Origins

Though there had been kings (and thus obviously royal titles) in Mesopotamia since prehistoric times, the first great "innovator" of royal titles was Naram-Sin of Akkad (r. 2254–2218 BC), the grandson of Sargon of Akkad and the fourth ruler of the Akkadian Empire. Naram-Sin introduced the idea of kingship in the four corners (e.g. the four inhabited regions of the Earth) with the title "King of the Four Corners of the World", probably in geographical terms expressing his dominion over the regions Elam, Subartu, Amurru and Akkad (representing east, north, west and south respectively).^[3] It is possible that Naram-Sin might have been inspired to claim the title following his conquest of the city Ebla, in which quadripartite divisions of the world and the universe were prominent parts of the city's ideology and beliefs. Naram-Sin was also the first king to claim divinity for himself during his lifetime. Though both his father Manishtushu and his grandfather Sargon were recognized as divine, they had only been deified posthumously.^[4] The adoption of the title "God of Akkad" may have been due to Naram-Sin winning a great victory over a large-scale revolt against his rule. Naram-Sin was also the first Mesopotamian ruler to adopt the epithet dannum ("mighty").^[5]

Another title heavily associated with the Akkadian rulers was šar kiššatim. The literal translation of this title is "King of Kish", Kish being one of the more prestigious Sumerian cities, often having been seen in the times preceding the Akkadian Empire as having some sort of primacy over the other cities in the region. Use of the title, which was not limited to kings actually in possession of the city itself, implied that the ruler was a builder of cities, victorious in war and a righteous judge.^[6] By the time of Sargon of Akkad, "King of Kish" meant a divinely authorized ruler with the right to rule over all of Sumer, it might have begun to refer to some sort of a universal rule already in the centuries before Sargon's rise to power.^[7] Through its use by Sargon of Akkad and his successors, the title would be altered in meaning from "King of Kish" to the more boastful "King of the Universe", which is how later rulers would interpret it for more than a thousand years.^[8]

After the fall of Akkad, further titles would be introduced by the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur. The founder of this dynasty, Ur-Nammu (r. 2112–2095 BC), combined the title of "king of Akkad" with the traditional "king of Sumer" in an effort to unify the north and south of Mesopotamia under his rule, creating the title of "king of Sumer and Akkad". Though the Akkadian kings had used both the titles of "king of Akkad" and "king of Sumer", the combined title was new. Sargon of Akkad had even during his reign explicitly been against linking Sumer and Akkad. There was some native Mesopotamian precedence for double titles of this kind, in the Early Dynastic III (c. 2900–2350) period, double titles were used by some kings with examples like "lord of Sumer and king of the nation" and "king of Uruk and king of Ur". These titles were unique to their respective rulers however, never appearing again, and repeated "king" at the mention of the second kingship. Ur-Nammu was acknowledged by the priesthood at Nippur and crowned as sovereign of the two lands surrounding Nippur "to right and left".^[9] The fourth king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Amar-Sin (r. 2046–2038 BC), was the first ruler to introduce the title šarru dannu ("mighty king"), replacing the earlier epithet dannum.^[10]

When the Third Dynasty of Ur collapsed and its vassals once again became independent polities, the former vassal cities often only implicitly renounced their allegiance to Ur. Since the ruler of Ur was deified and thus technically a god, ruling titles like šar ("king") were applied to the principal deities of the cities. As a result, formerly subordinate titles such as šakkanakki and Išši’ak (both translating to "governor") became sovereign ruling titles.^[10]

Assyrian and Babylonian titulature

Over the course of the centuries after the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the main kingdoms that would develop in Mesopotamia were Assyria in the north and Babylonia in the south. The kings of Assyria would title themselves as Išši’ak until the reign of the Middle-Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I of the 14th century BC, who once more introduced the title šar, signifying his role as an absolute monarch.^[11]

Typically, Assyrian royal inscriptions usually glorify the strength and power of the king whilst Babylonian royal inscriptions tend to focus on the protective role and the piety of the king.^[1] Assyrian titularies usually also often emphasize the royal genaeology of the king, something Babylonian titularies do not, and also drive home the king's moral and physical qualities while downplaying his role in the judicial system.^[12] Assyrian epithets about royal lineage vary in how far they stretch back, most often simply discussing lineage in terms of "son of ..." or "brother of ...". Some cases display lineage stretching back much further, Shamash-shuma-ukin (r. 667–648 BC) describes himself as a "descendant of Sargon II", his great-grandfather. More extremely, Esarhaddon (r. 681–669 BC) calls himself a "descendant of the eternal seed of Bel-bani", a king who would have lived more than a thousand years before him.^[13]

Assyrian royal titularies were often changed depending on where the titles were to be displayed, the titles of the same Assyrian king would have been different in their home country of Assyria and in conquered regions. Those Neo-Assyrian kings who controlled the city of Babylon used a "hybrid" titulary of sorts in the south, combining aspects of the Assyrian and Babylonian tradition, similar to how the traditional Babylonian deities were promoted in the south alongside the Assyrian main deity of Ashur.^[12] The assumption of many traditional southern titles, including the ancient "king of Sumer and Akkad", by the Assyrian kings served to legitimize their rule and assert their control over Babylon and lower Mesopotamia.^[2] Epithets like "chosen by the god Marduk and the goddess Sarpanit" and "favourite of the god Ashur and the goddess Mullissu", both assumed by Esarhaddon, illustrate that he was both Assyrian (Ashur and Mullissu, the main pair of Assyrian deities) and a legitimate ruler over Babylon (Marduk and Sarpanit, the main pair of Babylonian deities).^[14]

