The Stand-In King

Although the Assyrian king’s rules and traditions were very similar to those of Babylonian’s, there are some disparities. An unusual action of the Assyrian royalty is implanting a stand-in king during times that were sought to be “unfortunate.” It is of particular interest because of the many flaws that could be thought up of this doing.

First, we should consider why the Assyrians would do such a thing. The Assyrians were very ideological people, as the readers of the text can confirm through the emphasis on religious aspects, such as consulting oracles and the obligations. Therefore, it must have been an integral part of their customs and culture to follow warning by the spiritual advisors. As the text says “when the seers and astrologers who, throughout the empire, watched out for the appearance of unfavorable signs concerning the king, arrived at the conclusion that a particularly dangerous period lay ahead, the sovereign symbolically abandoned the attributes of his office.” (85) Therefore, astrology and signs from the Earth played a major role in governing.

The text does not mention that the king does anything when he is being substituted, only saying that he “withdrew to his private apartments and lived there under the designation ‘laborer’” (85). So the first problem that arises is how the substituted king overtakes the responsibility of the king. However, it is true that the king had many advisors, and they probably took care of the situation leaving the stand-in king to just sit on the throne with now power. That seems possible especially since the stand-in was only placed in order to gain the unfortunate situations that were supposed to occur to the actual king and is merely “disposed of” in the end (85).

Also, it also comes to mind of the enemies of Assyria being able to forsee when the king wouldn’t be in throne and in this way be able to attack. If the stand-in were just a condemned man on the street, he would not know what to do, however, if nobility had been placed, the noble might know how to handle to the situation because of his higher education. Despite that, this would still be a major risk for the Assyrian government.

No matter what we read, the text only gives half the story. There could be many details Joannes left out that show how the stand-in situation worked. However, if what Joannes told us is it, the Assyrian government would have fell a long time before.