Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala: Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 2526 June, 2018 (Subartu, 47) (English and French Edition) [Bilingual ed.] 9782503595344, 2503595340

Table of contents :
Front Matter
Cécile Michel. Current Research on the Bronze Age Diyala: An Introduction
Dominique Charpin. 1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case
Ariane Thomas. 2. La Diyala au Louvre ou le reflet d’une certaine historiographie
Philippe Quenet. 3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah: Insight into the Emergence of Multi-Stepped Terraces
Sophie Cluzan. 4. From the Diyala to Ur, via Mari, Kiš, and the Jazira: When the Boat-God and the Hero Meet at the Dawn of Kingship
Ahmed Kamil Mohammed. 5. A New Text from Tell Sulayma — Diyala Region
Rients de Boer. 6. The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Early Old Babylonian Trade Networks: A View from Sippar
Carlos Gonçalves. 7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala: A Study of the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš
Back Matter

Citation preview

Interdisciplinary research on the Bronze Age Diyala

SUBARTU XLVII Subartu — a peer-reviewed series — is edited by the European Centre for Upper Mesopotamian Studies. General Editor Marc Lebeau Editorial Board M. Conceição Lopes Lucio Milano Adelheid Otto Walther Sallaberger Véronique Van der Stede With the support of the following institutions Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia Université Libre de Bruxelles Universidade de Coimbra Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Subartu is a part of The ARWA Collection

Cover image: Diyala River in Baghdad, Iraq, 2017. Photo: Ali Al Obaidi. Released into public domain via Wikimedia Commons under a CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

VOLUME 47 Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Interdisciplinary research on the Bronze Age Diyala Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018 Edited by

Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Keywords: Diyala, Old Babylonian, Temple Architecture, Seals, Historical Geography, Trade Networks, Social Networks.

© 2021, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium 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. D/2021/0095/278 ISBN: 978-2-503-59534-4 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-59535-1 DOI: 0.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.124296 ISSN: 1780-3233 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper

Contents

List of Illustrations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii CÉCILE MICHEL

Current Research on the Bronze Age Diyala: An Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

DOMINIQUE CHARPIN

1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

ARIANE THOMAS

2. La Diyala au Louvre ou le reflet d’une certaine historiographie.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

PHILIPPE QUENET

3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah: Insight into the Emergence of Multi-Stepped Terraces. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

SOPHIE CLUZAN

4. From the Diyala to Ur, via Mari, Kiš, and the Jazira: When the Boat-God and the Hero Meet at the Dawn of Kingship. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

AHMED KAMIL MOHAMMED

5. A New Text from Tell Sulayma — Diyala Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

RIENTS DE BOER

6. The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Early Old Babylonian Trade Networks: A View from Sippar. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

CARLOS GONÇALVES

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala: A Study of the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Indices. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103

List of Illustrations

2. La Diyala au Louvre ou le reflet d’une certaine historiographie — Ariane Thomas Figure 2.1. Figurines et plaquettes ; terre cuite ; Diyala (?).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Figure 2.2. Têtes féminines ; calcaire ; Diyala (?).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Figure 2.3. Disque à motif d’étoile ; argent Diyala (?). Clou de fondation inscrit ; terre cuite; Diyala (?). Sceaux-cylindres et cachets ; schiste, lapis-lazuli, hématite ; Diyala (?). Dé à jouer ; terre cuite ; Diyala (?).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Figure 2.3bis. Pendentif en forme de grenouille ; lapis-lazuli ; Diyala (?).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Figure 2.4. Planches comparatives établies par Paul François. « Khafadje-Tell Asmar » et « Tell Hariri ».. . . . . . 27 Figure 2.5. Fragment de statuette masculine et de bélier en calcaire, statuette masculine en alliage cuivreux et plaquette en terre cuite ; Diyala (?).  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Figure 2.6. Tête d’homme ; calcaire, schiste et coquille, Diyala (?). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Figure 2.7. Statuette du prince Ginak ; calcaire ; Diyala (?). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Figure 2.8. Sceau-cylindre ; améthyste ; Diyala (?).  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Figure 2.9. Statues royales emportées d’Eshunna par Shutruk-Nahhunte au xiie siècle avant J.-C. ; gabbro.. . . . 30

3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah: Insight into the Emergence of Multi-Stepped Terraces — Philippe Quenet Figure 3.1. Overview of the salient features of the Temple Oval I First Occupation Phase. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Figure 3.2. Plan of the Temple Oval I First Occupation Phase with the specific features discussed in this contribution.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Figure 3.3. Plan of the Temple Oval I neighbourhood at the time of the ‘Houses’ Level 4.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Figure 3.4. Architectural model of the Temple Oval II and its neighbourhood (1987).. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Figure 3.5. Visible parts of the Temple Oval for an observer standing on the ground (A) at the city gate at a distance of about 15 m, (B) in the southern street at a distance of about 30 m. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Figure 3.6. Reconstruction of the Temple Oval I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Figure 3.7. Four reconstructions among many of the Temple Oval I.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

viii

List of Illustrations

4. From the Diyala to Ur, via Mari, Kiš, and the Jazira: When the Boat-God and the Hero Meet at the Dawn of Kingship — Sophie Cluzan Figure 4.1. Early Dynastic seals and seal impressions from the Diyala according to dating of the objects. . . . . . 49 Figure 4.2. The Boat-god on the Early Dynastic seals of Khafajah, sorted according to the type of composition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Figure 4.3. The Boat-god on the Early Dynastic seals of Tell Asmar, sorted according to the type of composition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 Figure 4.4. The Boat-god on the Early Dynastic seals of Tell Agrab appears once on top of a ‘building scene’.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Figure 4.5. The Boat-god’s distribution according to the type of archaeological context in the Diyala. . . . . . . . . 54 Figure 4.6. Frequency of the main types of scene on Early Dynastic seals of the Diyala and at Mari. .. . . . . . . . . . 55 Figure 4.7. Relative frequency of the Boat-god showing the impor­tance of three main areas: the Diyala, Kish and Mari, the Jazira. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Figure 4.8. The Boat-god beneath a panel left blank for an inscription. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57 Table 4.1.

Identification and references of the Boat-god according to Frankfort 1955, Amiet 1980, and Cluzan in this paper.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Table 4.2.

Three main types of composition of the Boat-god’s apparition on the seals of the Diyala.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

5. A New Text from Tell Sulayma — Diyala Region — Ahmed Kamil Mohammed Figure 5.1. Tell Sulayma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Figure 5.2. IM 85444.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 Figure 5.3. The date formulae in tablets IM 12265 and IM 12264. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Figure 5.4. The location of Tell al-Baghdadya, likely the ancient city of Malgium.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 Figure 5.5. Old Babylonian sites in the Hamrin Basin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Figure 5.6. Obverse of tablet IM 121115 from Mê-Turran (Tell es-Sib and Tell Haddad) with a list of workers from the city of Bater, photograph and drawing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

6. The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Early Old Babylonian Trade Networks: A View from Sippar — Rients de Boer Figure 6.1. Main trade routes from the Zagros Mountains into Mesopotamia. .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

List of Illustrations

ix

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala: A Study of the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš — Carlos Gonçalves Figure 7.1. Sociogram corresponding to Document 1 of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Figure 7.2. Sociogram corresponding to Documents 1 to 10 of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Figure 7.3. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Figure 7.4. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, with a partition into sub-communities that maximizes modularity.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Figure 7.5. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, after the deletion of Nūr-Šamaš.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Figure 7.6. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, after the deletion of Nūr-Šamaš, now with nodes grouped according to the sub-communities to which they belong.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93 Figure 7.7. Sociogram corresponding to all nodes belonging to sub-communities 3 and 8, as well as the edges that connect them.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Figure 7.8. Sociogram corresponding to all nodes belonging to sub-communities 3 and 8, as well as the edges that connect them, with additional indication of the numeration of the documents corresponding to certain edges.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96

Current Research on the Bronze Age Diyala: An Introduction Cécile Michel The aim of the conference held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study in June 2018, ‘The Old Babylonian Diyala: Research since the 1930s and Prospects’, was to establish an overview of our archaeological, philological, and historical knowledge, as well as the current research conducted on this valley which played an important role in establishing the link between Iran and Mesopotamia.1 During the Bronze Age, the Diyala River, which has its source in the Zagros Mountains, separated into two branches in the area of Mê-Turran. The northern branch, Turran, and the southern branch, Ṭaban, flowed into the Tigris, the former near Šaduppûm and the latter approximately 75 km south-east (Nashef 1982, map on p. 137). Several Middle Bronze Age towns built along these two rivers and in the vicinity of their confluence with the Tigris have been excavated, some providing cuneiform texts documenting the history of the kingdom of Ešnunna during the early second millennium bce. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the Diyala was first excavated by illicit diggers who sold statues and cuneiform tablets on the antiquities market. In France, Henri Pognon bought inscribed bricks and presented his research about the country of ‘Ashnunnak’ at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. On his death, he bequeathed his collection to the Louvre but did not reveal his thoughts about the localization of the capital (see Ariane Thomas in this volume). Various other artefacts were bought by * Cécile Michel ([email protected]) CNRS, Archéologies et Sciences de l’Antiquité-HAROC (UMR 7041), Nanterre and Center for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Universität Hamburg.

Half of the speakers at the conference agreed to contribute to this volume and we thank them for this. The other participants have integrated their results in monographs that have been or will be published. The present introduction includes all the results presented during the conference. 1 

the museum which featured among them terracotta plaques and figurines. Among these artefacts, many Mesopotamian statues and inscriptions brought back as trophies by the twelfth-century bce Elamites were unearthed at Susa (Iran) during the French excavations at the very end of the nineteenth century, and sent to the Musée du Louvre. Some of these bear inscriptions of ŠutrukNahhunte who claimed to have destroyed Ešnunna. This suggests that over half a millennium later, the memory of Ešnunna persisted, confirming the kingdom’s fame during the first centuries of the second millennium bce. By means of all these artefacts, that ended up in the Louvre’s collections, André Parrot and Henri Frankfort established links between the Diyala sites and the discoveries made at Mari and Terqa, suggesting that all these sites had been imbued with the same culture during the Middle Bronze Age. It was only during the late 1920s and the 1930s — over sixty years after the discovery of the Assyrian capitals by French and British diplomats — that the Oriental Institute of Chicago started excavations at Tell Asmar, the ancient Ešnunna, as well as Khafajah, ancient Tutub, Ishchali, ancient Nērebtum, and Tell Agrab. Significantly, the Early Dynastic phases for Mesopotamia (I: 2900–2800; II: 2800–2600; III: 2600–2350) were fixed following archaeological criteria adopted by the Chicago excavations in the Diyala. The scientific investment of the Oriental Institute in the Diyala materialized in the form of an electronic database, created in 1992, for the purpose of rendering information about all the artefacts brought to light during these ancient excavations accessible to researchers.2 [accessed 18 September 2020].

2 

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 1–6 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126522        BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

2 Several contributions to this volume and presentations during the conference are sourced in these early works. An in-depth study of the architecture of religious monuments carried out at Strasbourg for an exhibition demonstrated how the traditional reconstitution of the Oval Temple at Khafajah had to be reassessed in connection with the foundation deposits discovered and their chronology (see Philippe Quenet in this volume). The temple, built around 2600 bce, had two main walls but the religious sphere is now to be located within the inner wall, to which the main monumental door should be connected. New proposals also emerged for the terrace and the building’s actual height. This oval temple is one of a series that includes the Ninhursag Temple at Tell Obeid and the Inanna Temple at Lagaš. The seals recovered from the early excavations in the Diyala provide a great variety of scenes that inspired art historian Henri Frankfort (1955). Half a thousand seals from Khafajah and Tell Agrab dated to the third millennium bce show architectural or geometrical motifs, or animals, but human beings are an exception, and the scenes in which they appear display a local style. According to Cheikhmous Ali, the absence of imprints on these seals suggests that they may have had a specific religious or magic function. A focus on two specific scenes of Diyala cylinder seals — the Boat-god and the naked hero with curly hair, the latter linked to royal imagery — gives clues as to the nature of intercultural networks among third-millennium Mesopotamian kingdoms (see Sophie Cluzan in this volume). The association of these two motifs, i.e. running water and heroism, appear to have emerged in the Early Dynastic Diyala as one of the main Mesopotamian representations of kingship. After World War II, the Diyala was further explored by the Iraqi Directorate-General of Antiquities conducting excavations at Tell Harmal, ancient Šaduppûm, Uzarlulu, and Tell Muhammad. Salvage excavations took place in the region in the 1970s and 1980s threatened as it was by the Hamrin dam project, specifically at Tell Yelkhi (for its chronology see Viaggio 2004 and Gentili 2011). Tell es-Sib and Tell Haddad, together identified as the ancient Mê-Turran, and Tulul Khattab. All these archaeological excavations and surveys revealed the emergence of a specific cultural area in the Diyala, linked to the trade toward the Zagros as early as the third millennium. Ešnunna played a central role in the international politics of the first centuries of the second millennium bce. On the one hand, its international history has been

Cécile Michel well documented by external sources. Circa 1770 bce, a letter found at Mari shows that several kingdoms of equal importance shared power in Mesopotamia including Babylon, Larsa, Ešnunna, and further to the west, Qaṭna (A.482, see most recently Lafont 2020). On the other, its internal political history is poorly known as we lack official archives and chronographic texts from Ešnunna (see Dominique Charpin in this volume and Charpin 2004, 96–100, 129–31). The same applies to Babylon, whose early second-millennium levels consisted largely of private residential areas. Nevertheless, the internal history of Babylon could be partly written thanks to, among others, the archives of its governors in the city of Larsa. Many tablets originating from the Diyala are unprovenanced, other groups came from excavated sites, some of them providing important numbers of tablets. The texts discovered at several sites, including the capital Ešnunna, usually dating either from the very beginning of the Old Babylonian period, or from the end of this era and the beginning of the Kassite period (for Tell Muhammad dating system by era, see van Koppen 2010). As a result the history of this region is discontinuous. The historical contributions to this volume help to clarify and complete the political, economic, social, and cultural history of the Diyala during the early Old Babylonian period, and suggest new identifications of ancient sites. During the 1977 excavations at Tell Sulayma, the Iraqi archaeologists found eight damaged tablets, seven of which were field purchase contracts. The last of these documents a theft from the Šamaš temple and includes a year formula mentioning Malgium. This town is also attested in the year name of Gungunum, king of Larsa, and in the Mari royal archives. According to historical and geographical considerations, Ahmad Kamil suggests identifying Tell Sulayma with the ancient city of Batir and locating Malgium at Tell al-Baghdadya, on the right bank of the Tigris River south of Baghdad (see Ahmad Kamil’s contribution in this volume). His proposal discusses the divergent interpretation by the team of Jawad et al. published in 2019 which proposes positioning Malgium at Tell Yassir due to the discovery on this site of brick inscriptions mentioning Malgium (Jawal et al. 2019). A new article by this team appeared just as this volume was sent to the publisher, thus was not available for consideration by A. Kamil; it includes the publication of seventeen inscribed bricks found scattered on the surface of the site, ten of which mention different kings of Malgium (Jawal et al. 2020, map on p. 66). The publication of three

Current Research on the Bronze Age Diyala: An Introduction studies on the same topic in less than two years illustrates the renewed interest in research on the Diyala region and advances in the knowledge acquired. Works on the Diyala are also based on microhistories developed through the implementation of modern tools and technologies. For a decade now, Assyriologists have been using graph theory to analyse social networks by means of a method of which the beginnings date back to the 1960s (Plutniak 2018). Such a method has been applied to hundreds of texts belonging to the NūrŠamaš archive; these texts come from the antiquities market (see Carlos Gonçalves in this volume). The use of modularity in graph theory sets out to disentangle homonyms in such economic texts. It also enables the identification of individuals and the detection of subcommunities of people working together. The economic history of the Diyala and its commercial relations with neighbouring regions may also be investigated through analyses of texts discovered at other Mesopotamian sites. Thus, studies on the Diyala have also been built on texts from Mari (see above), or archives found at Sippar. The Mari royal archives highlight the primary role of Ešnunna in the international tin trade from east to west, as the city was in direct contact with Elam (Joannès 1991; Michel 1996, 390–91). A group of tablets from Sippar, preserved in the Iraq Museum and published as a dossier in volume 7 of the series Texts in the Iraq Museum, belonged to merchant families involved in the long-distance trade of metals and textiles (see Rients de Boer in this volume). To facilitate their commercial activities, they tried to conclude commercial treaties with small Amorite rulers of the lower Diyala thus mentioning names of towns such as Akšak and Šadlaš, possible gateways to the Diyala on the tin road.3 This archive, which dates from the first half of the nineteenth century bce, is contemporaneous to the Kültepe archives of Assyrian merchants who exported tin and textiles from Aššur to Anatolia. Both merchant organizations worked the same trade networks for a duration of approximately two centuries. Thus, a few texts found at Sippar dating from the middle of the eighteenth century show clear Old Assyrian characteristics and were written by Assyrians (Veenhof 1991). The identification of Tell Muqdadiya with the ancient town of Šadlaš was tentatively proposed by Hervé Reculeau during the conference based on the reading, from photos, of ten tablets found on this site displaying features of the archaic Old Babylonian Ešnunna; one of these would end with an abbreviation of a Sūmū-numhim year name (Wu 1994). 3 

3

All the new data provided by the contributions gathered in this volume enable a reassessment of the important role of the Diyala, in particular Ešnunna, during the third and early second millennia bce. Other research works have been carried out on the Diyala, several of which were introduced during the Diyala conference in June 2018, but have not been included in this volume. A few of them have recently been published as monographs or are to be published in the near future. Among them are several that focus on the contextualization of archaeological and textual discoveries. Elisa Rossberger has analysed the distribution of the many artefacts and tablets found in two Old Babylonian Ishchali temples, the Kitītum temple and the Gate temple. Distinguishing the imaginary sphere represented by the earthly residence of the deity, the ritual protocol, and the social and administrative practices, she has attained an improved understanding of the interactions between these three spheres. She notes how extremely rich the cella of Kitītum is in cylinder seals made of coloured stones and other objects left by the bureaucrats of the temple. The many terracotta plaques featuring motifs of musicians and performers, and cult statuettes show the various means used to establish contact with a deity. Her preliminary results reveal a great deal of intermingling in the sphere of actions. At the moment Laith Hussein is preparing a thorough edition of the texts found at Tell Harmal, the ancient Šaduppûm. In terms of written artefacts this site is one of the Diyala’s richest: three thousand cuneiform tablets were discovered in the Bēl-gašer Temple, an administrative building called ‘Serai’, and private houses. The newly established plan of Tell Harmal renders a better understanding of the distribution of the tablets. Included here are administrative texts, letters, school exercises, lexical texts, large geographical lists, incantations, mathematical texts, legal documents, and literary texts as well as collections of laws. In addition, archaeologists at Tell Harmal have discovered invaluable sources for reconstructing the chronology of the Diyala in the form of lists of year names, in particular dating from the period between Ipiq-Adad II to Ibalpi-El II. Laith Hussein has also noted some unusual features such as lexical lists ending with a kind of a square cartouche resembling the drawing of a ziggurat with the name of the god written at its centre. In 2018, just after the conference, Basima J. Abed published a book documenting new year names of King Iluni of Ešnunna, who c.  1730 suffered defeat at the hands of Samsu-iluna of Babylon. Altogether she gath-

4 ered some twenty different year names, that had been completed with two letter headings sent by the sukkalmah to Iluni showing the influence of Elam at that time. Last but not least, of the projects conducted at Pisa under the direction of Claudio Saporetti in the Centro Studi Diyala,4 a database of personal names, Onomastica delle Diyala,5 is to collect and process all personal names for each of the Diyala cities. The database, presented by Francesca Nebiolo at the conference, is based on the Pisa team’s longstanding experience, and will be made accessible to the scientific community for further studies. 2020 marked the publication of the tenth volume of the ‘Turan’ series dedicated to the Diyala by Claudio Saporetti;6 it is the second supplement dedicated to ‘Formule dalla Diyala nel periodo paleobabilonese’. The publication of this volume suggests a revival of the works carried out on the Diyala at Pisa. The recent and forthcoming publication of several volumes shows how fruitful these various research projects on the Diyala have been. They are evidence of a field of research in full renewal, thanks to the archaeological work carried out in the field over the last few decades by our Iraqi colleagues.

[accessed 20 December 2019]. 4 

[accessed 20 December 2019]. The volume Turan 9, which is dedicated to the Onomastica di Ešnunna, has been announced as ‘in preparazione’. 5 

Saporetti 2020 and [accessed 12 January 2021]. A note on the website indicates: ‘This book is the sequel to Turan 2, Turan 3 (Suppl. 1) and Turan 4 (Copies). Because the publication of texts belonging to the Ešnunna civilization has not been particularly rich in recent years, this Supplement 2 is now published long after the first’, which was published in 2013. 6 

Cécile Michel

Acknowledgements

The organization of the conference ‘The Old Babylonian Diyala: Research since the 1930s and Prospects’, Paris, 25–26 June 2018, benefited from the support of two institutions to which we wish express our great gratitude. Two of the three organizers, Carlos Gonçalves and Cheikhmous Ali, were fellows of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study in 2016–2017. The conference was hosted in the seventeenth-century Hôtel de Lauzun, and the Institute provided the participants with accommodation. We thank most heartily Gretty Mirdal, the former director of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, and Simon Luck, its scientific coordinator, for their constant help and support. A great thank you to the Institute staff, Solène de Bonis, Élodie Saubatte, Geneviève Marmin, for their administrative and logistical help. Great gratitude also to the second institution, the LabEx Past in Present (ANR-11-LABX-0026-01), for granting the third organizer, Cécile Michel, the travel costs of the three Iraqi colleagues and a very warm thanks to its coordinator, Ghislaine GlassonDeschaumes. The editors of this volume express their gratitude to the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures — Understanding Written Artefacts (DFG EXC 2176 project no. 390893796) for its kind financial support in the last stages of preparing this book for publication and to James Rumball who polished the English of the contributions. A great thank you to the anonymous referees who gave constructive feedback to the authors. The editors extend their special thanks to Cheikhmous Ali for his active collaboration in the organization of the conference and his commitment to the defence of cultural heritage. It is most regrettable that due to his involvement in other projects he was unable to join them for the publication. We wish him the most well-deserved success in his new life project. Last but not least, we are indebted to Brepols publisher Rosie Bonté, series editor Marc Lebeau, and the editorial board of the SUBARTU series.

Current Research on the Bronze Age Diyala: An Introduction

5

Works Cited Abed, Basima J. 2018 The Royal Archive of the King Iluni from Basi City. Abed, Baghdad (National Library and Archives in Baghdad 4024). Charpin, Dominique 2004 ‘Histoire politique du Proche-Orient amorrite (2002–1595)’, in Dominique Charpin, Dietz-Otto Edzard & Marten Stol, Mesopotamien: Annäherungen, iv: Die altbabylonische Zeit (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 160/4). Academic Press, Fribourg: 25–480. Frankfort, Henri 1955 Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region (Oriental Institute Publications 72). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Gentili, Paolo 2011 ‘Nomi di Yelkhi’, Egitto e Vicino Oriente 34: 95–127. Jawad, Ahmed Ali; Abd Al-Rezaq; Nasir, Ali Jabarat; As’id, Ahmed Abbas 2019 ‘Discovery of the Location of the City of Malgium at Tell Yasir’, Sumer 65: 63–91. Jawad, Ahmed Ali; Al-Reza, Barhan Abd; Nasir, Ali Jabarat; As’id, Ahmed Abbas & de Boer, Rients 2020 ‘The Discovery of the Location of Magium (Tell Yassir)’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 72: 65–86. Joannès, Francis 1991 ‘L’étain, de l’Élam à Mari’, in Leon De Meyer & Hermann Gasche (eds), Mésopotamie et Élam: actes de la XXXVIème Recontre assyriologique internationale, Gand, 10–14 juillet 1989 (Mesopotamian History and Environment Occasional Publications 1). University of Ghent, Ghent: 67–76. Koppen, Frans van 2010 ‘The Old to Middle Babylonian Transition: History and Chronology of the Mesopotamian Dark Age’, Ägypten und Levante 20: 453–63. Lafont, Bertrand 2020 ‘Les rois puissants amorrites d’après une lettre de Mari’, in Martin Sauvage (dir.), Atlas historique du ProcheOrient ancien. Les Belles Lettres, Paris: 84. Michel, Cécile 1996 ‘Le commerce dans les textes de Mari’, in Jean-Marie Durand (ed.), Amurru, i: Mari, Ebla et les Hourrites, dix ans de travaux. Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris: 385–426. Nashef, Khaled 1982 ‘Der Ṭaban-Fluss’, Baghdader Mitteilungen 13: 117–39. Plutniak, Sébastien 2018 ‘Aux prémices des humanités numériques? La première analyse automatisée d’un réseau économique ancien (Gardin & Garelli, 1961). Réalisation, conceptualisation, réception’, ARCS: Analyse de réseaux pour les sciences sociales 1 [accessed 1 August 2021]. Saporetti, Claudio 2020 Formule dalla Diyala nel periodo paleobabilonese (Turan 10, Suppl. 2). Informatic@pplicata, Rome.

6

Cécile Michel

Veenhof, Klaas R. 1991 ‘Assyrian Commercial Activities in Old Babylonian Sippar – Some New Evidence’, in Dominique Charpin & Francis Joannès (eds), Marchands, diplomates et empereurs: études sur la civilisation mésopotamienne offertes à Paul Garelli. Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris: 287–304. Viaggio, Salvatore 2004 ‘Note sulla cronologia di Tell Yelkhi’, Egitto e Vicino Oriente 27: 103–08. Wu, Yuhong 1994 ‘The Treaty between Shadlash (Sumu-Numhim) and Neribtum (Hammi-dushur)’, Journal of Ancient Civiliza­ tions 9: 124–36.

Conference Programme Monday 25 June 2018

Tuesday 26 June 2018

9.00–9.15 Opening session

9.30–10.15 The Texts from Šaduppûm ‘Tall Harmal’ by Laith Hussein, University of Baghdad, College of Arts

Gretty Mirdal, for the Paris Institute for Advanced Study Ghislaine Glasson-Deschaumes, for the LabEx Pasts in the Present Carlos Gonçalves, for the organizing committee 9.15–10.15 Opening talk: Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case by Dominique Charpin, Collège de France 10.15–10.30 Coffee break 10.30–11.15 Diyala at the Louvre by Ariane Thomas, Musée du Louvre, Paris 11.15–12.00 Ešnunna under the Influence of Elam by Basima J. Abed, University of Baghdad, College of Arts, Baghdad 12.00–13.30 Lunch 13.30–14.15 Reconstructing the Oval Temple of Khafajeh: Insight into the Emergence of Multi-Stepped Terraces by Philippe Quenet, Université de Strasbourg 14.15–15.00 From Things to Practice: Reconstructing Spheres of Action from the Archaeological Inventories of the Old Babylonian Temples in Ishchali by Elisa Rossberger, Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität, München 15.00–15.30 Coffee break 15.30–16.15 A New Text from Tell Sulayma – Diyala Region by Ahmed Kh.  Mohammed, Former Director of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad 16.15–17.00 The Diyala Valley in the Early Old Babylonian Period: New Evidence from Tell Muqdadiya by Hervé Reculeau, University of Chicago

10.15–10.30 Coffee break 10.30–11.15 Between Past and Future: The ‘Onomastica della Diyala’ Project by Francesca Nebiolo, Proche-Orient Caucase, EPHE, UMR 7192 11.15–12.00 Homonyms, Aliases and Measurements in an Old Babylonian Community: The Archive of Nūr-Šamaš by Carlos Gonçalves, Universidade de São Paulo, IEA de Paris 2016–2017 12.00–13.30 Lunch 13.30–14.15 La glyptique de la Diyala au iiie millénaire av. n. ère: état de question by Cheikhmous Ali, Université de Strasbourg, IEA de Paris 2016–2017, fellow at the Gerda Henkel Foundation 14.15–15.00 From Diyala to Ur, Passing by Mari, Kish and the Jezireh: Interregional Connections in the First Historical Kingdoms by Sophie Cluzan, Musée du Louvre, Paris 15.00–15.30 Coffee break 15.30–16.15 The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Old Babylonian Trade Networks by Rients De Boer, Universiteit van Amsterdam 16.15–17.00 Conclusion and general discussion Cécile Michel, ArScAn, CNRS UMR 7041, Nanterre & Universität Hamburg

1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case Dominique Charpin In observing how the balance of power was experienced in Mari in the mid-eighteenth century bce, Ešnunna emerges as one of the great powers of the time. A famous and oft-quoted letter of Itūr-Asdu, states the following:1

was divided into two more or less parallel branches, Turran to the west Ṭabān to the east. Thanks to Khaled Nashef ’s 1982 geographic elucidation, Ešnunna’s location was discovered to be on the Ṭabān.

No king is really powerful on his own. Ten to fifteen kings follow Hammu-rabi, the man of Babylon; so many Rīm-Sîn, the man of Larsa; so many Ibal-pī-El, the man of Ešnunna; so many Amut-pī-El, the man of Qaṭna. Twenty kings follow Yarīm-Lîm, the man of Yamhad (Aleppo).

Firstly, it will be seen how fruitful the important archaeological research in the Diyala Valley has been; secondly why the position of Ešnunna has been neglected by historiography for such a long time; and finally an attempt is to be made to explain why this situation recently changed.

West of Mari, the great powers were Aleppo and Qaṭna; in the east, Babylon, Larsa, and Ešnunna. However, it has to be said that Ešnunna is far from occupying such an important place in contemporary historiography. The contribution here sets out to explain this paradoxical situation. The geography of the region nowadays is very different from that of the second millennium bce. When referring to the Diyala, one must be aware that the river has altered from what it was in antiquity. It is no longer possible to understand the location of Ešnunna on a modern map. But in the Old Babylonian period, downstream of the bottleneck of the Jebel Hamrin, the Diyala Dominique Charpin ([email protected]) Collège de France-PSL, UMR 7192.

1  A.482: cf. Dossin 1938, 117–18 (republished in Dossin 1983, 114–15) and Sasson 2015, 82. About the historical context of this do­cument (datable from year 5 of Zimri-Lim), cf. Charpin & Durand 1985, 323 n. 131. Admittedly, the letter was sent by Itūr-Asdu to ZimrīLîm. However, the passage quoted above is not addressed to the king of Mari — to whom Itūr-Asdu had nothing to teach — but to his vassals in the Ida-Maraṣ region (Saporetti 2002, 11 must be corrected on this point). To make this written contribution useful,

particular emphasis has been placed on the recent bibliography, as works prior to 2002 are to be found in Saporetti 2002.

Important Archaeological Research

The archaeological research being very developed after eighty years in the area, it cannot explain the limited historiographical position of Ešnunna. Ahmad Kamil Muhamed provided a useful presentation regarding the epigraphical discoveries in no less than seventeen tells (Muhamed 1992, 11–25). They can be described in four main phases: illicit diggings before 1930, American excavations and surveys from the 1930s to the 1960s, Iraqi excavations after World War II, and rescue excavations since 1980.

Before 1930 Official research on Ešnunna could have begun as early as the end of the nineteenth century, as in 1892 the French consul in Baghdad, Henri Pognon, had discovered the whereabouts of the city; but his loathing for Léon Heuzey was such that he died without revealing the Tell Asmar’s name.2 See the account of this rather inglorious episode of French archaeology in the Near East in Parrot 1946, 369 and the contribution of Ariane Thomas in this volume.

2 

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 7–21 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126523        BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

8 A great deal of illicit diggings took place at the end of the 1920s in the Diyala Valley: supplying Baghdad’s antiquities merchants with tablets was quite easy at such a short distance. Baghdad was of course not as developed as it is nowadays, but its centre was only forty kilometres from the Tell Asmar/Ešnunna site. The best-known sites were those selected later for excavations, such as Ishchali or Khafajah by the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, however other smaller sites have also yielded tablets. S. Viaggio (2009) recently called to mind the existence of Tell Seba’, situated a few kilometres south-east of Tell Asmar, and Tell Abu Halawa.3 Other texts from unidentified sites also exist such as the archives of Nūr-Šamaš copied by van Dijk (1966) and edited by Reschid (1965), to which Carlos Gonçalves has devoted his contribution.4 The problem, as usual, was the frequent splitting of the discoveries between many collections. For instance, the Ishchali texts have been spread between four different collections in Chicago, Berkeley,5 Oxford, and Philadelphia.6

Excavations of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago The Project Between 1930 and 1937, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago conducted excavations of four major sites in the Diyala region: Tell Agrab, Tell Asmar, Ishchali, and Khafajah.7 These undertakings were of an unprecedented scale. Up to 25 per cent of the total area of each site was excavated, uncovering not only the remains of palaces and temples, but also of houses, manufacturing facilities, streets, and urban defensive systems, with some soundings extending as deep as sixteen meters below the mound’s present surface. The tablets from this site are being prepared for publication by Serena Ticca. 3 

And on the contrary, texts refer to sites that cannot be identified, such as Šadlaš (Stol 2006–2008). 4 

5  See the very interesting introduction by N. Veldhuis, [accessed 20 December 2020].

See Charpin 2004a, 441–42, and now also the publications of S. Viaggio (lastly Viaggio 2009). The tablets from the Free Library in Philadelphia were to be published by M. Ellis (see lastly Ellis 1990), but they are still unpublished; P. Paoletti has announced a work that exploits their data (Paoletti in preparation).

6 

The traditional transcriptions of these Arabic toponyms have been used here. 7 

Dominique Charpin They covered a very long time span between the Late Uruk period and the end of the Old Babylonian period (c. 3000–1700 bce); almost two thousand tablets (from all periods) were unearthed. The expedition was directed by Henri Frankfort, assisted by a very skilled team, consisting of Seton Lloyd, Pinhas Delougaz, and Thorkild Jacobsen. The expedition was established at Tell Asmar. This site was chosen, because in 1928 many bricks mentioning Ešnunna appeared on the antiquities market, and Sidney Smith, Iraq’s director of antiquities at that time, convinced one of the local diggers to take him to the source, the site of Tell Asmar.8 As far as the Old Babylonian period is concerned, the epigraphical results may be summarized as follows. At Tell Asmar, ancient Ešnunna, most of the Old Babylonian texts date from the beginning of the period: short commemorative inscriptions, essentially containing the name, filiation, and title of the sovereign, approximately fifty letters addressed to five kings of the twentieth century, around sixty contracts,9 and a few hundred administrative texts. At Ishchali, ancient Nērebtum, the temple of the goddess Kitītum was the main building excavated. But the excavation also cleared part of the city wall with an adjacent temple and one of the city gates, as well as the so-called Serai, that is actually a grouping making up two huge private houses which were later connected. At Khafajah, ancient Tutub,10 Mound D was a citadel. At its centre stood a temple consecrated to the moongod Sîn, where almost one hundred tablets were found, largely loans by the god himself or by his entum-priestess, who may have lived in the southern building, which it is proposed here to be defined as a giparum.11 After the Oriental Institute finished its expedition, Mound B was excavated by the University Museum of Philadelphia. But it has to be noted that the tablets published in Greengus 1979 nos 305–25 were bought in Baghdad in 1930 (Farber 1984, 347): some of which date from Samsuiluna 23 to 27, the name of the year 24 commemorating the construction of Dūr-Samsu-iluna. 8  9 

Reichel 2018, 29.

They remain unpublished but see Whiting 1977 and Reichel 2001.

10 

See the brief but useful summary given by C. Reichel (2014–2016).

It is generally considered that the only excavated Gipar is that of Ur (Suter 2007, 319 n. 5). The confirmation given by this author concerning the presence of burial vaults in both Khafajah and Ur appears not to have attracted attention (Charpin 1999, 179–80). 11 

1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case Publications Following the end of the 1937 excavations, no less than nine volumes were prepared for publication in the OIP series. Five were published quickly,12 some after the war,13 and the remaining volumes much later.14 Three more volumes had been announced, but World War II interrupted the work and dispersed the group of scholars that had worked in the field, and these volumes were not completed.15 Jacobsen was the epigrapher of the Oriental Institute Expedition: having done a tremendous job cataloguing the epigraphic discoveries made at the four excavated sites, however, he published very few of these. His chapter in OIP 43 (Jacobsen 1940) in which he published royal inscriptions and year names have been extremely important in enabling the first reconstruction of the region’s history during the Old Babylonian period. In this chapter, Jacobsen also alluded to the existence of a treaty, the first known of that period, dating from King Bēlakum, often forgotten by authors dealing with the question of alliances, and which unfortunately remains unpublished.16 Regarding Ešnunna, only fifty letters from the archaic Old Babylonian period have been published to date (Whiting 1987). Hundreds of Old Babylonian tablets remain unpublished.17 H.  Frankfort, Sculpture of the Third Millennium b.c. from Tell Asmar and Khafājah (OIP 88), Chicago, 1939; H. Frankfort, S. Llyod & T.  Jacobsen, The Gimilsin Temple and the Palace of the Rulers at Tell Asmar (OIP 43), Chicago, 1940; P. Delougaz, The Temple Oval at Khafājah, with a Chapter by Thorkild Jacobsen (OIP 53), Chicago, 1940; P. Delougaz & S. Lloyd, Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala Region: With Chapters by Henri Frankfort and Thorkild Jacobsen (OIP 58), Chicago, 1942; H. Frankfort, More Sculpture from the Diyala Region (OIP 60), Chicago, 1943. 12 

13  P. Delougaz, Pottery from the Diyala Region (OIP 63), Chicago, 1952; H. Frankfort, Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region: With a Chapter by Thorkild Jacobsen (OIP 72), Chicago, 1955.

14  P. Delougaz, H. D. Hill & S. Lloyd, Private Houses and Graves in the Diyala Region (OIP 72), Chicago, 1967; H. Hill, T. Jacobsen & P. Delougaz, Old Babylonian Public Buildings in the Diyala Region (OIP 98), Chicago, 1990.

Miscellaneous Objects from the Diyala Region (OIP 89); Stone Vessels from the Diyala Region (OIP 96). The final planned volume, Four Ancient Towns in the Diyala Region, had not even been given a number in the OIP series. 15 

But one can piece together the quotations that the CAD has made over the years (Charpin 2004a, 98–99 and n. 373). 16 

R. Whiting has given the number of ‘more than 1400 Ur III and Old Babylonian tablets found at Tell Asmar’ (Whiting 1987, 2) but has never given a specific number for the OB tablets. 17 

9

Concerning Nērebtum (Ishchali),18 Greengus’s 1979 book includes not only the tablets from Ishchali, but also those from Khafajah Mound B.19 Unfortunately, this publication of the tablets of the Oriental Institute expedition is incomplete, because it does not include the tablets kept in Baghdad; a catalogue was published by Paolo Gentili (2004). For her PhD thesis, Rivkah Harris was tasked with editing the tablets discovered in the Sîn temple of Tutub (Khafajah), which Thorkild Jacobsen had had the time to copy, but not edit (Harris 1955). She thought that the ideogram ‘en’ used in these texts designated the moongod priest; but the texts from Ur reveal the same usage for a priestess, and it was possible to demonstrate that an ‘en’ of Sîn at Tutub received a dowry, so it is clear that ‘en’ (or in Akkadian enum) was a woman (Charpin 2004b).

Iraqi Excavations after World War II In the immediate post-World War  II years, the Iraqi Antiquities Service undertook numerous fruitful excavations, particularly in what were then Baghdad suburbs from which no less than three sites delivered tablets from the Old Babylonian period.

Šaduppûm (Tell Harmal) Taha Baqir chose to excavate the Tell Harmal and continue work at the Directorate of Antiquities simultaneously due to the site’s modest size.20 The tell had already been dug by illegal diggers and more than 120 tablets had been found, the majority, kept at Yale, were published by Simmons.21 Official excavations revealed a small town, its main temple dedicated to the god Bēlgašer (Charpin 1987), a large administrative building (the so-called ‘Serai’) and residential quarters, including smaller sanctuaries.22 Nearly three thousand tablets were discovered, featuring very famous texts, such as the ‘Laws of Ešnunna’ or mathematical tablets (Koppen 2006–2008; Isma’el et al. 2010; Gonçalves 2015; Friberg & Al-Rawi 2016). Approximately six hundred texts have 18  19 

For the identification, see lastly Charpin 1999, 79. See the partial edition in Greengus 1986.

