The oldest attestations have been identified in texts from Babylonia from the Old Babylonian period, though as early as during the reign of Shamshi-Adad I tākultu started to be performed in Upper Mesopotamia as well.
During the reign of the Sargonid dynasty the goal of the ritual was to create a link between the center of the Neo-Assyrian Empire and its peripheries by invoking deities from various locations to bless the king.
[5] William W. Hallo notes the development of the religious meaning of tākultu reflects a broader phenomenon of Mesopotamian cultic terms being derived from everyday language.
[7] In the relevant passage, Lugalbanda prepares a feast consisting of the meat of goats and aurochs and various alcoholic beverages, and invites An, Enlil, Enki and Ninhursag to partake in it.
[17] Surviving colophons indicate the texts were prepared by high ranking courtiers, such as the astrologer Issar-šumu-ēreš [de] and the exorcist Kiṣir-Aššur, advisors of Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal.
[23] Deities from other major Assyrian cities (for example Nineveh, Kurbail [pl] or Arbail) are also enumerated, and near the end of a list these worshiped in more remote parts of the empire could be mentioned too.
[30] The tākultu from the reign of Ashurbanipal includes Hurrian Kumarbi, Nabarbi, Samnuha,[31] Nupatik ("Umbidaki"), Ninatta and Kulitta,[32] Hittite Pirwa ("Birua"),[33] Urartian Haldi-aṣira, Elamite Napriš, Iabrītu and Narundi, and Iranian Ahura Mazda ("Assara-maza").
[31] Alfonso Archi additionally argues that the deity Iblaītu might be Išḫara invoked under a title stressing her association with Ebla, which he assumes the Assyrians might have been aware of because of contact with Hurrians.
[37] In the Ashurbanipal tākultu celestial bodies are invoked, though it is not certain if this reflects an influence of similar passages in Assyrian treaties, or merely the personal preference of the tablet's copyist Issar-šumu-ēreš, who was an astrologer.
[39] Beate Pongratz-Leisten argues certain conventions present in Neo-Assyrian tākultu texts, for example the inclusion of deified natural features, constitute a survival of tradition originating in the Syro-Anatolian cultural sphere, where they commonly occur in treaties.
[41] Gary Beckman notes that similar Akkadian terminology pertaining to food offerings appears both in tākultu and in a set of incantations from Hattusa designated by the term babilili and focused on invoking Pinikir (CTH 718), but concludes that this is insufficient to establish whether one of these ceremonies influenced the other.