ARCANE III History & Philology ARCANE Associated Regional Chronologies for the Ancient Near East and the Eastern Mediterranean History & Philology Walther Sallaberger & Ingo Schrakamp (eds) With contributions by A. Archi, M. G. Biga, K. De Graef, G. Marchesi, F. Pomponio, W. Sallaberger, I. Schrakamp, W. Sommerfeld, H. Steible & P. Steinkeller FH The European Science Foundation (ESF) is an independent, non-governmental organisation, the members of which are 79 national funding agencies, research-performing agencies, academies and learned societies from 30 countries. The strength of ESF lies in its influential membership and in its ability to bring together the different domains of European science in order to meet the challenges of the future. Since its establishment in 1974, ESF, which has its headquarters in Strasbourg with offices in Brussels and Ostend, has assembled a host of organisations that span all disciplines of science, to create a common platform for cross-border cooperation in Europe. ESF is dedicated to promote collaboration in scientific research, funding of research and science policy across Europe. Through its activities and instruments ESF has made major contributions to science in a global context. The ESF covers the following scientific domains: • Humanities • Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences • Medical Sciences • Physical and Engineering Sciences • Social Sciences • Marine Sciences • Materials Science • Nuclear Physics • Polar Sciences • Radio Astronomy • Space Sciences Walther SALLABERGER & Ingo SCHRAKAMP (eds) History & Philology (= ARCANE III), Brepols, Turnhout, 2015 A4, sewn, xvi + 445 pages Contents: Early Bronze Age, Chronology, 3rd millennium, History, Cuneiform, Uruk, Fara period, Presargonic period, Sargonic period, Akkad Empire, Gutean period, Ur III empire, Historical Geography Areas: Mesopotamia, Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, Iraq, Jezirah, Upper Mesopotamia, Syria, Iran All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978-2-503-53494-7 D/2015/0095/39 © 2015, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium Printed in the EU on acid-free paper Table of Contents Foreword ix By Walther Sallaberger & Ingo Schrakamp Conventions and Abbreviations xi PARt I: PHiLOLOGicAL DAtA fOR A HiStORicAL CHRONOLOGY Of MESOpOtAmiA iN tHE 3rd MiLLENNiUm 1 By Walther Sallaberger & Ingo Schrakamp 1. Introduction 3 1.1. Written Sources for a Chronology of the 3rd Millennium 3 1.2. Terminology: “Periods” and “Dynasties” 4 1.3. Relative and Absolute Chronology 5 2. Sources I: King Lists and Related Texts 13 2.1. The Sumerian King List 13 2.2. The Awan King List (AwKL) 23 2.3. The Shimashki King List (ShKL) 24 2.4. The Shakkanakku List from Mari (MShakL) 26 2.5. Gudea’s Dynasty: The Maeda Tablet 28 2.6. The Beginning of the Assyrian King List (AKL) 31 3. Sources II: Year Dates 33 3.1. Counting and Naming Years 33 3.2. Presargonic to Sargonic Year Dates from Babylonia 41 3.3. On the Year Dates of the Lagash II and Ur III Dynasties 49 4. On the Chronology of the Early Cuneiform Evidence 53 4.1. The Archaic Texts of the Late Uruk Period 53 4.2. Dating the Texts of the Late Uruk Period 54 4.3. The Geographical Horizon of the Archaic Texts 56 4.4. Archaic Texts from Ur 56 4.5. The Fara Period 61 5. The Presargonic Period 67 5.1. The First Dynasty of Lagash 67 5.2. The Presargonic Rulers of Umma 74 5.3. The Duration of the Presargonic period (Lagash I and Umma) 81 6. Transition from the Presargonic to the Sargonic Period 85 6.1. The End of Lagash under Urukagina 85 6.2. Lugalzagesi’s Kingdom 86 6.3. The Rise of Sargon 90 6.4. The Chronology of Ebla and Babylonian History 96 6.5. The Destruction of Mari 100 7. Sargonic Rule in Mesopotamia 105 7.1. Early Sargonic Period: Sargon, Rimush and Manishtushu 105 7.2. Classic Sargonic Period: Naramsuen and Sharkalisharri 108 7.3. Late Akkad Period 110 v Table of Contents 8. The Gutean Period: A Problem of 3rd Millennium Chronology 113 8.1. The Dynasty of Gutium in theSKL 113 8.2. State of Research 114 8.3. Gutean Presence during the Time of Sharkalisharri 116 8.4. Uruk and Umma 117 8.5. Lagash II: Gudea’s Dynasty 119 8.6. Puzurinshushinak 122 8.7. The Gutean Rulers 127 8.8. Conclusion 129 9. The Third Dynasty of Ur and Other Late 3rd Millennium Dynasties 131 10. Concluding Table 135 PART II: CHRONOLOGY AND HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE 3rd MILLENNIUM 137 1. Toward a Chronology of Early Dynastic Rulers in Mesopotamia 139 By Gianni Marchesi 1.1. Historical Framework 139 1.2. Chronological Tables 140 1.3. Comments on Rulers of Individual Cities 144 2. The Geographical Horizon of the Texts from Fara/Shuruppag 157 By Horst Steible 2.1. Sources 157 2.2. The Geographical Horizon According to Documents, Lexical and Literary Texts 157 2.3. Historical Relevance of the Geographical Horizon of the Fara Documents 160 3. The Chronology of Ebla and Synchronisms with Abarsal, Tuttul, Nagar and Nabada, Mari, Kish 163 By Alfonso Archi 3.1. The Kings 163 3.2. Kings and Ministers 164 3.3. Ebla and Abarsal (Tell Khuera?) 