See Viaggio in Saporetti 2002, 98–108 and lastly Miglus 2006–2008. 20 

In a series of articles in JCS, his copies being finally published in YOS 14 (Simmons 1978).

21 

For the twin-temple possibly devoted to Haya and Nisaba, see Charpin 2017, 114–16. 22 

10 been published so far, and it is hoped more will follow in the near future thanks to the efforts of Laith Hussein (see already Hussein 2009).

Uzarlulu/Zaralulu (Tell al-Dhib’ai) This small site in the eastern outskirts of Baghdad, one and a half kilometres to the east of Tell Harmal, was excavated in 1947, 1962, and 1983–1984.23 About three hundred Old Babylonian tablets were found there, of which only twenty-one have been published (Sulaiman 1978).

Tell Muhammad The site, located within present-day Baghdad, just one kilometre south of Tell Harmal, was the subject of discoveries in the mid-nineteenth century but was excavated by the Iraqi Antiquities Service from 1978 on (Muhamed 1992, 12). Unfortunately, the dissertation studying the texts was never published (Al-Ubaid 1983), only a privileged few have had access to it. The site’s identification with Diniktum, proposed by P.  Gentili (2006), is far from certain.

American Surveys The years after World War  II were also marked by ground-breaking surveys (Jacobsen 1958 and 1982; Adams 1965); their methodological importance needs no emphasis.

Salvage Excavations Finally, the construction of a dam on the Diyala where the river crosses the Jebel Hamrin was decided in 1976: it was the occasion of numerous rescue excavations in the following years, in a region which until then had not been the object of archaeological research. Old Babylonian tablets were discovered at several sites (Muhamed 1992, 18–25), thus far, however, publications have been limited to Tell es-Sib/Tell Haddad and Tell Yelkhi. The topography led to the establishing of two modern names, Tell es-Sib and Tell Haddad, but the whole most certainly corresponds to a single ancient city, that of Mê-Turran. The archival texts have only been partially published (Mustafa 1983 and Muhamed 1992). Literary 23 

See Muhamed 1992, 13–14; Viaggio in Saporetti 2002, 108–13.

Dominique Charpin texts (in Sumerian and Akkadian) were published in a series of articles by F. al-Rawi and A. Cavigneaux (the latest one being Cavigneaux 2014). A. Cavigneaux himself (1999) regretted this separation, as it prevents ascertaining that the archives and library of an exorcist were found, which would be a matter of great interest. The site of Tell Yelkhi was excavated in 1979 and 1980 by the Centre of Archaeological Research and Excavations of Torino, under the direction of G.  Bergamini and A.  Invernizzi (Muhamed 1992, 21). They discovered a building identified as a small temple, which contained twenty-three hepatoscopic texts dating from Ibal-pī-El II’s period, as well as an administrative building that yielded sixty-nine tablets (cf. Rouault & Saporetti 1985; Saporetti 1995 and 2001). Aside from the excavations of Hamrin, the salvage excavation of Tulul Khattab deserves mention (Muhamed 1992, 17). The State Organization for Antiquity and Heritage undertook excavations at the site in 1979 to prevent further destruction by local inhabitants. Tulul Khattab is twenty kilometres west of Tell Asmar, on the western branch of the Diyala (Turran), fourteen kilometres upstream from Khafajah (Tutub). No less than 359 tablets were discovered, thirty-six of which have been published (Isma’el 2007), but the proposed identification of the site with ṢupurŠamaš is doubtful (Charpin 2009, 147–48).

A Modest Historiographical Place

It has to be admitted that despite this intensive archaeological work, Ešnunna has a quite lowly position in modern historiography. Amélie Kuhrt’s 1995 textbook makes only nine references to Ešnunna in its index, whereas Mari features no less than thirty. Three main reasons for this situation are contended.

A Kingdom Better Known by Secondary Cities than by the Capital Itself First of all, Ešnunna is a kingdom better known by secondary cities than by the capital itself. The cities Tell Harmal (Šaduppûm), Ishchali (Nērebtum), Khafajah (Tutub), Tell Haddad and tell es-Sib (Mê-Turran), etc., all yielded many more Old Babylonian texts than Tell Asmar (Ešnunna) itself, especially from the ‘classical’ Old Babylonian period, i.e. the period contemporary with Hammu-rabi of Babylon. This may be regarded as fortunate, for there are many kingdoms about which historians complain they know nothing — save for the

1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case palace and some of the capital’s temples. Nonetheless, this is problematic as no palace archive exists for the Dāduša or Ibal-pī-El period i.e. the floruit of the kingdom. The only documents in our possession are those found outside Tell Asmar. A  letter discovered at Tell Harmal which still had its envelope bearing the seal of the king was identified as from the correspondence of Ibal-pī-El II.24 Another was unearthed in Mari in which Ibal-pī-El proposed the conclusion of an alliance with Zimrī-Lîm.25

A Deficient Chronological Frame Another problem is caused by the absence of chronographic texts. As a result, the succession of kings and the internal chronology of their reigns can only be partially ascertained.

No List of Kings Contrary to Isin, Larsa, or Babylon, there is no text giving the list of the kings of Ešnunna in a chronological order and indicating the length of their reigns. It took a long time before such a list and sequence could be established, thanks to diverse publications (Wu Yuhong 1994). At times ‘phantom kings’ disappeared, such as Rubûm (Charpin 1985, 62–66) or Ibni-Erra (Lacambre 1993); others reappeared, such as Ahušina. Finally, a list can be reconstructed, but vital uncertainties remain (Charpin 2004a, 388–90).

No List of Year Names

11

Too Few Synchronisms For the historian, the difficulty is even greater. For decades, the Diyala region was split into a number of kingdoms whose borders cannot be established. One of the problems is in not even knowing precisely the capital city of some of the kings and synchronisms become very difficult to establish. Only a very provisional picture of the situation before Ipiq-Adad II of Ešnunna unified the region, following the efforts of Jacobsen, Whiting, and Wu Yuhong, has been provided in Charpin 2004a, 100. In comparing this with the region around Babylon, the main difference is that the period of political division before the unification under Sumu-la-El is much shorter and the number of kingdoms more reduced. This is also why Ešnunna is not as well integrated in the general histories of Mesopotamia. It is simply too complicated! One could say that the history of Upper Mesopotamia is likewise very complicated, and contains even more kingdoms (Charpin & Ziegler 2003). This is actually true, but a richness of archives provide a huge advantage — primarily those of Mari, but in a number of other sites too. Many letters exist also that assist greatly in reconstructing the political events but regarding the Diyala region this is simply not the case.

A History that Went Bad And finally, the history of Ešnunna went bad: Vae victis! Its beginnings were far more glorious than those of Babylon. The dynasty began at the end of Ur III, unlike the Babylonian dynasty, that began over a century later.26 But after a floruit in the second part of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, the history of Ešnunna encountered several setbacks.

Moreover, no list exists enabling an ordering of the names chosen by the royal chancellery for the purpose of dating the documents, save that of a partial list for Ibal-pī-El II (Baqir 1949). The situation certainly applies to Mari, but thanks to the existence of multi-annual summaries the abundance of administrative texts dating from Zimrī-Lîm enables a chronological order of the names of the years to be constructed (Charpin & Ziegler 2003, 257–60). This is not the case regarding Ešnunna, in fact it is far worse, as many of these year names do not even include the name of the king. Thus, it is extremely difficult to impose some order in an abundance of texts that often feature no archaeological provenance.

It is known the kingdom was ravaged by the Elamites after their invasion in 1765: there is a legacy of so many Tell Harmal/Šaduppûm texts due to this systematic destruction.27 Just as it is known that Hammu-rabi was tempted to occupy the throne of Ešnunna, it was Ṣillī-Sîn who was chosen eventually.28 After many vicissitudes, an alliance was finally concluded between the two kings,

Goetze 1958, no. 5 ( [accessed 20 December 2020]).

Charpin 1987. One cannot follow the suggestion of Gentili (2006, 43, end of n. 21), who wonders about the fire at Tell Harmal: ‘Incidentally, could this fire be linked to the Abī-Ešuḫ conquest?’ No dated tablet at Tell Harmal is later than Ibal-pi-El II.

Let us recall that the Babylonian dynasty did not begin with Sumu-abum in 1894, but with Sumu-la-El in 1880: see lastly de Boer 2018.

26 

27 

24 

A.1289+ (Charpin 1991, 147–59; [accessed 20 December 2020]). 25 

28 

Charpin & Ziegler 2003, 227–28.

12 but it was short-lived.29 The importance of the victory of Hammu-rabi over Ṣillī-Sîn of Ešnunna in 1761 is marked in the name of the year 32: the king’s name is followed by the epithet ‘ur-sag’, the ‘hero’, which is exceptional. And the epithet is highlighted by an abnormal ‘layout’: the epithet ‘ur-sag’ is at the end of the line, after ‘lugal’ and not at the beginning of the next line. It is this way on all the tablets that have a non-abbreviated version of that year name (Charpin 2014). This is not a mere detail: the scribes were definitely instructed to write the name of the year in this way, which highlighted the importance of this victory. Six years later, Ešnunna appears to have been destroyed by a flood.30 Competition existed between Ešnunna and Babylon afterwards. Samsu-iluna led several campaigns (as indicated by the names of years 20 and 24); they were followed by a submission of the region, marked by the construction of a fortress (Dūr-Samsu-iluna) in Khafajah. The archives of Alammuš-naṣir in Damrum show that this high Babylonian dignitary received his share of the booty gained, ‘Ešnunnean maidservants’ being kept in his house (Charpin 2012a). Ešnunna managed to regain its independence under Abī-ešuh, as a new king named Ahušina is then attested to have been made prisoner by the king of Babylon.31 But we know very little of this period. Sporadic mentions of Ešnunna till Samsu-ditāna, the last king of the First Dynasty exist (Charpin 2005, 150). For a long time, it was thought that the Diyala region was in decline then, until F.  van Koppen proposed a different view (Koppen 2017, 59–63). He asserted that the texts of Tell Muhammad demonstrate the activity of two kings mentioned as ancestors of the Kassite kings of Babylon, Hurbah and Šipta-ulzi, who can be located during the first two decades of Samsu-ditāna. It was Babylon, how29 

Charpin & Ziegler 2003, 232 and 241.

According to the name of Hammu-rabi’s thirty-eighth year. The recent article of Matthew Rutz and Piotr Michalowski about the flooding of Ešnunna (2016) has to be corrected, as shown by Ziegler 2016. 30 

‘A year name on an unpublished tablet in the British Museum (BM 79898) deals with Abī-ešuh’s defeat of Ahušina, king of Ešnunna (C.  B.  F. Walker, personal communication)’ (Frayne 1990, 592). Cf. also Ellis 1985, 62 n. 3; Horsnell 1999, 259 and Stol 2004, 791 n. 1072. The year name has been given by M. Sigrist ( [accessed 20 December 2020]): mu a-bi-e-šu-uh lugal-e eren2 kalam aš2-nun-naki me3 nam-dugud-ba in-ne-en-šub-ub-ba a-hu-ši-na lugal aš2-nunnaki LU2×KAR2 mi-ni-in-dab₅-ba ‘Year Abī-ešuh the king defeated in a powerful battle the army of the land of Ešnunna and took prisoner Ahušina the king of Ešnunna’. 31 

Dominique Charpin ever, and not Ešnunna, that became the capital of central Mesopotamia in Kassite times.

A Recent Change and its Reasons

In spite of the above, the situation of Ešnunna is undergoing favourable changes in Assyriological studies, thanks to recent projects, chance discoveries, and the richness of the Mari archives.

Recent Projects Two projects have been developed in recent years around the Diyala region: one led by C. Saporetti in Pisa and the other one by Mc. Gibson and C. Reichel in Chicago.

The ‘Ešnunna Project’ of Pisa This project began when Claudio Saporetti, long known for his publications on Middle Assyrian texts, was chosen as field epigrapher for the Italian mission at Tell Yelkhi (see above). He launched a ‘Progetto Ešnunna’, gathering around him many students, to whom he entrusted theses and dissertations on subjects related to the kingdom of Ešnunna. Finally, he published a synthesis bearing the title: The Rival of Babylon subtitled History of Ešnunna a Powerful Kingdom that Challenged Ḫammurapi (Saporetti 2002).32 It must be said that this book has remained largely unknown: no review of it has been written in Assyriological journals (the publisher did not send review copies). The fact that it was written in Italian is probably not unrelated to this lack of recognition. Aside from the linguistic aspect, the Pisa Project remained largely unnoticed because many studies were not published in traditional Assyriological journals, but in publications such as Geo-archeologia, a rather confidential journal.33 In addition, many books were published by the University of Pisa in photocopy form only; these books have now been republished in the series Turan, but as yet have no ISBN, depriving them of official source identity.34 Note that this book had been preceded by Wu Yuhong’s book in 1994, but its purpose and chronological limits were not exactly the same. 32 

Geo-archeologia: Periodico dell’associazione geo-archeologica italiana, Pisa (a journal with no ISSN which is all the more difficult to find as there is no online version). A significant number of articles have also been published in journals of the University of Pisa, not very well known by Assyriologists: Egitto e Vicino Oriente and Studi classici e orientali, which have the advantage of an official existence (they are accessible via JSTOR).

33 

See [accessed 20 December 2020].

34 

1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case The ‘Diyala Archaeological Database’ of the Oriental Institute With the support of a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) grant, McGuire Gibson launched the Diyala Project as an electronic database in 1992. It was taken over by Clemens Reichel who obtained a new grant from the NEH for the Diyala Project in its ‘Recovering Iraq’s Past’ initiative (15 September 2004 till 2010). The database ( [accessed 20 December 2020]) unfortunately is still not very user-friendly, compared to the archives of Woolley pertaining to Ur (Ur-Online). Nonetheless it remains very important, as 75 per cent of the approx. fifteen thousand discovered objects remain unpublished up to now. Clemens Reichel’s dissertation on the building dubbed ‘Palace of the Rulers’ by the Tell Asmar excavators will be available soon hopefully. Reichel has already published very interesting articles deriving from his research (Reichel 2003, 2008, or 2018).

Unexpected Discoveries The situation has also improved thanks to several chance discoveries. The first is that of a stele of King Dāduša, unearthed by a peasant digging a well near Tell Asmar (Ismaïl & Cavigneaux 2003): according to the text, it originally stood in the temple of Addu. Its inscription is very important because it relates a joint campaign of this king of Ešnunna with Samsī-Addu (Charpin 2004c). Its iconography has been discussed all the more as the text describes the representations on the stele.35 More recently, looting has brought to light many texts from the Diyala region. One example is a treaty in which Ibal-pī-El (I), swearing an oath to four deities, pledges to remain faithful to Sîn-iddinam of Larsa and Sîn-kāšid of Uruk, help with military intervention against their enemy in case of conflict, protect their allies, not to send troops to Sab(i)um of Babylon or Ikūnpī-Sîn of Nērebtum, nor to establish any separate peace with them (Guichard 2014). The looters also uncovered numerous documents and letters dating from King Iluni, a contemporary of Samsu-iluna.36

The Richness of the Mari Archives Without any scientific chauvinism, it must be admitted that the revival of studies on the kingdom of Ešnunna in recent years is largely due to external sources, of which the archives of Mari are first and foremost.

Akkad, a Bicephalous Region A lot of effort has been invested in locating the city of Akkad.37 It should be noted, however, that Akkad was also the name of a two-headed region in the nineteenth century, with Babylon on one side and Ešnunna on the other. It is easy to see how the multitude of small states that formed around 1900 were gradually unified by the kings of Babylon on one side and those of Ešnunna on the other.38 Still under Zimrī-Lîm, a correspondent wrote significantly to the king of Mari:39 ‘The Akkadian who took the oath with them, is it the lord of Ešnunna or the lord of Babylon, I have not identified him.’ This quotation shows that the toponym Akkad can refer to both Ešnunna and Babylon.40 The two cities are separated by only 110  km, the same order of magnitude as between Sumer’s two great rivals, Isin and Larsa (90 km). The border between the kingdoms of Babylon and Ešnunna has often fluctuated, being located north and east of Tell ed-Dēr, sometimes on the right bank of the Tigris and sometimes on its left bank (van Koppen & Lacambre 2008/09).

Political and Cultural Role of Ešnunna It is clear that the documentary situation has led to an underestimation of Ešnunna’s role. Without going into details of the events, it is necessary to recall some key moments in Ešnunna’s political history. After the political unification of the entire Diyala Valley, expansion took place in two directions: towards the ‘Habur Triangle’ and up the Middle Euphrates, under Ipiq-Adad II and Narām-Sîn up to Ašnakkum (Chagar Bazar) and Tarnip (probably Tell Tamir) on one side, up to Puzurrān and a little downstream from Mari on the other. The competition resumed a few decades later between Samsī-Addu

37  38 

See lastly Suter 2018 (with bibliography).

Some are in private collections (Guichard 2016); others have been recovered by the Baghdad Museum (Abed 2018). 36 

See Ziegler 2014.

See Charpin 2004a, 94–100.

ARM 27, 135:31–33, u3  l[u2] ak-ka-du-um ša it-ti-šu-nu, ni-iš dingir-lim [i]z3-ku-ru lu-u2 lu2 eš3-nun-naki, lu-u2 lu2 ka2-din[gir-ra]ki pa-ga-ar-šu u2-ul u2!-w[e]-di. See the comment in Charpin 2004a, 31. 39 

35 

13

For the equivalence of Akkad with Ešnunna, see also Charpin 2004a, 341 n. 1781.

40 

14 and Dāduša. Finally, Ibal-pī-El II twice tried to resume this policy of expansion in the same regions. However, from a cultural point of view, the work from Mari’s archives over the last twenty years has highlighted the very great importance of Ešnunna: it was Ešnunna that introduced the Old Babylonian way of writing in Upper Mesopotamia, and not Babylon (Charpin 2012b)! This is proven by the syllabary, the writing, and some ideograms. For example, in Mari as in Ešnunna, the sound /QA/ is written with the sign QA, not with the sign GA. The title of ‘general’ is written ‘gal mart-u’ and not ‘ugula mar-tu’ as in Babylon or Larsa, etc.41 One of the main differences between Sumer and Akkad in the Old Babylonian period is the use of the Akkadian language in commemorative inscriptions.42 The high literary level reached by the scribes of Ešnunna is demonstrated by the Akkadian text celebrating the exploits of King Narām-Sîn, commemorated on the gate of the temple he built for the god Erra.43 One may suppose the influence of the royal inscriptions of Ešnunna on those of Mari, in this case that of Yahdun-Lîm: even if the stele of Dāduša is later, it confirms this relationship completely. Finally, the high level of the scribes of the kingdom of Ešnunna is not limited to beautiful letters or royal inscriptions: the excavations of Tell Harmal or Tell Haddad also reveal their abilities in the field of mathematics and those of Tell Yelkhi or Tell Haddad in the field of divination. At this point, historiographical considerations concerning prophecies in the Old Babylonian period are necessary. It is the prophecies found in Mari that were the first known, having been published from 1950; it was only in 1987 that two prophecies found in Ishchali (Nērebtum) were published.44 Addressed by the goddess Kitītum to King Ibal-pī-El II, they appear to date from his accession to the throne: thus they are older than those of Mari, certainly more numerous, dating

And it can be noted that this cultural influence spread not only towards Upper Mesopotamia, but also towards Iran, as shown by the texts discovered at Chogah Gavaneh: eighty-four tablets were excavated in 1979 at this site, located sixty kilometres west of Kermanshah, on the so-called ‘Great Khorasan Road’ (publication in Abdi & Beckman 2007; discussion in Gentili 2012). 41 

And in Babylon, Sumerian was not used before the annexation of Larsa: see Charpin 2012a, 30–31. 42 

43  44 

See lastly Foster 2005, 124–25.

See Ellis 1987; Charpin 2015, 27–28 with bibliography.

Dominique Charpin from the reign of Zimrī-Lîm.45 Not only can prophecy no longer be considered a characteristic phenomenon of the western part of the Near East, but it can no longer be said that the oldest surviving testimonies originated there: the Diyala Valley seems to have priority. This point deserves to be emphasized here.

Some Keys to Ešnunna given by Mari Curiously, Jacobsen, who was interested in the many spellings of the name of the town of Ešnunna, said nothing of its etymology (Jacobsen 1934). However, in a letter from Mari, Ešnunna is described as ‘the House of Tišpak and the Prince’ (Charpin 1985, 63–64 e2 dtišpak u3 ru-biim).46 Although this seems to have passed unnoticed, this expression appears to be based on the etymology of the Sumerogram used to note the name of the city: EŠ3 + NUN ‘sanctuary’ + ‘prince’.47 Other texts confirm the traditional title of the kings of Ešnunna was rubûm.48 Yet, in the prologue to his Code, Hammu-rabi says that he welcomed refugees from Ešnunna to Babylon in those terms:49 The pious prince (rubûm), who brightens the countenance of the god Tišpak, who provides pure feasts for the goddess Ninazu, who sustains his people in crisis, who secures their foundations in peace in the midst of the city of Babylon.

It is clear that the title rubûm here was not chosen by chance (although as far as I know nobody has ever noted this).50 Hammu-rabi is described here as an Ešnunnean king!51 There are no other witnesses confirming the An exception is the prophecy FM 6, 1, which dates from the time of Yasmah-Addu, when work in the temple of Dagan of Terqa took place, dating back to the eponymies of Aššur-malik and Awiliya, and is thus roughly contemporaneous with the advent of Ibal-pī-El II. 45 

A.3274+ (Guichard 2002, 127–31): 28’. See also ARM 26/1, 37:6–8, lu2-meš ša a-na p[a-a]n ṣa-bi-im ša e2 dtišpak, giššukur zabar iš-[šu]-u2 u3 a-na ru-bi-im, u2-ga-al-li-lu ‘the people who raised the spear against the troop of the House of Tišpak and who sinned against the Prince’. 46 

Saporetti (2002, 39) wrote: ‘il nome di Ešnunna […] ha un vero significato nella scrittura sumerica èš.nun.na, che significa “la casa del principe”’, but he did not make a connection with the passage of the letter of Mari quoted above.

47 

As demonstrated in Charpin 1985, 62–66. See since Whiting 1987, 30, 98, and 161 and lastly Charpin 2004c, 162 with more refs n. 29. 48 

49  50 

Translation of Roth 1995, 80.

At least not Hurowitz 1994 nor Saporetti 2002.

It is known that after the withdrawal of Elam, Hammu-rabi considered ascending to the throne of Ešnunna: finally, the sub-­officer 51 

1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case presence of the people of Ešnunna in Babylon: apparently, there was some kind of deportation. Furthermore, several clay cylinders discovered in Kiš bear the same inscription of Samsu-iluna written in Sumerian or Akkadian. According to this text, the god Enlil ordered the gods Zababa and Inanna to help Samsu-iluna capture his enemies, so he could have his hands free to (re)build the wall of Kiš. The text then describes how Samsu-iluna killed Rīm-Sîn (II), as well as twenty-six rebel kings. It further states that Samsuiluna defeated Iluni, the king of Ešnunna, and cut his throat. The inscription then moves on to the construction work on the Kiš wall and ends with this prayer:52 On account of this may the god Zababa and goddess Ištar grant as a present well-being and life which like the gods Sîn and Šamaš is eternal, to Samsu-iluna, the prince (rubûm), their favourite brother; may they present it to him as a gift.

The discussions were all devoted to the dating of Iluni’s defeat.53 But the rubûm title conferred on Samsu-iluna has so far not been noticed any more than the use of the rubûm title in the section of the Code of Hammu-rabi devoted to Ešnunna: this title shows that after defeating Iluni, Samsu-iluna considered himself king of Ešnunna, in the way his father did after his victory on Ṣillī-Sîn. It is therefore striking to see that Samsu-iluna twice reproduced the way of his father: he added ‘lugal sagkal’ after his name in the formula of his twentieth year, as Hammu-rabi had added ‘lugal ur-sag’ after his name in the formula of his thirty-second year (Charpin 2014), and he took the title of rubûm after his victory over Iluni, as his father had done after defeating Ṣillī-Sîn. All this clearly shows how these victories were considered particularly significant by the kings of Babylon, which underlines the importance of Ešnunna, for it had caused so much trouble for its neighbour and rival.

15

Conclusion

First of all, it is quite obvious that during the first half of the so-called ‘Old Babylonian’ period, Babylon was both politically and culturally not a capital of comparable importance to that of Ešnunna. This reveals our current, modern terminology to be inadequate: ‘Old Babylonian’ is a term used to describe a type of language. Extending it to describe the period of the four centuries following the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur is most unfortunate, as it more or less consciously confers an importance on Babylon far beyond what it actually had at the time. It is more relevant and preferable, in this author’s opinion to talk instead of an Amorite period.54 After Hammu-rabi, one perceives less of an increased influence of Babylon than an influence by default. Mari, then Ur, Larsa and Uruk, then Isin and Nippur, and finally Ešnunna: all the great religious capitals or major cities of the first half of the Old Babylonian period have more or less disappeared. Some of them came back to life in the Kassite period, but neither Mari nor Ešnunna (Charpin 2011). The other cities of northern Babylonia like Sippar or Kiš had ceased to play a political role since the reign of Sumu-la-El, others such as Borsippa or Dilbat never had one: Babylon remained alone, for its greater glory…

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the members of the organizing committee, Carlos Gonçalves, Cécile Michel, and Cheikhmous Ali, for their invitation to deliver the opening talk of the colloquium ‘The Old Babylonian Diyala: Research since the 1930s and Prospects’, which took place at the Institute of Advanced Studies of Paris, 25–26 June 2018.

Ṣillī-Sîn was chosen (Charpin 2004a, 226). But after his victory on Ṣillī-Sîn, Hammu-rabi annexed his kingdom: it is logical therefore that he took the title of rubûm.

Frayne 1990, 388 no. 7:128–36, a-na šu-a-ti, dza-ba₄-ba₄ u3 dinanna, a-na sa-am-su-i-lu-na, ru-be2-em ta-li-mi3-šu-nu, šu-ul-ma-am u3 ba-laṭam, ša ki-ma den-zu, u3 dutu da-ri2-um, a-[n]a qi2-i[š]-tim, li-qi2-šušum, a-na še-ri-ik-tim, li-iš-ru-ku-šum. 52 

See Charpin 1998, Saporetti 2002, 377–78, and lastly Lambert & Weeden 2020, 29–30.

53 

Charpin 2004a, 38. I have been reminded that the Amorites were present in Babylonia before the time I propose to call Amorite. But I have never seen such an objection being made to the appellation ‘Kassite period’ (for the first part of the Middle Babylonian period), which poses exactly the same problem. 54 

16

Dominique Charpin

Abbreviations AMD AOAT AS

BagM

BBVO BiMes CAD

CHANE EVO JCS

JCSMS JEOL

JNES

MARI NABU OBO

Ancient Magic and Divination (Groningen, then Leiden & Boston) Alter Orient und Altes Testament (Neukirchen-Vluyn, then Münster) Assyriological Studies (Chicago) Baghdader Mitteilungen (Berlin)

Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient (Berlin) Bibliotheca Mesopotamica (Malibu)

Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (Chicago)

Culture and History of the Ancient Near East (Leiden & Boston) Egitto e Vicino Oriente (Pisa) Journal of Cuneiform Studies

Journal of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies (Toronto) Jaarbericht ‘Ex Oriente Lux’ (Leiden)

Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Chicago)

Mari: Annales de recherches interdisciplinaires (Paris) Nouvelles assyriologiques brèves et utilitaires (Paris)

OIP OIS

Oriental Institute Publications (Chicago) Oriental Institute Seminars (Chicago)

OPSNKF Occasional Publications of the Samuel Noah Kramer Fund (Philadelphia) PIHANS Publications de l’Institut historique et archéologique néerlandais de Stamboul (Leiden) PIPOAC RA RIME RlA RSO

UAVA WAW YOS ZA

Orbis biblicus et orientalis (Fribourg & Göttingen)

Publications de l’Institut du Proche-Orient ancien du Collège de France (Leuven, Paris, Walpole) Revue d’assyriologie et archéologie orientale (Paris) The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia (Toronto) Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorder­ asiatischen Archäologie (Berlin/Boston) Rivista degli studi orientali (Rome)

Untersuchungen zur Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (Berlin)

Writings from the Ancient World (Atlanta)

Yale Oriental Series (New Haven & London)

Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie (Berlin & Boston)

Works Cited Abdi, Kamyar & Beckman, Gary 2007 ‘An Early Second-Millennium Cuneiform Archive from Chogha Gavaneh, Western Iran’, JCS 59: 39–91. Abed, Basima 2018 The Royal Archive of the King Iluni from Basi City (in Arabic). Baghdad. Adams, Robert McC. 1965 Land Behind Baghdad: A History of Settlement on the Diyala Plains. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Al-Ubaid, Iman J. Mahmoud 1983 ‘Unpublished Cuneiform Texts from Old Babylonian Period – Diyala Region, Tell Muhammad’ (unpublished master’s dissertation, in Arabic, University of Baghdad). Baqir, Taha 1949 ‘Date Formulae and Date-Lists from Harmal’, Sumer 5: 34–86. Boer, Rients de 2018 ‘Beginnings of Old Babylonian Babylon: Sumu-Abum and Sumu-la-El’, JCS 70: 53–86.

1. Old Babylonian Ešnunna: A Historiographical Case

17

Cavigneaux, Antoine 1999 ‘A Scholar’s Library in Meturan? With an Edition of the Tablet H 72 (Textes de Tell Haddad VII)’, in Tzvi Abusch & Karel van der Toorn (eds), Mesopotamian Magic: Textual, Historical, and Interpretative Perspectives (AMD 1). STYX, Groningen: 251–73. 2014 ‘Une version sumérienne de la légende d’Adapa (Textes de Tell Haddad X)’, ZA 104: 1–41. Charpin, Dominique 1985 ‘Données nouvelles sur la chronologie des souverains d’Ešnunna’, in Jean-Marie Durand & Jean-Robert Kupper (eds), Miscellanea Babylonica: mélanges offerts à Maurice Birot. Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris: 51–66. 1987 ‘À propos du site de Tell Harmal’, NABU 1987: no. 117. 1991 ‘Un traité entre Zimri-Lim de Mari et Ibâl-pî-El II d’Ešnunna’, in Dominique Charpin & Francis Joannès (eds), Marchands, diplomates et empereurs: études sur la civilisation mésopotamienne offertes à Paul Garelli. Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris: 139–66. 1998 ‘Iluni, roi d’Ešnunna’, NABU 1998: no. 29. 1999 Review of Harold Hill, Thorkild Jacobsen & Pinhas Delougaz, Old Babylonian Public Buildings in the Diyala Region (OIP 98), Chicago, 1990, RA 93: 178–80. 2004a ‘Histoire politique du Proche-Orient amorrite (2002–1595)’, in Dominique Charpin, Dietz-Otto Edzard & Marten Stol, Mesopotamien: Annäherungen, iv: Die altbabylonische Zeit (OBO 160/4). Academic Press, Fribourg: 25–480. 2004b ‘La dot-nidittum de l’ênum de Sîn à Tutub’, NABU 2004: no. 78. 2004c ‘Données nouvelles sur la région du Petit Zab au xviiie siècle av. J.-C.’, RA 98: 151–78. 2005 ‘Économie et société à Sippar et en Babylonie du nord à l’époque paléo-babylonienne’, RA 99: 133–76. 2009 ‘Archives paléo-babyloniennes: les textes et le terrain’, RA 103: 131–48. 2011 ‘Babylon in der altbabylonischen Zeit: eine Hauptstadt von vielen … die als einzige übrig blieb’, in Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum, Margarete van Ess & Joachim Marzahn (eds), Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident. De Gruyter, Berlin: 77–89. 2012a ‘L’exercice du pouvoir par les rois de la Ière dynastie de Babylone: problèmes de méthode’, in G. Wilhelm (ed.), Organization, Representation and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 54th Rencontre assyriologique internationale at Würzburg 20–25 July 2008. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake: 21–32. 2012b ‘Mari à l’école d’Ešnunna: écriture, langue, formulaires’, in Catherine Mittermayer & Sabine Ecklin (eds), Altorientalische Studien zu Ehren von Pascal Attinger: mu-ni u4 ul-li2-a-aš ĝa2-ĝa2-de3 (OBO 256). Academic Press, Fribourg: 119–38. 2014 ‘Des rois de Babylone héroïques vainqueurs d’Ešnunna’, NABU 2014: no. 13. 2015 Gods, Kings, and Merchants in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia (PIPOAC 2). Peeters, Leuven. 2017 La vie méconnue des temples mésopotamiens (Docet omnia 1). Les Belles Lettres, Paris. Charpin, Dominique & Durand, Jean-Marie 1985 ‘La prise du pouvoir par Zimri-Lim’, MARI 4: 293–343. Charpin, Dominique & Ziegler, Nele 2003 Florilegium marianum, v:  Mari et le Proche-Orient à l’époque amorrite: essai d’histoire politique (Mémoires de NABU 6). Société pour l’étude du Proche-Orient ancien, Paris. Dijk, Jan van 1966 Cuneiform Texts: The Archives of Nūršamaš and Other Loans (TIM 3). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.

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Dossin, Georges 1938 ‘Les archives épistolaires du palais de Mari’, Syria 19: 105–26. 1983 Recueil Georges Dossin: mélanges d’Assyriologie (1934–1959) (Akkadica Supplementum 1). Peeters, Leuven: 102–32. Ellis, Maria de J. 1985 ‘Notes on the Chronology of the Later Ešnunna Dynasty’, JCS 37: 61–85. 1987 ‘The Goddess Kititum Speaks to King Ibalpiel: Oracle Texts from Ishchali’, MARI 5: 235–66. 1990 ‘Ishchali: An Old Babylonian Town and its Economic Archives’, in Eric Aerts & Horst Klengel (eds), The Town as Regional Economic Centre in the Ancient Near East. Leuven University Press, Leuven: 103–13. Farber, Walter 1984 Review of Samuel Greengus, Old Babylonian Tablets from Ishchali and Vicinity (PIHANS 44). Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, Istanbul, 1979, JNES 43: 346–50. Foster, Benjamin R. 2005 Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature, 3rd edn. CDL Press, Bethesda. Frayne, Douglas R. 1990 Old Babylonian Period (2003–1595 bc) (RIME 4). University of Toronto Press, Toronto. Friberg, Jöran & Al-Rawi, Farouk N. H. 2016 New Mathematical Cuneiform Texts (Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences). Cham, Springer. Gentili, Paolo 2004 ‘A Catalogue of the Ishchali Texts in the Iraq Museum’, JNES 63: 257–75. 2006 ‘Where Is Diniktum? Remarks on the Situation and a Supposition’, RSO 79: 231–38. 2012 ‘Chogha Gavaneh: An Outpost of Ešnunna on the Zagros Moutains?’, EVO 35: 165–73. Goetze, Albrecht 1958 ‘Fifty Old Babylonian Letters from Harmal’, Sumer 14: 3–78 and pls 1–24. Gonçalves, Carlos 2015 Mathematical Tablets from Tell Harmal. Springer, Cham. Greengus, Samuel 1979 Old Babylonian Tablets from Ishchali and Vicinity (PIHANS 44). Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut te Istanbul, Istanbul. 1986 Studies in Ishchali Documents (BiMes 19). Undena, Malibu. Guichard, Michaël 2002 ‘Les relations diplomatiques entre Ibal-pi-El et Zimri-Lim: deux étapes vers la discorde’, RA 96: 109–42. 2014 ‘Un traité d’alliance entre Larsa, Uruk et Ešnunna contre Sabium de Babylone’, Semitica 56: 9–34. 2016 ‘Guerre et diplomatie: lettres d’Iluni roi d’Ešnunna d’une collection privée’, Semitica 58: 17–59. Harris, Rivkah 1955 ‘The Archive of the Sin Temple in Khafajah (Tutub)’, JCS 9: 31–58, 59–88, and 91–120. Horsnell, Malcolm J. A. 1999 The Year Names of the First Dynasty of Babylon, ii: The Year-Names Reconstructed and Critically Annotated in Light of their Exemplars. McMaster University Press, Hamilton.

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Hurowitz, Victor A. 1994 Inu Anum ṣīrum: Literary Structures in the Non-Juridical Sections of Codex Hammurabi (OPSNKF 15). University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. Hussein, Laith M. 2009 ‘Tell Ḥarmal: Die Texte aus dem Hauptverwaltungsgebäude “Serai”’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, PhilippsUniversität Marburg) [accessed 20 December 2020]. Isma’el, Khaled S. 2007 Old Babylonian Cuneiform Texts from the Lower Diyala Region: TELUL KHATTAB (Edubba 9). Nabu, London. Isma’el, Khaled S. & Robson, Eleanor 2010 ‘Arithmetical Tablets from Iraqi Excavations in the Diyala’, in Heather D. Baker, Eleanor Robson & Gabor Zólyomi (eds), Your Praise Is Sweet: A Memorial Volume for Jeremy Black from Students, Colleagues and Friends. British Institute for the Study of Iraq, London: 151–64. Ismaïl, Bahija K. & Cavigneaux, Antoine 2003 ‘Dādušas Siegesstele IM 95200 aus Ešnunna. Die Inschrift’, BagM 34: 129–56 and pls 1–7. Jacobsen, Thorkild 1934 Philological Notes on Eshnunna and its Inscriptions (AS 6). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1940 ‘Historical Data’, in Henri Frankfort, Seton Lloyd & Thorkild Jacobsen with a chapter by Günter Martini, The Gimilsin Temple and the Palace of the Rulers at Tell Asmar (OIP 43). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago: 116–200. 1958 ‘Summary of Report by the Diyala Basin Archaeological Project June 1, 1957 to June 1, 1958’, Sumer 14: 79–89. 1982 Salinity and Irrigation Agriculture in Antiquity: Diyala Basin Archaeological Projects; Report on Essential Results, 1957–58 (BiMes 14). Undena, Malibu. Koppen, Frans van 2006–2008     ‘Šaduppûm. A. Nach schriftlichen Quellen’, in RlA xi. Berlin: 488–91. 2017 ‘2. The Early Kassite Period’, in Alexa Bartelmus & Katja Sternitzke (eds), Karduniaš: Babylonia under the Kassites; The Proceedings of the Symposium Held in Munich 30 June to 2 July 2011, i: Philological and Historical Studies (UAVA 11/1). De Gruyter, Berlin: 45–92. Koppen, Frans van & Lacambre, Denis 2008/09_ ‘Sippar and the Frontier between Ešnunna and Babylon. New Sources for the History of Ešnunna in the Old Babylonian Period’, JEOL 41: 151–77. Kuhrt, Amélie 1995 The Ancient Near East c. 3000–330 bc (Routledge History of the Ancient World). Routledge, London. Lacambre, Denis 1993 ‘Ibni-Erra, un souverain d’Ešnunna?’, NABU 1993: no. 29. Lambert, Wilfred G. & Weeden, Mark 2020 ‘A Statue Inscription of Samsuiluna from the Papers of W. G. Lambert’, RA 114: 15–62. Miglus, Peter 2006–2008     ‘Šaduppûm. B. Archäologisch’, in RlA xi. Berlin: 491–95.

