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Dinesh

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Posted: 13 Sep 2022

Taken: 12 Sep 2022

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 Dinesh
Dinesh club
Hammurabi, as we have seen in II.2, is always carved standing and listening intently to a very present god. And countless cylinder seals from his period show other personages listening eye to eye or being presented to the just-as-real figures of human shaped gods. The Ashur altar of Tukulti is in shocking contrast to all previous depictions of the relations of gods and men. Nor is it simply some artistic idiosyncrasy. Other altar scenes of Tukulti are similarly devoid of gods. And cylinder seals of Tukulti's period also show the king approaching other nonpresent divinities, sometimes represented by a symbol. Such comparisons strongly suggest that the time of the breakdown of the bicameral mind in Mesopotamia is some time between Hammurabi and Tukulti.

This hypothesis is confirmed in the cuneiform remains of Tukulti and his period. What is known as the Epic of TukultiNinurta1 is the next clearly dated and well-preserved cuneiform document of note after Hammurabi. In the latter's time there is no doubt of the gods' eternal undeviant presence among men, directing them in their activities. But at the beginning of Tukulti's somewhat propaganda like epic, the gods of the Babylonian cities are angry with the Babylonian king for his inattention to them. They therefore forsake their cities, leaving the inhabitants without divine guidance, so that the victory of Tukulti's Assyrian armies is assured. This conception of gods forsaking their human slaves under any circumstances whatever is impossible in the Babylon of Hammurabi. It is something new in the world.
Moreover, it is found throughout whatever literature remains of the last three centuries of the second millennium B.C.

“ One who has no god, as he walks along the street,
Headache envelops him like a garment. “

So one cuneiform tablet from about the reign of Tukulti. If the breakdown of the bicameral mind involved the involuntary inhibition of temporal lobe areas of the right hemisphere, as we have conjectured earlier, this statement takes on an added interest Page 224/225

THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESSIN THE BREAK-DOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND
20 months ago. Edited 20 months ago.

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