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Mesopotamian Politics

I. The Argument
The Narrative

Part IV
Chapter 14

Hegemony and Balances

Marco De Pietri – April 2024

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14.1 The Pendulum of Power

The ‘empire’ of Akkad change the territorial conception with two results (cf. Section 13.5) specifically regarding the political horizon:

  1. it was no longer limited to nuclear expanded states;
  2. it was not possible to keep in time in the shape of a dilated ‘empire’.

In the new configuration of sourth-western Mesopotamian states, new limitations developed:

  1. the geopolitical concept turned out to be more an idea than a concrete reality;
  2. every further possibility of unitary consolidation vanished.

At the middle of the second millennium BC, the whole ‘Mesopotamia’ basically started being splitted into two poles (cf. Section 18.2):

  • the northern one, with Mittani/Assyria;
  • the southern one, with the Kassites/Babylon.

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14.2 Sumerian Unification: Ur III (2100-2000 BC)

After the Gutians (cf. Section 12.4), the reaction against this ‘invasion’ is described in contemporary sources in terms of Sumerian nationalism: anyway, it was actually a great integration of Sumerian and Akkadian cultural elements.

Ur-Namma (ca. 2112-2095 BC) and Shulgi (ca. 2094-2047 BC; cf. Table 4) started a new dynasty, the third dynasy of Ur = Ur III, showing a new political awareness towards a new Mesopotamian integration, manifested in three main factors (cf. Map 9):

  1. an intense activity of construction projects, defining a new ‘Pan-Mesopotamian’ material culture;
  2. the development of the concept of ‘province’, implying:
    • the rotation of governors from one province to another;
    • taxation flowed toward the center.
  3. the king came to be seen within the divine sphere through a process of deification of the royal office, whre the king is perceived as the protective spirit of the land; this is evident in three aspects:
    • the dedications of temples in the name of the king;
    • the use of the name of the king as an element in proper names of people;
    • the use of the epithet ‘god of justice in his land’ applied to the king.

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14.3 The First Division: Isin and Larsa (2000-1800 BC)

The collapse of the first Mesopotamian state of Ur III was caused by both a structural weakness (shown in the very independece of provinces, especlially Isin) and external factors (the Elamites who defeated the last king of the dynasty, Ibbi-Sin, reigning ca. 2028-2004 BC).

Even though, the Elamites did not take possession of the territory and a profound division into smalles units occurred (cf. Map 10); these new entities shown three different political configurations:

  1. a revisitation of the city-state (mainly Kish, Uruk, Eshunna, Der and Babylon);
  2. in Isin, a true regional state (including Nippur) took place with king Ishbi-Erra; to recall also the role of Lipit-Ishtar who issued a ‘law code’ predating that of Hammurapi (cf. Section 15.4). A strong political awareness is manifested in two aspects:
    • the use of the title ‘king of Sumer and Akkad’;
    • the final redaction of the Sumerian King List, showing an essential unity of the political institution in time and space;
  3. a new potentially national ideology developed in Larsa which took the hegemony after Isin with kings Warad-Sin and Rim-Sin, both sons of a person who carried the Elamite name Kudur-Mabuk, qualified as ‘father of Amurrum’, a toponym refering to a wider reality (cf. Section 16.8). The importance of the conquest of Isin by Rim-Sin is evident by the year-name used from that moment onwards: ‘the year x after the conquest of Isin’. An innovation in Larsa was also the switch from Sumerian to Akkadian as the language used by the administration.

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14.4 The First Multi-Regional State: Assur and Mari (1800 BC)

Assur was an important city-state around 1800 BC (see Map 11). From around 1970 until 1840 BC, starting with the reign of Erishum, merchants from Assur established an intense commercial network with Anatolia, mainly in the later Cappadocian area (see, most of all the imporant center of the kārum, the Akkadian word for ‘shore/market’, of Kanesh/Kültepe).

This trade network has been blocked by the expansion of the kingdom of Mari in the Khabur, which interrupted the communication towards the Taurus; the counter-attack of Assur came under Shamshi-Adad (ca. 1814-1781 BC), a king of Amorite ancestry, who moved the capital from Assur to Shubat-Enlil/Tell Leilan (the older Shehna), conquered Mari (where he established his son Yasmah-Addu), and put his other son Ishme-Dagan as governor in Ekallatum; this shifting of the capital would later on acquire a strong political value (cf. Section 17.3).

An innovation at the level of multi-regionality came about: “The administrative triangle Shubat-Enlil – Ekallatum – Mari revealed a very specific desire to create new political and administrative schemes” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 174); the state is now perceived as an independent entity showing a high level of political and administrative awareness.

Nonetheless, the state founded by Shamshi-Adad did not survive after his death, and the Khabur will be again a central area just after three centuries, with the kingdom of Mittani (cf. Section 18.3).

Thus said, the multi-regional setup continued even after Shamshi-Adad, even if the central core was moved to the peripheral Mari; here, around 1850 BC, a new, Amorite dynasty took the power: with the second king of this dynasty, Yahdun-Lim, the Assyrian trades towards Anatolia were interrupted [see above]; Zimri-Lim (Yahdun-Lim’s son) found refufe in Aleppo, being able to retake the power in Mari, starting the a very well-documented period thanks to the archives found in this city.

