From Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World, a tale from the Old Babylonian Period:

Isin suffered from an embarrassing shift of power when its ninth king, Erra-imitti, was told by a local oracle that disaster was heading his way. Erra-imitti decided to avert the coming catastrophe by following a scapegoat ritual familiar from later Assyrian practice; he picked one of the palace workmen, a groundskeeper, to be king-for-a-day. At the end of a prescribed period, the faux king would be ceremonially executed. In this way, the omen would be fulfilled, since disaster had already come upon the king, and the real king would escape unscathed.

Unfortunately, as the chronicle that preserves the event tells us, once the groundskeeper was temporarily crowned, Erra-imitti went to eat a bowl of soup and died sipping from it.[7] Soup is hard to choke to death on; probably a palace poisoner was at work. With the king dead, the groundskeeper refused to give up the throne and reigned for twenty-four years.

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[7]Translated from A.K. Grayson, Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles (1975), p. 155.

(p. 159)

See also: “praxeology of war”