Tradition And Change In The Beliefs At Assur, Nineveh And Nisibis Between 300 Bc And Ad 300

Abstract

This chapter demonstrates that the variety of local religious life in North-Mesopotamia during the Hellenistic and Parthian or Roman times. As examples of the interplay between ?local? and ?introduced? religious aspects, it choose three towns in that region, Assur, Nineveh and Nisibis, which had all played a distinctive role in the Assyrian period. Despite the fact that they were located relatively close to each other, the development of their religious culture in the Hellenistic and Roman periods went in different directions. The most important religious buildings of Parthian Assur are grouped at the highest point of the town, between the ruins of the old Enlil-Assur ziggurat and the Tigris. The Babylonian conquerors had built two small and simple temples at the southwest corner of the forecourt of the sanctuary of the god Assur. The simplest one is the so-called ?temple N?.Keywords: Assur; Assyrian period; Babylonian; Hellenistic period; Nineveh; Nisibis; Roman period; temple N