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14.5 Babylonian Unification: Hammurapi (1792-1750 BC)

The ideal extension of Mesopotamia lost after the Ur III period (around 2000 BC) was rebuilt by Hammurapi of Babylon (ca. 1792-1750, middle chronology; cf. Map 12).Note 1

Despite we do not have any texts from the capital, Babylonia, the year-names along with the documents of the conquered cities and the prologue of Hammurapi’s ‘law code’ (brought by the Elamites to Susa) allow us to retrace the king’s deeds. A great political awareness is shown by Hammurapi’s administrative and juridical strategies as it is described in Section 15.

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14.6 The Second Division: Marshes and Steppe (1700-1500 BC)

After the reign of Hammurapi, under his successor Samsu-iluna, Babylon return to the level of a regional/city/state, also because of many revolts by singles cities, like Isin and Eshunna; in this time, two territories regained their independence, the ‘kingdom of the sea lands’ and the kingdom of Khana (see Map 14) whose geographical peculiarity can help in explaining the end of Hammurapi’s political configuration: the ‘kingdom of the sea lands’ and the kingdom of Khana, in fact, comprised the marshy regions to the south and the central-western steppe, respectively. This geographical peculiarities were not fully integrated in the Mesopotamian physiognomy as a state (a problem already faced by the kings of Akkad, cf. above, Section 11.3): “The people of the marshes and the people of the steppe identified with their own landscapes in completely idiosyncratic ways which the integrative effort of the central government was never able to discover and much less change” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 176).

It was perhaps from thes two entities that the two different ‘Babylonians’ came into being the the so-called ‘cosmopolitan’ period (see Part V):

  1. the kingdom of Khana followed the political lineas of Mari, but the capital was moved to Terqa/Tell AsharaNote 2 where 13 kings ruled on the area, influencing the late Kassite Babylon (see (see Section 18.5);
  2. in the region of the ‘kingdom of the sea lands’ we will see later on the development of ethnic factors which will foster an impulse for the return of a non-Kassite concept of the state with the second dynasty of Isin (see Section 18.6).

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14.7 The ‘International’ Horizons: the ‘Amorite’ Kingdoms

Mespotamian self-awareness developed on the basis of internal factors; particularly, the relative linguistic and scribal unity can be regarded as an index of differentiation in respect to ‘foreign’ realities including the Syro-Mesopotamian area, from Aleppo and Ugarit to Hazor and Tell Sekka/Damascus. This area has been included in the ‘international’ horizon of the second ecumene (cf. Section 8.2); this period is named that of the Amorite kingdoms after the names of the kings which were basically Amorite. But this definitions could be misleading, at least for two reasons:

  1. we have no clues that Amorite was the spoken language;
  2. the political structure of these kingdoms was substancially Mesopotamian (being the second ecumene shaped on the structure of the ‘empire’ of Akkad).

Within this political entity, there were interstate relationships, such as those between Mari, Aleppo, Qatna and Babylon; but they were not really ‘international’, given the affinity connecting these cities. Furthermore, this affinity was not enough to prevent military conflicts which did not transcend the horizon of the second ecumene.

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14.8 Foreign Trade

Trade, differently from war (see above), put profoundly different individuals and cultures into contact, even if it was indirect, and the merchants served as intermediaries, carrying goods along with news and knowledge.

This trade (best exemplified by the kārum of Kanesh/Kültepe and other eleven similar Assyrian ‘colonies’ in Cappadocia) was different from that of the third millennium BC, at least for two aspects:

  1. the impact of the perception of a remote and distant situation wass less pronounced (cf., on the contrary, the development of an ‘ideological manifesto’ mirrored in the tales about Gilgamesh; see Section 8.6.3);
  2. the encounters between different culturs developed a spirit of truly international communication which will lead to communicate on a level of diplomatic symmetry mostly during the so-called ‘cosmopolitan period’ (see Section 17.1) which is characterized by standardized protocols.

The Assyrian ‘colonies’ in Anatolia, in fact, show at the same time:

  1. a well-articulated projectuality of these Assyrian enclaves in Anatolia;
  2. a total dependence of the ‘colonies’ on the central government of Assur.

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Notes

  • Note 1: it is worthy to report here verbatim G. Buccellati’s explanation about the correct etymology and spelling of this personal name: “The name is usually rendered ‘Hammurabi’ but this mixes Amorite (Hammu for ʿammu ‘the (deified) paternal uncle,’ and Akkadian (rabi ‘is great’). One should instead keep the original Amorite also for the second part, which is to be read rapi ‘he heals’ – hence ‘the (deified) paternal uncle heals,’ parallel to Hebrew Raphael for rapā-El ‘god heals’” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 174, fn. 10). Cf. also Streck 1999 Hammurabi. Back to text
  • Note 2: on Terqa/Tell Ashara, see the dedicated website. Back to text

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