Babylon King Ritual

The story begins by Barbara Nevling Porter mentioning how powerful the tool of public rituals can be. Public rituals were used to shape political attitudes and promotes political change. The authors purpose was to discover the pitfalls of public speaking rituals. Barbara wanted to examine the potential of public speaking rituals, if used unwisely, to undermine very position they were meant to strengthen (Porter 273). Her two main focuses were about both a successful and unsuccessful use of a public ritual. She shows the successful use of a public ritual used by Esarhaddon in babylon, which helped persuade the recently conquered babylonians to accept him as a legitimate Babylon king. The later performance of the same ritual by Ashurbanipal and Shamash-shum-ukin were considered a political error. This political error would later encourage an uprising against Assyria that would erupt late in Ashurbanipal's reign.

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The basket bearing ritual became more of a symbol of all the public rituals (Porter 267). When the people felt as if the king was a good king the rituals seemed more successful. People uprised regardless of the ritual when they felt the king wasn't doing a good job. Barbara wanted to prove the pitfalls of the public rituals. She uses both successful and unsuccessful examples of the use of public rituals. The basket-baring rituals she chose to use proved her point well. The rituals didn't really keep order all of the time as they were suppose to do. Sometimes if an uprising was going to occur it would regardless of having the ritual. mishaps that happen during the performance of the rituals could even cause an upset. During the ritual mistakes could be made that could cause a stronger uprising among the people. Barbara made her point in the essay with the information that she researched. She proved as much as she could with the information she could