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Muhamed, Ahmad Kamil 1992 Old Babylonian Cuneiform Texts from the Hamrin Basin: Tell Haddad (Edubba 1). Nabu, London. Mustafa, Abdul-Kader Abdul-Jabbar 1983 ‘The Old Babylonian Tablets from Me-Turan (Tell al-Sib and Tell Haddad)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow). Nashef, Khaled 1982 ‘Der Ṭaban-Fluß’, BagM 13: 117–41. Paoletti, Paola in preparation     The Temple Archive of Ištar-Kitītum in Ishchali/Nerēbtum and its Dedicatory Practices in their Old Babylonian Context. Parrot, André 1946 Archéologie mésopotamienne: les étapes. Albin-Michel, Paris. Reichel, Clemens 2001 ‘Seals and Sealings at Tell Asmar: A New Look at an Ur III to Early Old Babylonian Palace’, in Willliam W. Hallo & Irene J. Winter (eds), Seals and Seal Impressions: Proceedings of the XLVe Rencontre assyriologique internationale, pt ii: Seals and Seal Impressions. CDL Press, Bethesda: 101–31. 2003 ‘A Modern Crime and an Ancient Mystery: The Seal of Bilalama’, in Gebhard Selz (ed.), Festschrift für Burkhart Kienast zu seinem 70. Geburtstage dargebracht von Freunden, Schülern und Kollegen (AOAT 274). Ugarit, Münster: 355–89. 2008 ‘The King Is Dead, Long Live the King: The Last Days of the Šu-Sîn Cult at Ešnunna and its Aftermath’, in Nicole Brisch (ed.), Religion and Power: Divine Kingship in the Ancient World and Beyond (OIS 4). Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago: 133–55. 2014–2016     ‘Tutub. B. Archäologisch’, in RlA xiv. Berlin/Boston: 244–47. 2018 ‘Centre and Periphery — the Role of the “Palace of the Rulers” at Tell Asmar in the History of Ešnunna (2,100–1,750 bce)’, JCSMS 11/12: 29–53. Reschid, Fauzi 1965 ‘Archiv des Nūršamaš und andere Darlehensurkunden aus der altbabylonischen Zeit’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Ruprecht-Karl-Universität zu Heidelberg). Roth, Martha 1995 Law Collections from Mesopotamia and Asia Minor (WAW 6). Society of Biblical Literature, Atlanta. Rouault, Olivier & Saporetti, Claudio 1985 ‘Old Babylonian Texts from Tell Yelkhi (Hamrīn Project, Iraq)’, Mesopotamia 20: 23–52. Rutz, Matthew & Michalowski, Piotr 2016 ‘The Flooding of Ešnunna, the Fall of Mari: Hammurabi’s Deeds in Babylonian Literature and History’, JCS 68: 15–43. Saporetti, Claudio 1995 ‘Testi da Tell Yelkhi del periodo Isin-Larsa–I’, Mesopotamia 30: 1–38. 2001 ‘Testi da Tell Yelkhi del periodo Isin-Larsa–II’, Mesopotamia 36: 89–102. 2002 La rivale di Babilonia: storia di Ešnunna, un potente regno che sfidò Ḫammurapi (I volti della storia 118). Newton & Compton, Rome.

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Sasson, Jack M. 2015 From the Mari Archives: An Anthology of Old Babylonian Letters. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Simmons, Stephen D. 1978 Early Old Babylonian Documents (YOS 14). Yale University Press, New Haven. Stol, Marten 2004 ‘Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in altbabylonischer Zeit’, in Dominique Charpin, Dietz-Otto Edzard & Marten Stol, Mesopotamien: Annäherungen, iv: Die altbabylonische Zeit (OBO 160/4). Academic Press, Fribourg: 641–975. 2006–2008     ‘Šad/tlaš’, in RlA xi. Berlin: 486–87. Sulaiman, Amer 1978 ‘Harvest Documents and Loan Contracts from the Old Babylonian Period’, Sumer 34: 130–38. Suter, Claudia 2007 ‘Between Human and Divine: High Priestesses in Images from the Akkadian to the Isin-Larsa Period’, in Jack Cheng & Marian H. Feldman (eds), Ancient Near Eastern Art in Context: Studies in Honor of Irene J. Winter by her Students (CHANE 26). Brill, Leiden: 317–61. 2018 ‘The Victory Stele of Dadusha of Eshnunna: A New Look at its Unusual Culminating Scene’, Ash-Sharq 2: 1–29. Viaggio, Salvatore 2004 ‘Sull’edificio “Serai” a Ishjali’, AGOGE 1: 11–49 and pls 1–2. 2009 ‘Old Babylonian Texts (Diyala Region) from the Hearst Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley’, in Paola Negri Scafa & Salvatore Viaggio (eds), Dallo Stirone al Tigri, dal Tevere all’Eufrate: Studi in onore di Claudio Saporetti. ARACNE, Rome: 377–90. Whiting, Robert M. 1977 ‘Sealing Practices on House and Land Sale Documents at Eshnunna in the Isin-Larsa Period’, in McGuire Gibson & Robert D. Biggs (eds), Seals and Sealing in the Ancient Near East (BiMes 6). Undena, Malibu: 67–74. 1987 Old Babylonian Letters from Tell Asmar (AS 22). The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago. Wu Yuhong 1994 A Political History of Eshnunna, Mari and Assyria during the Early Old Babylonian Period (from the End of Ur III to the Death of Šamši-Adad) (Supplement to Journal of Ancient Civilizations 1). Institute of History of Ancient Civilizations, Changchun. Ziegler, Nele 2014 ‘Akkade à l’époque paléo-babylonienne’, in Nele Ziegler & Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum (eds), Entre les fleuves, ii: D’Aššur à Mari et au-delà (BBVO 24). PeWe, Gladbeck: 177–90. 2016 ‘The Flooding of Ešnunna?’, NABU 2016: no. 41.

2. La Diyala au Louvre ou le reflet d’une certaine historiographie Ariane Thomas

Introduction

« La Diyala, important affluent du Tigre moyen, se jette dans ce fleuve, en aval de Bagdad. Il n’est pas étonnant que la région soigneusement irriguée ait fixé dans l’antiquité une population abondante et prospère. Les nombreux tells, avant même que les clandestins s’y soient attaqués, auraient dû attirer l’attention des voyageurs et des archéologues, mais les uns et les autres passaient toujours trop au sud. Certains qui savaient quelque chose, avaient décidé de garder pour eux le secret.  » (Parrot 1946, 369). Comme le soulignait ainsi André Parrot, la vallée de la Diyala est une région centrale au sein du territoire que nous appelons Mésopotamie qui n’en fut pas moins relativement négligée dans les premiers temps de la redécouverte archéologique de l’antique Mésopotamie jusqu’aux fouilles de l’Oriental Institute de Chicago menées dans les années 1930. Comme André Parrot le sous-entend et comme les collections du musée du Louvre en témoignent, la vallée de la Diyala fut cependant visitée avant cette date. Ce papier entend rappeler cette drôle d’historiographie restée par trop secrète ou clandestine et du même fait souvent oubliée, en même temps que dresser un petit catalogue des collections du musée du Louvre liées à la Diyala et dont l’histoire est plus ou moins reliée à celle de l’archéologie de cette région qui contribua à élargir le champ de vision pour parler de « Mésopotamie ». Enfin, le musée du Louvre conserve quelques vestiges provenant de Suse, sur le plateau iranien auquel mène la vallée de la Diyala et depuis laquelle ils auraient été emportés dans l’Antiquité. Ces derniers amènent notamment à s’interroger sur d’éventuelles pistes de recherches concernant les périodes plus récentes de villes réputées alors détruites comme Ešnunna. Ariane Thomas ([email protected]) is the head of the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Antiquities at the Louvre Museum where she has also been a curator in charge of Mesopotamian collections. She has been teaching for several years and has been involved in various archaeological excavations in the Middle East as well as in numerous research projects.

1890–1930 : une identification du pays d’Ešnunna restée longtemps « secrète » malgré des objets exhumés…

Vers 1890, Henri Pognon (1853–1921), consul de France et assyriologue archéologue aurait appris l’emplacement du pays d’Ešnunna sans que l’on puisse dire avec assurance s’il s’agissait bien de Tell Asmar comme on le découvrirait plus tard puisqu’il décida de tenir secrète sa localisation. Il est néanmoins vraisemblable qu’il s’agissait bien de Tell Asmar au vu des briques inscrites au nom de rois d’Ešnunna sur lesquelles il communiqua à l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres en 1892 (Pognon 1892, 81)1. Il y fut dit qu’« un heureux hasard a permis à M. Pognon de découvrir où était situé ce pays. Il ne lui a pas été possible de le parcourir en entier et d’en reconnaître les limites exactes ; il n’a pu y faire que de rapides excursions. Il y a constaté l’existence de ruines, dont une au moins lui a paru considérable » (Pognon 1892, 81). Mais « pour certaines raisons, M. Pognon croit que ce serait rendre un mauvais service à l’assyriologie que de faire savoir dès aujourd’hui où était situé le pays d’Achnounnak » (Pognon 1892, 81). Il explicita cette décision ainsi : « Je m’abstiendrai, dussé-je attendre vingt ans et même mourir sans avoir rien révélé, de faire savoir quelle était la région appelée dans l’Antiquité pays d’Achnounnak, jusqu’à ce qu’une certaine notabilité scientifique plus influente hélas que compétente ait disparu ou pris le sage parti de retourner à l’étude l’archéologie grecque » (Parrot 1946, 369). Sans le nommer, Pognon visait évidemment Léon Heuzey (1831–1922) qu’il était aisé de reconnaître. Ce dernier était en effet d’abord un helléniste formé à l’école française d’Athènes et conservateur au département des Antiquités grecques et romaines avant de devenir le premier conservateur Elles étaient inscrites aux noms des rois Ibal-pī-el, Ur-Ningišzidda, Nulaku ou Gulaku ainsi que d’« un prince dont le nom, en partie détruit, se terminait par les syllabes machou ». 1 

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 23–32 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126524        BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

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Ariane Thomas

Figure 2.1. Figurines et plaquettes ; terre cuite ; H. max. 17,3 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Genouillac 1930 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 12441 à 12479.

Figure 2.2a-c. Têtes féminines ; calcaire ; H. max. 10 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Genouillac 1930 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 12433, AO 12434, AO 12435.

Figure 2.3. Disque à motif d’étoile ; argent ; D. 7,4 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Genouillac 1930 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 12438. Clou de fondation inscrit ; terre cuite ; L. 25 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Genouillac 1930 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 12480. Sceaux-cylindres et cachets ; schiste, lapis-lazuli, hématite ; H. max 4,4 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Genouillac 1930 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 12439, AO 12440, AO 12481, AO 12482, AO 12483. Dé à jouer ; terre cuite ; H. 1,8 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Genouillac 1930 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 12436.

Figure 2.3bis. Pendentif en forme de grenouille ; lapis-lazuli ; H. 6,4 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Genouillac 1930 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 12437.

2. La Diyala au Louvre ou le reflet d’une certaine historiographie du tout nouveau département des antiquités orientales en 1881 (qui inclut la céramique antique à partir de 1886), étroitement lié aux fouilles de Tello et à la redécouverte des Sumériens sur ce site. Professeur et auteur prolifique, président de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres et présent dans divers comités sans compter son implication dans de grands évènements comme l’exposition universelle de 1889, Léon Heuzey mourut le 8 février 1922, soit un peu moins d’un an après Henri Pognon, décédé le 16  mars 1921, qui emporta ainsi le secret de l’emplacement d’Ešnunna avec lui. Néanmoins, soit que le secret n’ait pas été si bien gardé, soit que d’autres aient fait les mêmes observations qu’Henri Pognon, il est remarquable que des objets provenant très vraisemblablement d’Ešnunna soient alors connus. Le musée du Louvre acquit ainsi deux tablettes mentionnant Ešnunna alors lue « Ašnunnak », publiées dès l’année suivant leur achat en 1911 (Genouillac 1911, 2, pl. V et IX ; inv. AO 4691 et AO 5493). Il s’agissait d’un compte de petit bétail au nom « d’Itûria, patési d’Ašnunnak » et d’une autre tablette relative à la « prise en charge de six agneaux par Bá-ša-dIštar l’homme de Kallamu, le patési d’Ašnunnak ». Ces deux tablettes furent vendues en 1910 au Louvre par le marchand Elias Géjou. Vraisemblablement né en 1868 à Bagdad et élevé par des missionnaires français, Elias Géjou, résidant en France à partir des années 1880, fut un marchand d’antiquités mésopotamiennes particulièrement actif entre la fin du dix-neuvième siècle et jusqu’à sa mort incertaine durant la seconde guerre mondiale. Bien que l’on ne puisse être certain que les tablettes proviennent bien d’Ešnunna dans la mesure où elles auraient pu être déplacées dans l’antiquité, il est troublant de constater que Géjou vendit quatre ans plus tard au Louvre une plaquette en terre cuite représentant un menuisier au travail (Thomas 2016, 79, no 46, inv. AO 6694bis), remarquablement similaire à une plaquette qui devait être achetée en 1930 comme provenant d’Ešnunna (Fig. 2.1). Bien qu’il ait semble-t-il déclaré que cette plaquette venait d’Uruk, Géjou n’en aurait pas moins pu la tenir en réalité d’Ešnunna. En fait, il est probable que des explorations clandestines aient alors déjà été conduites dans la vallée de la Diyala, lesquelles auraient pu mettre Pognon ou Géjou sur la voie d’Ešnunna. Le fait est en tout cas bien établi à partir des années 1920 et au tout début des années 1930 comme en témoignent notamment des rapports officiels relatifs à l’afflux d’objets provenant de la Diyala sur le marché des antiquités à Bagdad2. Plus précisément, 2 

Iraq Government, Ministry of Education, Department of Antiqui-

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on sait que dès mars 1924, « on apporta à Langdon, alors à Bagdad, une brique d’Ur-Ningišzida, provenant de Tell Asmar » (Parrot 1946, 370), tandis que les fouilleurs de l’Oriental Institute de Chicago déclarèrent dans le rapport de leur première campagne sur ce site qu’ils furent motivés pour fouiller ce qui était encore une terra incognita d’un point de vue archéologique, notamment par le fait que les années précédentes, les boutiques d’antiquités à Bagdad s’étaient remplies d’objets de grande valeur, datant principalement des époques sumériennes les plus anciennes ou de la dynastie de Hammu-rabi et réputés provenir du désert oriental de la Diyala (Frankfort et al. 1932, 3). C’est sans doute dans ce contexte que l’abbé Henri de Genouillac, alors en poste au département des Antiquités orientales du musée du Louvre, acquit d’abord en 1929 quatre briques inscrites « au nom d’un patési d’Ashnunnak »3, puis surtout une cinquantaine d’objets provenant d’Ešnunna, qui entrèrent dans les collections du musée du Louvre en 1930. Ce « lot d’antiquités sumériennes et sémitiques »4 comprenait cinquante-et-un objets au total supposés provenir d’Ešnunna. Trois têtes féminines en pierre (Fig. 2.2), dont l’une avait conservé un œil incrusté, un pendentif en forme de grenouille en lapis-lazuli, un disque en argent et un dé en terre cuite (Fig. 2.3 et Fig. 2.3bis) côtoyaient de nombreuses plaquettes et figurines en terre cuite représentant divers thèmes : dieux et déesses, hommes-taureaux, lions ailés, lions passant et combattant, chiens passant ou chienne nourrissant ses chiots, figures de femmes et d’hommes de plus ou moins haut rang d’après leur costume dont un menuisier, des lutteurs et de nombreux musicien, harpistes ou luthistes (Fig. 2.1). On remarque notamment un luthiste, nu sauf une large ceinture, coiffé de plusieurs longues tresses (Fig. 2.1), qu’il convient a priori de rapprocher d’une autre plaquette représentant de manière plus schématique une figure comparable (Emerit et al. 2017, 356, no 413–14, inv. AO 12457 et AO 12462). Leur coiffure, mal connue par ailleurs, laisse penser qu’il pourrait s’agir de prisonniers étrangers, peut-être venus de l’Elam tout ties, Report on Excavations in Iraq during the Season 1928–9 (Baghdad 1929), p. 7 ; British Library, Report for the Year 1928, p. 1 (cité par Bernhardsson 2005, 157).

Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 11415 à 11418 inclus. Ces briques faisaient partie d’un important lot de tablettes rapporté de Bagdad par M. de Genouillac (arrêté du 22 juin 1929). 3 

4 

Compte-rendu du comité des musées nationaux du 1er mai 1930.

26 proche, par comparaison avec d’autres monuments et au vu de l’importance de la tresse élamite, même si ce n’est pas tout à fait la même coiffure. Enfin, à côté d’une plaquette figurant une tête grimaçante du démon Humbaba, une figurine plus grande que toutes les autres, montre un Gilgameš debout en tenue de combat marchant sur la tête de Humbaba qu’il a vaincu et mis à mort et qui sert de base (Fig. 2.1). Si des fragments comparables sont conservés ailleurs (Steymans 2010, 419, fig. 17 et 18), cette figurine est la seule entièrement conservée. La plupart de ces plaquettes de terre cuite étant fabriquées dans un moule, il n’est pas nécessairement étonnant de retrouver des œuvres presque identiques tout en soulevant la question de possibles faux, d’autant plus dans le cas d’œuvres entrées presque au même moment dans les diverses collections qui les abritent. C’est pourquoi nous avons procédé à des tests de datation par thermoluminescence5, en particulier sur une plaquette de harpiste, remarquablement proche d’une autre conservée à Chicago6, dont les résultats ont confirmé l’antiquité. Le reste de l’ensemble transmis par Genouillac comprenait un fragment de vase orné du profil d’un homme (Fig. 2.1), des cachets et des sceaux-cylindres d’époques et de pierres diverses et pour finir un clou de fondation inscrit (Fig. 2.3) publié dès 1930 par l’abbé (Genouillac 1930, 216). Parce qu’il évoque une alliance entre Lagaš et Uruk, on peut néanmoins se demander s’il vient ou non d’Ešnunna. Tous ces objets issus du marché des antiquités attirèrent l’attention et contribuèrent aussi à leur manière à la mise en place des premières véritables fouilles archéologiques dans la région de la Diyala par l’Oriental Institute de Chicago. Ces objets et le caractère presque vierge de cette région motivèrent en effet les équipes de Chicago à entamer les fouilles que l’on connait entre 1930 et 1936 à Tell Asmar (l’antique Ešnunna dont les fouilleurs déploreront qu’Henri Pognon ait gardé secret l’emplacement  ; Frankfort et  al. 1932, 3), Tell Agrab, Ishchali et Khafadje (qui s’avérera correspondre à l’antique Tutub), qui allaient renouveler notamment la chronologie du troisième millénaire avant notre ère en Mésopotamie7. 5  Avec l’aide du C2RMF. Nous remercions particulièrement Elisa Porto et Antoine Zinc. 6 

University of Chicago, Oriental Institute Museum, inv. OIM A9345.

L’étude des sceaux-cylindres trouvés dans une stratigraphie assurée permirent notamment la proposition d’un découpage en trois phases principales, toujours employé, de l’époque dite « des Dynas7 

Ariane Thomas

1930–1960 : à l’heure des fouilles américaines et après, l’élargissement du champ de recherche à la « Mésopotamie »

En mars 1934, Henri Frankfort qui dirigeait l’expédition de l’Oriental Institute de Chicago dans la Diyala, passa, sur le chemin du retour vers l’Europe, par le site de Tell Harīrī (antique Mari) sur le Moyen-Euphrate en Syrie moderne, dont les fouilles venaient alors d’être commencées par André Parrot pour le musée du Louvre. Frankfort publia peu après un article dans lequel il déclara « Au mois de mars de cette année, après la clôture de nos chantiers de Mésopotamie, nous passâmes par Abu-Kemâl en rentrant en Europe. Rien ne pouvait être plus inattendu que d’y trouver, à 400 kilomètres de Khafaje, dans la maison hospitalière de la Mission du Louvre, quantité d’objets que nous aurions identifiés, chez un marchand d’antiquités, comme provenant de fouilles clandestines sur le site même que nous venions de quitter. » (Frankfort 1934, 173). De fait, cette rencontre semble avoir largement fait réfléchir tant le fouilleur de Mari qu’Henri Frankfort dont l’article sus-cité précédait immédiatement un autre signé d’André Parrot dans lequel ce dernier expliquait qu’il s’agissait plutôt d’un « article en commun […] né, on l’a vu plus haut, du passage rapide à Abu-Kemâl, en fin de campagne, de notre collègue H.  Frankfort. […] La civilisation attestée par Mari et par Tirqa, n’est pas une nouveauté et c’est l’évidence même qu’elle a des points de contact extrêmement étroits avec Assur […], Ashnunnak (Tell Asmar), Opis (Khafaje), Kish, Adab (Bismya)8. D’autre part, il y a un air de parenté indéniable, avec le bloc plus spécialement « sumérien », du bas pays, Shuruppak, Erech, Ur, Eridu, Lagaš, Larsa. […] Il y a donc à présent la preuve, qu’à l’époque présargonique, tout le pays des deux fleuves est imprégné d’une culture similaire. […] Les comparaisons que nous avons faites ci-dessus et que nous pourrions élargir encore facilement, nous permettent de constater l’homogénéité parfaite de la culture qui est celle d’Opis9 et d’Ashnunnak ties archaïques » couvrant la majeure partie du troisième millénaire avant notre ère (Frankfort 1955).

Signalons ici une erreur dans le texte qui confond la Bismaya située dans la Diyala avec celle identifiée à l’antique Adab plus près de Bagdad. Il y a d’ailleurs au moins une troisième Bismaya en Irak comme le fit remarquer Ahmad Kamil, ancien directeur du Musée d’Irak. 8 

Le site de Khafadje était alors identifié à tort avec l’antique cité d’Opis dont les textes akkadiens et grecs indiquent qu’elle était située à l’est du Tigre, près de la rivière Diyala, et qui fut le lieu de la bataille du même nom opposant Perses et Babyloniens vaincus en 539 avant J.-C. 9 

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dans la région de la Dialah et de Mari sur le Moyen-Euphrate. […] Mais là, où nous nous séparons cette fois, c’est que si nous constatons une culture identique, Frankfort l’appelle toujours « sumérienne », alors que nous n’acceptons plus que « mésopotamienne ». Ce qui ne signifie nullement d’ailleurs que nous songions à déposséder entièrement les Sumériens. Mais les gens de Mari vont nous obliger désormais, à rendre aux Sémites des temps présargoniques, la place qu’on leur avait certainement par trop mesurée. Sémites et Sumériens en Mésopotamie, le vieux problème va sans doute rebondir » (Parrot 1934, 180–89). Tant Frankfort que Parrot s’appuient sur le rapprochement du matériel10, illustré notamment par deux planches comparant des artefacts similaires provenant de Tell Harīrī à ceux provenant de Khafadje et Tell Asmar et réalisées par Paul François, l’architecte de la Mission de Tell Harīrī (Fig. 2.4). Au-delà des objections que l’on pourrait avancer maintenant que l’on connaît mieux ce matériel et d’autres sites tant dans le MoyenEuphrate que dans la Diyala, il est important de souligner qu’en étant « frappés par l’identité de civilisation qui unissait les deux régions […] et comme Mari n’avait jamais été sumérienne, force était de renoncer à attribuer aux seuls Sumériens cette civilisation » (Amiet 1981/1982, 281). C’est ainsi qu’en ne se limitant plus au sud chaldéen ou au nord assyrien, les fouilles de la Diyala et l’écho qu’elles rencontrèrent avec celles de Mari dans le Moyen-Euphrate permirent d’élargir le champ des recherches pour mieux comprendre ce que l’on appellerait de plus en plus l’antique « Mésopotamie », alors même que le terme qui jusqu’alors désignait autant le territoire moderne cédait la place au nom d’Irak avec la pleine indépendance du pays promulguée en 1932. C’est dans ce contexte d’un renouvellement des connaissances de l’histoire et de l’art de l’ancienne Mésopotamie que le département des Antiquités orientales du musée du Louvre procéda à l’acquisition de quelques pièces provenant de la région de la Diyala et destinées à compléter la collection du musée, conçu comme un lieu de savoir avant tout, afin que soit mieux présentée l’ancienne Mésopotamie, enrichie des mises à jour nécessaires. Cette politique destinée à servir la révision du discours du musée pour mieux suivre l’avancée de la science archéologique fut d’abord menée sous la direction de René Dussaud jusqu’en 1936 puis sous la houlette de Georges Contenau, parti en retraite en 1946, et enfin d’André Parrot qui lui succéda en 1946 jusqu’en 1968, date à laquelle il prit la nouvelle direction du musée du Louvre. À ce propos, Dominique Charpin raconte avoir eu une expérience similaire à Philadelphie en voyant des tablettes provenant d’Ishchali dans la Diyala qui lui parurent si proches des tablettes de Mari qu’il s’était d’abord étonné que l’université de Philadelphie conserve des tablettes de Mari. Après ce premier étonnement, ce constat le conduisit à travailler sur l’influence d’Ešnunna sur la réforme de l’écriture à Mari (Charpin 2012). 10 

Figure 2.4. Planches comparatives établies par Paul François (Parrot 1934, pl. 1 et pl. 2). « Khafadje-Tell Asmar » et « Tell Hariri ».

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Figure 2.5. Fragment de statuette masculine et de bélier en calcaire, statuette masculine en alliage cuivreux et plaquette en terre cuite ; H. max. 14,9 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat Barbosa 1936, 1938 et 1943 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 18886, AO 18887, AO 19523, AO 19704.

Figure 2.7. Statuette du prince Ginak ; calcaire ; H. 25,5 cm ; Diyala (?) ; don de la société des amis du Louvre 1951 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 20146.

Figure 2.8. Sceau-cylindre ; améthyste ; H. 2,7 cm ; Diyala (?) ; achat 1962 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 21117.

Dès 1936, le département des Antiquités orientales du musée du Louvre acquit des objets (Fig. 2.5) provenant sans doute de la Diyala auprès de Madame Hélène Luiz de Sousa Barbosa, vraisemblablement marchande d’antiquités — du moins à ses heures — d’après sa correspondance et la mention en en-tête de ses lettres « Objets de Fouille de haute classe : Sumer — Chaldée — Assyrie »11. En 1936, elle vendit un buste d’orant et un À la même époque, elle vendit également plusieurs objets au British Museum (for instance BM 128886–128891). D’après les archives des musées nationaux, elle habitait alors 75 boulevard Exelmans à Paris. 11 

Figure 2.6. Tête d’homme ; calcaire, schiste et coquille, H. 9,3 cm ; Diyala (?) ; don des héritiers d’Alphonse Kann 1949 ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 20113.

fragment de bélier, tous deux en pierre (AO 18886 et AO 18887), puis en 1938 une statuette d’homme en alliage cuivreux qui fut peu après publiée par le Dr. Contenau (inv. AO 19523 ; Contenau 1940, 37–45, pl. IV). À propos de ce dernier objet, plus rare, Contenau (1940 : 12–13) souligna justement la portée des découvertes qui venaient d’être faites notamment dans la Diyala, et qui remettaient en question ce que l’on pensait savoir, en indiquant ne pouvoir « donner à la statuette du Louvre qu’une date approximative. Malgré les découvertes de ces dernières années, ou plutôt en raison de ces découvertes, nos incertitudes en chronologie ancienne sont telles qu’il est tentant de revenir au parti que Maspéro

2. La Diyala au Louvre ou le reflet d’une certaine historiographie faisait sien, il y a un demi-siècle, lors de la rédaction de sa grande Histoire en trois volumes, ne fixer aucune date et n’adopter qu’une chronologie relative. […] Pour aborder l’étude de tels monuments, il faut abandonner certaines interprétations ayant cours à l’époque où l’on possédait peu d’objets de Mésopotamie ». En 1943, Mme Barbosa vendit au musée une plaquette en terre cuite représentant deux chiens s’affrontant de part et d’autre de deux hommes, ainsi qu’une figurine de lion en terre cuite également (inv. AO 19704 et AO 19705). Après la guerre en 1949, c’est d’Alphonse Kann (1870–1948) que le musée du Louvre reçut en don une tête d’orant en pierre ayant encore conservé son œil gauche incrusté (Fig. 2.6). Ce collectionneur éclectique, ami de Marcel Proust et de nombreux marchands, avait réuni une collection fameuse d’art ancien et moderne dont il vendit à plusieurs reprises des pièces, à Paris en 1920 ou à New York en 1927, pour continuer de collectionner. Obligé de fuir la France en 1938 où sa collection fut spoliée par les nazis, il mourut en 1948 mais il souhaita que soit donnée cette tête en remerciement aux conservateurs qui l’avaient aidé pendant la guerre, notamment Georges Salles, spécialiste de l’Orient, alors directeur du Musée Guimet. Ce fragment de statue fut publié en 1957 par André Parrot, selon lequel elle provenait « vraisemblablement des fouilles clandestines (avant 1929) qui précédèrent l’exploration scientifique par l’Oriental Institute de Chicago » (Parrot 1957, 226 ; AO 201). En 1951, la société des amis du musée du Louvre donna au Louvre une statuette d’orant, presque complète, inscrite au nom de Ginak, prince d’Edin-E, une ville non localisée (Fig. 2.7). Publiée par André Parrot en 1957 en même temps que la tête précédemment citée (Parrot 1957 : 224–26 ; AO 20146), cette œuvre complétait l’ensemble de statues plus ou moins fragmentaires destinés à montrer au Louvre ce style spécifique découvert dans la Diyala qui ouvrait un nouveau pan de l’antique Mésopotamie. En 1962, la modeste collection du Louvre d’œuvres rattachées à la Diyala fut complétée par l’achat d’un sceau-cylindre (Fig. 2.8) au nom d’un serviteur du roi divinisé Ipiq-Adad d’Ešnunna, fils d’Ibal-pī-El I, publié la même année par Jean Nougayrol, l’épigraphiste du musée qui traduisit ainsi son inscription : « [A]u dieu Miš[ar(?)] [d]e Dur-Rimush pour la vie du divin Ipiq[ad] ad « roi de Kish », [fi]ls d’Ibalpie[l,] so[n. m]aître, …. [fi] ls de Kab/p…a offert (ceci). » (Nougayrol 1962 : 189–90 ; AO 21117).

29

Œuvres déplacées de la Diyala à Suse en Elam et le destin d’Ešnunna après Hammu-rabi

Outre la collection d’œuvres diverses provenant plus ou moins assurément de la Diyala que le musée du Louvre réunit entre au moins 1911 et 1962 par des dons et achats, le musée conserve également plusieurs monuments trouvés à Suse sur le plateau iranien, dans la région de l’Elam antique. C’est leur inscription qui nous rappelle qu’ils furent emportés depuis la Diyala jusqu’à Suse dans l’Antiquité. Découvertes en fouilles par Jacques de Morgan entre la fin du dix-neuvième et le tout début du vingtième siècle, ces œuvres entrèrent au musée bien avant le reste de la collection du Louvre liée à la Diyala et leurs inscriptions furent presque aussitôt publiées par le père Scheil (Scheil 1905 ; 1908). La plus ancienne de ces statues appartenait au roi d’Akkad Maništušu (Thomas 2015) d’après l’inscription gravée par le roi élamite Šutruk-Nahhunte qui nous précise « Moi, Šutruk-Nahhunte, fils de Hallutaš-Inšušinak, roi d’Anšan et de Suse, mon dieu Inšušinak me portant aide, j’ai abattu (la ville d’) Išnunnuk (Ešnunna). J’ai pris la statue de Maništušu et je l’ai emportée au pays d’Elam. » (Scheil 1908 : pl. 2, p. 2 ; Sb 49 = Sb90). Une statue très proche, également assise et en pierre dure noire (Fig. 2.9a), représente en revanche un roi amorrite d’Ešnunna, postérieur de quelques siècles au roi d’Akkad. Šutruk-Nahhunte aurait fait effacer l’inscription originale en akkadien pour la remplacer par une inscription en élamite dédiant la statue au dieu Inšušinak : « Je suis Šutruk-Nahhunte, fils de HallutašInšušinak, roi d’Anšan et de Suse, qui a agrandi le royaume, maître de l’Elam, souverain de la terre d’Elam. Inšušinak, mon dieu, me l’ayant accordé, j’ai détruit Ešnunna ; j’ai emmené la statue et l’ai apportée au pays d’Elam. Je l’ai offerte à Inšušinak, mon dieu » (Scheil 1905 : 12–13, pl. 3 ; Sb 6). De même, une statuette de prince debout (Fig.  2.9b) devait représenter l’un des souverains amorrites d’Ešnunna avant d’être emportée par Šutruk-Nahhunte d’après l’inscription qu’il y fit graver : « Moi, Šutruk-Nahhunte, fils de Hallutaš-Inšušinak, roi d’Anšan et de Suse, le dieu Inšušinak, mon dieu, m’ayant ordonné, j’ai détruit Ešnunna ; la statue de… j’y enlevai et au pays de Hapirti j’emportai et à Inšušinak mon dieu je vouai ! » (Scheil 1905 : 12–13, pl. 3 ; Sb 56). S’il est difficile de les dater très précisément, leur style laisse supposer qu’elles pourraient dater du dix-neuvième siècle avant notre ère suivant la chronologie traditionnelle, au moment où Ešnunna montait en puissance sous les règnes d’Ipiq-Adad II et de son fils

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Figure 2.9. Statues royales emportées d’Eshunna par Shutruk-Nahhunte au xiie siècle avant J.-C. ; gabbro ; H. max. 89 cm ; fouilles J. de Morgan à Suse (Iran) ; Musée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. Sb 61, Sb 56, Sb 57.

Narām-Sîn. Rappelons à ce sujet qu’un autre monument royal conservé au Louvre évoque un autre puissant souverain d’Ešnunna plus récent. Au vu du fragment d’inscription subsistant sur une face entre deux personnages qui mentionne la conquête de la ville d’Arrapha, celle de Qabra au-delà du petit Zab et la région d’Urbilum, la stèle dite « de Mardin » représenterait en effet la victoire du roi Samsī-Addu sur Qabra, conjointe avec le roi Dāduša d’Ešnunna qui la célébra aussi sur sa propre stèle de victoire conservée au musée de Bagdad et dans le nom de sa dernière année de règne12. Contrairement aux autres statues qui étaient en pierre noire, une statuette en pierre blanche n’en devait pas moins représenter un souverain amorrite d’Ešnunna (Fig. 2.9c). L’inscription initiale martelée porte encore le nom d’Ur-Ningišzida, gouverneur d’Ešnunna (Scheil 1905 : 12–13, pl. 3 ; Sb 57). Ces trois dernières statues de princes amorrites d’Ešnunna auraient été emportées d’Ešnunna à Suse par Šutruk-Nahhunte au douzième siècle avant J.-C., soit près plus d’un demi-millénaire plus tard13. Or on arrête bien souvent l’histoire connue d’Ešnunna après sa conquête par Hammu-rabi en 1762, alors même que ce royaume de la Diyala jadis si puissant n’était vraiMusée du Louvre, département des Antiquités orientales, inv. AO 2776 (Thomas 2016, 354, no 425). À propos de la stèle de Dāduša d’Ešnunna conservée au musée national d’Irak, inv. IM 95200, voir Ismail et Cavigneaux 2003. 12 

Auquel il faut peut-être ajouter Sb 58 et Sb 141 (Spycket 1981, pl. 163 et fig. 62). 13 

semblablement déjà que ruine puisqu’il venait d’être occupé sinon totalement détruit par les Elamites sous la direction du roi Siwe-palar-huppak. Avant de quitter la Mésopotamie, les Elamites détruisirent en effet Ešnunna et quelques autres villes, ce qui fait supposer à certains que les statues — du moins celles provenant de Mésopotamie d’après leur style mais dépourvues d’inscription de Šutruk-Nahhunte auraient pu être emportées en Elam dès cette époque (Dietz 2015). Le fait que Šutruk Nahhunte, plusieurs siècles après, aient emporté des statues princières d’Ešnunna indiquent peut-être que cette histoire était encore présente dans les mémoires, du moins élamites. Ceci révèle en tout cas que le site ne devait pas être totalement détruit après le dix-huitième siècle avant notre ère et que tant la survie d’Ešnunna et de ses vestiges que celle de son histoire étaient encore assurés au milieu du treizième siècle avant notre ère.

Conclusion

Sans avoir jamais fouillé dans la région de la Diyala, le musée du Louvre n’en conserve pas moins une modeste collection d’objets permettant d’évoquer cette région fondamentale de l’antique Mésopotamie. Certains permettent même d’interroger autrement l’histoire de cette région au travers de ce que des statues princières d’un royaume déchu depuis plusieurs siècles pouvaient encore représenter pour un souverain du treizième siècle, qui plus est étranger, venu de l’Elam.

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31

Ouvrages cités Amiet, Pierre 1981/1982     « André Parrot (1901–1980) », Archiv für Orientforschung 28 : 281–82. Bernhardsson, Magnus T. 2005 Reclaiming a Plundered Past : Archaeology and Nation Building in Modern Iraq. University of Texas Press, Austin. Charpin, Dominique 2012 « Mari à l’école d’Ešnunna : écriture, langue, formulaires », in Catherine Mittermayer & Sabine Ecklin (éd.), Alt­orientalische Studien zu Ehren von Pascal Attinger; mu-ni u4 ul-li2-a-aš ĝa2-ĝa2-de3 (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 256). Academic Press, Fribourg : 119–37. Contenau, Georges 1940 « Une statuette sumérienne archaïque du musée du Louvre », Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot 37 : 37–45. Dietz, Albert 2015 « Der Raubzug des Šutruk-Nahhunte I. und andere Beispiele für den Umgang mit Beutestücken in der alt­ orientalischen Geschichte » (mémoire de master non publiée, Université Ludwig-Maximilians, Munich). Emerit, Sybille ; Guichard, Hélène ; Jeammet, Violaine ; Perrot, Sylvain ; Thomas, Ariane ; Vendries, Christophe ; Vincent, Alexandre & Ziegler, Nele (dir.) 2017 Musiques ! Échos de l’Antiquité. Louvre-Lens, Lens. Frankfort, Henri 1934 « Mari et Opis : essai de chronologie », Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale 31/4 : 173–79. 1955 Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region (Oriental Institute Publications 72). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Frankfort, Henri ; Jacobsen, Thorkild & Preusser, Conrad 1932 Tell Asmar and Khafaje : The First Season’s Work in Eshnunna, 1930/31 (Oriental Institute Communications 13). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Genouillac, Henri de 1911 Tablettes de Dréhem (Textes cunéiformes du Louvre 2). Geuthner, Paris. 1930 « Nouveaux princes et cités nouvelles de Sumer », Revue de l’histoire des religions 101 : 216–22. Ismaïl, Bahija K. & Cavigneaux, Antoine 2003 « Dādušas Siegesstele IM 95200 aus Ešnunna. Die Inschrift », Baghdader Mitteilungen 34 : 129–56, pl. 1–7. Nougayrol, Jean 1962 « Notes épigraphiques », Syria 39, 3/4 : 188–92. Parrot, André 1934 « La civilisation mésopotamienne », Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale 31/4 : 180–89. 1946 Archéologie mésopotamienne ; les étapes (Collection Sciences d’aujourd’hui). Albin Michel, Paris. 1957 « Acquisitions et inédits du Musée du Louvre : 6. Sculpture mésopotamienne », Syria 34, 3/4 : 223–31. Pognon, Henri 1892 « Note sur le pays d’Achnounnak », Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 36/2: 81–82.

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Scheil, Vincent 1905 Textes élamites-sémitiques (Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse 6). Leroux, Paris. 1908 Textes élamites-sémitiques (Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse 10). Leroux, Paris. Spycket, Agnès 1981 La statuaire du Proche-Orient ancien. Brill, Leyde. Steymans, Hans U. (dir.) 2010 Gilgamesch : Ikonographie eines Helden (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 245). Academic Press, Fribourg. Thomas, Ariane 2015 « The Akkadian Royal Image : On a Seated Statue of Manishtushu », Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorder­ asiatische Archäologie 105/1 : 86–117. 2016 (dir.) L’Histoire commence en Mésopotamie. Louvre-Lens, Lens.

