Naram-Sin proclaims divine kingship; the Victory Stele
- Date
- c. 2254 BCE
- Category
- Culture, arts & philosophy
- Region
- Mesopotamia (Iraq)
- Era
- Ancient Civilizations
- Significance
Naram-Sin, grandson of Sargon and fourth king of Akkad, took the Akkadian Empire to its height and broke with Mesopotamian tradition by having himself deified during his own lifetime, adopting the title 'king of the four quarters (of the universe)' and the divine determinative before his name.
His Victory Stele, carved to commemorate a triumph over the Lullubi people of the Zagros mountains, depicts the king ascending a mountain wearing the horned helmet that marked divinity, larger than his soldiers and trampling fallen enemies beneath a heavenly array of stars. The monument abandoned the traditional register format of earlier art for a unified, dynamic composition and stands as a landmark of ancient Near Eastern propaganda and royal ideology. Both the claim to living godhood and the visual language of the stele influenced later Mesopotamian conceptions of sacred kingship.
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Empires active in c. 2254 BCE
- Indus Valley (Harappan) Civilization2600 BCE – 1900 BCE
- Akkadian Empire2334 BCE – 2154 BCE
- Egyptian Old Kingdom2686 BCE – 2181 BCE
- Elamite Kingdom2700 BCE – 539 BCE
Related culture, arts & philosophy events
- Enheduanna, the first named author in historyc. 2300 BCE
- Carving of the Great Sphinx of Gizac. 2500 BCE
- Oracle-Bone Script: Earliest Attested Chinese Writingc. 1250 BCE
- Great Hypostyle Hall and temple-building at Karnakc. 1290–1213 BCE
- Tomb of Fu Hao: An Undisturbed Shang Royal Burialc. 1250 BCE
- Merneptah Stele: earliest mention of 'Israel'c. 1208 BCE
Further reading
The wider story
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