A city defined by its god
Religion was at the centre of Babylon’s identity. The city’s patron deity was Marduk, and over the course of the second and first millennia BCE he rose from a local god to the leading figure in the Babylonian pantheon. This was not a break with older belief: Babylonians continued to worship the gods who had been important in Sumer and Akkad, among them Anu, Enlil, Ea, Sin, Shamash and Ishtar. What changed was the ranking. Compared with the older Sumerian pantheon, Babylonian tradition placed Marduk at the head, and its priests wrote the older stories again to explain why.
Marduk and the Enuma Elish
The main text that explains Marduk’s status is the poem known as Enuma Elish, from its opening words “when above”. In it the young god Marduk defeats the sea goddess Tiamat and her allies, creates the ordered world from her body and is proclaimed king of the gods. The story ends with the building of Babylon as the gods’ home and the giving of Marduk’s fifty names.
The poem is a good example of how religion and politics overlapped. It is a version of the Mesopotamian creation myth that gives Babylon cosmic importance. Most scholars date it to the late second millennium BCE, though the exact date and context are discussed. In the first millennium BCE it was recited during the new-year ritual, and copies were made in Assyria as well, where the god Ashur was sometimes substituted for Marduk.
The Esagila temple and the ziggurat
Marduk’s main temple, the Esagila, stood in the heart of Babylon beside the ziggurat Etemenanki. The name Esagila is usually translated as “house whose top is raised”. The temple contained the statue of Marduk, which was cared for as a living presence: it was clothed, fed with daily offerings and moved on processions. A large staff of priests, singers, cooks and gate-keepers served it, and the temple owned land and workshops, which made it an economic institution as well as a religious one. The site of Esagila lies deep under later deposits and water, so excavators have recovered only parts of the plan. Much of what we know comes from texts, including a later tablet describing the temples of Babylon.
The Akitu festival
The best-known ceremony was the Akitu, the new-year festival, held in the spring month of Nisannu (roughly March to April) in the first millennium BCE. It lasted about eleven days. According to the surviving ritual texts, the proceedings included prayers and offerings in the Esagila, the recitation of Enuma Elish, and a ritual in which the high priest took the king’s royal insignia and struck his cheek, after which the king affirmed that he had not neglected the city or the god. The king then took Marduk’s hand, a gesture of renewed legitimacy, and a procession carried the god’s statue out along the Processional Way to a festival house outside the walls and back again.
Scholars read the festival in several ways: as a renewal of cosmic order, a reaffirmation of kingship, and a public display that tied the population to the temple. The sources are mostly from the late periods, so how closely earlier versions matched is uncertain. Several kings who ruled Babylon from outside, including Assyrian rulers, are said to have taken part in order to be accepted as legitimate. A king who skipped the ceremony, as Nabonidus is said to have done during his years away, could be accused of neglect by his critics.
Wider Mesopotamian influence
Babylon’s cult did not stay within its walls. Babylon’s priests copied and standardised ritual and omen texts, and Mesopotamian cities from Borsippa to Uruk drew on their ideas. The Babylonian omens literature and ritual handbooks were the basis of the scholarly craft of the diviner and exorcist, and cities competed to claim the support of their own gods against Babylon’s. Older cities kept their own prestige: the religious centre Nippur, home of Enlil’s temple, had long given kings a sense of divine approval, and the shift of prestige towards Babylon came gradually. Statues of the gods were also treated as political prizes: according to later tradition, Marduk’s statue was taken from Babylon on more than one occasion, by Hittite, Elamite and Assyrian forces.
Other cults in the city
Babylon was not a one-god city. Nabu, Marduk’s son in the theology, had a major cult at nearby Borsippa and a shrine in Babylon. Ishtar had a strong presence in the city, and the Ishtar cult is the reason her gate carried her name. Shamash, Sin and others also had temples. Ordinary people prayed at household shrines, used amulets and consulted diviners, and the temple calendar of festivals shaped the rhythm of the year.
What we should be careful about
The picture of Babylonian religion comes mostly from priestly and royal texts, so it tells us more about institutions than about private belief. Some popular claims, such as that Babylonians were “monotheists” in worshipping Marduk, are not supported: the evidence points to a hierarchy of many gods with Marduk at the top. The Kassite dynasty and later rulers also supported the temples of many cities, so Babylon’s religious leadership was shared rather than total.