3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah: Insight into the Emergence of Multi-Stepped Terraces Philippe Quenet

Introduction

Within the frame of the Diyala Project conducted by Henri Frankfort, Khafajah, which turned out to be the ancient city of Tutub, was one of the main targets selected by the team of the Chicago Oriental Institute. The site was made up of four mounds, the largest of which, mound  A, had been the earlier occupation, extending from the Late Uruk to the Akkadian period. The excavations in the Temple Oval area began under the direction of Conrad Preusser in 1930–1931. Pinhas Delougaz took over the year after and completed the work in three campaigns until the building was completely exposed in 1933–1934. The results were published in a newspaper article, annual preliminary reports, and a final publication (Frankfort 1932; Frankfort et al. 1932, 60–105; Frankfort 1933, 58–79; Frankfort 1934, 63–80; Frankfort & Jacobsen 1935, 32–37; Delougaz 1940). The Temple Oval proved to have been founded in the midEarly Dynastic period (c. 2600 bce). It may have been in use until the end of the Akkadian period (c. 2200 bce). Three main architectural phases (‘building phases’ in the excavator’s terminology) were defined, Temple Oval  I to III, I  being the earliest. Sub-phases, called ‘occupation phases’ by the excavators, were also recognized.1 Only portions of the walls of Temple Oval II and III could be traced as these levels had been heavily Philippe Quenet ([email protected]) Professor of ancient Near Eastern archaeology, University of Strasbourg, member of the Joint Research Unit Archimède (CNRS-UMR 7044). With the help of the whole team involved in the project, this research was conducted in the preparation phase of the exhibition Ana Ziqquratim – Sur la piste de Babel (On the Road to Babel) that took place in Strasbourg, France, in 2016. A book with the same title was published on this occasion (Quenet 2016a).

1  Note that the excavators’ sequence of the phases II and III has been challenged. See Tunca 1984, 36–45, and Vallet 2016.

eroded. Temple Oval I, much better preserved, yielded a complete plan. Therefore, it seemed best suited for a comprehensive reconstruction attempt and a fruitful reappraisal of the excavators’ report and conclusions. More specifically, the focus here will be on the earliest phase of all, i.e. the ‘First Occupation Phase’ of the ‘First Building Period’. The Temple Oval  I was built on disproportionate foundations (Quenet 2014). Its visible part covers an area of about 7000 m2 (Figs 3.1–3.2). Its envelope consists of a rounded perimeter wall, 1.5 m thick. It is neither circular nor, frankly, is it oval. It resembles, at best, a sort of irregular quadrilateral with rounded edges (length in the south-east–north-west axis: 100 m, maximum width in the south-west–north-east axis: 74  m). Its northwestern end was pierced by a gate. This outer enceinte surrounds an inner one, even thicker (3.5 m on average), with an ‘oval’ shape as well, but smaller (c. 83 × 62 m) and shifted to the south-east, thus leaving room in the north-west for a courtyard and a building on the northeastern side of it (‘House D’). The gate situated at the north-western end of this Inner Enclosure wall leads to a second courtyard, more trapezoidal than rectangular (c. 56 × 38 m)2 and bordered with rooms on all sides. The base of an almost square terrace (c. 30 × 25 m), the top of which was once accessed by an axial staircase, occupies the courtyard south-eastern half. A splendid and impressive reconstruction of the edifice, looking south-east from above, illustrates the final publication as a frontispiece (it is complemented by an isometric view in the plates, see Delougaz 1940, pl. V). It was elaborated by the excavators and drawn by H. D. Darby in 1934 before the excavation of the surround2 

It looks rectangular at first sight but is not.

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 33–46 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126525        BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

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Philippe Quenet

Figure 3.1. Overview of the salient features of the Temple Oval I First Occupation Phase (after Quenet 2016a, fig. 5).

Figure 3.2. Plan of the Temple Oval I First Occupation Phase with the specific features discussed in this contribution (after Delougaz 1940, pl. III).

3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah

Figure 3.3. Plan of the Temple Oval I neighbourhood at the time of the ‘Houses’ Level 4 (after Vallet 2016, fig. 3).

ing neighbourhood was completed.3 So, the presence of ordinary houses in the drawing forefront is inaccurate: an open space extended in front of the Temple Oval I main entryway. Opposite stood a fortified gate projecting from both sides of the curvilinear wall of the city (Fig. 3.3). This is but one of the many aspects of this reconstruction that were generally overlooked by previous studies (Heinrich & Seidl 1982, 117–19; Tunca 1984, 36–45; Battini 2005–2006; Dezzi-Badeschi 2008). It deserves closer examination, for Darby’s artist’s impression has been widely reproduced over the past seventy years and, as a consequence, this idea of Temple Oval I’s appearance has been taken for granted as possibly authentic (Quenet 2016c for a shorter version).

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‘House D’

There is little to say about the reconstruction of ‘House D’, which remains broadly accurate even to this day (Delougaz 1940, fig.  64, for an isometric view of this building). However, one main detail catches the eye: the sloping roofs around courtyard L 43:3.4 They have clearly been inspired by the Greek or Roman impluvium model, which no doubt informed the draughtsman’s mind at a time when standards of classical architecture were deeply rooted in the general cultural knowledge of educated people. Traditional Near Eastern, especially Mesopotamian, architecture favours flat roofs. Domed roofs rank second. Architectural remains and ancient iconography confirm that this reality can be traced back to a remote antiquity. Accordingly, it is more likely that all ‘House D’ roofs were flat. They have been represented that way in an architectural model exhibSloping roofs of this kind were actually reconstructed for all the rooms of House D as well as those surrounding the inner courtyard (Delougaz 1940, 71, pl. VI/A-C).

4 

The ‘Houses’ at Khafajah were excavated from 1930 to 1938 (Delougaz et al. 1967, v).

3 

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Philippe Quenet

Figure 3.4. Architectural model of the Temple Oval II and its neighbourhood (1987). German Architecture Museum, Frankfurt (source: [accessed 1 August 2021]).

ited at the German Architecture Museum in Frankfurt (Fig.  3.4)5 and in a recently published reconstruction (André-Salvini & Azara 2012, 245). None of these reconstructions have been furnished with comments. In the second instance, one may wonder why the modern designers chose to place all roofs at the same level. In Darby’s drawing and the architectural model, room K 43:3 has higher walls (Delougaz 1940, 70). The drawing clearly shows that the south-western wall of this room is pierced with small windows aligned in a row above the level of the neighbouring roofs (those of the rooms K 43:4, K 43:5, and K 44:5) (Fig. 3.3a). Although it cannot be seen in the picture, one can postulate the presence of an additional row of windows on the opposite side of the room. So many openings would have made this a generously illuminated room. These lightning conditions would have been desirable if K 43:3, being the more spacious room, had been a communal/ reception room, designed for hospitality, occasionally hosting a large assembly — for banqueting or conducting talks inter alia. Rooms of this kind have been known in southern Mesopotamia since the appearance of the tripartite building plan in the Ubaid period. Other minor corrections or additions may be suggested. There is no reason for corridor K 43:6 and vestibule K 43:1 to be open to the sky (Fig. 3.3b), as they both lead to the vast inner courtyard L 43:3. The presence of a free-standing, square brickwork massif on its south-western side6 requires explanation (Fig. 3.3c). It may have been a pillar or the base of a wooden beam supporting the wooden carpentry of a lean-to construction or portico, conveniently creating a roofed passageway running along the north-eastern wall of K 43:3 It represents the Temple Oval II, but ‘House D’ was still standing at that time.

5 

Delougaz 1940, fig. 47: in the photography background, in front of the workman. 6 

and connecting the K 43:2 and L 43:9 doorways. That being the case,7 anyone entering the house through the entrance room K 43:4 could reach the back rooms of the building (like M 43:9) and be sheltered from rain during the winter season. The distribution room L 43:8 was also probably roofed for the same reason. It would have been higher in this case, as in Darby’s drawing, with the upper part of its walls fenestrated like K 43:3. Openings of this sort would have been the only possible sources of daylight for this room including the rooms opening to it. Beyond these technical details, the main issue is the function of ‘House D’. It quite visibly shares all the salient features of a typical Early Dynastic house — a courtyard-centred layout and the presence of a reception room (K 43:3) and a kitchen (M 43:5 and 9) in particular. For this reason, the excavators unhesitatingly called it a ‘house’, but compared to the substantial corpus of Early Dynastic houses,8 it was obviously a wealthy residence. Its surface (660 m2), the existence of two distribution spaces (K 43:3 and L 43:8) dividing the building into two sectors, the exceptional small finds discovered there, and the elaborated altar exposed in L 43:4, all argue the room may have been a kind of private chapel (Delougaz 1940, 49, figs 44 and 45). In his analysis of the Temple Oval area, Régis Vallet supports the idea that ‘House D’ was the dwelling of a high-ranking dignitary — possibly the temple’s high priest (Vallet 2001; Vallet 2016). This line of reasoning is the most convincing, as it accounts for the integration of a residential building in an architectural complex, primarily religious in nature. Should It could hardly have been a podium (contra Delougaz 1940, 46). The extant height of this brickwork is the same as the walls. This may imply that it was levelled.

7 

The bulk of our documentation comes from the Diyala sites (Delougaz et  al. 1967) and Tell Abu as-Salabikh (Postgate 1983; Green 1993).

8 

3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah

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Figure 3.5. Visible parts of the Temple Oval for an observer standing on the ground (A) at the city gate at a distance of about 15 m, (B) in the southern street at a distance of about 30 m (author’s drawing after Delougaz 1940, pl. VI/D-E).

it be adopted, this interpretation has a direct bearing on the reconstruction of the outer enceinte.

The Outer Enclosure Wall

The Outer Enclosure wall could be traced for the greater part of its circuit (Fig. 3.3d). Its width was 1.5 m, less than half that of the Inner Enclosure. If the width of the walls indicates height, then the outer wall was lower than the inner one. This obvious conclusion was reached by Delougaz, who in his own words ‘arbitrarily’ set the respective height of the two enclosures at 4  m and 6.5  m. He also assumed that his calculation was ‘based chiefly on an individual sense of proportion’ (Delougaz 1940, 68). The visual effect produced by his reconstruction (Delougaz 1940, pl. VI/D-E) is truly satisfactory to the modern eye, but remains an abstraction. The Temple Oval was embedded in a densely built neighbourhood and a view of the monument in its entirety would have been impossible. Upon crossing the city gate, all that would have met the spectator’s forward gaze would have been a tall screen wall of approximately 15 m (Fig. 3.5a). Only a distance of 30 m or more from the temple — which may have been visible from the southern street — would have rendered a glimpse of the top of the shrine in Delougaz’s elaborate reconstruction (Fig. 3.5b), whose conclusions, as to be evidenced here, are debatable. Whether the aesthetic perception of the people of the Early Dynastic period or, even more specifically, the builders of the Temple Oval was that of Delougaz, shall remain unknown. What remains certain is that no data other than the width of the walls exists for any assessment of their original heights. One could assume the heights to be approximate multiples of the height of a single brick layer, but they are not. Although they were all of the plano-convex type (Delougaz 1933, 2–4) the

Temple Oval bricks are of varied dimensions (Delougaz 1933, 2–4). Moreover, there were several ways to lay this type of brick in a wall and often a variety of patterns featured in the same wall (Delougaz 1933, 15–28). This potential irregularity of brickwork bond undermines any attempt at extrapolation. Examining external evidence, the Değirmentepe excavations exposed Ubaidperiod houses with 50 cm thick walls that could support an upper storey and rise to a height of at least 4 m (see in particular Building İ, Gurdil 2005). Therefore, a comparable height estimation for the Temple Oval Outer Enclosure wall, even if free-standing, does not seem oversized. It must be emphasized that it was reinforced by buttresses, 1 m wide and 20 cm thick, set on its inner side at more or less regular intervals of approx. 5 m (Delougaz 1940, 20). Inevitably, although Delougaz furnishes no detail, they must have been bonded with the main wall for stability. According to Delougaz, their location excludes a decorative function and, at least in the narrow corridor running between the two enceintes, they may have supported the beams of a roof.9 As they are found all along the inner side of the Outer Enclosure, they may have had another or additional function. No walkway is visible on this wall top in Delougaz’s reconstruction, but the enceinte summit must have been granted easy access, for its mud lining would have required renewing at least every other year. There may have been a genuine walkway there, protected perhaps, on its outer side, by a brick parapet, and perhaps enlarged on its inner These buttresses having no counterpart along the Inner Enclosure wall, the end of the beams may have been inserted in the wall brickwork and supported by wooden struts (cf. Margueron 2004, 217–22, fig. 205 bis, 207, and 214 bis) or even brick corbels. Some have been well documented in northern Mesopotamian architecture of the third millennium bce, especially at Tell Khazneh (passim in Munchaev et al. 2004 and Munchaev & Amirov 2016). 9 

38 side by beams running longitudinal to the wall, their ends resting on the buttresses. In the absence of traces of brick-built steps at ground level outside the Inner Enclosure, it may be assumed that the most convenient access to this walkway were the roofs of ‘House D’, via ladders and/or wood staircases. A turning staircase, made of two flights of stairs with an intermediate landing, may have occupied the L 43:5 and L 43:6 spaces or, more likely, the north-eastern end of corridor K 43:6 and room K 43:1 (Fig. 3.3e). This would explain the presence of two passages apparently connecting the corridor to the central courtyard. In fact, only K 43:2 would have led to the latter, while the bathroom L 43:1 (interpretation of Delougaz 1940, 57) would have had private access — as expected — via the antechamber K 43:1. The towers flanking the entrance to the forecourt in Delougaz’s reconstruction (Delougaz 1940, 65 and 68; Fig.  3.3f) would have required the same maintenance work as the top of the wall. Unfortunately, later rebuilding works had destroyed the enclosure wall here, leaving no remains (Delougaz 1940, 21, figs 12 and 16). This gap of several metres10 gives space for the imagination. A rational approach would entail two essential questions: For what was the Outer Enclosure intended and what was the relation between the Outer and Inner Enclosures? In the Temple Oval Third Building Phase, the Outer Enclosure disappeared, as well as ‘House D’. This seems to imply that 1. the Outer Enclosure and ‘House D’ were closely linked, 2. they were not part of the temple proper, but a subset of the whole complex,11 3. the Outer Enclosure was chiefly designed to unify two separate entities (Vallet 2016, 147),12 4. the temple core activities were concentrated in the Inner Enclosure. If so, the Outer Enclosure most likely appeared, qualitatively and quantitatively, inferior to the Inner Enclosure. The plans (Delougaz 1940, pls III and IV) and the text do not seem to be consistent on this point: only a portion of the outer face of the enclosure, shorter in the north than in the south, is missing in the plans on either side of the entryway. The Diyala Archaeological Database does not help solve the problem, although it provides a richer collection of photographs of the gate area than the final publication. 10 

Two comparable temples have been exposed at Tell al-‘Ubaid and Tell al-Hibbah and both lack a double enclosure (Quenet 2016b). 11 

In the Second Building Period, ‘House D’ was accessed directly from the street — not from the forecourt anymore — while the Outer Enclosure was rebuilt. Its wall was much thicker and buttressed. Could it be that ‘House D’ became independent from the complex and the sacred area was extended to the rest of the space between the two enclosures? 12 

Philippe Quenet Its gateway may have been emphasized, with low and shallow buttresses or bastions for instance — although a plain wall shall not be dismissed — but certainly not in a way that made it more impressive than the entryway to the temenos. As just seen, there is ample evidence that was indeed the case, contrary to Delougaz’s reconstruction.

The Inner Enclosure Wall

The Inner Enclosure’s distinctive features are the thickness of its wall (Fig. 3.3g) and the two solid brick massifs marking its gateway (Fig. 3.3h). These were overlooked by Delougaz, who simply declared ‘the inner gateway had no ornamentation of any kind on its outer face’ and ‘the two shallow recesses situated approximately in the middle of the thickness of the wall were alone the means of emphasizing that this was a main entrance’ (Delougaz 1940, 68). He opted therefore for an arched opening to break the dull uniformity of a plain wall. This seems unlikely for several reasons. Early Dynastic official building displayed monumental entryways.13 The entrances of the roughly contemporary Sîn Temple VIII and X at Khafajah have a similar plan and, admittedly, were emphasized with bastions (Delougaz & Lloyd 1942, fig. 70, pls 10 and 12). In the Third Building Period, the Temple Oval Gate was quite ostentatious.14 The two massifs attested at the ground level in the First Building Period, almost identical in size (c. 3.5 m large and 5 m long), probably also evidence the presence of two bastions towering on either side of K 44:2 and overhanging the Inner Enclosure walkway by a few metres. K 44:2 may have been open to the sky in this case,15 and the top of the gate wall was possibly no higher than the Inner Enclosure walkway and the roofs of K 45:7, K 45:4, K 44:10, and L 44:2. Another issue is the morphology of the parapet of both the walkway and the bastions. A  cylinder-seal impression of the later fourth millennium bce shows a wall with battlements in the form of stepped merlons (Boehmer 1999, Abb. XXVI). It seems to depict a city Temples (see the numerous ‘small temples’ of the Diyala sites: Delougaz & Lloyd 1942), palaces (see Palaces P and A at Kiš: Moorey 1978, figs E and F), as well as other exceptional buildings (see Building B33 at Larsa: Thalmann 2003). 13 

The ground plan (Delougaz 1940, fig. 103 and pl. XI) led Delougaz to reconstruct a monumental gateway (ibid., figs 104–08). 14 

The fact that the bricks of the stairway were bound with bitumen (Delougaz 1940, 24), well known for its watertight efficiency, supports this hypothesis further. 15 

3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah wall. Such crenelations are far more common in later iconography, mainly dated to the Iron Age. Having an ornamental or defensive function, they are specific to public and military monumental architecture. There is no guarantee that merlons, plain or stepped, crowned the top of the Temple Oval Inner Enclosure and its towers, but they would have certainly added to the majesty of the god’s earthly residence and enhanced the difference of status between the Inner and Outer Enclosure, as long as it is correct to assume there was one. If not, both walls may have been crenelated or topped with a plain parapet. Access to the Inner Enclosure walkway was granted by a narrow staircase running from the south-eastern end of L 45:4 to the north-western end of K 44:10 according to Delougaz. There probably exists no better hypothesis. From here the summit of the towers could easily be reached, by whatever means imaginable.

The Terrace

No more than the base of the terrace (Fig. 3.3i) was preserved, as the latter had been levelled down to a height of less than 1.5 m above the courtyard floor and rebuilt at a larger scale in the Second Occupation Period. Its ground plan reveals it to be a 25 × 30 m parallelogram16 with buttressed retaining walls. The buttresses were 15 cm thick and 2 m wide (Delougaz 1940, 41–42). The terrace had upright faces, as far as can be judged from the sections (Delougaz 1940, pls VIII, IX, and X). A staircase, 7.70 m long and 2.70 m large, leads to its top (Delougaz 1940, 42). It was built of dressed stone steps 1.5 m wide, leaving room on each of its side for a brick parapet 60 cm thick, perhaps resembling that of the Sîn Temple VII staircase or the sides of the altar in ‘House D’ room L 43:4 (Delougaz & Lloyd 1942, figs 40–41, and Delougaz 1940, fig.  44). The first step alone, 15  cm high and 30 cm deep, was in position (Delougaz 1940, 69). Delougaz postulated that these 30  cm were also the dimension of the tread. As a result twenty-five to twenty-six steps would have been required to span the entire length of the staircase, had there been a single flight of stairs (7.7: 0.30  = 25.66). The terrace would have been approx. 3.75 m to 3.90 m high (25/26 × 0.15 = 3.75/3.90 m). Atop it Delougaz reconstructed a shrine with a bent axis, measuring 20  m by 10  m approximately, resembling the ‘Small Single Shrine’ exposed in Q 45:4 (see Fig. 3.3; Delougaz 1940, 65–67; Delougaz & Lloyd 1942, 113–16 and fig. 105). Every step of this reasoning can be challenged.

39 With a 30 cm tread the stone blocks do not overlap, and a natural number of steps cannot be obtained (25.66). In the Temple Oval of Tell al-‘Ubaid, two staircases made of dressed stone steps were exposed. Several descriptions have been made of the north-western one. Although they lack consistency (compare Woolley 1924, 338, Hall & Woolley 1927, 14 and 71, and Hall 1930, 264), a careful examination of the available information makes it clear the steps overlapped, with a total depth of 33 cm and a tread of 25 cm. As for the south-eastern staircase, the tread of the steps was 24 cm, while the stone slabs proper 55 cm deep and therefore overlapping. The step rise was 25 to 27 cm (Hall & Woolley 1927, 70). If the tread of the Khafajah Temple steps was 24 cm, not only the horizontal joints between the stones would have more safely protected the underlying mudbrick ramp of the staircase from water infiltration, but a natural number of steps (thirty-two) would have continued to the top of the terrace, rising to 4.8 m above the courtyard floor. This is the maximum height allowed by the reconstruction of a single flight of stairs with its uppermost step abutting the terrace face.17 For the Tell al-‘Ubaid south-eastern staircase, Woolley opted for an intermediate landing. He thus lowered the terrace to 6 m at the most, although it may well have reached 10 m (Hall & Woolley 1927, 106). Aside from its height, several other aspects of the Temple Oval I terrace raise questions. No doubt it was built to support the god’s shrine, for no other place in the complex could have fulfilled this role. However, what this shrine actually looked like and whether it was standing on top of a single or two-storey terrace is a matter of debate. The Temple Oval I terrace is 750 m2, with ample room to lay a second terrace on top of its platform. This upper terrace must have been narrower. If the width of the free space set around it is approx. 4 m, the remaining space would be approx. 22 m wide and 17  m long i.e. 352  m2. A  fairly spacious shrine (14 × 11 m, 154 m2) could have been situated on top of this upper platform if it again was surrounded by 4 m free space. These figures are arbitrary, but demonstrate that a proto-ziggurat, rather than a high terrace, could have been erected at Tutub in the mid-third millennium bce, several centuries before the Ur III period and the construction of the first true ziggurats known to date, at Ur, Eridu, Uruk, and Nippur. Is it possible to assess on firmer ground the existence of Early Dynastic foreIt may have been somewhat higher if the staircase was running into the terrace massif.

17  16 

Its faces were aligned to the walls of the courtyard (see above).

40 runners to the Ur III monumental, staged towers? To address this question the available evidence has to be scrutinized.

The Number of Storeys and the Top Building

A well-established, functional, and topographical continuity exists between the high terraces and the earliest ziggurats of fourth and third millennia bce (Quenet & Bizreh 2016; Eichmann 2016; van Ess 2016; Benati 2016; and Sauvage 2016). The most complete sequences come from Eridu, where Ubaidian terraced buildings preceded Urukian (and Early Dynastic?) high terraces, which in turn left space for the Eabzu ziggurat. At Uruk, an uninterrupted sequence of superimposed terraces extends from the Ubaid to the Early Dynastic period onwards in the Anu ziggurat area, while the Ur III ziggurat overlies an Early Dynastic terrace in the Eanna area. The same may be true for the Ur Etemenigur ziggurat, for there is unequivocal evidence that the acropolis religious complex dates back at least to the early third millennium bce.18 At Nippur, Early Dynastic brickwork was first encased in a subsequent monument of the Akkadian period, then in the massif of the Ekur ziggurat. At Kiš, a plano-convex brick massif apparently lies at the heart of the Ziggurat Z. Unfortunately, these repeated rebuildings caused every monument to be levelled and partly destroyed, as the new one superseded it. In other words, ziggurats have erased their ancestors’ footprints. Two exceptions may provide an insight into the elaboration process of staged towers. The first is the Painted Temple at Urum/Tell ‘Uqair (Dermech 2016 and Frey & Dermech 2016). In Level VII-A, dated to the Late Uruk period (end of the fourth millennium bce), the building plan is well enough preserved to attest that an upper terrace overlay a lower one. Whether this form is fully intentional — i.e. resulting from a planned and innovative architectural project — or incidental — i.e. an adaptation required by the successive rebuildings of the monument and the increasing height of its terrace — is difficult to determine. The ‘Massif rouge’ in Mari, dated to the mid-Early Dynastic period, was more clearly designed as a three-storey terrace. It was roughly 30  ×  40  m and had slightly battered faces (Butterlin 18  Stray clay cones were discovered in the earliest excavated levels. These ornamental elements were in use from the later fourth millennium bce until the beginning of the Early Dynastic period. Cones were also found in the Tell al-‘Ubaid Temple Oval area.

Philippe Quenet 2016b). The second and third storeys were visible, contrary to the basal one, almost entirely sunk into the ground and used as a foundation. These two upper storeys were preserved up to 6 m and their faces were buttressed. The top of the uppermost one, whose existing height is 1 m, had been levelled when the monument underwent its first rebuilding. Up to now the ‘Massif rouge’ is the most ancient attestation of a stepped terrace in Mesopotamia, thus permitting a fresh look at ziggurat-like iconographic motifs engraved on many contemporaneous cylinder seals (Ali 2016, fig.  7; Ali 2012, 227–36 and pls 117–26). Later fourth-millennium bce high terraces supported a tripartite building, as evidenced in Uruk and many other places in southern Iraq and northern Syria (Butterlin 2016a; Butterlin 2018, 353–467). Only two to three top buildings are known to be from the third millennium.19 The first two were exposed in Tello, ancient Girsu, if Jean-Daniel Forest’s interpretation of the rather confusing excavation data is to be accepted (Quenet 2016b, 143–44 and fig. 2). They date from the late Early Dynastic period and were dedicated to Ningirsu, the storm and war god, protector of the kingdom of Lagaš. They consisted of a two-room rectangular building, the earlier one the ‘Construction inférieure’ measuring approximately 8 × 6 m, the later one the ‘Construction d’Ur-Nanše’ about 10 × 7 m. Each room had its own entrance. Both were pierced at opposite ends of the building. The same sort of building, 15 × 9 m, built in honour of the earth goddess Ninhursag, may be attested at Adab.20 They all differ significantly from the building reconstructed by Delougaz. They are not single room shrines. They are smaller and, at Adab, the entrance was probably not aligned with the ramp or staircase — the nature and location of this feature have been badly recognized in the field — leading to the top of the terrace.

And even for the subsequent two millennia, save the building depicted on the Chøyen stela (Montero Fenollós 2016, fig. 3), which may have crowned the Etemenanki, the ziggurat of Marduk in Babylon. However, it corresponds to a type that developed subsequent to the Early Dynastic period. 19 

20  Quenet 2016b, 143 and fig. 1, with bibliography. Karen Wilson, on weak grounds, has preferred to reconstruct a two-room building with a single entrance and a passage between the two rooms (Wilson et al. 2012, 95–97 and fig. 9.9).

3. Reconstructing the Temple Oval of Khafajah

Figure 3.6. Reconstruction of the Temple Oval I (Quenet 2016b, fig. 2).

Figure 3.7. Four reconstructions among many of the Temple Oval I (Strasbourg University/CAD Guillaume Schmitz).

41

42

Conclusion

Delougaz and Darby’s study of the Khafajah Temple Oval I in the 1930s resulted in a sharp analysis and a strikingly reconstructed view of the complex. Both are so deeply convincing that they have barely been challenged over the past eighty years. The contribution here is precisely such an attempt to make a distinct reappraisal of the overall documentation, checking out the validity of previous conclusions, especially in the light of the new discoveries that have been unearthed since the 1930s. It has emerged that minor details of the original reconstruction may be revised or at the very least questioned: ‘House D’ roofs were flat rather than sloping; the entrance corridor was probably roofed as well; a walkway protected by a parapet, which may have been crenelated, ran along the top of both enclosure walls. None of these suggestions, if adopted, alters the general appearance of the edifice significantly. Others do, however; the Outer Enclosure gate is likely to have been more modest than that of the Inner one; the gate to the main precinct was clearly flanked by towers. One of the main issues concerns the terrace and its top building. It may have been a single terrace, in the tradition of the high terraces initiated in the fifth millennium bce continuing without interruption thereafter (cf. Eridu, Uruk, and Adab inter alia). The two examples of multi-storeyed terraces provided by the Painted Temple of Urum (two storeys) and above all by the ‘Massif rouge’ of Mari (three preserved storeys with battered faces and buttresses) make it perfectly plausible that the Temple Oval terrace was itself stepped. In our reconstruction, a 5 m lower terrace, as in Mari, supports an upper one, a few metres high (Fig. 3.6). Two independent flights of stairs, aligned on the same axis lead

Philippe Quenet

to the second and third floors, upon which stands the last of the god’s abode — the gigunû? (Cavigneaux 2016). It may have been a rectangular construction, about 15 × 10 m, were it akin to the top buildings exposed at Girsu and Adab. Did it stand instead on a fourth storey? The possibility cannot be ruled out, in view of the fact that the ziggurat-like motif found on some cylinder seals is three-fold and associated sometimes with a man (or men) placing a square shape on its top, but for the time being it remains unproven. The Temple Oval I cannot be the object of a rigid reconstruction. Either it is possible to build on the available data, develop arguments, and forward hypotheses, or the lack of data prevents us from any firm conclusion. At any rate, multiple combinations are possible (Fig. 3.7). It is even more important to emphasize that, before the latest discoveries at Mari, no evidence was able to bridge the gap between the fourth- to thirdmillennium bce high terraces and the late third-millennium Ur III ziggurats. The ‘Massif rouge’ demonstrates beyond any doubt that multi-stepped terraces were first built and experimented with as early as the mid-third millennium bce. It radically changes how some architectural and iconographic evidence is to be considered. It also raises the question whether multi-stepped terraces were invented and intended for special purposes, compared to high-terraced and one-storey temples. Early Dynastic sanctuaries are characterized by a variety of forms, but, as far as we know, they do not appear to be related to gods’ gender, specific attributes, or rank in the local pantheon (Dabin 2016). The question of when, how and why multi-stepped terraces were added to this already varied repertoire remains to be answered.

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Works Cited Ali, Cheikhmous 2012 ‘Recherches sur les représentations architecturales dans la glyptique du Proche-Orient ancien’, 3 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, Université de Strasbourg). 2016 ‘Du plan à l’élévation: l’apport de l’iconographie’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 57–63. André-Salvini, Béatrice & Azara, Pedro (eds) 2012 Antes del Diluvio: Mesopotamia 3500–2100 A.C. Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona. Battini, Laura 2005–2006     ‘Les aménagements à l’air libre dans la cour du Temple Ovale’, Archiv für Orientforschung 51: 235–41. Benati, Giacomo 2016 ‘Le complexe de la ziggurat d’Ur-Namma à Ur / Muqayyar’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 173–77. Boehmer, Rainer M. 1999 Uruk: Früheste Siegelabrollungen (Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka Endberichte 24). Von Zabern, Mainz am Rhein. Butterlin, Pascal 2016a ‘Le phénomène des temples sur terrasse de la période urukéenne’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 97–102. 2016b ‘Le Massif rouge de Mari / Hariri: une terrasse étagée aux marges du Sud mésopotamien’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 137–42. 2018 Architecture et société au Proche-Orient ancien: les bâtisseurs de mémoire en Mésopotamie (7000–3000 av.  J.-C.). Picard, Paris. Cavigneaux, Antoine 2016 ‘L’énigme du gigunû’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 74. Dabin, Margaux 2016 ‘Le temple protodynastique: une réalité multiforme’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 131–34. Delougaz, Pinhas 1933 i: Plano-Convex Bricks and the Methods of their Employment; ii: The Treatment of Clay Tablets in the Field (Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 7). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1940 The Temple Oval at Khafājah (Oriental Institute Publications 53). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Delougaz, Pinhas & Lloyd, Seton 1942 Pre-Sargonid Temples in the Diyala Region (Oriental Institute Publications 58). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Delougaz, Pinhas; Hill, Harold D. & Lloyd, Seton 1967 Private Houses and Graves in the Diyala Region (Oriental Institute Publications 88). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

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Dermech, Sarah 2016 ‘Le Temple peint d’Urum / ‘Uqair: un exemple de décoration intérieure’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziq­ quratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 121–26. Dezzi-Badeschi, Chiara 2008 ‘À propos des installations dans la cour du Temple ovale de Khafajah’, in Joachín M. Córdoba, Miquel Molist, Carmen Pérez, Isabel Rubio & Sergio Martínez (eds), Proceedings of the 5th International Congress on the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Madrid, April 3–8 2006): Actas del V Congreso internacional de arqueología del Oriente Próximo Antiguo (Madrid, 3 a 8 de abril de 2006), 3 vols. Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid: i, 253–71. Eichmann, Ricardo 2016 ‘La séquence des bâtiments sur terrasse d’Uruk/Warka, secteur de la “ziggurat d’Anu”’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 105–11. Ess, Margarete van 2016 ‘La ziggurat du quartier de l’Eanna à Uruk / Warka’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 163–66. Frankfort, Henri 1932 ‘New Light on the Ancient Sumerian Civilisation: Excavations at Khafaje of a Temple Nearly 5000 Years Old, Contemporary with the Royal Tombs at Ur’, Illustrated London News 8 October: 526–29, 552. 1933 Tell Asmar, Khafaje and Khorsabad: Second Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition (Oriental Institute Com­ munications 16). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. 1934 Iraq Excavations of the Oriental Institute, 1932/33: Third Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition (Oriental Institute Communications 17). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Frankfort, Henri & Jacobsen, Thorkild 1935 Oriental Institute Discoveries in Iraq, 1933/34: Fourth Preliminary Report of the Iraq Expedition (Oriental Institute Communications 19). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Frankfort, Henri; Jacobsen, Thorkild & Preusser, Conrad 1932 Tell Asmar and Khafadje: The First Season’s Work in Eshnunna, 1930/31 (Oriental Institute Communications 13). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Frey, Maurice & Dermech, Sarah 2016 ‘Le Temple peint d’Urum sur sa haute terrasse à deux niveaux (maquette au 1/50)’, in P. Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 127–29. Green, Anthony (ed.) 1993 The 6G Ash-Tip and its Contents: Cultic and Administrative Discard from the Temple? (Abu Salabikh Excavations 4). British School of Archaeology in Iraq, London. Gurdil, Bekir 2005 ‘Architecture and Social Complexity in the Late Ubaid Period: A Study of the Built Environment of Değirmentepe in East Anatolia’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of California). Hall, Henry R. 1930 A Season’s Work at Ur, al-Ubaid, Abu Shahrain (Eridu) and Elsewhere: Being an Unofficial Account of the British Museum Archaeological Mission to Babylonia 1919. Methuen, London. Hall, Henry R. & Woolley, Charles Leonard 1927 Al-‘Ubaid (Ur Excavations 1). Oxford University Press, Oxford.

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Heinrich, Ernst & Seidl, Ursula 1982 Die Tempel und Heiligtümer im alten Mesopotamien: Typologie, Morphologie und Geschichte, 2 vols (Denkmäler antiker Architektur. Deutsches Archäologisches Institut 14). De Gruyter, Berlin. Margueron, Jean-Claude 2004 Mari: métropole de l’Euphrate, au iiie et au début du iie millénaire av. J.-C. Picard, Paris. Montero Fenollós, Juan-Luis 2016 ‘Le sanctuaire de Marduk à Babylone: l’heure de l’apothéose’, in P. Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 223–27. Moorey, Peter Roger S. 1978 Kish Excavations, 1923–1933: With a Microfiche Catalogue of the Objects in Oxford Excavated by the Oxford-Field Museum, Chicago, Expedition to Kish in Iraq, 1923–1933. Clarendon, Oxford. Munchaev, Rauf M. & Amirov, Shahmardan N. 2016 Телль Хазна I: Культово-административный центр IV–III тыс. до н. э. в Северо-восточной Сирии, ii [Tell Khazna I. A Cultic and Administrative Centre of the 4th and 3rd Millennia bc in Northern Syria, ii]. Paleograf, Moscow. Munchaev, Rauf M.; Merpert, Nicholai I. & Amirov, Shahmardan N. 2004 Телль Хазна I: Культово-административный центр IV–III тыс. до н. э. в Северо-восточной Сирии [Tell Khazna I. A Cultic and Administrative Centre of the 4th and 3rd Millennia bc in Northern Syria]. Paleograf, Moscow. Postgate, J. Nicholas 1983 The West Mound Surface Clearance (Abu Salabikh Excavations 1). British School of Archaeology in Iraq, London. Quenet, Philippe 2014 ‘Le Temple ovale de Khafaje (Mésopotamie centrale): de l’aberration architecturale au rituel de construction’, Archimède: archéologie et histoire ancienne 1: 96–106. 2016a (ed.) Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg. 2016b ‘Les temples ovales sud-mésopotamiens’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 143–46. 2016c ‘Le Temple ovale de Tutub, premier état (maquette au 1/50)’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 152–53. Quenet, Philippe & Bizreh, Hiba 2016 ‘La séquence des bâtiments sur terrasse d’Eridu/Abu Shahreïn: vers la monumentalisation’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 75–83. Sauvage, Martin 2016 ‘La ziggurat: entre création et aboutissement’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 155–60. Thalmann, Jean-Paul 2003 ‘Larsa 1987/1989: le bâtiment B 33’, in Jean-Louis Huot (ed.), Larsa: travaux de 1987 et 1989 (Bibliothèque archéologique et historique 165). Institut français d’archéologie du Proche-Orient, Beirut: 35–139. Tunca, Öhnan 1984 L’architecture religieuse protodynastique en Mésopotamie, 2 vols (Akkadica Supplementum 2). Peeters, Leuven.

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Vallet, Régis 2001 ‘Khafadjé ou les métamorphoses d’un quartier urbain au iiie millénaire’, in Catherine Breniquet & Christine Kepinski (eds), Études mésopotamiennes: recueil de textes offerts à Jean-Louis Huot. Éditions recherche sur les civilisations, Paris: 449–61. 2016 ‘Le Temple ovale de Tutub / Khafajah et son insertion dans le tissu urbain’, in Philippe Quenet (ed.), Ana ziqquratim: sur la piste de Babel. Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, Strasbourg: 147–51. Wilson, Karen L.; Lauinger, Jacob; Philipps, Monica L.; Studevent-Hickman, Benjamin & Westenholz, Aage 2012 Bismaya: Recovering the Lost City of Adab (Oriental Institute Publications 138). Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago. Woolley, Charles Leonard 1924 ‘Excavations at Tell Obeid’, The Antiquaries Journal 4/4: 329–46.

4. From the Diyala to Ur, via Mari, Kiš, and the Jazira: When the Boat-God and the Hero Meet at the Dawn of Kingship Sophie Cluzan

Glyptic for Reconstructing History and Intercultural Relationships

Regarding the Early Historical Kingdoms, or Early Dynastic period, the glyptic offers a complex and rich field of research, noteworthy for the design of ancient cultural links which developed in the vast geographical area situated between the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers. This was well developed and shown by Frankfort’s first edition of the seals he discovered in the Diyala Valley, even though he clearly demonstrated the inadequacy of context for dating such objects (Frankfort 1955). His well-known and pioneering work of contextual archaeology stresses the fact that the chronology of intercultural relationships can hardly be based on objects such as seals, whose peculiarities are to be kept over time and transmitted in different ways. However, for a given period of time, large enough to avoid the issue of very accurate chronology, their iconography remains a strong basis for identifying networks of intercultural relationships and for designing the main tendencies respectively developed in different places in terms of their symbolic expressions. In fact, alongside the vast amount of third-millennium seals retrieved at the Diyala, seals from other main Mesopotamian centres of urbanization and power such as Ur, Girsu, Kiš, and Mari, as well as the newly acknowledged important region of the Jazira, progressively formed what can be considered as the most relevant ‘data base of images’ for understanding this first historical period of the ancient Near East. Sophie Cluzan ([email protected]) General Curator for Heritage, Department of Near Eastern Antiquities, Louvre Museum.

