Neo-Assyrian Deportations, the Moon God of Harran, and the Shaping of the Biblical Ancestral Traditions

Abstract Through annexation and two-way deportations, the Neo-Assyrian conquest of the southern Levant in the late eighth century BCE resulted in a complete sociopolitical reorganization of the northern Palestinian highlands. The imperial apparatus exiled Israelites to Upper Mesopotamia and likewise forced Mesopotamian populations into the region to fill the demographic void in their stead. Cuneiform texts from the period attest to both Israelite deportees in Upper Mesopotamia and Mesopotamian deportees in the Neo-Assyrian province of Samerina, as well as to the persistence of previous identities in these new contexts and, more generally, to the heterogeneity that seemed to define provincial life in the empire. One of the most visible signs of Neo-Assyrian imperialism in the southern Levant is the appearance in the local glyptic of the cult standard of Sin, the moon god of Harran. Harran functioned as the de facto “western capital” of the Neo-Assyrian empire during the Sargonid period, and it also enjoyed special status later under Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire. Conspicuously, both Harran and Ur – another prominent home of a temple to Sin – appear in the narratives of Genesis as the homes of the biblical ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Against the background of the two-way deportations and their lasting effects on southern Levantine society, it appears that certain aspects of these ancestral narratives were constructed to reflect and respond to the societal heterogeneity brought about by annexation into the Mesopotamian imperial sphere. The Abraham and Jacob stories attest to heavy southern Levantine adaptation of Mesopotamian themes and motifs, such as Assyrian and Babylonian city theology and allusions to the Epic of Gilgamesh. In particular, Harran and Ur appearing as the hometowns of Abraham can be placed alongside iconographic evidence in evincing the localization of aspects of the Mesopotamian lunar deity in the southern Levant during the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods. Moreover, the placement of the Israelites’ origins in Upper Mesopotamia according to the earlier Jacob story paints them as close relatives to the Aramean population of the region, thereby seeming to construct a history of “Israel” that blurs the lines between Mesopotamians and Levantines – presumably serving to promote and facilitate social cohesion as a reaction to forced imperial heterogeneity.