To "Be Like God"

Giussepe Cesare, "The Expulsion of Adam and Eve (circa late 16th century)," Turin, Galleria Sabauda.

Uncertainty and insecurity derive from the fragility inherent in the constitution of men, from the continuous challenges they face in order to survive. No one is so strong neither so capable as to live by himself. Since the beginning, man has been forced to live by either the circumstances, either by its rationality among others like him. Aristotle states that “[t]he man who is isolated, who is unable to share in the benefits of […] association, or has no need because he is already self-sufficient, is no part of the city [the community], and must therefore be either a beast or a god.”[1]

Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of God not because they ate the fruit from the forbidden tree, but because what it meant to eat it. They were told and lied by the snake that the fruit contained in it the power to “be like God”, to live forever, and to know good from evil. The sin of the first men was not to defy the will of the Creator; rather it was their lust to be powerful, sovereign, infinite… their own god. Men —Hobbes and Schmitt say— have created and imposed over others their own artificial deity, an everlasting, “mechanical creature:” Leviathan —the state.[2]

This essay will be based on the archeological piece the “Victory Stele of Naram-Sin” on the defeat of the Lullubite people by the descendant of Sargon, the king of the Akkadian Empire. Why would a political leader be depicted as “divine” on a public monument to his triumph in battle? What political meaning is behind Naram-Sin’s stele? It will be argued that public monuments such as the former were instruments of power whose main objective was to impact on the recipients’ perceptions about the political group that built them. These memorials were means of propaganda to assert Akkadian dominance over both rivals and subjects; which better way to do so than making the king a god and representing him in his divinity triumphant over Agade’s enemies.

This essay will be divided into four main parts: one about the theoretical point of view from which this monument will be analyzed; another on the history of Naram-Sin and on his stele; other on the importance of reflecting the king’s divinity in public memorials; and lastly, another part on the importance of the “Victory Stele” as a means to exercise power and assert the Akkadian state dominion over its rivals and its own society.