Following Frankfort, Amiet included the seals of the Diyala in his study of Near Eastern archaic glyptic, demonstrating how iconography and some of the figures used to build symbolic or mythological references of the societies can help in reconstructing regional specificities and how they may be considered as reflections of ethnographical diversity (Amiet 1980, 180). In fact, aside from the complexity of dating the production of the seals, the images they display are of major impact for any territorial approach to cultures. Since the time of these pioneering and fundamental works, new finds have been made, largely in the central and northern areas of present-day Syria, providing a new vision of the geopolitical situation prevailing in this area during the third millennium. To the west, the discovery of the royal archives of Ebla in 1974, documenting the period between 2380 and 2335 bce, produced a revolution in knowledge of the political and economic network bounding the northern cities and kingdoms. In the light of this new data, in 1992 Gelb extended the former concept of ‘Kiš Tradition’, which had been discussed as early as the 1960s, to the new concept of ‘Kiš Civilization’. The concept was expanded on the one hand geographically, from Kiš to Abu Ṣalabikh and other sites in Babylonia and, via Mari and Terqa, to Ebla and other sites to the north of Syria, and on the other chronologically, identifying this civilization as spanning from Early Dynastic to post-Ur III (Gelb 1992). In Gelb’s formulation, the ‘Kiš Civilization’ is based mainly upon textual and scribal considerations but does not imply any ethno-linguistic unification of the different cities.

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 47–62 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126526        BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

48 Moreover, according to this concept, there are no real unifying features among all these centres in terms of art and material culture (Gelb 1992, 124), a consideration to be discussed in this paper. In 2008, Quenet provided a general archaeological study of the exchanges that took place in the northern areas of Mesopotamia from the end of the fourth millennium to the emergence of Akkad (Quenet 2008). His detailed and systematic analysis shows how much this northern part interacted with its neighbours to the south, east, and west and the varying geographical trends followed by these interactions over time. It demonstrates that the region of the Diyala was differently connected or simply not connected to other areas, depending on the main streams of exchange and the main routes that developed during the period. Throughout the early part of the period preceding the emergence of historical kingdoms (dubbed Early Bronze I: 3100–2800), the Diyala remained rather closed, seemingly restricting its connections to the area of the Ninivite Culture, while by the end of the period, it participated far more in a network spreading toward the central and southern parts of the plain of Mesopotamia and toward its northern areas. In characterizing these last areas in the terms of their relationships, Quenet produced some important insights into glyptic productions as major sources of iconographical information concerning the intercultural relations and, as a result, the territoriality of the cultures under scrutiny. More recently, Archi postulated that this wide area, from Babylonia to Syria and to the north up to GaziantepUrfa, displays what can be called a linguistic continuum including several dialects, characterized by different traditions but serving as a base for acculturation (Archi 2014, 161, 168). Focusing on some special cases and following these previous studies, more detailed insights will be presented here to contribute to the discussion on the possible integration of the Diyala region into the growing network of kingdoms and cultures at the beginning of written history, that is to say during the Early Dynastic period or Early Bronze Age. The links that have already been underscored by the aforementioned studies will be considered to evaluate how they may set out a wider definition of Gelb’s concept of ‘Kiš Civilization’. Two images from the global iconographic corpus attested at the Diyala are to be scrutinized here: the Boat-god and the figure displayed with head, shoulders, and arms in a frontal position,

Sophie Cluzan from here on in referred to as the naked and curlyhaired hero.1 The choice is based on the assumption that these two figures are meaningful enough to demonstrate how images and symbols can be profitably incorporated into any discussion concerning the definition of a cultural or civilizational area. Furthermore, in a more specific way, this paper aims at challenging Gelb’s statement that the ‘Kiš Civilization’ is of no relevance regarding art and material culture. This will be underlined by the role played by the Diyala within the area of the ‘Kiš Civilization’ in the creation of a new visual concept of power.

Some Improvements on the Data of the Diyala Cylinder Seals Corpus

As a foundation for the discussion, it is worth considering the corpus on which it is based. In 1955, Frankfort’s monograph furnished the highest number of seals retrieved in the course of excavations and for which the exact provenance has been recorded and published. The volume gathers the seals and impressions unearthed at Khafajah, Tell Asmar, Tell Agrab, and Ishchali. The documents have been sorted by site, building or area, and layer as well as by the date of the seal itself as this may differ slightly from the date of the archaeological context. The corpus has been composed of two complementary catalogues. Featuring 1002 seals, the first gathers the vast majority of the finds, each illustrated, while the second puts together 167 seals and impressions of which there is no illustration either due to a poor state of preservation or the absence of a photograph (113 seals and fifty-four impressions: Frankfort 1955, 53–61). Frankfort gives a summary of the data in his table 1 but it is worth recalling that it actually does not include the unillustrated catalogue, nor does it include the seals of a style and context that are not well defined. These choices prevent a complete and exact vision of the number of seals actually retrieved at each of the sites for each period of their occupation (Frankfort 1955, 11).2 However, this situation has been slightly improved by the online publication of the database of the Diyala Project at the Oriental Institute of the University of Many more examples could be worked on to complete this initial overview such as banquet scenes and contest scenes within a syntactic and semantic analysis. 1 

As stated by the author, this table is based on the illustrated seals whose styles are recognizable and whose find-spots are dated. 2 

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Figure 4.1. Early Dynastic seals and seal impressions from the Diyala according to dating of the objects. The table gathers all the occurrences mentioned by Frankfort in his publication, whether illustrated or not. Imported seals are not included in this diagram, nor are seals belonging to the transitional period preceding the Early Dynastic.

Chicago, that provides more information.3 Thus far, of the 167 seals and seal impressions of Frankfort’s unillustrated catalogue, at least forty-six have now been furnished with a photograph or drawing.4 Of course, the remaining discarded seals cannot be incorporated in any precise thematic approach of the iconography, but may be counted and sorted by site, provenance, and date as shown in Fig. 4.1.5 Further references to quantities in this paper will be made according to this data reappraisal.

Two Mythological Figures and their Connection

As previously mentioned, two themes or motifs have been chosen for this study according to their ability to characterize the Diyala region during the Early Dynastic 3 

[accessed 17 September 2021].

Nineteen for Khafajah; eighteen for Tell Asmar; eight for Tell Agrab; one for Ishchali. Unfortunately, the iconography of three of these remains unclear (including one said to show a ‘human prowed boat’: Kh. I 130) and two others were never carved in antiquity. Of the remaining 121 not illustrated, one is said to show a ‘human prowed boat’: Kh. V 56. 4 

This paper will not discuss Early Dynastic subdivisions, so the period is taken as a whole. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that the Boat-god and the naked hero displayed in a frontal position are two figures dating mainly from last part of the Early Dynastic III.

5 

kingdoms and their capacity to help include this area into a wider territorial and cultural approach. Indeed, the Boat-god and the naked and curly-haired hero are two figures known for their highly symbolic value. The former is moreover extremely relevant for confronting the idea Gelb has proposed of a bipolar cultural partition, describing the Mesopotamian world of that time as the ‘Kiš Civilization’ versus the Sumerian World. This paper will argue that the Boat-god is actually a key feature of the Early Dynastic culture of the Diyala and is related to the high-ranking people of this area, about whom otherwise so little is known for the period. Moreover, the frequency of the Boat-god’s appearance in the Diyala as well as in other northern urban centres, such as Mari or Tell Beydar, demonstrates strong cultural links between these centres, and is thus a good candidate to provide a substantial challenge to Gelb’s postulation of a ‘Kiš Civilization’ spreading over centres with no other cultural links than those defined exclusively through linguistic data. Finally, the issue of the first intimate association of the Boat-god and the naked and curly-haired hero during the Early Dynastic period will be explored from a geographical and historical perspective. Indeed, this association of running water and heroism, first proposed by the Diyala, is to be transferred to the Akkadian glyptic to become one of its main visual paradigms of royalty.

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The Boat-God The Boat-God in the Diyala Seals Corpus Among the 1109 seals and seal impressions found in the Diyala, Frankfort identified fifteen seals displaying a Boat-god.6 To this, Amiet added two more seals acknowledged in the group retrieved at Khafajah and an acquisition by the Musées Royaux of Belgium of another seal showing the same creature, supposedly coming from Tell Asmar (Amiet 1980, 474, pl.  108, 1438). This paper adds two more seals to these previous series (Table 4.1).

Table 4.1. Identification and references of the Boat-god according to Frankfort 1955, Amiet 1980, and Cluzan in this paper. Italic numbers refer to Frankfort’s 1955 catalogue, followed by the excavation numbers. * denotes an acquisition, thus not considered in the discussion since its provenance is uncertain (Amiet 1980, 1348). Note that object cards and field registers now available online allowed new identifications. The total is eighteen seals and one seal impression (As. 32:840).

The Boat-god is a crescent-shaped boat whose prow is human-shaped featuring a horned head, indicating divine status (Frankfort 1939, 67–70; 1955, 36–37; Amiet 1980, 177–81). The ship hull is usually rendered as if covered by animal fur, resembling animal depictions in various media of the period. In the Diyala Valley, the epiphany of this boat occurs in three main types of composition, two of which have already been acknowledged by Frankfort and Amiet (Table 4.2).

Frankfort

Amiet

Cluzan

Khafajah

267 – Kh. II 276 270 – Kh. II 99 306 – Kh. IX 136 331 – Kh. III 922 339 – Kh. III 279 354 – Kh. I 142 366 – Kh. IX 92 383 – Kh. VI 68 No – Kh V 56 No – Kh I 130

335 – Kh. III 742 342 – Kh. III 860

Tell Asmar

484 – As. 34:21 499 – As. 33:191 513 – As. 32:840 551 – As. 33:193

1348*

Tell Agrab

895 – Ag. 36:446

495 – As. 32:1115 No – As. 32:182

Table 4.2. Three main types of composition of the Boat-god’s apparition on the seals of the Diyala. As. 32:840 is a seal impression. Alone

With Figures

With Building

Below Frame

Khafajah

267 – Kh. II 276 270 – Kh. II 99 331 – Kh. III 922 339 – Kh. III 279 354 – Kh. I 142 366 – Kh. IX 92 No – Kh. I 130

306 – Kh. IX 136 342 – Kh. III 860 No – Kh V 56

383 – Kh. VI 68

335 – Kh. III 742

Tell Asmar

499 – As. 33:191

484 – As. 34:21 No – As. 32:182

513 – As. 32:840 551 – As. 33:193

495 – As. 32:1115

Tell Agrab

In the first type, eight seals show the creature standing alone embracing the whole length and height of the engraved circumference of the seal (Figs 4.2, 4.3). The anthropomorphic prow holds a paddle to propel the boat in which a passenger also featuring a horned head is usually seated clutching the ship’s steering oar. Associated with this epiphany and displayed around the anthropomorphic ship are a plough, a vase, and a quadruped whose species may vary — lion-shaped, For two of them, an illustration is still missing. Frankfort 1955, 54: Kh. V 56 and Kh. I 130. Nevertheless, based on Frankfort’s reliability they can be incorporated in the following discussion. 6 

895 – Ag. 36:446

goat-shaped, or indistinct. As shown by Frankfort, these three items are not mere ‘filling motifs’ but are to be considered as main components of the depiction of this divine apparition (Frankfort 1939, 68; Amiet 1980, 179). Some subsidiary motifs may also be added to the composition such as, for instance, scorpions. Differences within the scene or details may occur but remain quite rare as the figure is quite standardized despite possible stylistic variations. In nine seals, the second type of composition associates the Boat-god with some seated or standing anthropomorphic figures placed around him (Figs 4.2, 4.3, 4.4). In this series, the figures appear to be intricately linked to the apparition

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Figure 4.2. The Boat-god on the Early Dynastic seals of Khafajah, sorted according to the type of composition. Note that the seals Kh. I 130 and, Kh. V 56 do not appear here as they have no illustration. Seals 1, 2, 4–8: drawings by Amiet 1980, catalogue numbers 1429, 1415, 1421, 1434, 1430, 1433, 1432. Seals 3, 9, 10: drawings by the author.

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Figure 4.3. The Boat-god on the Early Dynastic seals of Tell Asmar, sorted according to the type of composition. Seals 1, 2, 4, 5: drawings by Amiet 1980, catalogue numbers 1431, 1428, 1441, 1443. Seals 3, 6: drawings by the author.

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Figure 4.4. The Boat-god on the Early Dynastic seals of Tell Agrab appears once on top of a ‘building scene’. Drawing by Amiet 1980, catalogue number 1448.

of the Boat-god. Among examples of this second type, there is a series of four seals in which the Boat-god is associated with a complex scene often designated as ‘the building scene’ which Frankfort and Amiet refer to as the ‘building of the ziggurat’ (Frankfort 1955, 39–40; Amiet 1980, 181–86). The third type of compositional scheme is proposed for the first time in this paper. In fact, a close look at Frankfort’s publication revealed the existence of two seals in which the creature can be identified under a blank panel originally intended for an engraved inscription which was not made (Fig. 4.2, 4.3).7 The general layout of this last composition is well known and widespread among Early Dynastic kingdoms. It parts the seal into two different areas with the first devoted to a scene whose elements cover the whole height of the seal and the second divided horizontally in two with an inscription in the upper part and one or more figures in the lower one. These last components, which appear smaller than the rest of the seal’s figures, have often been termed ‘filling motifs’. Such a designation, however, strips them of their possible meaning. In point of fact, a more precise look at several seals constructed according to this compositional scheme and upon which is inscribed the names of officials indicates how this little zone beneath the area of the inscription is not motivated by art or compositional considerations but actually plays a far more important and symbolic function, as the following discussion will demonstrate. In any event, in the present state of the documentation, it can be alleged that the Diyala shows the only two examples of such an association of an inscription — despite being left uninscribed — and the Boat-god. One of them was quoted by Amiet as drawn at a lesser scale in a small register of the seal: Amiet 1980, 179. The other is our new identification. For Frankfort, these two seals show an ‘indistinct object beneath blank inscription panel’: Frankfort 1955, pls 33, 335; 47, 495.

7 

Who Is the Boat-God? Different interpretations have been made of this figure whose divine nature and connections to the cosmic and agricultural worlds have been acknowledged by many authors (e.g. Steinkeller 1992; Collon 1997, 11–12). Although the meaning of the Boat-god is not the topic of this paper, it can be summarized as follows. Frankfort calls it the ‘Sun-god’s boat’ referring to details such as the presence of a scorpion in one example found outside the Diyala and more recent examples of his depiction dating from the Akkadian period in which more details are likely to be available and where in some the divine passenger has rays stretching out from his shoulders (Frankfort 1955, 35–36). Steinkeller (1992, 257) also proposed the identification of a ‘Sun-god’s boat’. Conversely, Amiet (1980, 180) focuses on the passenger’s image, arguing that its numerous variations mean it cannot be attributed to just one specific divine personality. According to Amiet, the passenger’s image more likely illustrates a peculiar conception related to the Semitic areas of the Mesopotamian plain, where it could stand for their respective main god. Concerning the Boat-god himself, Amiet suggests it could be an illustration of Apsû — with his help, the passenger would have been able to travel around the universe (Amiet 1980, 177–81).8 Kantor raises the possibility that the Boat-god could have been equated with Sirsir, Ea’s boat known from later texts (Kantor 1984). Nevertheless, some texts of Abu Şalabikh dating from the Early Dynastic III show that Sirsir was a major deity, a qualification which sheds doubt on the idea that such a major god would have served as a transportation means for another. According to Amiet, in Akkadian times, the passenger is associated with sun emblems as rays and in other seals the Sun-god rises from the earth in front of the Water-god. This drives him to propose the following two associations: the Boat with Apsû and the passenger with the Sun-god travelling around the earth. 8 

54

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Lastly, as shown both by Braun-Holzinger (1993) and Collon (1997), the rays stretching from the shoulders of the Boatgod’s passenger do not automatically constitute a reference to the Sungod as they may equally be attributes of the Moongod. According to Collon (1997, 12), the scene of the Boat-god could actually depict the Moon-god travelling in the sky while the quadruped, which also travels in the same direction, may be interpreted as an image of the Sun-god (Steinkeller 1992, 257). Both heavenly bodies Figure 4.5. The Boat-god’s distribution according to the type of archaeological context in the Diyala. then appear as the succession of day and night, folpreferential link with any specific type of building or lowing a cosmic order which, in turn, provides fertility areas of the settlements, with the exception of his pref9 to the earth. Actually, a closer look at the geographierence for the domestic contexts at Khafajah and Tell cal distribution of the creature over the various zones Agrab and, conversely, palatial at Tell Asmar (Fig. 4.5). of the Near East shows some trends that might be useThirdly, there is no clear correlation between the type ful for its symbolic and historical interpretation. In fact, of composition in which the Boat-god is displayed and as already mentioned by Frankfort (1955, 36) and Amiet the nature of the find-spots. The Boat-god standing (1980, 180), this mythological creature is linked to the alone with his passenger features in both religious and Semitic area of Early Dynastic settlements. Finally, it secular contexts. The same applies to the epiphany of might be important to underline that the Boat-god the boat on top of a ‘building scene’, which is not conis one of the rare depictions of gods known for Early nected to any specific context. Lastly, with the excepDynastic seals. Gods are not common on seals of this tion of one seal retrieved in a tomb at Khafajah, all the period. seals in which the Boat-god is associated with other figures come from domestic contexts. Any reason for this correlation remains unclear, while the Boat-god located The Boat-God in Context beneath a panel left blank for an inscription comes In considering the geographical distribution of the Boateither from a house at Khafajah or from the Northern god over the Diyala and the aforementioned varying Palace at Tell Asmar. types of composition, there appear the following facts. Firstly, in the Diyala, Khafajah is the settlement with the larger number of seals evidencing the epiphany of the divine boat.10 Secondly, the Boat-god does not show any Ristvet proposes drawing a link between the Boat-god and the religious processions mentioned during Early Dynastic times: 2015, 74. Indeed, boats are mentioned in cultic calendars at Early Dynastic Mari, notably when Aštar is supposed to go to or to be taken to the processional boat: see Lecompte forthcoming. 9 

10 

Until the recent discoveries of Tell Beydar, Khafajah remained

the site with the highest number of Boat-gods for the whole Syrian and Mesopotamian alluvial plain. Nowadays, both sites evidence the same amount of Boat-gods. For the glyptic of Tell Beydar, see: Jans & Bretschneider 2011.

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55

Mapping the Boat-God In the Diyala, the Boatgod’s epiphany accounts for 21.4 per cent11 of the Early Dynastic  III seals, an impressive number signifying his importance in the area. 12 Moreover, considering the four main types of scene depicted at the sites of the Diyala, the Boat-god ranks second or even first of their respective corpus (Fig. 4.6). The relative frequency of these scenes, as well as the position of the Boatgod among them, are also to be found outside the Diyala, at Mari. The city of Figure 4.6. Frequency of the main types of scene on Early Dynastic seals of the Diyala and at Mari. the Euphrates, where the The Boat-god stands in the second position at Khafajah and Asmar, in the first at Agrab. Westward, Boat-god is also the most at Mari, he appears in the third row (Parrot 1956, 187–99; 1967, 273–77; 1968, 33–43). prominent mythological figure, displays a proportion also demonstrating his importance.13 Taking into consideration all the areas of the NearEast, Amiet counted around forty-five Early Dynastic occurrences of the Boat-god, of which thirty-four of known provenance. A closer look at the actual data made it possible to correct this result, increasing the number of the Boat-god images with known provenance from thirtyfour to fifty-six.14 Nineteen of these come from the Diyala, fifteen from the Jazira — with three from Tell Brak and twelve from Tell Beydar — seven from Kiš, six from Mari, five from Fara, one from Ur, and two from Susa (Fig. 4.7).15 The Boat-god’s occurrences in the Diyala are all dated of ED III. Seals surely attributed to ED III account for eighty-four examples (this number excludes seal impressions that are sometimes too hard to date), out of which eighteen seals (one impression discarded) display the figure. 11 

In the Diyala as well as everywhere else, the Boat-god never appears on media other than seals. It might be the only important mythological figure that is never displayed elsewhere. 12 

This ratio is based on seals. It excludes seal impressions, as for the Diyala.

13 

According to Collon, Steinkeller counted fifty attestations: Collon 1997, 11. 14 

Interestingly enough, these northern centres share the lionheaded eagle with spread wings, a figure otherwise limited to the south of Mesopotamia.

15 

Figure 4.7. Relative frequency of the Boat-god showing the impor­ tance of three main areas: the Diyala, Kish and Mari, the Jazira.

Going westward, no Boat-god was found at the important kingdom of Ebla although some of the artistic media of this city share iconographic choices and other mythological figures with Mari or the Jazira. This geographical distribution clearly shows that the Boat-god is highly representative of an area that

56 spreads over the Diyala Valley, the middle alluvial plain of Mesopotamia, with above all Kiš and Mari, and the region of the Jazira to the north. This geographical distribution illustrates the links of Early Dynastic Diyala to its powerful neighbouring kingdoms of Kiš and Mari, parts of Gelb’s ‘Kiš Civilization’, as well as with the northern cities of the Jazira that Archi (2014, 161, 168) included in the linguistic continuum he acknowledged in the area just prior to the emergence of Akkad. Even though they were not aware of the recent discoveries made in the Jazira, as mentioned above, this preferential link between the northern areas and the Boat-god was already acknowledged as one of their important cultural features by Frankfort and Amiet. Their ideas are thus entirely supported and even strengthened by the new discoveries made long after both their postulations. Moreover, considering that gods are otherwise not common on Early Dynastic seals, it has to be emphasized that the northern parts of the Mesopotamian plain, defined by Gelb as the place of a civilization around Kiš, have a quite unique relation to god depictions on their seals, a fact that can be interpreted as a strong cultural link.

The Boat-God’s Lifetime The Boat-god is a mythological figure that appears during the Early Dynastic period16 appearing to be developed mostly during its last phase, III.17 However, the Boat-god is present during the following Akkadian period, though far less frequently, before subsequently disappearing from the group of the Mesopotamian mythological creatures.18 When their provenance is known, the last Akkadian appearances of the Boat-god are all situated in the Diyala region and more specifically, at Tell Asmar.

Collon (1997, 12) argues that the theme of a boat carrying a passenger in an environment where some elements point to a divine atmosphere exists as early as the Uruk period. I personally believe that this well-known ancient image has nothing to do with the epiphany of a divine Boat as we understand it during Early Dynastic and Akkadian times.

16 

Again, it is worth recalling the actual difficulty for the exact dating of seals, where they inscribed seals in the names of dated kings: seals are kept over a long time, transferred, looted, and reinscribed. See for instance the seal of Lugalanda reused by Uru-inimgina after it was reinscribed. 17 

During Akkadian time, the Boat-god’s iconography is somehow more detailed. See Frankfort’s catalogue: seals 516, 598, and 621. 18 

Sophie Cluzan Thus, there is little doubt that one of the Boat-god’s areas of predilection, if not the main one, is the Diyala Valley whatever the period of his lifetime may be, Early Dynastic or Akkadian. Moreover, his restricted lifetime is quite unique in the life of Near Eastern mythological creatures, especially for those that have been a major focus of attention. As a matter of fact, the main mythological creatures originating in Early Dynastic times are usually still in use during the subsequent periods. Albeit having gone through some evolutions or slight changes, they traditionally remain part of the cultures that initially produced them. In that sense, the Boat-god is an exception, as is the lion-headed eagle, Imdugud/Anzu, that develops in the same period.19 Aside from the shortness of their lifespan, these two creatures are linked by their competencies. Both are related to water and express its power on earth. The lion-headed eagle is known to be a southern creature that finally spreads to all the northern parts of the alluvial plain, up to the Jazira to the north and to Ebla to the west, albeit with a frequency waning from its area of origin towards its spheres of dissemination. The Boatgod, on the contrary, is a northern figure that spreads to the south, hence waning in the southern extremities.20 The eagle is of aerial nature, bringing the power of water from the air whereas the Boat-god is a terrestrial force bearing water in the ground. In fact, his body is related to the animals of the fields, with hair around his hull, and to snakes, in terms of the general shape of his appearance and animal-headed stern. The snake is a common symbol of terrestrial power, fertility, and water.21

The Boat-God as a Means of Identity Mythological figures can be displayed to show the epiphany of the god they represent but may also be used as symbols referring to the main qualities of the god’s personality. People or groups of people may use these images either to display the patronage of the entity by which they wish to be recognized, or to claim special qualities symbolically represented by the chosen entity. This creature appears to have ceased prior to the Boat-god for, unlike the latter, it seems not to have survived into the Akkadian period. 19 

This assumption is based on his frequency rate in the north paralleled to that of the lion-headed eagle in the south. 20 

21  Admittedly, it is hard to delimit the significance of such figures as the images may indicate several meanings simultaneously. Furthermore, images of mythological figures can be used in ways that do not exclude others.

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57

The seals are linked to personal, communal, or institutional expression and this may be why they offer so many examples of mythological figures and symbols as potential vectors of identities. Numerous examples of this trend exist, and the Early Dynastic period is highly representative of this very phenomenon. Many figures are used in this way in that period, such as the naked curly-haired hero displayed in a frontal position which may refer either to one or to several persons, for instance one of the elders or wise men of ancient times, or to what these persons stand for i.e. wisdom, strength, power, legitimacy, order versus chaos, or royalty. This multidimensional reality and polysemic nature of images and the preferential use that can be made of each of them to express concepts and ideas makes it possible to consider the recurrent image as having a real pivotal function in the cultures that produce and use them. Figure 4.8. The Boat-god beneath a panel left blank In the light of the above, it can be for an inscription. Drawings by the author. argued that a recognition of the special attention paid to some mythological figthe area of the Diyala, however, in this valley the pheures can help in defining the territoriality of cultures. nomenon has a somewhat systematic character. None The frequency of the appearance of the Boat-god in the of the seals found there were ever inscribed. In terms of Diyala makes it very likely it was one of these ethnic or provenance, these uninscribed seals were largely found cultural key features during Early Dynastic times, an in domestic contexts at Khafajah and at Tell Asmar image through which the territory and its related culthough two examples come from the Northern Palace of tural and religious values were expressed. This special the latter site (Frankfort’s catalogue: 495, 502). role can also be deduced from his continuity over time in this very region. During the Akkadian period, the At Tell Agrab the only example was found in a grave Boat-god remains one of the main mythological images and at Ishchali it was retrieved in the Kititum temple. of the Akkadian repertory of the valley. If gods were The figures placed beneath the blank panel constitute then truly and often represented, this god followed his one of the most interesting aspects of this set of seals. way in a very special manner, evidencing the fact that, They largely feature scorpions or plants, respectively over time, he kept his power to express an identity, representative of the animal and the vegetal nature obviously shared, at least during Early Dynastic times, and moreover seem to have been assimilated one to the with what Gelb defined as the ‘Kiš Civilization’ area. other through their general shape (compare Frankfort’s catalogue number 888 (plant) and 320 (scorpion)). No inscribed seals were found in the Diyala among all the Early Dynastic evidence, save for a group of twelve Their symbolic value expressing fertility, or soil and seals in which a blank panel had been prepared but left water, can also be assigned to the Boat-god that occupies uninscribed.22 Such uninscribed seals are not limited to Eight Early Dynastic seals were published by Frankfort (1955) in his illustrated catalogue. Four more seals can be added to this repertory thanks to the online database of the Diyala Project of the 22 

Oriental Institute: Kh.VIII 162; Kh. VIII 30; As. 32: 587. Seal impressions are not considered here but it can be noted that one of them, from Asmar, As. 32:739, shows the same pattern as shown now by the field registration card available at the Online Diyala Database.

58 the same zone on two other seals belonging to the same category of uninscribed documents (Fig. 4.8; Frankfort’s catalogue: 335 from Khafajah and 742 from Tell Asmar). Although Amiet already identified the Boat-god on one of these two seals, the peculiarity of this position for an important divine figure normally displayed at a larger scale was not evaluated by the author. Yet, one cannot help but note that these two seals are the only ones among the twelve seals left uninscribed whose main scenes depict the highly meaningful naked and curlyhaired hero displayed in a frontal position. Thus, even though a strict correlation between the two figures cannot be asserted from only two examples, in the Diyala an actual relation seems to link the apparition of the Boat-god under a panel reserved for an inscription and the presence of this hero in the main scene of the seal. This can be corroborated by the fact that a total of only eight occurrences thus far makes this naked and curlyhaired hero a fairly rare appearance in the glyptic of the Early Dynastic Diyala as a whole.23 As noted earlier, other Near Eastern examples show that during Early Dynastic times the figures chosen to be displayed below the inscription of very high-ranking personage’s seals are usually linked to their owner’s personality. Clear examples of this can be found on the royal seals of the kings of Ur, Meskalamdug and Mesannepada (respectively U. 11152 and U. 13607: Legrain 1934, 340; Burrows 1930, 342). The former implements the naked curly-haired hero, as an image of royalty or power, whereas the latter chooses a circle of four interconnected armed heroes whose endless ring symbolizes the totality, perhaps materializing the idea of the four directions where royalty is provided, a concept also expressed by the inscription of the seal itself, as Mesannepada appears in it under the title of king of Kiš. The choice made of an intimate correlation between the personality of the seal owner and the figure placed under the frame of the inscription can also be understood for the kings from whom more than one seal is known. For instance, two of the three seals of Lugalanda have been designed according to the type of composition that separates the seal into two distinct zones. Both seals display a heroic figure under the inscription: the naked curly-haired hero, that is to say, the royal hero (Allotte de la Fuÿe 1907, 109–20).

Sophie Cluzan To the north, Išqi-Mari, whose iconographic programme as a whole — statue and seals — is of warlike character, chose to place a chariot below the inscription of his two seals, a highly symbolic feature of royalty at war (for the king’s warlike programme shown by his statue and his seals, see Cluzan & Lecompte 2014, 257–60; Beyer 2007, 249–53). Actually, Išqi-Mari’s choice is highly significant as it fits the titles he claims in both inscriptions of his seals: lugal Mari to which he adds ensi Enlil on one of them, the latter being known to have been used by competitive sovereigns during the period of conflict of the emergence of Akkad.24 Naturally, it is also striking to see a royal hero, naked, curly-haired, and displayed in a frontal position, placed just at the side of the seated king of Mari. Išma-ilum’s seal, for its part, shows an interesting use of the same hero for the composition of its main scene while the royal inscription of this prince of Matar (Cluzan & Lecompte 2016, 111 table 1) is supported by the southern image of the lion-headed eagle attacking a reclining human-headed bull (Amiet 1973, catalogue number 202). At Lagaš, Queen Nin-tur had three seals: all of which use the figure of this naked curly-haired hero under or around her royal inscription (Legrain 1934, 352).25 Thus, it can be assumed that a relationship is drawn between the royal person named in the inscription of Early Dynastic royal seals and the symbols that are placed below the frame of the inscription and that are related either to the actual personality of the owner, or to his specific kingdom or royal house, or even to his geographical or ethnic background. Moreover, there is a correlation between the naked and curly-haired hero displayed in the front, representing royalty per se, and these heraldic figures.

The Boat-God as a Means of Identifying High-Ranking or Royal People of the Diyala In the Diyala, a very special status can be assigned to the Boat-god, for apart from being one of the main images of its glyptic, he appears beneath panels for inscriptions Lecompte 2014, 124–25 draws an equivalence between the title ensi-gal Enlil of Išqi-Mari’s statue and the title ensi Enlil inscribed on one of his seals. 24 

The use of the hero characterizes the seal of Queen Barnamtarra too. Although its image does not follow the type of composition divided in two, it displays numerous naked and curly-haired heroes shown in rows along its three registers. This indicates the high correlation on seals between royal status and this hero. 25 

This hero can largely be identified via his frontal position as he is the only male figure to be displayed in this way during Early Dynastic times and onwards: Frankfort’s 1955 catalogue numbers: 245, 335, 353, 370, 495, 924, 757, 535. 23 

4. From the Diyala to Ur, via Mari, Kiš, and the Jazira on the two seals in which the royal hero, otherwise so discrete in the valley, is depicted in the main scene. Therefore, it can be hypothesized that these two seals may have been linked to some very high-ranking people or even to a royal personage or house — if one considers the importance of the Boat-god in this geographical area, where he is undoubtedly part of the cultural identity. Of course, this remains hypothetical as the inscriptions were never engraved, but if one considers that these seals are the only two examples combining a blank panel for an inscription and a naked curly-haired hero in the main iconographic zone, this proposition must surely gain some credit. It would explain, for instance, why the Boat-god plays such a major role in the valley during the Early Dynastic period and why he is already correlated with the royal hero — an association that will be his mark during the Akkadian period.

The Naked and Curly-Haired Hero as a Watery Creature

As seen from many examples, the naked hero with curly hair, drawn in a frontal position is closely connected with the imagery of royal seals. In the Diyala, this figure appears in two types of scene: in contest scenes or alone. In contest scenes, he behaves as he usually does in any Early Dynastic kingdom, fighting against animals, sometimes with other figures. As noted above, he is far less frequent in the Diyala than in the southern parts of the alluvial plain. Nevertheless, in the Diyala, he occasionally appears in a very specific and interesting position — displayed horizontally — which is quite unique. This amazing positioning of the figure is illustrated by two Early Dynastic seals retrieved at Tell Asmar where, though the hero is standing on his feet, the figure is oriented perpendicularly to the seal’s vertical middle axis that is materialized by the perforation of the cylinder (Frankfort 1955, numbers 535, 757). This specific composition is not related to any artistic consideration nor is it due to haphazard choice. On the contrary, this selection is intentional bearing a real and deep meaning as was demonstrated in Mesopotamian archaic and Akkadian seals (Amiet 1980, 149) as well as from Ugarit Late Bronze Age seals (Cluzan 2017, 661–64). Positioned horizontally, the naked and curly-haired hero symbolizes water and its strength, referring to the power of kingship in its dimensions of fertility, abundance, and continuity.26 Thus, this secondary concep26 

Amiet proposed that the Boat-god and the horizontal naked and

59

tion of the royal hero as a watery figure, which develops at least until the end of the second millennium over a wide geographic area and emerges for the first time in the Diyala as well as at Kiš where one example of such a use of the figure was found (Amiet 1980, pl. 98: 1292). Moreover, it is certainly not a coincidence that this conception of a horizontal positioning of the hero arises in the very cultural area where the connection of the Boat-god, a watery and chthonic creature, with the hero, a figure of power and control, emerges for the first time. These horizontal heroes of Tell Asmar, that will be followed by more detailed ones during the Akkadian period,27 are likely to be considered as another expression of the Boat-god, horizontally wandering in the sky of the seals, that is to say — of the world. Thus, the Diyala and the area of Kiš are the places where this very peculiar conception of the hero as a watery creature took place. The link drawn between water and heroic royalty explains why the figure of the royal hero is combined with a Boat-god on the two seals in which the divine ship supports the frame of an inscription.

The Diyala and the Emergence of a Visual Concept of Power

In considering the occurrences of the Boat-god and of the royal hero, one may suggest that the link between the two figures, of power and controlled water, had already been achieved in the area of the Diyala during the Early Dynastic period. From there, it was transmitted to the following period of Akkad and its royal imagery, which emerged in the same geographical area. Moreover, it was also transferred to other areas, paving the way to the well-known combination of the god Enki/ Ea with this hero, the symbol of the god’s power and wisdom on earth and who may be considered to be the king, as the provider of fertility, order, and equilibrium. In fact, as learnt from many examples, ancient people took advantage of the ability of images to reflect more than one reality or idea and in one figure combined curly-haired hero could materialize a unique cosmic entity: Amiet 1980, 180. Personally, I see them as two complementary figures, one of divine nature and the other of heroic and royal essence. Both are, in fact, related to the power of water as a source of life once it is controlled.

During the Akkadian period, some seals show how these horizontal heroes can be combined to form both an aquatic motif as well as a boat, as if they were both. See Amiet 1980, pl. 111: 1478 from Alishar, 1480 from Ur. 27 

60 several concepts and cultural or historical references. Consequently, mythological figures were used and read with a quite conscious knowledge of their polysemy. It is not really surprising that the well-known Akkadian association of royalty, water, hero, and Boatgod occurred in the Diyala during the preceding period, for this valley belongs to the region that witnessed the emergence and ascension of the subsequent Akkadian power. Moreover, the link that can be drawn through the Boat-god between the Diyala and most of the areas bounded by Gelb’s concept shows that this ‘Kiš Civilization’ is a more complete and maybe more complex phenomenon than one that is purely linguistic. In fact, these areas also shared very intimate and important cultural features in terms of their symbolic concept of royalty or power and fertility, which were eventually transmitted to the Akkadian king’s model and from there to the many Near Eastern dynasties onwards. The Diyala is the place where the royal hero became the watery creature. As such, the area is not just an area of transit. It is the centre of the emergence of one of the most important images of kingship, once the naked and curly-haired hero, as a royal reference, became the acolyte of the god Enki/Ea.28 It must be taken into account that this important image was formed in an area sharing it as a cultural key feature with the main centres of the ‘Kiš Civilization’, especially for a period when the kingship of this city was, in reality or at least symbolically, referred to as the royal reference per se and for the period immediately preceding the emergence of Sargon, who claimed to originate from this very city. Moreover, if images of power are considered to be highly representative of the societies and their culture the Boat-god designs a cultural and strong link between the Diyala, Mari, Kiš, and the Jazira although, thus far, it excludes Ebla. Whatever the reason there may be for this last exception, it is worth considering that material culture, which is no less than one of the expressions of culture, notably when it deals with symbols, could be included into the concept of the ‘Kiš Civilization’. Finally, this civilization gave birth to a new type of power, the moment the old Early Dynastic naked and curly-haired hero becomes definitively associated with the running water of the Boat-god. There, by the Diyala …

Akkadian glyptic frequently uses the hero, associated with water, to refer to the fertility of the land provided by the power of the king. Controlling the water reflects the geopolitical power of the sovereign.

28 

Sophie Cluzan

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Works Cited Allotte de la Fuÿe, François-Maurice 1907 ‘Les sceaux de Lougalanda patési de Lagash (Sipourla) et de sa femme Barnamtarra’, Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale 6: 105–25. Amiet, Pierre 1973 Bas-reliefs imaginaires de l’ancien Orient d’après les cachets et les sceaux-cylindres. Musée de la Monnaie, Paris. 1980 La Glyptique mésopotamienne archaïque, 2nd edn. Éditions du CNRS, Paris (1st edn 1961). Archi, Alfonso 2014 ‘La situation géopolitique de la Syrie avant l’expansion d’Akkad’, in Pascal Butterlin, Jean-Claude Margueron, Béatrice Muller, Michel al-Maqdissi, Dominique Beyer & Antoine Cavigneaux (eds), Mari ni Est, ni Ouest (Syria, Supplément 2). Presses de l’Ifpo, Beirut: 161–71. Beyer, Dominique 2007 ‘Les sceaux de Mari au iiie millénaire. Observations sur la documentation ancienne et les données nouvelles des villes I et II’, Akh Purattim 1: 231–60. Braun-Holzinger, Eva-Andrea 1993 ‘Die Ikonographie des Mondgottes in der Glyptik des III. Jahrtausends v. Chr.’, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 83: 119–35. Burrows, Eric 1930 ‘Tablets and Seals-Impressions’, in Charles Leonard Woolley, ‘Excavations at Ur, 1929–30’, Antiquaries Journal 10: 341–43. Cluzan, Sophie 2017 ‘Un monde à l’horizontal dans la glyptique d’Ugarit: une culture ancienne au service de la mythologie et des croyances d’un royaume du Bronze récent’, in Valérie Matoïan & Thomas Römer (eds), Actes du colloque: société et religion à Ougarit (Ugarit-Forschungen 48). Ugarit-Verlag, Münster: 653–73. Cluzan, Sophie & Lecompte, Camille 2014 ‘Les statues inscrites du temple d’Ishtar’, in Sophie Cluzan & Pascal Butterlin (eds), Voués à Ishtar: Syrie, janvier 1934, André Parrot découvre Mari (Guides archéologiques de l’Institut français du Proche-Orient 11). Institut français du Proche-Orient, Beirut: 253–75. 2016 ‘Les sceaux d’Išqi-Mari. Nouvelles perspectives sur l’idéologie royale et la chronologie de Mari’, in Julie Patrier, Philippe Quenet & Pascal Butterlin (eds), Mille et une empreintes: un Alsacien en Orient; mélanges en l’honneur du 65e anniversaire de Dominique Beyer (Subartu 36). Brepols, Turnhout: 109–23. Collon, Dominique 1997 ‘Moon, Boats and Battle’, in Irving Finkel & Markham J. Geller (eds), Sumerian Gods and their Representations (Cuneiform Monograph 7). STYX, Groningen: 11–17. Frankfort, Henri 1939 Cylinder Seals: A Documentary Essay on the Art and Religion of the Ancient Near East. MacMillan, London. 1955 Stratified Cylinder Seals from the Diyala Region (Oriental Institute Publications 72). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Gelb, Ignace J. 1992 ‘Mari and Kiš Civilization’, in Gordon D. Young (ed.), Mari in Retrospect. Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake: 121–202.

