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Jesper Eidem* the Kingdom of Šamšı¯-Adad and Its Legacies

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Jesper Eidem* the Kingdom of Šamšı¯-Adad and Its Legacies Jesper Eidem* The Kingdom of Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad and its Legacies Introduction The origins of the Mittani Kingdom remain obscure. Epigraphic evidence from its capital sites, ancient Wasˇsˇukanni and Taidu, will hopefully one day fill some of the gaps, and the ongoing excavations at Tall Fakhariya and Tall Hamidiya, likely candidates for these two sites, could produce such evidence at short notice.1 Meanwhile, however, we are faced with an historical challenge: how to bridge the gap between the end of the MBA / Old Babylo- nian period and the subsequent LBA / Mittani era, and to understand how society changed over the relevant centuries, while even the exact time span is open to fierce debate. As a modest contribution to illuminating these problems the present paper examines presumed formative or “virtual” Mittani social and political structures, discernible prior to the formation of the actual and formal Mittani kingdom, when such structures are documented as being juxtaposed with – and in opposition to – those of lowland Mesopotamian society, repre- sented by the Kingdom of Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad. This situation highlights some crucial aspects of so- cial and political control in Northern Mesopotamia and, by implication, in the subsequent transition. The kingdom of Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad The archives from ancient Mari, supplemented by an increasing number of other sources, provide unusually detailed documentation for the composite “Kingdom of Upper Mesopo- tamia” created by Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad and his sons,2 especially as related to the phases of its apogee * NINO, Leiden. 1 Excavations at Tall Fakhariya 2008 and 2009 produced suggestive, but not conclusive epigraphic evidence for the identification (Bonatz 2010). Tall Hamidiya has recently produced a small archive, which indeed seems to sup- port the proposed identification (Kessler 2010). 2 For numerical assessment of the sources see Eidem 2004. The number of letters published or quoted from this period now approach 700, and the total excavated may well exceed 1000. As is well-known, the pertinent evi- dence is quite exceptional in several respects. Just to mention one obvious aspect, which I think has often been misrepresented: the core of the Mari texts pertaining to the period of the Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad kingdom is of course the cor- respondence between the king himself and his two sons, and much attention has been paid to the psychological situation between the triad. However interesting that may be, however, the real point is rather that this is a corre- spondence between the three leaders of an early empire, disclosing, deliberating, and discussing their concrete strategies and tactics in some detail, surely a very rare situation for the entire ancient world. THE KINGDOM OF SˇAMSˇ¯I-ADAD AND ITS LEGACIES 137 and dissolution, and the subsequent rump-state ruled by the former heir apparent, Isˇme- Dagan. Although a number of sources from Mari remain unpublished, recent overviews by Charpin, Ziegler, Villard, and others3 supply a basic contextual and chronological frame- work for the evidence, and hence a useful departure for use of this evidence in wider per- spectives. There can be little doubt, I think, that the Kingdom of Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad (henceforth KSA) owed its brief moments of real glory foremost to the ruthless brilliance of its creator – in spite of the perhaps provocatively conservative nature of such an estimate.4 Indeed, careful reading of the sources portrays a desperately chaotic organisation replete with ad hoc measures necessary to forge a semblance of cohesion. Put more simply, the kingdom was forced to move and expand – or collapse. It lacked any real legitimacy, and had to simulate roles of local predecessors, like in Mari and Assur, or ultimately attempt to pose as suc- cessor to the Sargonic kings (Eidem – Højlund 1993). The almost immediate collapse of the kingdom following the death of Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad seems to support this impression of extreme vulnerability.5 In the midst of all this turbulence, however, one also senses a deep urge for stability, which the KSA ultimately could not provide, and perhaps managed to supply only briefly in its core. The failure of the Amorite kings, including Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad, to provide such stability obviously helped usher in the era of the “Bergvölker”. It seems that the socio-political struc- tures applied – and perhaps those preceeding them – were inadequate to the task. Yet on the margins of the KSA existed what appears to have been a substantially different world, where more tightly-knit socio-political structures prevailed, which therefore, ultimately had a better chance of uniting Upper Mesopotamia. The vanguard of Mittani? While the origins and formation of the Mittani kingdom are still unclear, a recent assess- ment by von Dassow hints at some interesting perspectives: “Rather than retrojecting Mit- tani itself into the time of Hattusˇili I and Musˇili I [i.e. 16th century], the available evidence warrants inferring that constant conflict with Hatti, fuelled by those two rulers’ wars of con- quest, catalyzed the process of coalescence or unification among Hurrian polities that re- sulted in forming the kingdom called Mittani. It is possible, at the same time, to postulate an antecedent polity that was not replaced by but rechristened as Mittani, shortly after the eclipse of Old Hittite and Old Babylonian sources.”6 3 Charpin – Ziegler 2003, Ziegler 2002, Villard 2001, Charpin – Durand 1997. 