Blurb:

This article discusses how the image of a king’s leading divine military supporter evolved from the Early Dynastic to the Old Babylonian periods. All observations are done exclusively on the material of royal inscriptions and hymns. The article distinguishes three possible stages in the evolution of the god supporting a king on the battlefield image. In the first stage, the central divine military supporters were local deities. In the second stage, deified kings made war by their own credit as heroic beings. Mentions of gods assisting on the battlefield were rare; most often, it was the supreme deity. In the last stage, some deities gained features of professional war gods and at the same time associated with (capital’s) local gods as their aspects. It could be partly influenced by changes in the royal deification practice.