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Jans, Greta & Bretschneider, Joachim 2011 Seals and Sealings from Tell Beydar/Nabada (Seasons 1995–2001): A Progress Report (Beydar Monographs 1, Subartu 27). Brepols, Turnhout. Kantor, Helene J. 1984 ‘The Ancestry of the Divine Boat (Sirsir?) of Early Dynastic and Akkadian Glyptic’, Journal of Near Eastern Studies 43: 277–80. Lecompte, Camille 2014 ‘Mari au iiie millénaire à l’époque des cités sumériennes’, in Sophie Cluzan & Pascal Butterlin (eds), Voués à Ishtar: Syrie, janvier 1934, André Parrot découvre Mari (Guides archéologiques de l’Institut français du ProcheOrient 11). Institut français du Proche-Orient, Beirut: 115–27. forthcoming     ‘La vie religieuse à Mari lors de la phase de la Ville II d’après la documentation textuelle’, in Pascal Butterlin (ed.), La vie religieuse à Mari, Ville II. Peters, London. Legrain, Léon 1934 ‘The Cylinder Seals’, in Charles Leonard Woolley, The Royal Cemetery (Ur Excavations 2). Oxford University Press, Oxford: 325–65. Parrot, André 1956 Mission archéologique de Mari, i: Le temple d’Ishtar. Geuthner, Paris. 1967 Mission archéologique de Mari, iii: Les temples d’Ishtarat et de Ninni Zaza. Geuthner, Paris. 1968 Mission archéologique de Mari, iv: Le ‘Trésor’ d’Ur. Geuthner, Paris. Quenet, Philippe 2008 Les échanges du Nord de la Mésopotamie avec ses voisins proche-orientaux au iiie millénaire (ca. 3100–2300 av. J.-C.) (Subartu 22). Brepols, Turnhout. Ristvet, Lauren 2015 Ritual, Performance and Politics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Steinkeller, Piotr 1992 ‘Early Semitic Literature and Third Millennium Seals with Mythological Motifs, Estratto da Literature and Literary Language at Ebla’, Quaterni di Semitistica 18: 243–75. Woolley, Charles Lenoard 1934 The Royal Cemetery (Ur Excavations 2). Oriental Institute, Chicago.

5. A New Text from Tell Sulayma — Diyala Region Ahmed Kamil Mohammed Figure 5.1. Tell Sulayma (Rmaidh 1981, 43, pl. 2).

purchase contracts of fields and they include an oath formula invoking the god Tišpak and the king of Ešnunna, Ibal-pī-El II, plus a date formula belonging to King Ṣillī-Sîn. The text presented in this paper, IM 85444 (Fig. 5.2), belongs to this group, but its subject is a theft from the temple of Šamaš, perpetrated by a man identified in the document as a servant. The text includes a brief date formula mentioning the city of Malgia, i.e. Malgium (Levy 1947, 65: 74), a feature that makes the tablet a very important finding, for it is the first time that this formula is identified in the texts from the Diyala region, even though no mention of any of the kings of Ešnunna is made on it. In 1977, the Iraqi mission that excavated Tell Sulayma found eight tablets on the floor of the first layer of the discovered building, three in room 1 and five in room 2 (Fig. 5.1). All of them, with the exception of one tablet, were severely damaged due to their proximity to the surface of the site, that at the time of the excavations had been used for agriculture. Their texts are mostly Ahmed Kamil Mohammed, former director of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad.

Malgium was the capital of one of the many kingdoms that co-existed in the early Old Babylonian period (Groneberg 1980, 156; see also Jacobsen 1937–1939, 364; AASI 1970, 166; Frayne 1990, 668; Abraham 2008, 29; De Boer 2013, 19–25). The first clear mention of this city dates to its capture by Gungunum, king of Larsa, in the nineteenth year of his reign. According to the ancient evidence, the territory of the kingdom may have extended from the south of the confluence of the Diyala River with the Tigris River in the north to the city of Maškan-šapir (Tell Abu

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 63–71 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126527        BREPOLS

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The Text IM 85444

Obv. 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lo.e. 9 Rev.10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Up.e. 20

Warassa (ir3-sa3) awīl (lu2) I-ba-al-dAdad (iškur) šumšu (mu-ni-im) i-na šu-ur-qi2-im ša dŠamaš (utu) ša Na-bi-dŠamaš (utu) rāb-amurrim (gal-mar-t[u]) iṣ-ba-tu-šu-u2-ma a-na kasap (ku3-babbar) ki-iš-ša-ti-šu 3 šiqil (gin2) kaspam (ku3-babbar) ip-pa-ša[-ar] u3 kaspam (ku3-babbar) m I-ba-al-˻dAdad (iškur)˼ a-n[a Na-bi- Šamaš (utu)] it-t[a-di-in] igi [………………] m [……………….] igi [……………] m [………………] m [………………] m […………………] m Ia-pu[-ḫu xxx] iti ki-is-ki-sum2 mu ma-al-gi-aki m

Translation The servant of Ibal-Adad, named Warassa, was caught looting the (temple) of the god Šamaš, by Nabi-Šamaš, the chief of the Amorites, and for the silver of his acquisitions, 3 shekels of silver, he will be released. Then Ibal-Adad gave the silver to Nabi-Šamaš. (The names of six witnesses are missing). Witness Yapuhu – x, month kiskissum, year of the city of Malgia.

Comments Line 7. Durative tense N, third person singular from pašārum, see CAD P, p. 236. The sign ‘pa’ is slightly damaged on the tablet. Line 18. This name is restored from the written seal impression on the tablet.

al-Dhuari) in the south (Edzard 1957, 159; Kutscher 1987–1990, 300–02). The region under its control can be considered as a buffer zone between two great contemporary powers, Assyria in the north and Larsa in the south. Its location has been more precisely identified thanks to three letters from Mari, which place it between the city of Dêr (Tell al-Aqar) and Babylon (Charpin 2004, 31 n. 19). Yet, the city itself remains undiscovered. In 1929, the Iraq Museum purchased a collection of thirty clay tablets containing loans and receipts of sil-

Figure 5.2. IM 85444. Photos and drawings by the author.

ver, barley, and beer. Although the lot remains unpublished to this date, an examination of the tablets showed that two of them carry date formulae of the reigns of two kings of Ešnunna: Ipiq-Adad II (mu ra-pi2-qu-um indab5, ‘year in which he seized Rāpiqum’, in tablet IM 12265) and Dāduša (mu qa-ba-ra-aki, ‘year of Qabara’, in tablet IM 12264, Fig. 5.3). The collection was found at Tell al-Baghdadya, a site located directly on the right bank of the Tigris River, fifty-five kilometres south of Baghdad (Fig. 5.4). The

5. A New Text from Tell Sulayma — Diyala Region

65 tell is registered in the list of Iraqi archaeo­logical sites (AASI 1970, 166), and its discovery was announced in the official newspaper of the Iraqi government in 1935, but no excavation has yet been conducted at the site. One feels compelled to believe that the site of Tell al-Baghdadya corresponds to the city of Malgium itself, and in this case the finding of the date formulae of IpiqAdad  II and Dāduša would be clear indications that the city of Malgium was under their control. H owe ve r, t h e Wa s i t Inspectorate of Antiquities recently announced that a new archaeo­logical site may be the remains of the city of Malgium (Jawad et al. 2019, 63). The discovery was made during the Inspectorate’s survey of archaeo­l ogical sites. This new site, Tell Yassir, is located about fortythree kilometres south of Tell al-Baghdadya, and about eighteen kilometres from the Tigris River to the south-east (Fig. 5.4). The identification of Tell Yassir and Malgium was made on the basis of a number of bricks found on the surface of the site. These

Figure 5.3. The date formulae in tablets IM 12265 and IM 12264. Drawings by the author.

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Figure 5.4. The location of Tell al-Baghdadya, likely the ancient city of Malgium. Map after an original from https://cosmolearning.org/ images/iraq-archaeological-sites-map-1057/, revised by author.

bricks carry cuneiform inscriptions that, besides mentioning the city of Malgium, add new kings’ names as rulers of the ancient city. The opinion of the Wasit Inspectorate that Tell Yassir corresponds to the city of Malgium is doubtful for two reasons. Firstly, the discovery of the aforementioned bricks is not the result of a proper excavation. The bricks were found scattered on the surface of the site. Furthermore, as they did not mention the name of one king but of several, one must consider they may have been reused in the construction of a building at a later period, having been relocated from another site. At most archaeo­logical sites that have been destroyed or abandoned, local inhabitants reuse bricks to build new structures. The city of Ctesiphon is just such an example, as is the construction of Baghdad by Abu Jaafar Al-Mansour. Another well-known example is the reuse of the bricks of Babylon for the construction of the Al-hindya dam, as well as the majority of the neighbourhoods of the old city of Hilla. The fate of bricks can be altogether different from that of clay tablets, which in general remain at their original sites and are not used in construction elsewhere (although they were frequently reused for local construction or works of repair). The second reason is the position of Tell Yassir in relation to Tell al-Aqar and Babylon. The location of Tell

al-Baghdadya is almost directly between Tell al-Aqar and Babylon, while Tell Yassir is located to the south of the straight line joining Tell al-Aqar and Babylon. If Tell Yassir corresponded to Malgium, this would mean that a commercial convoy would have had to go further south to cross the Tigris and then a little to the north to reach Babylon, while the road from Tell al-Aqar to Babylon, via Tell alBaghdadya, would be almost straight and direct, thus shorter than the other road. As commercial convoys usually take the shortest and more secure route to their destination, Tell al-Baghdadya seems to be a better location for Malgium. At any rate, Tell al-Baghdadya and Tell Yassir are sites where two cities of Malgium’s kingdom flourished, and only future excavations will prove on which site the capital itself was located.

Regarding the kings of Ešnunna, IpiqAdad II came to the throne at an undetermined time, perhaps c.  1862  bce. He was a strong king and the first to adopt the title of ‘lugal’ (Edzard 1957, 162). The borders of the kingdom of Ešnunna were expanded under his rule and, according to texts from Mari, Ipiq-Adad  II’s reign lasted at least thirty-seven years (Charpin 2004, 130). However, his year names are still largely unknown (Sigrist & Damerow 2000, 130). After having consolidated the Diyala region under his authority, he began to engage in military actions outside the lower Diyala region by taking over the city of Arrapha (Charpin 2004, 130) then Mê-Turran (Tell es-Sib and Haddad) (Greengus 1979, 31, no. 40). He then captured Rāpiqum (Frankfort et al. 1940, 127 n. 47; Goetze 1953, 56; Beitzel 1984, 83) and Yablia (Tell Šišīn), the latter having remained under his control for at least two years (Mohammed 2002, 1–10). His reign came to an end c. 1818 bce (Charpin 2004, 389), after the attack by Sîn-iddinam, king of Larsa, on the city of Ešnunna (Goetze 1950, 101). The discovery of the year mentioning the capture of the city of Rāpiqum, presented above in the discussion of the text from Tell al-Baghdadya, resulted in a new year being added to the rule of this king, indicating that he took Malgium first, to secure his southern border against the threat of the kingdom of Larsa, and then proceeded to occupy Rāpiqum and Yablia, to control all the cities along the commercial route on the Euphrates.

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Figure 5.5. Old Babylonian sites in the Hamrin Basin. Map after Mohammed 1992, pl. 41.

Dāduša, son of Ipiq-Adad  II, ascended the throne at an unknown time (Charpin 2004, 389). He was also a powerful king and seeking to secure the southern borders of Ešnunna against the threat of the kingdom of Larsa, he took over the city of Mankisum, a port on the Tigris that became the starting point of the military campaigns of Ešnunna (Greengus 1979, 32 n. 47; Goetze 1953, 56). Sometime later, he married his daughter to the governor of Rāpiqum and established an alliance with him, aiming to ensure his control on the Euphrates (Simmons 1959, 80 n. 5; Leemans 1960, 180). He then crept north to take over the city of Ekallātum (Tulul al-Haikal), which belonged to the Assyrians, but ended up reaching an agreement with them permitting him to occupy the town of Qabara on the eastern bank of the Lower Zab River (Edzard 1957, 165 n. 890; Eidem 1985, 83, 87–88). Later, however, he had to leave the city to Šamšī-Adad I, king of Assyria. Instead of a share of the booty, he recorded his victory on an obelisk (Ismail 1987, 302). The rule of Dāduša ended in c. 1779 bce, after the Assyrian campaign against Ešnunna (Charpin 2004, 389). Thus, the text of Tell al-Baghdadya might indicate that he took over the city of Malgium as well, and in this way added an additional year to Dāduša’s reign. As indicated above, there is some difficulty in knowing to which king the year name of Tell Sulayma belongs: Ipiq-Adad II or Dāduša or even perhaps Ibalpī-El II? Ipiq-Adad II and Dāduša were powerful kings and engaged in several military movements in the south, east, and north of the kingdom of Ešnunna. It is clear that their priorities were to secure the southern

borders of the domain against the danger of the kingdom of Larsa and to protect the commercial route that went along the Euphrates River. However, it is thought the year name of the Tell Sulayma tablet belongs to Dāduša, due to the apparent unity of the group of tablets in relation to their find-spot and dates: the eight texts found in the site were almost in one spot, within one layer; and the other date formulae found in these texts (to the reign of Ibal-pī-El II and Ṣillī-Sîn, as explained above) point to a specific moment in the chrono­logy of the kings of Ešnunna that is closer to Dāduša’s reign. Ipal-pī-El II did not conduct campaigns against the south, and although he participated with Šamšī-Adad I, king of Assyria and Hammu-rabi, king of Babylon in a campaign against Malgium, his role was secondary (Bryce 2009, 441). Tell Sulayma was excavated between 1977 and 1984 by three Iraqi missions and it was the largest site of the Old Babylonian period in the Hamrin Basin (Fig. 5.5). Five stratigraphic layers were identified, of which the first and the second dated to the Old Babylonian period, while the others, more ancient, dated to the Old Akkadian and Early Dynastic periods (Rmaidh 1984, 43–54; Rmaidh & Shaker 1979, 420–27). Based on the Akkadian texts discovered in the site, its ancient name was believed to be Awal. This was reinforced by the fact that the texts from Tell Sulayma constitute, to date, the oldest known reference to this city (Rasheed 1981, 9), which had appeared previously in only three texts

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Figure 5.6. Obverse of tablet IM 121115 from Mê-Turran (Tell es-Sib and Tell Haddad) with a list of workers from the city of Bater, photograph and drawing (Mohammed 2012, 83–96).

from the Diyala region, that is to say two from Ishchali and one from Ešnunna (Tell Asmar) (Greengus 1979, 97; Frankfort et al. 1940, 125 n. 43). However, an analysis of some texts from Tell es-Sib and Haddad referring to a city named Bater may offer a different conclusion. One of them, IM 121115 (Fig. 5.6), includes a list containing the names of one hundred and fifty-two workers with the names of their fathers, all of them from the city of Bater (Mohammed 2012, 83–96). The name Bater, or Batir, appeared since the Early Dynastic period in the form of Badar or Madar (Frayne 1990, 701). In the Akkadian period, this name was mentioned in a letter recording a purchase of a field in that city (al-Rawi 1992, 180–85), as well as in the Akkadian texts from Tell Sulayma (Rasheed 1981, 4). In addition, the name of the goddess Batiritum was mentioned on an impression of

a cylinder seal from Tell Sulayma and dated to the Late Akkadian period (al-Gailani-Werr 1982, 80 fig. 41). The name of this goddess was first mentioned when she was described as the Lady of Bater in an inscription of AnuBanini, king of the Lulubians, on the front of a mountain near the city of Serbil Zahab in Iran (Klengel 1987–1990, 164–68). Her temple was mentioned on a brick found in the second layer of Tell Sulayma, dated to the Old Babylonian period (Frayne 1990, 702; George 1993, 163 n. 1287). It is also attested in an omen from Tell es-Sib (al-Rawi 1994, 39 n. 5) and in a trial from Tell Haddad, in which two people accused of stealing from a barley storehouse were convicted in the name of the goddesses Ṧarratum and Bateritum (Mohammed 1992, 43 text 11). The text of the list of workers sent from Batir to Mê-Turran and the text of the trial, as well as the other

5. A New Text from Tell Sulayma — Diyala Region texts, indicate a close link between these two cities implying they must have been close to each other geographically. Among the sites in the Hamrin with layers dating to the Old Babylonian period, Tell Sulayma is the one located the nearest (six kilometres to the east across the Diyala River) to Tell es-Sib and Haddad, that is to say, to the ancient Mê-Turran. Aside from which, the city of Awal is mentioned in the Akkadian texts of Tell Sulayma, but not in the texts of Tell es-Sib and Haddad. On the other hand, however, the ancient city of Batir had been mentioned since the Early Dynastic period. In putting these pieces together, it is now believed that the ancient name of Tell Sulayma is Batir rather than Awal. The latter must be searched for elsewhere, perhaps a little further to the north-east, in the area around the modern city of Qara Teppa.

Conclusion

The aim of this paper was to present an analytical study of an as yet unpublished cuneiform text found by the Iraqi mission in Tell Sulayma, in the Diyala region in 1977. The importance of this text comes mainly from a new date formula contained in it. This date formula probably belongs to the time of Dāduša, king of Ešnunna, and it mentions the city of Malgium, capital of the kingdom of the same name. It must, therefore, be taken into account in determining the location of Malgium, which remains a subject of discussion. Comparing the date formula with those from other texts obtained by the Iraq Museum in 1929, suggests that Tell al-Baghdadya could be the remains of Malgium. At the same time, the Archaeo­logical Inspectorate of Wasit believes that Tell Yassir, which has been recently surveyed, is the location of Malgium. As, to date, neither site has been fully excavated the suggestion here is that it is not possible to confirm with exactitude which of the two sites could have been Malgium. As for Tell Sulayma, it is believed that the site’s ancient name was Batir, on the basis of an analysis of city names occurring beyond and within the Diyala region, especially in texts from Tell es-Sib and Haddad. As previous studies considered its ancient name to be Awal, the conclusions of this paper recommend searching for the city bearing this name elsewhere, before a more solid verdict can be reached.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the late Dr Bahija Khalil Ismail, the former director of the Iraq Museum, who granted me the study and publication rights of all the Old Babylonian Tell Sulayma texts. I  also warmly thank Professor Farouk N. H. al-Rawi for his advice.

Abbreviations AASI CAD IM

JCS

Atlas of Archaeo­logical Sites in Iraq (in Arabic). Gen­ eral Directorate of Antiquities, Baghdad, 1970. The Assyrian Dictionary of the University of Chicago. Oriental Institute, Chicago, 1956–2010. Iraq Museum (Baghdad).

Journal of Cuneiform Studies (New Haven).

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Works Cited Abraham, Kathleen 2008 ‘New Evidence for Warad-Sîn’s Mu-Malgium-Basig (“The Destruction of Malgium”) Year Name’, Revue d’assyrio­logie et d’archéo­logie orientale 102: 27–38. al-Gailani-Werr, Lamia; Shakir, Burhan & Salman, Salah 1982 ‘Catalogue of the Cylinder Seals from Tell Suliemeh – Himrin’, Sumer 38: 68–88. al-Rawi, Farouk N. H. 1992 ‘Two Old Akkadian Letters Concerning the Offices of Kala’um and nārum’, Zeitschrift für Assyrio­logy 82: 180–85. 1994 ‘Texts from Tell Haddad and Elsewhere’, Iraq 56: 35–43. Beitzel, Barry J. 1984 ‘Išme-Dagan’s Military Actions in the Jezirah: A Geographical Study’, Iraq 46: 29–42. Boer, Rients de. 2013 ‘An Early Old Babylonian Archive from the Kingdom of Malgium?’, Journal asiatique 301/1: 19–25. Bryce, Trevor 2009 The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. Routledge, London. Charpin, Dominique 2004 ‘Histoire Politique du Proche-Orient Amorrite (2002–1595)’, in Dominique Charpin, Dietz Otto Edzard & Marten Stol, Mesopotamien: Die altbabylonische Zeit (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 160/4). Academic Press, Fribourg: 641–975. Edzard, Dietz O. 1957 Die zweite Zwischenzeit Babyloniens. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Eidem, Jesper 1985 ‘News from the Eastern Front: The Evidence from Tellal-Rimah’, Iraq 47: 42–49. Frankfort, Henri; Lloyd, Seton & Jacobsen, Thorkild 1940 The Gimilsin Temple and the Palace of the Rulers at Tell Asmar (Oriental Institute Publications 43). The University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Frayne, Douglas R. 1990 Old Babylonian Period (2003–1595  bc) (The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods 4). University of Toronto Press, Toronto. George, Andrew R. 1993 House Most High: The Temples of Ancient Mesopotamia (Mesopotamian Civilizations 5). Eisenbrauns, Winona Lake. Goetze, Albrecht 1950 ‘Sîn-iddinam of Larsa: New Tablets from his Reign’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 4: 83–118. 1953 ‘An Old Babylonian Itinerary’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 7: 51–72. Greengus, Samuel 1979 Old Babylonian Tablets from Ishchali and Vicinity. Nederlands Historisch-Archaeo­logisch Instituut te Istanbul, Leiden.

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Groneberg, Brigitte 1980 Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der altbabylonischen Zeit (Répertoire géographique des textes cunéiformes 3). Reichert, Wiesbaden. Ismail, B. Khalil 1986 ‘Eine Siegesstele des Konigs daduša von Ešnunna’, Innsbrucker Beitrage zur Kulturwissenschaft 24: 105–08. Jacobsen, Thorkild 1937–1939     ‘The Inscription of Takil-ili-su of Malgium’, Archiv für Orientforschung 12: 363–66. Jawad, Ahmed Ali; Abd Al-Rezaq; Nasir, Ali Jabarat & As’id, Ahmed Abbas 2019 ‘Discovery of the Location of the City of Malgium at Tell Yasir’, Sumer 65: 63–91. Jawad, Ahmed Ali; Abd Al-Rezaq; Nasir, Ali Jabarat; As’id, Ahmed Abbas & De Boer, Rients 2020 ‘The Discovery of the Location of Malgium (Tell Yassir)’, JCS 72: 65–86. Klengel, Horst 1987–1990     ‘Lullu(bum)’, in Erich Ebelin & Bruno Meisser (eds), Reallexikon der Assyrio­logy und vorderasiatischen Archäo­logie, vii. De Gruyter, Berlin: 164–68. Kutscher, Raphael 1987–1990     ‘Malgium’, in Erich Ebelin & Bruno Meisser (eds), Reallexikon der Assyrio­logy und vorderasiatischen Archäo­logie, vii. De Gruyter, Berlin: 300–04. Leemans, Wilhelmus F. 1960 Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period as Revealed by Texts from Southern Mesopotamia (Studia et documenta ad iura Orientis antiqui pertinentia 6). Brill, Leiden. Levy, Selim J. 1947 ‘Harmal Geographical List’, Sumer 3: 50–83. Mohammed, Ahmad K. 1992 Old Babylonian Cuneiform Texts from the Hamrin Basin: Tell Haddad (Edubba 1). Nabu, London. 2002 ‘Texts from Šišīn’, Akkadica 123: 1–10. 2012 ‘List of Workers from Meturran’, Athar Al-Rafedain 1: 83–96 (in Arabic). Rasheed, Fauzi 1981 The Oldest Cuneiform Inscriptions Discovered in Hamrin Dam Basin (Hamrin 4) (in Arabic). The Organization of Antiquities & Heritage, Baghdad. Rmaidh, Salah S. 1984 ‘The Tell Sleima Excavations (Second Season)’, Sumer 40: 43–54 (in Arabic). Rmaidh, Salah Salman & Shaker, Burhan. 1979 ‘Excavations of Tell Sulaima’, Sumer 35: 420–27 (in Arabic). Sigrist, Marcel & Damerow, Peter 2000 Mesopotamian Year Names, Neo-Sumerian and Old Babylonian Date Formulae. Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, Los Angeles [accessed 1 August 2021]. Simmons, Stephen D. 1959 ‘Early Old Babylonian Tablets from Harmal and Elsewhere’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 13: 71–93.

6. The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Early Old Babylonian Trade Networks: A View from Sippar Rients de Boer

Trade was a necessity for the people living in ancient Mesopotamia. The reason for this was simple: the Euphrates and Tigris flood plains did not provide them with all necessary or useful natural resources. Specifically, the resources not locally available were metals (silver, gold, tin, copper), good timber, stone, and (semi-)precious stones (lapis lazuli, carnelian, etc.). To pay for these goods they mostly traded agricultural products such as vegetable oils and products from animal husbandry like wool and leather items. Mesopotamia was surrounded by potential trade partners: the Levantine coast to the west, Anatolia to the north, the Persian Gulf to the south, and the Zagros Mountains to the east. As such, Mesopotamia was also an intermediary for trade between these areas. One of the most important trade routes ran through the Diyala region, thus connecting Mesopotamia and the Zagros. This contribution assesses the textual evidence concerning trade with and through the Diyala region from the viewpoint of a trading house from Sippar, the socalled ‘TIM 7 organization’, which operated in the early Old Babylonian period c. 1880 bce.

Trade and Trade Routes through the Diyala Region

The Zagros Mountains in western Iran are a formidable barrier for anyone wanting to cross them. There are only a few places where one can cross the mountains into Mesopotamia (see Fig. 6.1).1 There is a northern route Rients de Boer ([email protected]) studied Assyrio­logy in Groningen, Leiden, and Paris. He has taught in Leiden and Amsterdam and now works at the Leiden Faculty of Archaeo­logy.

The northernmost route along the Great Zab, and the maritime trade through Ur are not taken into account due to the focus on the Diyala in this contribution.

1 

that passes along Šušarra (Tell Shemshara) following the Little Zab into northern Mesopotamia. A southern route where some of the Zagros trade routes first coalesce at Susa; from there, the route crosses either the southern marshes to Girsu and Lagaš, or runs from Susa along the Zagros foothills towards Dêr. From Dêr the route either continues to Malgium, Iri-sagrig, or the Diyala region. Lastly, there is a route through the middle, either following the entire Diyala River Basin through part of the Zagros, or joining up with the Diyala Valley from the Zagros gates. This last route was used frequently in antiquity and is sometimes called the ‘Great Khorasan Route’. In addition, a branch of the medieval Silk Road also followed its traces. The Zagros gates are an important point at which to enter the Zagros and are the site of a number of rock reliefs close to the modern town of Sarpol-e-Zahab (Börker-Klahn 1982, 45–47; BraunHolzinger 2007, 149–52, 168–69). Coming from eastern Iran the traveller passes through modern Hamadan and Kermanshah until she/he reaches Eslamabad-e-Gharb, which has an important tell in its centre called Chogha Gavaneh, from which the route continues towards the Zagros gates. The Diyala route passes through the Hamrin Basin (now flooded for the construction of the Hamrin dam), which is one of the only ways to cross the last western ripple of the Zagros Mountains, the Jebel Hamrin. After this, one is in the lower Diyala region and Mesopotamia proper. During the Old Babylonian period (c. 2003–1595 bce), much of this region was controlled by the kingdom of Ešnunna until its demise at the hands of Elam in the 1760s. However, Ešnunna was not always in complete political control of the Diyala Valley, specifically its upper region, i.e. the Hamrin Basin and the northern area beyond, first known as Simurrum (Frayne 2009–2011) and later as Ida-maraṣ (according to Guichard 2015, it is to be distinguished from the better-

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 73–82 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126528        BREPOLS

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Rients de Boer

Figure 6.1. Main trade routes from the Zagros Mountains into Mesopotamia. Map by M. Sauvage and R. de Boer.

known Ida-maraṣ in the Habur Triangle in northern Syria). Together with Susa in the south, Ešnunna was the gatekeeper for almost all Zagros trade into southern Mesopotamia. Whoever controlled Ešnunna controlled a large part of the flow of goods in and out of Mesopotamia. It comes as no surprise that the main political and military forces in the Zagros Mountains at the time were often involved in Ešnunnean politics (Vallat 1996, and most recently Durand 2013). After the fall of the Ur III empire around 2003 bce, it was the Elamite Šimaški confederation (based in the Zagros Mountains) that influenced

Ešnunna.2 As seen, for example, by the Elamite names of two early Ešnunna rulers: Kirikiri and Bil(a)lama. The latter even married his daughter to the Šimaški ruler Tan-ruhuratir (De Boer 2014, 170–74). Later it was the Elamite Sukkalmah-dynasty that meddled in Ešnunna’s affairs by murdering its royal house and usurping power in 1765 bce (Durand 2013 and Joannès 1991).

On the difficulty of establishing the sequence of Šimaški rulers, see Glassner 2013. For more on the relation between Elam and Ešnunna, see Peyronel 2013.

2 

6. The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Early Old Babylonian Trade Networks

Textual Sources for Trade through the Diyala Region

The published early Old Babylonian cuneiform texts from the Diyala region are not very informative on trade (for the sources see De Boer 2014, 190–200). In addition, large groups of texts are still unpublished, such as the texts found by the Oriental Institute expedition in the 1930s at Ešnunna3 as well as the majority of texts from Mê-Turran and Uzarlulu preserved in the Iraq Museum. Nevertheless, a few observations can be made: ২ Choga Govaneh, a tell in the current city of Eslamabad-e-Gharb in the Zagros Mountains, must have been an important trading post on the way to the kingdom of Ešnunna. A  group of Old Babylonian texts found there point to the influence of Ešnunna through the usage of its month names and orthography (Abdi & Beckman 2007, 48). However, none of these texts deal directly with trade. ২ An Ešnunna merchant overseer (ugula dam-gar3), Būr-Sîn, son of Ibbi-Tišpak, is known from an archive from Nērebtum (the Būr-Sîn/Ilšu-nāṣir archive, see De Boer 2014, 198). He is referred to on his seal as a servant of Ipiq-Adad II. As Charpin 2018 has shown, it was current practice for merchant overseers to be defined as a servant of the incumbent ruler. In the same archive we find the merchant (lu2? dam-gar3) Sîn-rabi (TJDB pl.  22 (MAH 16163:1), time of Ibal- pī-El II). ২ Other merchants often crop up in Diyala texts, but they are only known by their names and titles and nothing is known of their activities. For instance the Nūr-Šamaš archive mentions several merchants (see De Boer 2014, 200): Bēlšunu (TIM 3 22: 5, time of Sîn-abūšu, lu2 ˹dam-gar3!˺), Ilšu-ibbīšu (TIM 3 12: 17, time of Sîn-abūšu), and Šamašgāmil (TIM 3 75: 20, undated). The archive of the Sîn temple from Tuttub (De Boer 2014, 199) refers to another merchant overseer (ugula dam-gar3): Enlil-nada (JCS 9 p. 117 no. 98: 9’, undated), as well as to the merchants Birtinum (JCS 9 p. 114 no. 86: 3’, undated), Maṣiam-ilī (JCS 9 p. 86 no. 46: 6’, mu bad3 hu-ri-ib-šum ba-dim2), and Rīm-Aya (JCS 9 p. 79 no. 29: 13, time of Hammi-dušur). An overview of the merchants from Šaduppûm is given by Hussein (2009, 40–41).

75

For useful textual information on trade through the Diyala region one is dependent on texts from other sites. Mari has yielded interesting information on the trade of tin through the Diyala (Joannès 1991) and lapis lazuli from Susa (Guichard 1996). Of the many Larsa texts, the work done by Leemans on trade between Larsa, Ešnunna, and Susa (Leemans 1960, 57–84; Leemans 1968) merits mention. A group of letters kept in Chicago and Baghdad sent by Larsa merchants in the kingdom of Ešnunna deals with trade and other official business.4 The Old Assyrian archives from Kültepe, ancient Kaneš, are less explicit, as not a single city from the Diyala is ever mentioned in the thousands of published texts. Nonetheless, ‘Akkadians’ are mentioned as a sort of catch-all term for people from middle and southern Iraq (Veenhof 2008, 96–98). Despite this textual obscurity, Ešnunna and the Diyala region must have been important trading partners with Aššur. After this short overview on trade in the Diyala, the focus will be on an archive that can yield significant information on early Old Babylonian trade, the so-called ‘TIM 7 organization’.

The TIM 7 Organization

In 1941, the famous Iraqi archaeo­logist Taha Baqir excavated at Tell ed-Der, ancient Sippar-Amnānum (Baqir & Mustafa 1945). The team found a group of Old Babylonian buildings with some 315 texts on the eastern part of the site. Among these texts there was a late Old Babylonian (from the time of Samsu-iluna onwards) and an early Old Babylonian group. The latter group contained letters, economic texts, administrative documents, and school texts. The economic and administrative were all edited by Edzard in 1970, while the copies (also of the school texts) appeared as Texts in the Iraq Museum 7 (TIM 7) in 1971 by the same author. Goddeeris (2002, 169) coined the neutral term ‘TIM 7 organization’ to refer to the early Old Babylonian group of texts found at Tell edDer/Sippar-Amnānum and so it will be referred to here. The letters of the ‘TIM 7 organization’ were not studied or published by Edzard. ‘Al-Adhami studied them in his 1971 PhD thesis, and had published a few of the letters previously published in 1967. These letters are edited anew in De Boer 2021, and will be referred to under the siglum IPLA, which stands for ‘Ikūn-pîša Letter Archive’, after its main protagonist.5 This group still calls out for serious study, in the meantime one can consult Charpin 1983–1984, 104–06.

4 

Some of the more interesting texts and information have been published by Gelb 1968, Whiting 1977a, 1977b, 1987a, and 1987b. A full publication of the Ešnunna texts is still pending.

3 

The reader is referred to De Boer 2021 for more detailed information on the archive, but the most useful points for the current 5 

76 There are c. 265 texts belonging to the ‘TIM 7 organization’, fifty-six of which are letters. The texts from the archive can be dated between c. 1885 and 1830 bce, however the letters seem to date mostly to the period of c. 1885–1880 bce. They document a time in which Sumuabum held sway over a group of Amorite tribal leaders. These men were able to seize power in a number of cities in the lower Diyala region and northern Babylonia (De Boer 2018). The people behind the ‘TIM 7 organization’ seem to be an extended family or group of families involved in a range of activities such as providing credit, agriculture, production of cloths and other items, processing of metals, and long-distance trade. The ‘TIM 7 organization’ was part of an international trade network and SipparAmnānum, being close to both the Euphrates and the Tigris, was perfectly located for trade. As such, it was at the crossroads of at least three major trade routes: from the Diyala to the west and the two fluvial routes following the Euphrates and Tigris. The ‘TIM 7 organization’ used diplomacy to safeguard its trade routes and had its own agents at Mari and in the Diyala to conduct business. The trade was organized along family lines and the ‘TIM 7 organization’ was part of the same Near Eastern trade networks as the Old Assyrian traders (Veenhof 2008, 79–90).

Diplomacy and Middlemen

At the time when the (IPLA) letters from the ‘TIM 7 organization’ were written, Ešnunna had not yet conquered the entire Diyala region. Ešnunna is not mentioned once in ‘TIM 7 organization’ documents, probably because there was a buffer of lower Diyala polities between Ešnunna and Sippar ruled by men from Sumuabum’s entourage. It is with these men that the ‘TIM 7 organization’ dealt. The letters specifically mention Sumun-abi-yarim and Mašparum, whose exact seats of power are still unknown (on these rulers: De Boer 2014, 203 and 208–10). In addition, there is frequent mention of the šakkanakkum ‘governor’ of the town of Išīm-Šulgi, which is also located in the Diyala. A group of letters, IPLA 1–6 and 9 (IM 49225, IM 49221, IM 49543+IM49238, IM 49219, IM 49240, IM 49274, IM 49534), dealing with the problems surrounding the conclusion of a treaty, was sent by the ‘TIM 7 organization’ agent Ilum-ma to Ikūn-pîša. The Sippar ‘petty king’ Ilum-ma-Ila is somehow involved in all of these dealings. In addition, IPLA contribution have been reiterated below.

Rients de Boer 7 and 18 (IM 49222 and IM 49537) talk about bribes that were paid, or needed to be paid, to Sumu-abum, Sumula-El, and Immerum (another Sippar ‘petty king’). This all leads to the conclusion that the ‘TIM 7 organization’ relied on good relations with the Amorite rulers in their vicinity to operate their various businesses which included trade with the Diyala. The point here is that the organization did not apparently trade directly with Ešnunna, but through middlemen in the lower Diyala region. Other early Old Babylonian texts from Sippar perhaps confirm this point: at least two merchant families, originally from the lower Diyala, had settled in Sippar and conducted business with trading partners in the Diyala. There is the family of Puzur-Akšak, originally from Šadlaš (Goddeeris 2002, 135–40, texts dated between Apil-Sîn and Hammu-rabi). His children Lamassī and Erīb-Sîn traded with the Diyala and one of their partners was an Ešnunnean called Ibni-Tišpak, who also had dealings with Aššur.6 The Erra-gāmil family, another Šadlaš family, also lived in Sippar. Erragāmil was a business partner of the Puzur-Akšak family. Direct trade relations with Ešnunna only seem to start after Ešnunna had unified the lower Diyala region.

Cities from the Diyala Mentioned in ‘TIM 7 Organization’ Texts

Below follows the enumeration of all Diyala towns mentioned in the TIM 7 texts, first the letters: ২ IPLA 21 (IM 49224) mentions the town Lasimi.7 ২ IPLA 24 (IM 49253) mentions Akšak as a place to buy carnelian. Administrative texts: ২ TIM 7 135: 5’–6’; in an account of barley: ‘when you have returned here from Akšak’. ২ TIM 7 152: 12 and TIM 7 157: 15; flour is dispensed ‘to Akšak’. ২ TIM 7 154: 7–8; in an account of barley and flour: ‘when the men from Šadlaš’. 6 

CT 8 37b (probably Hammurabi 1), AbB 2 107.

This town’s location in the Diyala is probable, but not certain. RGTC 3: 152 only mentions one town called Lasumi, which is attested in texts from Nērebtum. A town called Lašimi occurs in the Harmal Geographic List; MSL 11: 58: 100; la-ši-miki and p. 104: 270; kaš4ki (= lāsimum). 7 

6. The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Early Old Babylonian Trade Networks ২ TIM 7 160: 8’–10’; in an account of barley and flour: ‘all this, when Šu-Sîn, son of Ṭabâya, and the men from “Nerebtani” (perhaps Nērebtum?) were staying’.

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২ TIM 7 196 is a text similar to 195, with again large amounts of copper and silver. ২ TIM 7 197 is a damaged tablet enumerating cauldrons (ruqqum).

২ TIM 7 198 is a unique text in the corpus dealing with the production and export of ceramics. The ceramics (unknown úr × gar.bi vessels) were produced in at least ten ovens and were exported to Transtigridian Dêr and Akšak (Edzard 1970, 192–93 with Sallaberger 1996, 17).

The letters are very informative about the copper and tin trade, even though the amounts mentioned are relatively small. IPLA 37 (IM 52834) was written by ‘TIM 7 organization’ agent Nūr-Sîn to Arwium and Girni-isa:10

As we can see, Akšak, an as of yet unlocalized/uncharted town in the lower Diyala, is mentioned often and for this reason seems to have maintained close relations with Sippar throughout the Old Babylonian period. This is reflected mostly in the many Sippar personal names with Akšak as a theophoric element such Akšak-abī ‘Akšak is my father’ and the above-mentioned PuzurAkšak ‘Protection of Akšak’ (De Boer 2014, 210–12).