4 For a similar conclusion, and examples of the “human resource management” strategies of Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad see Ziegler 2008. 5 Charpin – Ziegler 2003, 143f. 6 von Dassow 2008, 20. 138 JESPER EIDEM Indeed such antecedent polities are known to have existed on the northern and eastern marches of Mesopotamia from the time of our earliest records, mostly rather shadowy en- tities only scantily documented in lowland sources. By a stroke of archaeological luck, how- ever, what is perhaps the best known polity of this kind was contemporary with the KSA. Archival sources from Mari and Shemsha¯ra, ancient Sˇusˇarra¯7, combine to provide the out- line of a story which shows how Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad’s geo-political ambitions brought Hurrian groups from the eastern periphery into the very core of the kingdom, where some of them forged political control with apparently important areas of northeastern Mesopotamia. This control seems to have been short-lived, and in any case fades from record at the end of the Old Babylonian period. The story may, however, be of significant relevance for the subse- quent appearence of a Hurrian-Mittani kingdom in Upper Mesopotamia, and therefore worth reviewing in summary form.8 During the last years of his life Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad, aided by the king of Esˇnunna, expanded his power into the plain east of the Tigris, where he conquered important city-states like Arrapha and Qabra.9 We still know very little about the population in the region east of the Tigris, but it seems the situation was very similar to the rest of Upper Mesopotamia. Several kings bore Hurrian names, but we also find, e.g. Bunu-Ishtar of Qabra¯ and Mar-Addu of Ja’ila¯num.10 Further east, however, in the Zagros, were a number of kingdoms, predomi- nantly Hurrian, and apparently organised in a kind of confederacy with the collective label “Turukkum”. A leading member of Turukkum was the country known as Itabalhum (or Ita- palhum) with its king Pisˇenden based in the capital site of Kunsˇum. The geographical framework for this policy is uncertain, but a distinct possibility is that Itabalhum should be sought in the Urmia Basin in modern NW Iran. On the western marches of Itabalhum, in NE Iraq, was the outpost of Sˇusˇarra¯, modern Tall Shemsha¯ra, located on the Lower Zab, where the river flows through the gorge at Darband i-Ramkhan. Tall Shemsha¯ra was excavated briefly in 1957 by a Danish expedition, and in 1958–1959 by an Iraqi expedition, but is now partly inundated by Lake Dokan. Fig. 1 shows the camp of the Danish expedition on a mound northwest of the main site, which later proved to have a building from the Mittani period under the surface, and it seems that the site, located at a strategic junction, had a long and complicated history (Eidem 2011). On the main mound, however, the Danish expedition uncovered a small, but very informative archive from the time of the KSA. The texts show that ancient Sˇusˇarra¯ was held by a so- called nulda¯num by the name of Kuwari. The title of nulda¯num is only known from this spe- 7 Eidem – Læssøe 2001. 8 Most of what follows is based on presentation and discussion in Eidem – Læssøe 2001, and precise references are therefore kept to a minimum. 9 Charpin – Ziegler 2003, 91ff. 10 Cf. the list in Charpin – Ziegler 2003, 268 (in 4.1.7). THE KINGDOM OF SˇAMSˇ¯I-ADAD AND ITS LEGACIES 139 Fig. 1 | Tell Shemsha¯ra, camp of the Danish expedition (Photo Jørgen Læssøe). cific context, but must denote a kind of “duke”,11 with the implication that Kuwari himself was related to the royal house of Itabalhum. Among the letters in the archive were several sent from Pisˇenden himself, although none addressed to Kuwari, who was informed about the “king” by other associates. Itabalhum was involved in a conflict with Gutium, another presumably confederate structure centered in modern Luristan, and was allied to Elam in the southern Zagros. The conflict thus spanned the entire stretch of the eastern mountains, and shows that these areas, generally thought to have been the home of poorly organised nomads, in fact were fairly well-integrated in large confederate structures, no doubt aligned primarily along eth- nic divisions. Indeed, intense conflict between the predominantly Hurrian Turukkum and Gutium is known to have persisted for many years, and must have been based on funda- mental antagonism.12 Weakened by expansion of the KSA and Esˇnunna, the Turukkean alliance collapsed and the Lord of Sˇusˇarra¯, Kuwari, was obliged to become a vassal of Sˇamsˇ¯ı-Adad to protect his 11 A derivation from wala¯dum seems possible, but the title as we know it may well be a normalisation of a local, non-Semitic word.
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