Most of the Neo-Assyrian titles that speak of the king's prowess, e.g. "great king", "mighty king" and even the old "king of the Universe", a title dating back to Akkadian times, were not carried over into the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire with two exceptions. The founder of the Neo-Babylonian empire, Nabopolassar (r. 625–605 BC) uses some of the titles (prominently "mighty king") in his early inscriptions, possibly due to his family originating as high-ranking officials for the Assyrians (a fact he otherwise was careful to mask). The final ruler of the Neo-Babylonian empire, Nabonidus (r. 556–539 BC), took all three of the Assyrian titles in inscriptions late in his reign, deliberately aligning himself with the Neo-Assyrian kings, possibly to claim a universal empire as in the Assyrian model.^[1]

Achaemenid and Seleucid use

In the Cyrus Cylinder, Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid Empire assumes many native Mesopotamian title following his 539 BC conquest of Babylon. Much like the late inscriptions of Nabonidus, the Cyrus Cylinder corresponds more to the traditional Assyrian royal titulary than it does the Babylonian.^[1] When the Assyrian kings conquered Babylon, they titled themselves as both kings of Babylon and kings of Assyria. Since they were not technically legitimate Babylonian rulers in that they had not been born to the Babylonian throne, they stressed their legitimacy by deriving their kingship from the fact that they had held royal status before conquering Babylon. Cyrus does much the same in the Cyrus Cylinder, stressing that his father and grandfather were "kings of Anšan" and that Cyrus was the "heir to an eternal line of kingship".^[15]

The Antiochus Cylinder, which describes how Antiochus I (r. 281–261 BC) of the Seleucid Empire rebuilt the Ezida Temple in the city of Borsippa, is one of the last known documents written in Akkadian, separated from the previous Cyrus Cylinder by around 300 years. This cylinder also contains the last known example of an Akkadian-language royal titulary, applied to Antiochus himself. It is an important source on the self-presentation of Seleucid kings and on the relations between the Seleucid rulers and the inhabitants of Babylon (located near the recently founded Seleucid capital of Seleucia). The text of the cylinder as a whole combines and reshapes elements from the Babylonian and Assyrian traditions of royal titularies, sometimes breaking with tradition to introduce aspects of the Seleucid royal ideology.^[16]

Though the titulature of Antiochus I used in the cylinder has in the past been interpreted as very traditionally Babylonian in its composition, especially compared to that of Nebuchadnezzar II (r. 605–562 BC) of the Neo-Babylonian empire, only two titles in the Antiochus Cylinder actually align with titles consistently used by the Neo-Babylonian kings (those being "king of Babylon" and "provider of Esagila and Ezida". Other titles in the cylinder, including "great king", "mighty king" and "king of the Universe" are more characteristic of the Neo-Assyrian kings.^[1]

Out of the titularies of all previous kings, the titulary of Antiochus most closely resembles that of Nabonidus in its arrangement though they are not identical, that of Antiochus combining Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian titles. It is possible given the large amount of time separating the Antiochus Cylinder from the last known previous example (the Cyrus Cylinder) and the rather simply and short nature of the titulary that it mixes traditions and ideas due to the limited amount of sources the scribe would have had to work with, but royal titularies were usually created with great care and consideration. It is possible that the mixture was chosen to specifically reflect a more Seleucid version of kingship, Assyrian titles like "mighty king" and "great king" fitting with the warrior king-idea used by the Seleucids in the rest of their empire. Universalizing titles like "king of the Universe" may have simply been appealing in lacking a geographical specification and that the king would not have to confine his realm to include just Babylon or Mesopotamia (which would have resulted from a title like "king of Sumer and Akkad").^[17] Similar to how Cyrus the Great stressed that his lineage was royal despite him not being born to the Babylonian throne, Antiochus titulary contains the information that he is the son and heir of Seleucus I Nicator (the first Seleucid king, r. 305–281 BC), who is referred to as "the Macedonian", connecting him with the kingship of Alexander the Great and his line and granting Antiochus further legitimacy.^[15]

Titles centering on the king's person

Descriptive titles similar to epithets, titles which center on the king's person. Titles and epithets which relate to the personality and position of the king account for about 24.9% of Neo-Assyrian titularies.^[13]

Titles centering on the king's relationship to the world

Titles describing the domain under the control of a king. Titles and epithets which relate to the worldly position of the king account for about 35.8% of Neo-Assyrian titularies.^[13]

Titles centering on the king's relationship to the divine

Titles describing the position of the king relative to the deities of the Ancient Mesopotamian religion. Titles and epithets which relate to the divine position of the king account for about 38.8% of Neo-Assyrian titularies.^[13]