Dilmunite copper at 85 shekels (and) a packet load of tin at 11 shekels of tin (per shekel of silver). 11 The departure of the caravan is imminent.

The Trade in Metals by the ‘TIM 7 Organization’

The organization also traded and processed metals. Silver is ubiquitous in the ‘TIM 7 organization’ texts and a common means of payment, so the focus here will be instead on other metals mentioned, most notably copper and tin. The occurrences are:8 ২ TIM 7 190 is an Old Assyrian document written in Aššur; it deals with amounts of copper that were put together by a number of men as merchandise (bābtum) in Aššur. None of the men can, as of yet, be connected to the ‘TIM 7 organization’ (Leemans 1960, 101–02).

1–3 Speak to Arwium and Girni-isa, thus (says) NūrSîn. 4 I am well 5 and my merchandise is well. 6 I am staying in Mari. 7–8 My merchandise that is approaching by boat is (also) well. 9–10 (The prices are here:)

This excerpt shows that the ‘TIM 7 organization’ traded copper and tin with Mari. Moreover, the copper seems to come from Dilmun, or it is of ‘Dilmun quality’ (Reiter 1997, 152–68). It is not known whether the boat arriving at Mari is travelling up- or downstream. The word šuqlum in line 10 is translated as ‘packet load’ because it is mentioned with copper and tin (Reiter 1997, 176). They are probably referring to the prices for copper and tin: 85 shekels of Dilmun copper for 1 shekel of silver and 11 shekels of tin for 1 shekel of silver. Another informative letter is IPLA 40 (IM 49305), written by the otherwise unknown Sîn-imittī to Elali and Ur-sig,11 two men that must have worked for the ‘TIM 7 organization’:12 1–4 Speak to Elali and Ur-Sig, thus (says) Sîn-imittī. 5 78 shekels of copper per (shekel of silver), 6 18 shekels of tin per (shekel of silver), 7–8 90 shekels of Diniktum? wool per (shekel of silver),

২ TIM 7 191 and 192 are short memorandums concerning copper. ২ TIM 7 193 and 194 deal with large amounts of an unspecified metal. ২ TIM 7 195 is an account with large amounts of copper (up to a total of more than one hundred talents) and silver. Tin is also mentioned in line 2: 11 gin2 ku3-bi an-na ‘11 shekels is its worth in tin’, meaning that an amount of tin is worth 11 shekels of silver.9

8 

Collations of these text are in Reiter 1997, Anhang II, 78*–79*.

The collation by Reiter 1997, Anhang II, 78* gives the reading of 11 shekels. 9 

IPLA 37 (IM 52834), 1 a-na ar-wi-um 2 u3 gir3-ni-sa3 qi2-bi-ma 3 um-ma nu-ur2-den-zu 4 ša-al-ma-a-ku 5 u3 te-er-ti ša-al-ma-a[t] 6 i-na ma-riki wa-aš-ba-a-[ku] 7 te-er-˹ti˺ ša gišma2 8 i-ṭe4-ḫi-am ša-al-ma-˹at˺ 9 1 ⅓ ma-na 5 gin2-ta urudu tilmun-n[a] 10 ˹11˺ gin2-ta an-na šu-uq-l[um] 11 [wa-ṣi2 ḫ]a-ra-ni-im qe2-ru-ub. 10 

Only Ur-sig is attested in another text: in TIM 7 106: 3’ he delivers a garment.

11 

IPLA 40 (IM 49305): 1 a-na e-la-li 2 u3 ur-sig5 3 qi2-bi-ma 4 um-ma denzu-i–mi-/ti-ma 5 1 ma-˹na˺ 18 gin2-ta urudu 6 18 gin2-ta an-na 7 1 ½ ma-na-ta sig2 8 di-in-˹ki˺-a-tum 9 1 ⅔ ma-˹na˺-ta sig2 10 ra?-ba-tum 11 2 ma-na-t[a] še-giš-i3 12 ½ ma-na-ta i3-dug3-g[a] 13 ⅓ ma-na 2 gin2 i3-gi[š] 14 [⅓?] ma-na i3-šah… The text is also cited by CAD Š/3 62 and discussed by Stol (2004, 962). I thank J. G. Dercksen for his help in understanding this text and for his suggestion to read di-in-˹ki˺-atum in line 8. 12 

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Rients de Boer 9–10 100 shekels of soft wool per (shekel of silver), 11 120 shekels (of silver) for sesame (oil) per (gur), 12 30 shekels (of silver) for fine oil per (gur), 13 22 shekels (of silver) for oil per (gur), 14 [20?] shekels (of silver) of lard per (gur).

Each of the listed commodities and their quantities corresponds to a shekel of silver (hence ta after the weights). They must represent the going rates in an unspecified town. Perhaps, in the broken part of the letter, Sîn-imittī is asking whether he should buy anything at these rates. It should be noted that 18 shekels of tin for 1 shekel of silver is very cheap, in fact it is the cheapest Old Babylonian price known to this author.13 Sîn-imittī must have been in a town close to the source of tin, either in Susa or in the Diyala region. However, the price of the copper, 78 shekels per shekel of silver is high, suggesting an exceptional quality or scarcity.14 The prices for wool per shekel of silver in IPLA 40 are also exceptionally high.15 Something else must be at play in IPLA 40 with the supposed prices for wool and oil. One is compelled to ask where the tin came from. The fact that Sippar was a hub for the trade in tin has been confirmed by other texts.16 The tin surely came from a source in the Zagros or further away in Central Asia. A third possibility is that — like the copper in IPLA 37 — the tin had been imported from Dilmun.17 The ‘TIM 7 organization’ must have procured its tin further down the trade network either from Susa, Aššur, or the Diyala. Unfortunately, this cannot be decided based on the texts. Nevertheless, other early Old Babylonian Sippar texts mention that tin was obtained from Ešnunna.18

Conclusions

At the beginning of this paper an overview was given of the most important Old Babylonian trade routes from the Zagros Mountains into Mesopotamia. The polity of Elam (and its main city Susa) was an important gateThe cheapest price in Reiter (1997, 273–76) and Joannès (1991, 76) is 16:1 (TIM 1 20 from Larsa). In the Old Assyrian texts, the cheapest is 17:1 (AKT 3 39), Dercksen 2014, 106, see also Dercksen 2017, 302. 13 

14  See the prices in Reiter 1997, 182–87 (on average: 215/1). For the generally higher prices in Anatolia: Dercksen 1996, 33–50.

Stol 2004, 961–65. For example: expensive bu-ṣi wool was sold in Ešnunna at a rate of 180:1, the wool in IPLA 40 is twice as expensive. 15 

16 

E.g. CT 45 118, see the comments by Leemans 1968, 202–05.

Dercksen 2017 gives a summary of the most recent information. On Dilmun tin: Reiter 1997, 271. 17 

18 

CT 8 37b, already mentioned above, attests to this, as does TIM 1 20.

keeper of this trade. In fact, it is not known how the trade was organized beyond Elam for no texts exist from central or eastern Iran. Ešnunna was the main trade emporium in the Diyala and was in direct contact with Elam, often coming under its influence. Items such as tin and precious stones from Ešnunna were traded with the rest of Mesopotamia. The Sipparean ‘TIM 7 organization’ had intensive trade contacts with the Diyala, but also with Aššur, Mari, and towns in the south of Mesopotamia. Its trade was organized along family lines and depended on contacts with trusted agents, either locals or family members. The size and scope of its trade networks depended on the political situation and trade was often conducted through a string of middlemen. To safeguard their trade routes, the people from the ‘TIM 7 organization’ secured pacts with the Amorite leaders in the lower Diyala, as well as paying them bribes. The ‘TIM 7 organization’ and its activities show close parallels with those recorded in the Old Assyrian archives from Kaneš. It stands to reason that they belonged to the same trading networks encompassing the Near East at the time. Unexpectedly, Ešnunna occurs less frequently in early Old Babylonian texts, the time in which the ‘TIM 7 organization’ operated. It features more often in texts from the time of Hammu-rabi of Babylon (1792–1750 bce) onwards. Undoubtedly, this is due to the political unification of the Diyala by King Ipiq-Adad II of Ešnunna (whose chrono­logy is still uncertain). In the early Old Babylonian period, the two towns Akšak and Šadlaš in the lower Diyala region are mentioned more than others. From the viewpoint of Sippar these nearby towns must have acted as the gateway to the rest of the Diyala. After Ešnunna became the leading political power in the Diyala, they are only mentioned sporadically. Neither the tell of Akšak nor Šadlaš has yet been found, but it is not unreasonable to speculate that they were a link in the trade network connecting Ešnunna/ Elam with the rest of Mesopotamia.

6. The Diyala Region as a Linchpin in Early Old Babylonian Trade Networks

Abbreviations AbB 2

AKT 3

CT 8 CT 45

IM

IPLA JCS 9 MAH

MSL 11

RGTC 3 TIM 1 TIM 3 TIM 7 TJDB

Frankena, Rintje. 1966. Briefe aus dem British Museum (LIH und CT 2–33) (Altbabylonische Briefe in Umschrift und Übersetzung 2). Brill, Leiden.

Bilgiç, Emin & Günbattı, Cahit. 1995. Ankaraner KültepeTexte, iii: Texte der Grabungskampagne 1970 (Freiburger Altorientalische Studien, Beihefte: Altassyrische Texte und Untersuchungen 3). Steiner, Stuttgart.

Pinches, Theophilus G. 1899. Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, viii. British Museum, London.

Pinches, Theophilus G. 1964. Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum, xlv: Old Babylonian Business Documents (Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum 45). British Museum, London. Iraq Museum (Baghdad).

Boer, Rients de. 2021. The Ikun-pîša Letter Archive from Tell ed-Dēr (IPLA). Peeters, Leiden. Harris, Rivkah. 1955. ‘The Archive of the Sin Temple in Khafajah (Tutub)’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 9: 31–58. Musée d’art et d’histoire (Geneva).

Reiner, Erica. 1974. A Reconstruction of the Sumerian and Akkadian Lexical Lists, xi: The Series HAR-ra = hubullu, Tablets XX–XXIV (Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon 11). Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome.

Groneberg, Brigitte. 1980. Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der altbabylonischer Zeit (Répertoire géographique des textes cunéiformes 3). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Al-Zeebari, Akram. 1964. Old Babylonian Letters (Texts in the Iraq Museum 1). Directorate General of Antiquities, Baghdad.

Dijk, Johannes J. van. 1966. Cuneiform Texts: The Archives of Nūršamaš and Other Loans (Texts in the Iraq Museum 3). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden.

Edzard, Dietz O. 1971. Altbabylonische Rechts- und Wirtschaftsurkunden aus Tell ed-Dēr bei Sippar (Texts in the Iraq Museum 7). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Szlechter, Emile. 1958. Tablettes juridiques de la 1re dynastie de Babylone conservées au Musée d’art et d’histoire de Genève. Institut de Droit Romain de l’Université de Paris, Paris.

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1971 Altbabylonische Rechts- und Wirtschaftsurkunden aus Tell ed-Dēr bei Sippar (Texts in the Iraq Museum 7). Directorate General of Antiquities of Iraq, Baghdad. Frayne, Douglas R. 2009–2011     ‘Simurrum’, in Michael P. Streck (ed.), Reallexikon der Assyrio­logie und Vorderasiatischen Archäo­logie, xii. De Gruyter, Berlin: 508–11. Gelb, Ignace J. 1968 ‘An Old Babylonian List of Amorites’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 88: 39–46. Glassner, Jean-Jacques 2013 ‘Les premiers sukkalmah et les derniers rois de Simaški’, in Katrien De Graef & Jan Tavernier (eds), Susa and Elam: Archaeo­logical, Philo­logical, Historical and Geographical Perspectives; Proceedings of the International Congress Held at Ghent University, December 14–17, 2009 (Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse 58). Brill, Leiden: 319–28. Goddeeris, Anne 2002 Economy and Society in Northern Babylonia in the Early Old Babylonian Period (ca. 2000–1800  bc) (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 109). Peeters, Leuven. Guichard, Michael 1996 ‘À la recherche de la pierre bleue’, Nouvelles assyrio­logiques brèves et utilitaires 1996/1: 30–32. 2015 ‘Les rapports entre les régions du Haut-Habur et de l’est du Tigre: le cas des deux Ida-maraṣ’, in Lionel Marti, Christophe Nicolle & Kawah Shawaly (eds), Recherches en Haute-Mésopotamie, ii: Mission archéo­logique de Bash Tapa (campagnes 2012–2013) et les enjeux de la recherche dans la région d’Erbil (Mémoires de NABU 17). SÉPOA, Paris: 37–49. Hussein, Laith M. 2009 ‘Tell Harmal. Die Texts aus dem Hauptverwaltungsgebäude “Serai”’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Marburg University), download at: [accessed 1 August 2021]. Joannès, Francis 1991 ‘L’étain, de l’Élam à Mari’, in Leon De Meyer & Hermann Gasche (eds), Mésopotamie et Élam: actes de la XXXVIème Recontre assyrio­logique internationale, Gand, 10–14 juillet 1989 (Mesopotamian History and Environment Occasional Publications 1). University of Ghent, Ghent: 67–76. Leemans, Wilhelmus F. 1960 Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period as Revealed by Texts from Southern Mesopotamia (Studia et documenta ad iura Orientis antiqui pertinentia 6). Leiden, Brill. 1968 ‘Old Babylonian Letters and Economic History. A Review Article with a Digression on Foreign Trade’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 11: 171–226. Peyronel, Luca 2013 ‘Elam and Eshnunna: Historical and Archaeo­logical Interrelations during the Old Babylonian Period’, in Katrien De Graef & Jan Tavernier (eds), Susa and Elam: Archaeo­logical, Philo­logical, Historical and Geographical Perspectives; Proceedings of the International Congress Held at Ghent University, December 14–17, 2009 (Mémoires de la Délégation en Perse 58). Brill, Leiden: 51–70. Reiter, Karen 1997 Die Metalle im Alten Orient, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung altbabylonischer Quellen (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 249). Ugarit, Münster.

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Sallaberger, Walther 1996 Der babylonische Töpfer und seine Gefäße nach Urkunden altsumerischer bis altbabylonischer Zeit sowie lexikalischen und literarischen Zeugnissen (Mesopotamian History and Environment, 2nd ser., Memoires 3). University of Ghent, Ghent. Stol, Marten 2004 ‘Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft in Altbabylonischer Zeit’, in Dominique Charpin, Dietz Otto Edzard & Marten Stol, Mesopotamien: Die altbabylonische Zeit (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 160/4). Academic Press, Fribourg, 641–975. Vallat, François 1996 ‘L’Élam à l’époque paléo-babylonienne et ses relations avec la Mésopotamie’, in Jean-Marie Durand (ed.), Mari, Ebla et les Hourrites, dix ans de travaux, première partie: actes du colloque international (Paris, mai 1993) (Amurru 1). Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris: 297–319. Veenhof, Klaas R. 2008 ‘The Old Assyrian Period’, in Klaas R. Veenhof & Jesper Eidem (eds), Mesopotamia: The Old Assyrian Period (Orbis biblicus et orientalis 160/5). Academic Press, Fribourg: 13–264. Whiting, Robert M. 1977a ‘Sealing Practices on House and Land Sale Documents at Eshnunna in the Isin-Larsa Period’, in McGuire Gibson & Robert D. Biggs (eds), Seals and Sealings in the Ancient Near East (Bibliotheca Mesopotamica 6). Undena, Malibu: 67–74. 1977b ‘The Reading of the Name Dingir-šu-ì-lí-a’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 97: 171–77. 1987a ‘Four Seal Inscriptions from Tell Asmar’, Archiv für Orientforschung 34: 30–35. 1987b Old Babylonian Letters from Tell Asmar (Assyrio­logical Studies 22). The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Chicago.

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala: A Study of the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš Carlos Gonçalves

Introduction, Assumptions, and Theory

This paper is one in an intended series examining Old Babylonian archives and sets of documents from the Diyala region, under the assumption that the relational features that underlay the production and use of such archives and sets of documents may be informative of social structures as well as of the individuals that participated in them. As a consequence, the preoccupations here are situated both in the fields of social network analysis and prosopographical studies. In the present paper, the object of analysis will be the so-called archive of Nūr-Šamaš, which contains 121 cuneiform tablets, mostly loan contracts. The tablets were presented as a lot to the Museum of Iraq by an antiquities dealer, E. Messayeh, in the 1930s (Van Dijk 1966, 3). Three decades after, copies of the tablets were published by Jan Van Dijk (1966), while Fauzi Reschid (1965) published transliterations, translations, and comments. The exact archaeo­logical site in which these tablets were exhumed is unknown, but according to the testimony of Messayeh and to the internal evidence of the tablets, they come from the Old Babylonian Diyala region (Van Dijk 1966, 3).1 Carlos Gonçalves ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of history of science at the University of São Paulo, Brazil and was Fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 2016–2017.

Van Dijk (1966) and Reschid (1965) respectively present 157 and 139 documents from the lot presented by Messayeh. The archive of Nūr-Šamaš is composed only of documents numbered 1 to 121. With the exception of Documents 75, 116, 119, 120, and 121, all the others are loan contracts with Nūr-Šamaš as creditor. It is these documents that are the focus of the present text. Reproductions of Van Dijk’s (1966) copies and transliterations slightly different to those by Reschid (1965) are available online on the website of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative ( [accessed 10 January 2020]), and are accessible by filling ‘TIM 03’ in the search field reserved for publication. 1 

The documents of this archive contain the identification of some four hundred people, an ensemble referred to in short here as the community of Nūr-Šamaš. As a first approximation, the goal is to analyse the patterns of the associations people in this community established when they performed legal and economic activities. The analysis of such associations will be carried out employing concepts and techniques that have been said to pertain to the field of social network analysis, although many of them were employed by researchers long before social network analysis became fashionable. The goal of employing such concepts and techniques is to learn more about the people present in the documents that are the object of this paper. More precisely, the interest is in the way people were identified in these documents. As usual in cuneiform legal texts, identification in the documents from the archive of Nūr-Šamaš was made by the use of a full or shortened (hypocorism) personal name, accompanied or not by the name of a kinship relation (mostly the father) and a profession.2 After this, the relation patterns established by the documents will be employed to detect when different people may have received the same identification and 2  In the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, kinship relations are indicated by the apposition of the following expressions followed by the name of the relation: son of (dumu), daughter of (dumu-munus), wife of (dam-a-ni), his wife (dam-šu), and brother of (šeš-a-ni). The professions are: scribe (dub-sar), shepherd (sipa), soldier (aga-us2), official (gu-za-la2), leather worker (ašgab), cook (muhaldim), priest (nu-eš3), architect (šitim), gardener (nu-giš-kiri6), musician (nar), physician (a-zu), inspector of canals (gu-ga-lim and gu-gal), merchant (dam-gar3), chair-bearer (gu-za-la2), besides two uncertain readings KU-RU?-X–X (Document 92) and UD-AŠ-DI (Document 112). Furthermore, in Document 2, a certain Sîn-gāmil is identified as lu2 nu-hu-um, that can be read as ‘Sîn-gāmil, man from (the city of) Nuhum’. According to Groneberg (1980, 180), this may be a mis­ spelling of Numhûm (see also Groneberg 1980, 180).

Interdisciplinary Research on the Bronze Age Diyala. Proceedings of the Conference Held at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, 25–26 June, 2018, ed. by Carlos Gonçalves & Cécile Michel, subartu 47 (Turnhout, 2021), pp. 83–101 10.1484/M.SUBART-EB.5.126529        BREPOLS

PUBLISHERS

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when different identifications may have been given to a same person. In the first case, the people will be termed homonymous, while in the second the two different identifications will be established as two heteronyms or aliases of the same person. Following this explanation these problems will be referred to in a simplified manner, as the homonyms and aliases problems.

Social network analysis has today a vast literature and it is not possible to mention here all the relevant studies using its research concepts, techniques, and strategies. In the context of the research on the ancient Near East, efforts have been made to apply it both to specific problems (Anderson 2017) and to study its general potential (Waerzeggers 2014).

Even though homonyms and aliases are very difficult to detect and solve, the literature presents cases where this has been possible. In particular, Michel (1991) identified two men called by the same shortened name, or a hypocorism, Innaya in an Old Assyrian archive implementing a strategy bearing strong similarities to what will be proposed here.

In the very long section ‘Prerequisites’, the main decisions taken during the treatment of the data collected from the documents of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš and the prerequisites that are necessary to follow the argumentation here are described. When entering into certain computational details the greatest effort will be made to respect the various disciplinary trainings of possible readers. Yet, it must be kept in mind that the intention of the present paper is more to discuss the concepts necessary for applying the computational methods than to discuss the computer implementation itself.

An important heuristic concept for the present paper is that social network analysis enables the researcher to place their object of study as if under the lenses of a microscope, where several different questions about the nature of the examined material are then formulated. The most valuable aspect of the procedure put forward here is that some of these questions could otherwise not be formulated. Remaining with the metaphor, these questions are induced by the possibilities the microscope and its lenses open up. Some questions may indeed remain unanswered or only partially answered, but the end results provide insights into the object of study. Strictly speaking, social network analysis can be conducted with or without computers, and the literature shows important examples of both cases (Scott 2000, 7–37; Waerzeggers 2014). In the field of Assyrio­logy, a highly interesting example is the above-mentioned case of the two men named Innaya, firstly studied by Michel (1991) without computer assistance and then with the use of computer aid by Anderson (2017). Admittedly, it may be disputed whether the computer aided study brought new significant results to the already solved issue of the two Innayas. However, two unavoidable facts about social network analysis stand out, and they are valid not only for Assyrio­logy but every field of research: firstly, the greater the amount of data the researcher handles, the more difficult it is to avoid computers; secondly, there is no sin in using computer aid to study even very small archives, as long as the study is conducted with scientific rigour.3

Just as it is no sin to use a pocket calculator for tasks easily carried out with pencil and paper. 3 

The section ‘Homonyms and Aliases in the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš’ delivers the results of the research. Just one example of homonyms and aliases and how the applied methods can help will be shown. It is not the spirit of this paper to solve all cases of homonyms and aliases that might exist in the Nūr-Šamaš archive. The last section, ‘Conclusions: A Continuous Process’, deals with an important consequence of the proposed solution, which is the necessity of reformulating the data each time a homonyms or aliases case is solved. Furthermore, as the process is reversible, one is enabled to test hypotheses without having to commit to any definitive solution.

Prerequisites Names and Identifications As already mentioned, the archive of Nūr-Šamaš contains 121 documents, mostly loan contracts. These documents celebrate legal obligations and economic transactions between people. In order to fulfil their functions, the documents must identify these people correctly. The identification was made via the following means: ২ the name of the person, for instance, ‘Munānum’ (as in Documents 1 and 42) ২ the name of the person, accompanied by a kinship relation, e.g. ‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ (as in Document 1)

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala ২ t he inclusion of the person’s profession, e.g. ‘Nanna-mansum, scribe’ (as in Document 1) or ‘Munānum, architect’ (as in Document 85). Although ‘Munānum’ is simply a personal name, the same cannot be said of ‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Nanna-mansum, scribe’. Thus, to make it easier to refer to all of these forms of identifying people, ‘Munānum’, ‘Māšum son of Zanātim’, ‘Nanna-mansum, scribe’, and so on will be called identifications.

Normalization of Personal Names It is common that the same personal name is spelled differently in different documents. In order to deal with the names in the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, all the spellings of personal names have been listed and manually assigned to each spelling is an Akkadian normalized writing. For instance, the spellings nu-ur-dutu and nu-ur2-dutu were assigned the normalized writing Nūr-Šamaš. This is not to say that it is assumed a priori that all different spellings lead to the same rendering of a name and, consequently, to an identification that will always refer to the same person. Whether it is the same person or not, this must be decided by additional means, some of which have been discussed in the section ‘Homonyms and Aliases in the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš’. Due to the features of the cuneiform system, one may argue that nu-ur-dutu and nu-ur2-dutu are not really different spellings, because they end up producing the same sound. In this case, they should instead be considered as two different writings of the same spelling. To make the termino­logy consistent, the word ‘spelling’ will be avoided and nu-ur-dutu and nu-ur2-dutu will always be referred to as two different writings. There are situations, however, when two occurrences of the name are different not only because of the writings but because they contain different sounds. For instance, should bi2-qa2-ta-nu-um (as in Document 7) and bi2-in-qa2-ta-nu-um (as in Documents 26, 39, 45, 83, and 100) be taken to refer to the same name?4 The answer is affirmative, and in this case the justification is the assimilation of the consonant n to the following consonant q, reinforced by the absence of a writing with a double q. In some other cases, the divergence is deeper. For instance, what should one do in relation to na-qi2-hu-um 4 

Not to mention bi2-in-qa2-tu-um, in Document 96.

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(the father of an Ilī-atka in Documents 31 and 61), na-ki[ru]-um (equally, the father of an Ilī-atka in Document 46), and na-KI-hi-im (again, the father of an Ilī-atka in Document 77)? Because of the presence of the name of the son, it is possible to assume all of these writings refer to the same name. A last point to be considered is the presence of hypocorisms, that is, names resulting from the shortening of a two- or three-part name, or that have been produced in the manner of such a shortening but without a corresponding longer name (Stamm 1968, 111–17; Michel 1991, 33–36). Names such as Kūbiya (the father of Nūr-Šamaš, as many documents of the archive state), Wardiya, Puzuretaya, Ibniya, Pulsātum, and Munānum are shortened versions of possible longer names. Thus far, it has not been verified whether or not the same person crops up in the archive of Nūr-Šamaš identified by the complete as well as the shortened version of the name, but without doubt this is a possible avenue of research. To sum up, when normalizing the writings of personal names, one has to make assumptions. For the sake of precision, the initial assumptions correspond to a great extent to the normalized names as proposed by Reschid (1965).5 Whenever they diverge, for any reason, from Reschid it will be made clear in a final report, to be published elsewhere.

Graphs of Relations With the aim of retrieving the relations that people in the community of Nūr-Šamaš entered into among themselves, it is worth studying the pairs of identities that appear simultaneously in the same document. The idea behind this procedure is that when two or more identifications appear in the same document, it can be considered relational data, that is to say, data that is concerned with ‘contacts, ties and connections, the group attachments and meetings, which relate one agent to another’ (Scott 2000, 3). This is precisely the kind of data that is studied in social network analysis, for it cannot be deduced from the ‘properties of agents, but of systems of agents’ (Scott 2000, 3).

However, while Reschid did not separate the components of names, writing for instance Nūršamaš, this paper will adhere to the now more conventional practice of making the components of personal names visible, whenever it is possible, writing Nūr-Šamaš instead. 5 

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Two points must be emphasized. Firstly, ‘relation’ here does not set out to comprehend anything exterior to the documents. Secondly, in the approach developed in what follows, creditor, debtor, and witnesses are taken to be equally related by each document of the corpus in which they appear. Although it would also be possible to ask what happens when we treat each of the cases creditor–debtor, creditor–witness, debtor–witness, witness– witness, and, in the documents where there are two debtors, debtor–debtor as relations of different kinds, this will not be done in the present paper. One begins by applying these concepts to Document 1 of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš. The text in transliteration and translation reads as follows.

Transliteration Obverse  1. 2 gin2 ku3-babbar

2. maš2 dutu u2-ṣa-ab 

3. ki nu-ur2-dutu 

4. dumu ku-bi-ia  5. mma-šum 

6. dumu za-na-tim  7. [šu ba-an-ti] 

Reverse  1. [a-na maš]-gan2-[nim] 

rev 1 To the threshing floor, 2 the gold and its interest 3 he will weigh out.

4 In front of Munānum, 5 in front of Sîn-šeme, 6 in front of Sîn-dādiya, 7 in front of Wardiya. 8, edge In the year the daughter […]

According to this loan contract, a person identified as ‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ borrowed 2 gin of silver (approximately 16.8 grams) from the person identified as ‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’. The remaining people, identified as ‘Munānum’, ‘Sîn-šeme’, ‘Sîn-dādiya’, and ‘Wardiya’, acted as witnesses to the transaction. The loan includes interest, as read in line 2, perhaps to be translated ‘Šamaš will add interest’. The exact translation apart, this line states the inclusion of an interest rate related to the god Šamaš. The clause is reminiscent of a frequent practice in temple loans, with Šamaš as creditor, and seems to indicate some standardized interest rate (Harris 1960, 128). Thus, the identifications present in Document 1 are: ‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ ‘Munānum’

‘Sîn-dādiya’ ‘Sîn-šeme’

‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’ ‘Wardiya’

From these identifications, the following pairs can be formed:

2. ku3 u3 maš2-bi 

‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Munānum’

4. igi mu-na-nu-um 

‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Sîn-šeme’

3. i3-la2-e 

‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Sîn-dādiya’

5. igi sin-še-me-[e] 

‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’

6. igi sin-da-[di-ia] 

7. igi ARAD-[di-ia] 

8. mu dumu-[munus ereš-dingir] ša [x–x] u3 ša diškur Edge i-ba-ra-a

Translation

obv 1 2 gin of gold. 2 He will add the interest of Šamaš. 3 From Nūr-Šamaš 4 son of Kūbiya, 5 Māšum 6 son of Zanātim 7 took.

‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Wardiya’ ‘Munānum’ and ‘Sîn-dādiya’ ‘Munānum’ and ‘Sîn-šeme’

‘Munānum’ and ‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’ ‘Munānum’ and ‘Wardiya’

‘Sîn-dādiya’ and ‘Sîn-šeme’

‘Sîn-dādiya’ and ‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’ ‘Sîn-dādiya’ and ‘Wardiya’

‘Sîn-šeme’ and ‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’ ‘Sîn-šeme’ and ‘Wardiya’

‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’ and ‘Wardiya’

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which contains six nodes (or vertices) and fifteen edges (or links). Each node represents one identification and each segment joining two identifications (an edge) represents the connection between them, as established in Document 1. Such a diagram is called a sociogram (Scott 2000, 10) and its use stems from the work of psycho­ logist and social scientist Jacob Moreno (1934).

Figure 7.1. Sociogram corresponding to Document 1 of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš. All figures by author unless otherwise indicated.

Sociograms are very useful, because they offer visual access to the relations people establish. This becomes specially interesting as the number of documents grows, once the number of identifications (personal names and complements) and consequently, pairs of identifications become difficult to manage in written form. A slightly more complex example is the sociogram that corresponds to the first ten documents of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, represented in Fig. 7.2.

The central node represents the identification ‘Nūr-Šamaš son of Kūbiya’. As this identification is present in all the ten documents that generated the sociogram, thus every node has an edge that connects to the central node. In terms of the spatial distribution of the nodes, it is also notable that there are smaller groups of nodes in which all nodes are connected among themselves (aside from being connected to the node of ‘NūrFigure 7.2. Sociogram corresponding to Documents 1 to 10 of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš. Šamaš son of Kūbiya’). Each of these smaller groups corresponds to a document in the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, and This means that the people identified by ‘Māšum son the sociogram can be thought of as composed by the ten of Zanātim’ and ‘Munānum’ interact with each other, smaller sociograms of Documents 1 to 10. Finally, there is and this occurs in Document 1. In the same way, people one identification, ‘Nanna-mansum, scribe’, that has conidentified as ‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Sîn-dādiya’ nections in two of these smaller groups. This is because a also interact. This continues, covering all the fifteen person identified in this way is present in two documents pairs of identifications listed above. Once more, it has at the same time (Documents 2 and 6, to be precise).6 to be emphasized that these interactions are entirely circumscribed by the loan transaction, without any suggestion regarding interactions these people might have 6  Whether or not it was due to his profession as a scribe, that Nanentertained elsewhere and in other ways. These six people and fifteen pairs can be represented visually, for example, by the diagram in Fig. 7.1,

na-mansum participated in more documents than other people (in the universe composed of document 1 to 10) is not a question to be dealt with here.

88 A few theoretical comments may be useful. It may be said that the ensemble of these identifications and their connections corresponds to a graph. It should never be forgotten that a graph is an abstract, immaterial, invisible entity composed of equally intangible nodes and edges. It models situations such as the one produced by the community of Nūr-Šamaš. Both the written list of pairs of identifications and the sociograms are, respectively, mere descriptions or representations of their corresponding graphs. The graph formed by all the identities and relations appearing in all loan contracts of the archive of NūrŠamaš has 402 nodes and 1879 edges. The sociogram in Fig. 7.3 represents it.

More about Drawing Graphs Drawing a graph is not an easy thing to do. Small graphs can of course be drawn by hand. Larger ones require computer aid, and there are an astonishing number of different computer algorithms for many different choices of layout. Of great advantage is the choice of layout that may be used heuristically to understand the graph’s characteristics and therefore understand aspects of the empirical situation modelled by a graph. Thus, due to the sheer diversity of layout choice and to their intended heuristic value, it is good form, when presenting a visual representation of a graph, to specify how this has been done. In the present case, Python 3 scripts using the NetworkX package were run in a Jupyter notebook to produce a file describing the graph. The sociograms in Figs 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 were drawn by the Cytoscape software, version 3.6.1, employing a method technically dubbed ‘prefuse force directed layout’, a member of a larger family of methods called ‘force-directed’ paradigm.7 This paradigm comprehends a class of drawing algorithms that choose the positions of nodes and edges on the paper (or elsewhere) by temporarily considering them as physical entities, under the action of attracting and repelling forces. In one of the classic implementations, nodes are considered to be repelling each other (as if they were equally electrically charged) and edges are thought of as springs, so the nodes cannot get infinitely apart due to the repelling force. Other implementations consider the nodes as if under gravitational attraction (Di Battista et al. 1999, 303–26). [accessed 1 August 2021]. 7 

Carlos Gonçalves In case the previous paragraph may appear superfluous, it is always important to remember that the sociogram shown above does not depict the shape of the community of Nūr-Šamaš. It is merely an arbitrary and highly convenient way of drawing the graph from data originating in the community of Nūr-Šamaš.

People or Just Identifications? Rephrasing the Goal of This Paper It has already been stated that different occurrences of the same identification are no guarantee one is dealing with the same person. It can be assumed in most cases that each identification corresponds to only one person. However, there are phenomena that may invalidate such an assumption: Homonyms ২ in cases where identifications are given only by a personal name, some of them might in fact represent two or more people of the same name. For instance, who can guarantee that all ten occurrences of Iqād-ilī (as in Documents 11, 22, 27, 29, 62, 65, 72, 78, 107, and 112) correspond to one and the same person? ২ however, it is assumed not to be the case with the identities which, in addition to a personal name, are given a kinship relation or a profession. Thus, I assume that ‘Māšum son of Zanātim’ and ‘Nannamansum, scribe’ each refer to exactly the same person. Heteronyms or aliases ২ it might also be the case that the same person is referred to in the documentation in two or more different ways, which would produce two or more different nodes in the graph (and in the sociograms). For instance, some of the occurrences of the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ (which occurs in Documents 11, 22, 23, 29, 45, 54, 62, 63, 65, 72, and 78) may well be an alias for ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’ (which appears in Documents 27 and 28). The goal of this paper may now be rephrased more rigorously. The intention is to present some techniques and strategies to help identify and solve the situations described above. To accomplish this, certain characteristics of the graph corresponding to the ensemble of relations among the members of the community of NūrŠamaš will be investigated, assuming that two people

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Figure 7.3. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš.

are related when — and only when — they are simultaneously present in the same archive document.

Modularity Class Once one begins to think in terms of graphs, many things can be done to detect patterns that may be informative of how its nodes and edges are distributed. If the graph models a community, as is the case here, knowledge of the graph may translate into knowledge of the relations among the people in the community.

One of the aspects that can be investigated is how people tend to cluster. As there are many definitions and metrics related to the problem of clustering, it is always a very delicate question to choose the one most appropriate for the researcher’s problem. Berkowitz, certainly exaggerating the extent of the problem, states that ‘there are almost as many clustering measures in the literature as there are people who use the idea’ (1982, 15). The simplest realization of a cluster may be the clique. The online Merriam-Webster defines it as ‘a narrow

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Figure 7.4. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, with a partition into sub-communities that maximizes modularity.

exclusive circle or group of persons’.8 Graph-theorists describe a clique as ‘a type of cluster in which all nodes are directly connected to the others’ (Berkowitz 1982, 15). However, in life, groups of people clustering do not always form a clique, that is to say, it is not always true that every two people in a clique are connected in the dictionary sense. How does one conceptualize, describe,

[accessed 10 January 2020]. 8 

and identify groups of people that tend to do things together, and that might even be perceived by others as a group but cannot be defined as a clique in the strict, graph-theoretical sense? It is here that Berkowitz tells of several competing definitions. Before continuing, one may also note that the phenomenon of clustering has to do with the fact that communities are not homogeneous, that is to say, relations are not distributed with the same density. When translated to what it means in the analysis of a com-

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala munity, the idea refers to the sub-communities that people form inside a community. Friends, family members, and neighbours are examples of sub-communities. Furthermore, it may be considered that, under certain conditions, temple-goers, taxpayers, commercial partners may also form clusters or sub-communities. This is a very straightforward way of describing a cluster: ‘In some networks, you can find a group of nodes that are better connected to each other than chance would dictate. They are sometimes called clusters.’9 In order to unveil a possible way in which the community around Nūr-Šamaš is structured in clusters or sub-communities, this paper employs the concept of modularity. There are other concepts that can be used as a starting point to detect sub-communities within a community, so no claim is made that this is the only possible way to proceed.10 Modularity is a measure obtained when a graph is partitioned into classes (parts). Generally, it measures ‘the extent to which like is connected to like in a network’ (Newman 2010, 224). In order to calculate modularity, one must always assume a partition of the network. For instance, in networks of friendships partitioned according to race, some authors noted a tendency of higher modularity. This means that the links of friendship between people who identify as belonging to the same racial group are more frequent than between people from different racial groups (Moody 2001). Another example, that of a study about a mobile-phone network in Belgium, revealed that the partition of the community of phone users into Flemish and French speakers had high modularity.11 In this way, the concept of modularity has been proved useful and efficient when sub-communities must be detected. The goal, when using modularity to find the clusters in a graph, is to partition the graph so that the modularity gets the highest possible value. In other words: given a graph, how should it be partitioned so that modularity assumes its highest possible value? It turns out, however, that this is an incredibly complex problem, constituting an example of what computer scientists call a From the leaflet ‘Network Literacy: Essential Concepts and Core Ideas’, published by Network Science in Education and downloadable from [accessed 10 January 2020].

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NP-complete problem (Brandes 2007, 131–32). Thus, in practice, the algorithm is interrupted at a point when there is certainty that modularity is high enough for the partition to be meaningful in terms of clustering, even though it might not be the best possible partition. This explanation is necessary, as different computer implementations may find slightly different partitions for the same graph when trying to maximize modularity, making it thus essential that the algorithm and the implementation employed be clearly stated. Thus, for the sake of transparency, in order to split the graph made from the community of Nūr-Šamaš, the so-called Louvain method has been used, as implemented in the NetworkX package for Python 3.12 Once the Louvain method is applied to the whole graph, sixteen sub-communities, represented in the sociogram of Fig. 7.4 are obtained. 13 In order to make the distribution of these sixteen sub-communities visible over the sociogram, members of each sub-community are identified via a specific size and a specific shade of grey. Nodes tend to be more connected to like nodes than to those with different sizes and shades of grey. It is not known yet and may never be known, whether and why the real community four millennia ago was split into exactly these modularity classes, but it is known that this is one of the best partitions of the community that may be able to reveal the groups of people (through their identifications, as written in the documents of the archive) that had affinities while making the economic and legal transactions registered in the archive of Nūr-Šamaš. Such a partition will form the basis of the argument in the section ‘Homonyms and Aliases in the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš’ to identify and solve some homonyms and aliases.

