English (United Kingdom) 
Russian (Russia) The festival was associated with the change of the halves of the year; it was celebrated twice per year — at the time of harvest and at the period of barley sowing; later it was fixed at the spring and autumn equinox. The word for that festival still has no adequate translation (possibly, a2-ki-ti < e2-ki-tuš ‘the house of habitation’); it meant a construction out of the city territory, where a deity stayed a certain time before the triumphal returning to the city. In the end of the previous half of the year, that deity left the city, than settled down in akitu, and, finally, returned testifying the start of the new half of the year with that reappearance/
The first known note on akitu is in the text from Fara, in an ill-preserved line of which one can read ‘akitu of Ekur’. It meant the festival in the Enlil Temple of Nippur. In another text of the same time, originated from Ur, there are also numerous notes on akitu (in this case — in the local temple of Nanna); at that, one of the old months of Ur was called after that festival. Documents of the III Dynasty of Ur inform us; first, that there were two kinds of the akitu festivals —a2-ki-ti-še-gur10-ku5 ‘akitu of harvest’ and a2-ki-ti-šu-numun ‘akitu of sowing’. They served as names of the first and the seventh months of the New Ur calendar; and they were associated with at the spring and autumn equinox accordingly. Second, the festival of the same name was celebrated in Ur, Nippur, Umma, and Adaba. It means, that each city had its own akitu with the participation of local deities. Third, we find out that akitu was embodied in a certain construction of the both cult and economic purposes: it was a storehouse, where bundles of cane, bitumen, copper working tools were held, and a field, from which a rather much barley was got, and a yard for the cult activity. Fourth, in the Nippur text the festival was called that one of Ur. Fifth, economic and administrative texts of the III Dynasty of Ur allow us to restore an approximate scenario of the akitu festival in Ur.
The festival of the first month in Ur took from five to seven days in the very beginning of the year; a half year later, it took eleven starting days of the second part of the year. Nanna, the god of the Moon and the time in Ur, spent the evening of the first day in the sacred place of Du-ur (du6-ur2) of his temple of Ekišnugal. That place was, evidently, similar to Dukug in Nippur — the place of determination of destinies. On the second day morning Nanna went on his bark to the house of akitu in Gaeš, a suburb of Ur. On the third and fourth days, they made rich food sacrifices for the temple of Ekišnugal and its hosts (Nanna and his wife Ningal), as well as for the house in Gaeš. On the fifth day, Nanna triumphantly returned to the city and ascended to the throne of his temple, it meant the start of the new half of the year. In general, it becomes clear, tat the whole ritual could be divided into three parts: a)the determination of the destiny of the god; b) his leaving the city to akitu and staying there; c) rich sacrifices to the god and his return to the city. In Bad-Tibid, the central figure of the festival was Dumusid; in Drehem, possibly, it was Ninazu. We know that those gods played often the role of sacrifice at the Underworld, that swallowed them from time to time. In the Old Babylonian period, the rich sacrifices of the fourth day were completed with a rite of the great lamentation associated with Nanna. Perhaps, Nanna was mourned as the host who disappeared without a trace; people prayed gods to return him as soon as possible. In the later times, akitu was interpreted as a place of imprisonment of the deity, i.e. a jail, where the deity had been set and interrogated (See the text of ‘Marduk’s Ordeal’).
American scholar M. Cohen offers his own version of the origin of akitu in his book on the calendar festivals of the Near East. On his opinion, the festival was shaped in Ur on the eve of the autumnal equinox, when the Moon (Nanna) won over the Sun (Utu). The travel of Nanna on his bark was an image of the half-moon floating in heavens. A temporary disappearance of Nanna was a disappearance of the Moon before the new lunar disc appeared. The return to the city was the new moon and several days/nights after it. Later, the festival of Ur was transferred to other cities, including the sacred city of Nippur. The lamentation for Nanna, compiled in the Old Babylonian epoch, was associated with the commemoration of those citizens of Ur who fell during the seizure of the city by Elamites in the late third millennium BCE.
One can hardly agree with Cohen. If the ritual of akitu was associated with the lunar cult and the change of phases, it would be held every new moon, i.e. it would be monthly. The most ancient note on the festival — the text from Fara — mentioned ‘akitu of Ekur’, i.e. the ritual took place in the main temple of Nippur. Therefore, the festivals of akitu of Nipper and akitu of Ur had been celebrated since the most ancient times and simultaneously. Both festivals — spring and autumn ones — were associated with agricultural works, exactly with sowing and harvesting. Grain for sowing and harvested ears could be held in akitu. That is why we can suppose by right that initially the festival was built around the barley, with its cycle of dying and resurrection; and when the connection between the life cycle of grain was certainly compared to the movement of celestial bodies during a half of the year, the festival became astral-oriented. In Ur, the main object of veneration was the god of the Moon, but in other cities they venerated other gods. Noteworthy, Dumuzid and Ninazu were dying and resurrecting week deities, at that Dumuzid was associated exactly with the grain sowing. So, we should distract our attention from names and try to understand the function of the ritual — temporary disappearance and reappearance of the god (only after rich sacrifices stimulating the life forces of that deity). According to that logic, the house of akitu was a place where the discontinuity of the god-grain was embodied before the start of the new life cycle, and it was an analogue of the Underworld. At the moment of habitation in the house of akitu, each deity was to be taken for temporary dead one. That is why they mourned the god — perhaps, the lamentation had existed earlier, but was fixed in a written form only after the III Dynasty of Ur. These our assumptions are confirmed by a fragment of Astrolab B, where they mentioned ‘the akitu of harvest’ in the late autumn, when the plow was put from the field to the storage up to the next spring. The moment between taking the plow from the field and its return was symbolically called there ‘akitu’.
Literature:
- Emelianov V.V. Ritual v Drevnei Mesopotamii (Ritual in Ancient Mesopotamia). St. Petersburg, Peterburgskoe vostokovedenie, 2003.
- Bidmead J. The akītu festival. Religious continuity and royal legitimation in Mesopotamia. New Jersey, 2002.
- Cohen, 1993 – Cohen M.E. The Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East. Bethesda, 1993. P. 400-453.