171 3.4. Ebla and Tuttul 174 3.5. Ebla, Nagar and Nabada 175 3.6. Ebla and Mari 176 3.7. Ebla and Kish 178 4. The Geographical Scope of Ebla: Commerce and Wars. Some Remarks 181 By Maria Giovanna Biga 4.1. The Geographical Horizon of Ebla 181 4.2. Commerce and Wars 181 4.3. War 184 vi Table of Contents 5. The Rulers of Adab 191 By Francesco Pomponio 5.1. ED IIIa/Fara and ED IIIb/Presargonic Periods 191 5.2. Late ED to Early Sargonic Period 192 5.3. Classic Sargonic Period 193 5.4. Ur III Period 194 5.5. Old Babylonian Period 195 5.6. Middle Babylonian Period 195 6. Geographical Horizons of the Presargonic and Sargonic Archives 197 By Ingo Schrakamp 6.1. Presargonic and Early Sargonic Texts 197 6.2. Sargonic and Late Akkad Texts 223 7. The Transition from the Old Akkadian Period to Ur III in Lagash 271 By Walter Sommerfeld 7.1. Introduction 271 7.2. TheSumerian King List (SKL) 271 7.3. Postulated Synchronisms 272 7.4. Administrative Archives from Girsu 275 7.5. Prosopographical Connections 276 7.6. Conclusion 279 8. The Gutian Period in Chronological Perspective 281 By Piotr Steinkeller 8.1. Introduction 281 8.2. Historical Data Bearing on the Gutians 282 8.3. The Geographic Extent of the Gutian Kingdom 284 8.4. The Chronology of the Gutian Period 285 8.5. A Reconstruction of the Gutian History 286 8.6. Addendum (August, 2011) 288 9. Susa in the Late 3rd Millennium: From a Mesopotamian Colony to an Independent State (MC 2110-1980) 289 By Katrien De Graef 9.1. Introduction 289 9.2. The Archive of Igibuni 290 9.3. Other Late 3rd Millennium Texts from Susa 290 9.4. Dating the Fall of Susa 294 9.5. Susa Under Shimashkean Rule 296 10. Conclusion 297 By Walther Sallaberger & Ingo Schrakamp 10.1. Abstracts of the Contributions of Part II 297 10.2. General Conclusions 301 General Bibliography 305 Index of Geographical Names 361 Index of Personal Names 413 vii Foreword About a decade ago, the ARCANE project was launched to investigate the chronology of the Early Bronze Age, which corresponds largely to the 3rd millennium BC. Pierre de Miroschedji and Marc Lebeau were success- ful in obtaining funding from the European Science Foundation (ESF) so that the project could start in 2006. Walther Sallaberger was entrusted by the ARCANE group to deal with the area of history and philology, and maintained a constant discussion with the archaeologists within the project. Although ARCANE is basically interested in the archaeological chronology, based on a study of the mate- rial remains and radiocarbon dating, cuneiform sources exist for the second half of the 3rd millennium and thus allow one to correlate archaeological phases with historical data. This volume is devoted to the establishment of a historical chronology which is substantially a relative chronology, based on various sets of arguments: palaeo- graphy and tablet format, orthography and grammar, prosopography, and for more exact data on historical events and synchronisms, on king lists and date lists, the dates of tablets or the number of generations. The regional links between history and archaeological phases are discussed in the regional volumes of the ARCANE series for the Jezirah (Walther Sallaberger), Northern Levant/Syria (Alfonso Archi), Western Iran (Ingo Schrakamp), Tigridian Region (Massimo Maiocchi), and Middle Euphrates (Gianni Marchesi). While 3rd millennium chronology has not been debated much in the 1980s and 1990s, this situation has changed substantially during the last decade, due to the involvement of cuneiform philologists and historians in the ARCANE project. Recently, the discussion was fuelled, in particular, by the publication of new texts mainly from Adab and Umma stemming from illicit excavations in Iraq. A conference was organized at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich from July 13-15, 2006 by Walther Sallaberger. The contributions touched aspects dating from the Late Uruk period down to the end of the Ur III Empire, and they have proved so substantial an evaluation of the chronology that they form the core of this book. They were written by Gianni Marchesi, Horst Steible, Alfonso Archi, Vanna Biga, Francesco Pomponio, Ingo Schrakamp, Walter Sommerfeld, Piotr Steinkeller, and Katrien De Graef, who sent their reviewed articles between 2008 and 2011. We are very grateful for the patience of the authors to wait for the completion of this book.