will. It is impossible to prove the existence of ‘holy war’ as distinct from ‘secular war’ and the same must be true for Israel and all of the Ancient East, if not indeed for the whole of antiquity. To distinguish between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane’ in the social life of those days constitutes an unsustainable anachronism.