7 THE ISRAELITE-JUDAHITE STRUGGLE As early as the third millennium BCE, the city of Nippur held the supreme religious position in Mesopotamia. Its god, Enlil, was worshipped as the supreme deity in the Sumerian pantheon, and the city was seen as the place where the gods assembled to take important decisions. Rulers seeking supreme power in Mesopotamia claimed that they were favoured by the god Enlil. Nippur bore the epithet Dur-anki — “the bond of heaven and earth/underworld” — and was regarded as the centre of the universe 16. The concept of the “ navel of the world” refers to the “sacred hill” (DU6.KÙ) — a primeval hill which formed the nucleus from where all things originated, and was the bond linking heaven and earth. This axis mundi was the site of Ekur, the temple of Enlil in Nippur 17. With the rise of Babylon as Babylonia’s political capital in the first half of the second millennium BCE, Nippur maintained its supreme religious status, and the god Enlil continued to head the Mesopotamian pantheon. Hammurabi’s conquests (c. 1728-1686) made Babylon the centre of a great kingdom, and his victories raised the status of Marduk, the local god of Babylon. But this promotion features mainly in contemporary royal inscriptions of Babylon, while documents from the Old Babylonian period show that Marduk did not occupy a prominent position at that time in the Sumerian-Babylonian pantheon 18. Babylon’s political dominance of W. G . LAMBERT , “Nippur in Ancient Ideology”, Nippur in the 16 C e n t e n n i a l . Papers Read at the XXXVe R e n c o n t r e Assyriologique Internationale, (ed. M. DEJONG ELLIS) (Philadelphia, PA 1992) 119-120; J.G. WESTENHOLZ, “The Theological Foundation of the City, the Capital City and Babylon”, Capital Cities. Urban Planning and Spiritual Dimensions. Proceedings of the Symposium Held on May 27-29, 1996, Jerusalem, Israel, (ed. J.G. WESTENHOLZ) (Jerusalem 1996) 45-46; S.W. COLE, Nippur in Late Assyrian Times c. 755-612 BC (SAAS 4 ; Helsinki 1996) 7-12; W. SALLABERGER, “Nippur als religiöses Zentrum Mesopotamiens im historischen Wandel”, Die orientalische Stadt. Kontinuität, Wandel, Bruch. 1. I n t e r n a t i o n a l e s Colloquium der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft (ed. G. Wilhelm) (Saarbrücken 1997) 147-168. S.M. MAUL, “Die altorientalische Hauptstadt – Abbild und Nabel der 17 Welt ”, Die orientalische Stadt (ed. G. WILHELM) 114-122; A.R. GEORGE, “ ‘Bond of the Lands’: Babylon, the Cosmic Capital”, ibid., 128-133. For the rise of Marduk to the top of the Babylonian pantheon, see 18 W. SOMMERFELD, Der Aufstieg Marduks. Die Stellung Marduks in der babylonischen Religion des zweiten Jahrtausends v. Chr. (AOAT 213 ; Kevelaer – Neukirchen-Vluyn 1982); idem, “Marduk”, RLA 7 (1987-1990) 360-370;