Ignoring Nūr-Šamaš Removing Nūr-Šamaš from the graph is an interesting operation. Once he is connected to everyone else, his presence no longer provides real, useful information. Fig. 7.5 is a sociogram of the resulting graph. Compared to the sociogram in Fig. 7.4, the image is cleaner, now

9 

On the issue of community detection and its possibilities, see Newman (2010, 371–73). 10 

See Chen et al. (2015, 240–41) for a comment and Expert et al. (2010) for the original paper. 11 

See the article ‘Community Detection for NetworkX’, available at [accessed 10 January 2020].

12 

The Louvain method is implemented in the Networkx package for Python that was used here: [accessed 10 January 2020].

13 

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Figure 7.5. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of NūrŠamaš, after the deletion of Nūr-Šamaš.

making it possible to see more of the connections between people. The node count is one less the original number, that is to say, 401, whereas the edge count fell to 1478. In paying attention to the periphery of the sociogram in Fig. 7.5, some small groups of nodes that are not connected to the rest of the network appear. Each of these groups corresponds to one or two tablets, that is to say, one or two documents of the archive containing identi-

fications that do not occur elsewhere or identifications that are so damaged on the tablets that their exact reading is impossible. In relation to the identifications that can be read, as they do not occur in other documents, their only connection to other parts of the community as a whole is Nūr-Šamaš. Therefore, although connected to the most well-connected person in the community, the people that were so identified, seen through the eyes of the community, were peripheral.

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Figure 7.6. Sociogram corresponding to all loan contracts of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, after the deletion of Nūr-Šamaš, now with nodes grouped according to the sub-communities to which they belong. Sub-communities are numbered 0 to 15, as the miniature in the right bottom corner indicates.

More about Drawing Graphs As already stated, a graph is not a drawing, but an abstract entity. Thus, the layout used to draw a graph is not part of the definition of the graph, but a tool to which one may resort for visualizing a specific characteristic. In the sociograms in Figs 7.3–7.5, that are representations of the graph corresponding to the community of Nūr-Šamaš, the more nodes are situated to the centre, the more they tend to be connected to other nodes. As also already mentioned, those representations were made using an algorithm that operates in terms of forces of attraction and repulsion. Nūr-Šamaš, so to say, the strongest node, occupied the central, solar position of the system. The sociogram in Fig. 7.6 is a new representation of the same graph, the graph of the community of NūrŠamaš (after the deletion of Nūr-Šamaš). In this layout, the position of each node is decided according to the sub-community to which each identification belongs, thus the layout is deemed attribute grouped, according to the attribute sub-community (which equals the attribute modularity class). In this case, each group is a circle, and the layout makes it easier to discern the sub-communities, their internal connections, and how they are plugged one to the other.

Among the characteristics that might be immediately visualized in Fig. 7.6, there is, for instance, the fact that sub-community 0 has very few internal connections, indicating that its members had not established many economic transactions (as far as it can be deduced from the documentation analysed here) among themselves. Sub-community 5, on the other hand, presents a very dense mesh of internal relations, corresponding to the fact that its members established a great deal of transactions among themselves.

More about Modularity Classes One extremely interesting point to be noted here is that the sub-communities just described generalize something that Fauzi Reschid had perceived, albeit as a result of a completely different approach (Reschid 1966, 26–29). In his edition of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš, he noted that some groups of witnesses repeatedly appeared together in more than one document. It is striking that each of the groups (with few exceptions) of witnesses identified by Reschid belongs to a different cluster (or sub-community) in the above illustrations. However, it has to be emphasized that Reschid (1965) paid attention only to small groups of identifications that repeatedly appeared together in many documents. After these recurrent small groups of people are all

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noted down, it is very difficult to enlarge them toward larger clusters and simultaneously be certain each of the enlarged clusters are composed of ‘a group of nodes that are better connected to each other than chance would dictate’.14 In other words, it is very difficult to be certain they can be expanded into a partition of the community, into sub-communities, each characterized by a tendency for its members to establish more connections among themselves than with outsiders. There is even evidence from computer science studies indicating no guarantee that this would be a successful strategy (Brandes et al. 2007, 129). Interesting and acute as Reschid’s (1965) findings are, the approach employed in the present paper has much more generality and can be used for many purposes other than identifying recurrent people in the documentation.

The Directory of the Community of Nūr-Šamaš After establishing the sub-communities that maximize modularity, an additional computer script was used to build a listing of all the identifications present in the documentation, thus producing a directory of the community of Nūr-Šamaš. Here are some entries, containing the identifications ‘Abdi-arah’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Bunn-ilum’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’: Abdi-arah Sub-community: 3.

Connects to sub-communities 3, 5, and 8. Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 011, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 022, rev.5 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 023, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 029, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 045, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 054, rev.4

Abdi-arah (ab-di-e-ra-ah), Doc. 062, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 063, rev.3 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 065, rev.5 From the already mentioned leaflet ‘Network Literacy: Essential Concepts and Core Ideas’, published by Network Science in Education and downloadable from [accessed 10 January 2020]. 14 

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 072, rev.5 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 078, rev.5 Abdi-arah son of Bunn-ilum Sub-community: 4.

Possible father: Bunn-ilum, in sub-community 8. Connects to sub-communities 4.

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Bunn-ilum (bu-ni-lu-um), Doc. 074, rev.9 Abdi-arah son of Guzulum Sub-community: 3.

Possible father: Guzulum, in sub-community 3. Connects to sub-communities 3 and 10.

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Guzulum (gu-zu-lu), Doc. 027, rev.5

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Guzulum (gu-zu-lu-um), Doc. 028, rev.5 Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum Sub-community: 8.

Possible mother: Pulsātum, in sub-community 3. Possible mother: Pulsātum daughter of Iabulum, in sub-community 3. Connects to sub-communities 5, 8, and 10. Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu‑ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 038, rev.5

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu‑ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 041, rev.6 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu‑ul-za3-tum), Doc. 057, rev.4a

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu‑ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 068, rev.6

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu‑ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 081, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu‑ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 083, rev.8

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu‑ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 106, rev.5 The directory gives one entry for each identification. Thus ‘Abdi-arah’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Bunn-ilum’, ‘Abdiarah son of Guzulum’, and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ correspond to four different entries.

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Figure 7.7. Sociogram corresponding to all nodes belonging to sub-communities 3 and 8, as well as the edges that connect them.

For each identification, the number of the modularity class to which it belongs is shown. Thus, ‘Abdi-arah’ belongs to the class (or sub-community) number 3. Interestingly, ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’ also belongs to sub-community 3. However, both ‘Abdi-arah son of Bunn-ilum’ and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ belong to two other different sub-communities, namely 4 and 8.

cations, and at this point it is not possible to assert whether they are cases of homonyms or aliases.

Each entry in the directory specifies the sub-communities in which that identification has interactions. Thus, for instance, ‘Abdi-arah’ is connected to identifications in sub-communities 3, 5, and 8.

Abdi-arah and Others: A Case Study

In situations where an identification contains the name of a parent of the person, the directory also gives the number of each sub-community where a possible parent may be found. Take, for instance, ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’, an identification belonging to sub-community 8 and having connections in sub-communities 5, 8, and 10. There are candidates to be his mother, identified as ‘Pulsātum’ and as ‘Pulsātum daughter of Iabulum’, both in sub-community 3. Finally, each entry in the directory presents the occurrences of the identification in the documentation. For instance, the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ occurs in Documents 11, 22, 23, 29, 45, 54, 62, 63, 65, 72, and 78, while the identification ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’ appears in Documents 27 and 28. Again, it has to be emphasized that these are occurrences of identifi-

Homonyms and Aliases in the Archive of Nūr-Šamaš Returning to the four identifications ‘Abdi-arah’, ‘Abdiarah son of Bunn-ilum’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ mentioned in the section ‘Prerequisites’. By analysing the directory entries of these identifications, one notes that ‘Abdi-arah’ belongs to subcommunity 3. Furthermore, there are a total of eleven occurrences of this identification in the documentation, establishing links in its own sub-community and in two others, namely sub-communities 5 and 8. It is entirely possible that a single person may establish relations with people from different sub-communities. Such people are sometimes called bridges or brokers in the literature. However, the question may also be asked whether the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ might indicate more than one person. After all, in the whole community of Nūr-Šamaš, there are also people identified as ‘Abdi-arah son of Bunn-ilum’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’. Aside from

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Figure 7.8. Sociogram corresponding to all nodes belonging to sub-communities 3 and 8, as well as the edges that connect them, with additional indication of the numeration of the documents corresponding to certain edges.

which, it is striking that ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’ belongs to sub-community 3, that is to say, the same sub-community where the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ is placed, and that ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ belongs to sub-community 8, a sub-community where the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ has some connections. All of this suggests that it is worth asking whether there are cases of homonyms or aliases involving the identifications containing the personal name Abdi-arah. Taking a closer look at the situation, the sociogram in Fig. 7.7 depicts only the nodes belonging to sub-communities 3 and 8, and their connections. Nodes from other sub-communities and the connections outside the selected sub-communities were left out. The layout shown above was obtained by means of the following steps: first, the nodes of sub-communities 3 and 8 were chosen; each sub-community was arranged in a circle; then the nodes corresponding to the identifications ‘Abdi-arah’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ were dragged manually to the featured positions they now occupy. Finally, the only other identification that bridges the two sub-communities, ‘Ilī-rābi’, was also placed in a featured position. There is an important thing to be learnt from this sociogram: sub-communities 3 and 8 are not well connected. There are only two identifications that may serve as bridges between them: ‘Abdi-arah’, as is already

known, and ‘Ilī-rābi’. This reinforces the possibility that the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ may in fact hide two different people, perhaps one in sub-community 3 and one in sub-community 8, rather than being an unexpected bridge between two sub-communities that are otherwise particularly badly connected. The sociogram in Fig. 7.8 is a new version of that in Fig. 7.7, now exhibiting the numeration of the documents that correspond to the edges that connect ‘Abdiarah’ to the members of sub-communities 3 and 8. As already explained, each edge represents a connection between two identifications, and each such connection is established by documents in the archive of Nūr-Šamaš. Thus, edges in the graph are associated to at least one (but perhaps more) document numbers in the archive. Fig. 7.8 indicates this in a simplified manner, without the intention of specifying the document number (or numbers) that corresponds to each of the considered edges. Thus, the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ of Documents 11, 22, 23, 29, 62, 65, 72, and 78 has connections only in subcommunity 3, while the ‘Abdi-arah’ of Documents 54 and 63 has connections only in sub-community 8. Of course, it is possible that ‘Abdi-arah’ was a really easy-going person, with connections in different subcommunities. However, given the evidence of the previous paragraphs and the fact that there is an ‘Abdi-arah

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala son of Guzulum’ in sub-community 3 and an ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ in sub-community 8, it is suggested that: ২ the ‘Abdi-arah’ of Documents 11, 22, 23, 29, 62, 65, 72, and 78, who has connections only in subcommunity 3, is in fact ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, while ২ the ‘Abdi-arah’ of Documents 54 and 63, who has connections only in sub-community 8, is in fact ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’. In a few words, the use of the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ by both Abdi-arah son of Guzulum and Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum is a case of homonymy, for which the solution presented above is proposed. An immediate consequence of this reasoning is also the solution of two cases of aliases. As identities in the documents of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš: ২ ‘Abdi-arah’ and ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’ are some­times aliases of one person; ২ ‘Abdi-arah’ and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ are some­times aliases of a second person.

On Aliases The presence of identifications that differ only by an additional kinship relation or a profession raises the possibility of their being aliases. The archive of NūrŠamaš contains a number of such cases. Here are some additional examples, that may further illustrate how the modularity classes strategy, that partitions the community into so to say sub-communities, suggests the existence of or helps to exclude cases of aliases. Ahī-maraṣ Ahī-maraṣ Sub-community: 8.

Connects to sub-community 8.

Ahī-maraṣ (a-hi-ma-ra-aṣ), Doc. 032, rev.6 Ahī-maraṣ (a-hi-ma-ra-aṣ), Doc. 033, rev.5 Ahī-maraṣ son of Namanum Sub-community: 10.

Connects to sub-communities 8 and 10.

Ahī-maraṣ (a-hi-ma-ra-aṣ) son of Namanum (na-ma-ni-im), Doc. 046, rev.7

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As both ‘Ahī-maraṣ’ and ‘Ahī-maraṣ son of Namanum’ have connections in sub-community 8, it is worth investigating whether these identifications refer to the same person. In other words, whether these identifications might be aliases for the same person. Ahūni Ahūni Sub-community: 8.

Connects to sub-community 8. Ahūni (a-hu-ni), Doc. 077, rev.5

Ahūni son of Bazizum Sub-community: 3.

Connects to sub-communities 3 and 5.

Ahūni (a-hu-ni) son of Bazizum (ba-zi-zu-um), Doc. 062, obv.4 Ahūni son of Warad-x–x Sub-community: 5.

Connects to sub-community 5.

Ahūni (a-hu-ni) son of Warad-x–x (ARAD2-x–x), Doc. 071, obv.5 Each of the three identifications containing the personal name Ahūni belongs to and has connections in a different sub-community. This is a case, therefore, for which the modularity classes seem to indicate three different people, even though the number of occurrences is too small to make any watertight statement. Apil-Sîn Apil-Sîn son of Mati-arahtim Sub-community: 9.

Connects to sub-community 9.

Apil-Sîn (a-pil-sin) son of Mati-arahtim (ma-ti-a-ra-ah-tim), Doc. 020, rev.13 Apil-Sîn son of Puzuretaya Sub-community: 5.

Connects to sub-community 5.

Apil-Sîn (a-pil-sin) son of Puzuretaya (puzur4-e-ta-ia), Doc. 049, obv.5 This example is presented here only to show that the behaviour of modularity classes confirms there are indeed two different people under the two different identities.

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Ahum

Ahum son of Merānum Sub-community 0.

Connects to sub-community 0.

Ahum (a-hu-um) son of Merānum (me-ra-nu-um), Doc. 067, rev.5 Ahum son of Rubātum Sub-community 3.

Possible mother: Rubātum, in sub-community 1. Connects to sub-communities 3, 5, and 10.

Ahum (a-hu-um) son of Rubātum (ru-ba-tum), Doc. 003, rev.5 Ahum (a-hu-um) son of Rubātum (ru-ba-tum), Doc. 027, rev.2 Ahum (a-hu-um) son of Rubātum (ru-ba-tum), Doc. 065, rev.4 Ahum (a-hu-um) son of Rubātum (ru-ba-tum), Doc. 078, rev.4 Ahum (a-hu-um) son of Rubātum (ru-ba-tum), Doc. 087, rev.2

As in the previous case, modularity classes are consistent with the fact that these identifications refer to two different people. Ahu-waqar

Ahu-waqar Sub-community: 3.

Connects to sub-community 3.

Ahu-waqar (a-hu-wa-qar), Doc. 036, rev.3 Ahu-waqar (a-hu-wa-qar), Doc. 072, rev.3 Ahu-waqar son of Ilšu-bāni Sub-community: 0.

Connects to sub-community 0.

Possible father: Ilšu-bāni son of (Damaged name), in sub-community 7. Possible father: Ilšu-bāni son of (Damaged name), in sub-community 8.

Possible father: Ilšu-bāni, in sub-community 8.

Possible father: Ilšu-bāni son of Ibniya, in sub-community 11.

Ahu-waqar (a-hu-wa-qar) son of Ilšu-bāni (il3-šu-ba-ni), Doc. 092, rev.4 Ahu-waqar son of Puzurum Sub-community: 3.

Connects to sub-community 3.

Possible father: Puzurum, in sub-community 3. Ahu-waqar (a-hu-wa-qar) son of Puzurum (pu-zu-ru-um), Doc. 011, rev.2 Ahu-waqar (a-hu-wa-qar) son of Puzurum (pu-zu-ru-um), Doc. 022, rev.2 Ahu-waqar (a-hu-wa-qar) son of Puzurum (pu-zu-ru-um), Doc. 029, rev.2 Ahu-waqar son of (Damaged name) Sub-community: 3.

Possible father: (Damaged name) in sub-community: 6

Ahu-waqar (a-hu-wa-qar) son of (Damaged name), Doc. 078, obv.5 This seems to be a complex case, but a first analysis suggests it is worth investigating: ২ whether ‘Ahu-waqar’ and ‘Ahu-waqar son of Puzurum’ are aliases of a same person, once both identifications belong to sub-community 3, and ২ whether the illegible name in the identification Ahu-waqar son of (Damaged name), who was also placed in sub-community 3 by the modularity class algorithm, is in fact Puzurum. The details of each of the above cases will not be entered into. They are exhibited here only for the sake of exemplifying how the partition into modularity classes may help the process of detecting possible aliases.

Conclusions: A Continuous Process

Resuming with the conclusions obtained in the previous section about the identifications ‘Abdi-arah’, ‘Abdiarah son of Guzulum’, and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’. If it is accepted, at least as a working hypothesis, that the occurrences of ‘Abdi-arah’ in Documents 11, 22, 23, 29, 62, 65, 72, and 78 are an alias of ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, and that its occurrences in Documents 54 and 63 are an alias of ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’, it is now possible to produce a new graph. The result will be slightly different from the graph presented in the sec-

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala tion ‘Prerequisites’, made from the raw data extracted directly from the tablets of the archive of Nūr-Šamaš. The new graph still has 402 nodes, but the number of edges is now 1873, or six edges less than the original 1879. The number of modularity classes or sub-communities is still sixteen, although the numerical label each class receives is not necessarily the same as it was previously. The new directory entries corresponding to the identifications ‘Abdi-arah’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Bunnilum’, ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, and ‘Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum’ are the following: Abdi-arah Sub-community: 6.

Connects to sub-community 6.

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 045, rev.4 Abdi-arah son of Bunn-ilum Sub-community: 5.

Connects to sub-community 5.

Possible father: Bunn-ilum, in sub-community 9.

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Bunn-ilum (bu-ni-lu-um), Doc. 074, rev.9 Abdi-arah son of Guzulum Sub-community: 4.

Connects to sub-communities 4 and 6.

Possible father: Guzulum, in sub-community 4. Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 011, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 022, rev.5 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 023, rev.4

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Guzulum (gu-zu-lu), Doc. 027, rev.5 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Guzulum (gu-zu-lu-um), Doc. 028, rev.5 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 029, rev.4

Abdi-arah (ab-di-e-ra-ah), Doc. 062, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 065, rev.5 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 072, rev.5 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), Doc. 078, rev.5

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Abdi-arah son of Pulsātum Sub-community 9.

Connects to sub-communities 4, 6, and 9.

Possible mother: Pulsātum, in sub-community 3. Possible mother: Pulsātum daughter of Iabulum, in sub-community 4. Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu-ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 038, rev.5

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu-ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 041, rev.6 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), 054, rev.4

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu-ul-za3-tum), Doc. 057, rev.4a

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah), 063, rev.3

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu-ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 068, rev.6

Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu-ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 081, rev.4 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu-ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 083, rev.8 Abdi-arah (ab-di-ra-ah) son of Pulsātum (pu-ul-sa3-tum), Doc. 106, rev.5

It is striking that, in the new directory, identifications ‘Abdi-arah’ and ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’ no longer belong to the same sub-community. By correctly separating the occurrences of the identification ‘Abdi-arah’ that seem to be an alias of ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, the possibility arose for the remaining occurrences of ‘Abdi-arah’ to be placed in a different sub-community, more in accordance with the connections these occurrences establish with other identifications. Detection of homonyms and aliases can proceed with strategies and techniques similar to the ones described above. Each iteration of the process produces a new graph, a new clustering, and an updated directory, upon which new hypotheses can be established. None of the steps are irreversible, and it is the responsibility of each researcher to evaluate whether or not the solutions to homonyms and aliases make sense. In my view, this dynamic process of changes and updates is a useful item in the toolbox of researchers preoccupied with the problem of identification of individuals in a mass of documents.

100 In relation to the community of Nūr-Šamaš, it has been seen that the raw data coming from the documentation is subject to refining. The fact that the same individual, ‘Abdi-arah son of Guzulum’, may sometimes be identified without the name of his father, ‘Abdi-arah’, is no exception in the Old Babylonian documentation. Yet, that this was a practice also present in the archive of Nūr-Šamaš could not simply be taken for granted. Its confirmation depended on a more detailed analysis, such as the one carried out in the present paper. Even if it may not have been demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt, at least, it is fair to say that there are now strong reasons to accept it as very plausible.

Carlos Gonçalves

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge that this paper benefited from a fellowship at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study (France), with the financial support of the French State managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche, programme ‘Investissements d’avenir’ (ANR-11LABX-0027–01 Labex RFIEA+). I also would like to thank the São Paulo Research Foundation (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo — FAPESP — Grant 2018/095050–1) for partially funding my participation at the conference ‘The Old Babylonian Diyala — Research since the 1930s and Prospects’. Finally, I would like to thank Marcelo Rede and Cécile Michel for their attentive and critical reading of a previous version of this text, thus helping me to deeply improve my arguments. Any defects, errors, or inconsistencies that might have remained are entirely my responsibility.

Works Cited Anderson, Adam 2017 ‘The Old Assyrian Network: An Analysis of the Texts from Kültepe-Kanesh (1950–1750 b.c.e.)’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Harvard University). Berkowitz, Stephen David 1982 An Introduction to Structural Analysis: The Network Approach to Social Research. Butterworths, Toronto. Brandes, Ulrik; Delling, Daniel; Gaertler, Marco; Görke, Robert; Hoefer, Martin; Nikolski, Zoran & Wagner, Dorothea 2007 ‘On Finding Graph Clusterings with Maximum Modularity’, in Andreas Brandstädt, Dieter Kratsch & Haiko Müller (eds), Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 33rd International Workshop, WG 2007, Dornburg, Germany, June 2007; Revised Papers (Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4769). Springer, Heidelberg: 121–32. Chen, Guanrong; Wang, Xiofan & Li, Xiang 2015 Fundamentals of Complex Networks: Models, Structures and Dynamics. Wiley, Higher Education Press, Singapore. Di Battista, Giuseppe; Eades, Peter; Tamassia, Roberto & Tollis, Ioannis G. 1999 Graph Drawing: Algorithms for the Visualization of Graphs. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River. Dijk, Jan van 1966 The Archives of Nūr-Šamaš and Other Loans (Texts in the Iraq Museum 3). Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden. Expert, Paul; Evans, Tim S.; Blondel, Vincent D. & Lambiotte, Renaud 2010 ‘Uncovering Space-Independent Communities in Spatial Networks’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108/19: 7663–68. Groneberg, Brigitte 1980 Die Orts- und Gewässernamen der altbabylonischen Zeit (Répertoire géographique des textes cunéiformes 3). Reichert, Wiesbaden.

7. Social Network Analysis, Homonyms, and Aliases in the Old Babylonian Diyala

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Harris, Rivkah 1960 ‘Old Babylonian Temple Loans’, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 14: 126–37. Michel, Cécile 1991 Innāya dans les tablettes paléo-assyriennes, i: Analyse. Éditions Recherche sur les civilisations, Paris. Moody, James 2001 ‘Race, School Integration, and Friendship Segregation in America’, American Journal of Socio­logy 107/3: 679–716. Moreno, Jacob 1934 Who Shall Survive: A  New Approach to the Problem of Human Interrelations. Nervous and Mental Disease Publishing, Washington, D.C. Newman, Mark 2010 Networks: An Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Reschid, Fauzi 1965 ‘Archiv des Nūršamaš und andere Darlehensurkunden aus der altbabylonischen Zeit’ (unpublished inaugural dissertation, Heidelberg). Stamm, Johann Jakob 1968 Die akkadische Namengebung. Unchanged Reproduction of the 1939 1st edn, Leipzig, Mitteilungen der Vorder­ asiatisch-Ägyptischen Gesellschaft 44. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt. Scott, John 2000 Social Network Analysis: A Handbook. SAGE, London. Waerzeggers, Caroline 2014 ‘Social Network Analysis of Cuneiform Archives – A New Approach’, in Heather D. Baker & Michael Jursa (eds), Documentary Sources in Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman Economic History: Methodo­logy and Practice. Oxbow, Oxford: 207–33.

Indices Personal Names Names of individuals Abdi-arah: 88, 94–100 Abdi-arah, s. Bunn-ilum: 94–95, 99 Abdi-arah, s. Guzulum: 88, 94–100 Abdi-arah, s. Pulsātum: 94–99 Ahī-maraṣ: 97 Ahī-maraṣ, s. Namanum: 97 Ahu-waqar: 98 Ahu-waqar, s. Ilšu-bani: 98 Ahu-waqar, s. Puzurum: 98 Ahum: 98 Ahum, s. Merānum: 98 Ahum, s. Rubâtum: 98 Ahūni: 97 Ahūni, s. Bazizum: 97 Ahūni, s. Warad-[x-x]: 97 Akšak-abī: 77 Alammuš-naṣir: 12 Apil-Sîn: 97 Apil-Sîn, s. Mati-arahtim: 97 Apil-Sîn, s. Puzuretaya: 97 Arwium: 77, 77 n. 10 Bazizum, f. Ahūni: 97 Bēlšunu (dam-gar3): 75 Binqatanum/Biqatanum: 85, 85 n. 4 Birtinum (ugula dam-gar3): 75 Bunn-ilum: 94, 99 Bunn-ilum, f. Abdi-arah: 94–95, 99 Būr-Sîn, s. Ibbi-Tišpak (dam-gar3): 75 Elali: 77, 77 n. 12 Enlil-nādā (ugula dam-gar3): 75 Erīb-Sîn: 76 Erra-gāmil: 76 Girni-isa: 77, 77 n. 10 Guzulum: 94, 99 Guzulum, f. Abdi-arah: 88, 94–100

Iabulum, f. Pulsātum: 94–95, 99 Ibal-Iškur: 64 Ibbi-Tišpak, f. Būr-Sîn: 75 Ibni-Erra: 11 Ibni-Tišpak: 76 Ibniya: 85 Ibniya f. Ilšu-bāni: 98 Ikūn-pîša: 75–76 Ilī-atka s. Nākirum?: 85 Ilī-rābi: 95–96 Ilšu-bāni: 98 Ilšu- bāni, f. Ahu-waqar: 98 Ilšu-bāni, s. Ibniya: 98 Ilšu-ibbīšu (dam-gar3): 75 Ilšu-nāṣir: 75 Ilum-ma: 76 Innaya: 84 Iqād-ilī: 88 Kūbiya, f. Nūr-Šamaš: 85–87 Lamassī: 76 Maṣiam-ilī (dam-gar3): 75 Māšum, s. Zanātim: 84–88 Mati-arahtim, m. Apil-Sîn: 97 Merānum, f. Ahum: 98 Munānum: 84–87 Nabi-Šamaš: 64 Nākirum?, f. Ilī-atka: 85 Namanum, f. Ahī-maraṣ: 97 Nanna-mansum: 85, 87, 87 n. 6, 88 Nūr-Šamaš, s. Kūbiya: 8, 75, 83, 83 n. 2, 84–85, 85 n. 5, 86–97, 99–100 Nūr-Sîn: 77, 77 n. 10

Pulsātum: 85, 94, 95, 99 Pulsātum, m. Abdi-arah: 94–99 Pulsātum, s. Iabulum: 94–95, 99 Puzur-Akšak (from Šadlaš): 76–77 Puzuretaya: 85 Puzuretaya, f. Apil-Sîn: 97 Puzurum: 98 Puzurum, f. Ahu-waqar: 98 Rīm-Aya (dam-gar3): 75 Rubâtum, m. Ahum: 98 Šamaš-gāmil (dam-gar3): 75 Sîn-dādiya: 86–87 Sîn-gāmil (from Nuhum/ Numhûm): 83 n. 2 Sîn-imittī: 77–78 Sîn-rabi (dam-gar3): 75 Sîn-šeme: 86 Ur-sig: 77, 77 n. 11, 77 n. 12 Warad-[x-x], f. Ahūni: 97 Warassa: 64 Wardiya: 85–86 Yapuhu: 64 Zanātim, m. Māšum: 84–88

104

Names of Kings (fQueen) and Officials Abī-ešuh (Babylon): 11 n. 27, 12, 12 n. 31 Ahušina (Ešnunna): 11–12, 12 n. 31 Amut-pī-El (Qaṭna): 7 Anu-Banini (Lullubû): 68 Apil-Sîn (Babylon): 76 Aššur-malik: 14 n. 45 Awiliya: 14 n. 45 Barnamtarra (Lagaš): 58 n. 25 Bēlakum (Ešnunna): 9 Bilalama (Ešnunna): 74

f

Dāduša (Ešnunna): 11, 13–14, 30, 30 n. 12, 64–65, 67, 69 Gilgameš: 26 Ginak, prince d’Edin-E: 28–29 Gulaku/Nulaku (?): 23 n. 1 Gungunum (Larsa): 2, 63 Hallutaš-Inšušinak, f. ŠutrukNahhunte (Elam): 29 Hammi-dušur (Nērebtum): 75 Hammu-rabi (Babylon): 7, 10–12, 12 n. 30, 14, 14 n. 51, 15, 15 n. 51, 25, 29–30, 67, 76 n. 6, 78 Hurbah (Tell Muhammad): 12 Ibal-pī-El I (Ešnunna): 13, 23, 23 n. 1, 29 Ibal-pī-El II (Ešnunna): 7, 10, 11, 11 n. 27, 14, 14 n. 45, 63, 67, 75 Ibni-Erra: 11 Ikūn-pī-Sîn (Nērebum): 13 Ilum-ma-ila (Sippar): 76 Iluni (Ešnunna): 3, 4, 13, 15 Immerum (Sippar): 76 Ipiq-Adad II (Ešnunna): 3, 11, 13, 29, 64–67, 75, 78 Išīm-Šulgi (šakkanakkum, Diyala): 76 Išma-ilum (Matar): 58 Išqi-Mari: 58, 58 n. 24 Itūr-Asdu: 7, 7 n. 1 Itūriya (ensi2 Ešnunna): 25 Kirikiri (Ešnunna): 74 Lugalanda (Lagaš): 56 n. 17, 58

Indices Maništušu (Akkad): 29 Mašparum (Diyala): 76 Mesannepada (Ur): 58 Meskalamdug (Ur): 58 Narām-Sîn (Ešnunna): 13–14, 30 f Nin-tur (Lagaš): 58 Puzur-Ištar (ensi2 Ešnunna): 25 Rīm-Sîn II (Larsa): 7, 15 Sābium (Babylon): 13 Samsī-Addu/Šamšī-Adad I (Ekallātum): 13, 30, 67 Samsu-ditana (Babylon): 12 Samsu-iluna (Babylon): 3, 8, 12, 13, 15, 15 n. 52, 75 Sargon (Akkad): 60 Sîn-abušu (Diyala): 75 Sîn-iddinam (Larsa): 13 Sîn-kāšid (Uruk): 13 Siwe-palar-huppak (Elam): 30 Sumun-abi-yarim (diyala): 76 Sumu-abum (Babylon): 11 n. 26, 76 Sumu-la-El (Babylon): 11, 11 n. 26, 15 Sūmū-numhim: 3 n. 3 Ṣillī-Sîn (Ešnunna): 11–12, 14 n. 51, 15, 15 n. 51, 63, 67 Šipta-ulzi (Tell Muhammad): 12 Šutruk-Nahhunte, s. HallutašInšušinak (Elam): 1, 29–30 Tan-ruhuratir (Šimaški): 74 Ur-Nanše (Lagaš): 40 Ur-Ningišzida (ensi2 Ešnunna): 23 n. 1, 25, 30 Uru-inimgina (Lagaš and Girsu): 56 n. 17 Yahdun-Lîm (Mari): 14 Yarīm-Lîm (Aleppo): 7 Yasmah-Addu (Mari): 14 n. 45 Zimrī-Lîm (Mari): 7 n. 1, 11, 13–14

Names of Gods, Goddesses, and Demons Addu: 13 Apsû: 53, 53 n. 8 Anu: 40 Aštar: 54 n. 9 Bate/iritum: 68 Bēl-gašer: 3 Dagan: 14 n. 45 Enki / Ea: 53, 59–60 Enlil: 15, 58, 58 n. 24 Erra: 14 Haya: 9 n. 22 Humbaba: 26 Imdugud / Anzu: 56 Inanna / Ištar: 2, 15, 15 n. 52 Inšušinak: 29 Kitītum: 3, 8, 14, 57 Marduk: 40 n. 19 Mišar: 29 Ninazu: 14 Ninhursag: 2, 40 Ningirsu: 40 Nisaba: 9 n. 22 Sîn: 9, 15, 15 n. 52, 38, 39, 75 Šamaš: 2, 15, 15 n. 52, 63, 64, 86 Šarratum: 68 Sirsir: 53 Šu-Sîn, s. Ṭabâya: 77 Tišpak: 14, 14 n. 46, 63, Ṭabâya, f. Šu-Sîn: 77 Zababa: 15, 15 n. 52

I ndices

Geographical names Ancient names Adab (Tell Bismya): 26 n. 8, 40, 42 Akkad: 13–14, 29, 48, 56, 58–59 Akšak: 3, 76–78 Anšan: 29 Arrapha: 30, 66 Ašnakkum (Chagar Bazar): 13 Aššur/Assur: 3, 26, 75–78 Awal: 67, 69 Babylon: 2–3, 7, 10–15, 40, 64, 66–67, 78 Bate/ir, B/Madar (Tell Sulayma): 2, 63, 67–69 Borsippa: 15 Damrum: 12 Dêr (Tell al-Aqar): 64, 66, 73, 77 Dilbat: 15 Dilmun: 77–78 Diniktum: 10, 77 Dūr-Samsu-iluna: 8, 12 Dūr-Rimuš: 29 Ebla: 47, 55–56, 60 Edin-E: 29 Ekallātum (Tulul al-Haikal): 67 Elam: 3–4, 14 n. 51, 25, 29–30, 73, 74 n. 2, 78 Eridu: 26, 39–40, 42 Ešnunna (Tell Asmar): 1–4, 7–15, 23, 25–26, 27 n. 10, 29–30, 63–64, 66–69, 73–75, 78 Girsu (Tello): 25, 40, 42, 47, 73 Hapirti: 29 Ida-maraṣ: 7, 73–74 Isin: 11, 13, 15 Kaneš (Kültepe): 75, 78 Kiš: 15, 26, 29, 38 n. 13, 40, 47–49, 55–60 Lagaš: 2, 26, 40, 58, 73 Larsa: 2, 7, 11, 13–15, 26, 38 n. 13, 63–64, 66–67, 75, 78 n. 13 Lasimi, Lašimi, Lasumi: 76 Malgia/um (Tell al-Baghdadya or Tell Yasir): 2, 63–69 Mari: 1–3, 7, 10–15, 26–27, 40, 42, 47, 49, 54 n. 9, 55–56, 58, 60, 64, 66, 75–78

105 Maškan-šapir (Tell Abu al-Dhuari): 63–64 Matar: 58 Mê-Turran (Tell es-Sib & Tell Haddad): 1–2, 10, 66, 68–69, 75 Nērebtum (Ishchali): 1, 3, 8–10, 13–14, 26, 27 n. 10, 48–49, 57, 75, 76 n. 7, 77 Nuhum/ Numhûm: 83 n. 2 Nippur: 15, 39–40 Opis: 26 Puzurrān: 13 Qabara’: 64 Qabra: 30 Qaṭna: 2, 7 Rāpiqum: 64, 66–67 Simurrum: 73 Sippar: 3, 15, 73, 75–78 Sippar Amnānum (Tell ed-Dēr): 75–76 Susa: 1, 55, 75, 78 Ṣupur-Šamaš: 10 Šadlaš: 3 n. 3, 8 n. 4, 76, 78 Šaduppûm (Tell Harmal): 1–3, 9–11, 14, 75 Šimaški: 74 Šuruppak (Fara): 26, 55 Tarnip (Tell Tamir?): 13 Terqa: 1, 14  n. 45, 47 Tutub (Khafajah): 1, 8–10, 26, 33, 39 Ugarit: 59 Ur: 8 n. 11, 9, 11, 13, 15, 26, 39–40, 47, 55, 58, 73–74, 77 Urbilum: 30 Uruk: 8, 13, 15, 25–26, 33, 39–40, 42 Urum (Tell ‘Uqair): 40, 42 Uzarlulu see Zaralulu: 2, 10, 75 Yablia (Tell Šišīn): 66 Yamhad (Aleppo): 7 Zaralulu (Tell al-Dhib’ai): 10

Modern names Abu Halawa, Tell: 8 Abu Ṣalabikh: 36 n. 8, 47, 53 Agrab, TellAl-Aqar, Tell (Dêr): 1–2, 8, 26, 48–50, 53–55, 57

Al-Baghdadya, Tell (Magium?): 2, 63–69 al-Dhib’ai , Tell (Uzarlulu/Zaralulu): 10 Aleppo (Yamhad): 7 al-Hibbah, Tell: 38 n. 11 Al-‘Ubaid, Tell: 38 n. 11, 39–40 Asmar, Tell (Ešnunna): 1, 7–10, 13, 23, 25–27, 48–52, 54–59, 68 Beydar, Tell: 49, 55 Brak, Tell: 55 Chagar Bazar (Ašnakkum): 13 Chogha Gavaneh: 73 ed-Dēr, Tell (Sippar Amnānum): 13, 75 es-Sib, Tell (Mē-Turran): 2, 10, 66, 68–69 Fara (Šuruppak): 55 Haddad, Tell (Mē-Turran): 2, 10, 14, 66, 68–69 Harīrī, Tell (Mari): 26–27 Harmal, Tell (Šaduppum): 2, 3, 9–11, 14 Ishchali (Nērebtum): 1, 3, 8–10, 14, 26–27, 48–49, 57, 68 Khafajah/Khafadje (Tutub): 1–2, 8–10, 12, 33, 38–39, 42, 48–51, 54–55, 57–58 Khazneh, Tell: 37 n. 9 Kültepe (Kaneš): 3, 75 Muhammad, Tell: 2, 10, 12 Qara Teppa: 69 Seba’, Tell: 8 Shemshara, Tell (Šušarra): 73 Sulayma, Tell (Bater): 2, 63, 67–69 Šišīn, Tell (Yablia): 66 Tamir, Tell (Tarnip?): 13 Tello (Girsu): 25, 40 Tulul al-Haikal (Ekallātum): 67 Tulul Khattab: 2, 10 ‘Uqair, Tell (Urum): 40 Yelkhi, Tell: 2, 10, 12, 14

106

Texts A.1289+: 11 n. 25 A.: 3274+: 14 n. 46 482: 2, 7 AbB 2 107: 76 n. 6 AO: 4691: 25 5493: 25 ARM: 26/1 37: 6–8: 14 n. 46 27 135: 31–33: 13 n. 39 BM 79898: 12 n. 31 CT 8 37b: 76 n. 6, 78 n. 18 Frayne 1990 388 no. 7: 128–136: 15 n. 52 IM: 121115: 68 12264: 64–65 12265: 65 49219: 76 49221: 76 49222: 76 49224: 76 49225: 76 49238: 76 49240: 76 49253: 76 49274: 76 49305: 77, 77 n. 12 49534: 76 49537: 76 49543: 76 52834: 77 n. 10 85444: 63–64 Laws of Ešnunna (Roth 1995: 80): 9 TIM 1, 20: 78 n. 1 TIM 3,: 1: 84–87 2: 87 3: 98 6: 87 7: 85 11: 88, 94–99 12: 75 20: 97 22: 75, 88, 94–99 23: 88, 94–99 26: 85 27: 88, 94–95, 98–99 28: 88, 94–95, 99

Indices 29: 88, 94–99 31: 85 32: 97 33: 97 36: 98 38: 99 39: 85 41: 94, 99 42: 84 45: 85, 88, 94–95, 99 46: 85, 97 49: 97 54: 88, 94–99 57: 94, 99 61: 85 62: 88, 94, 96–99 63: 88, 94–98 65: 88, 94–99 67: 98 68: 94, 99 71: 97 72: 88, 94–99 74: 99 75: 75, 83 n. 1 77: 85, 97 78: 88, 94–99 81: 94, 99 83: 85, 94, 99 85: 85 87: 98 92: 83 n. 2, 98 96: 85 n. 4 100: 85 106: 99 107: 88 112: 83 n. 2 116: 83 n. 1 119: 83 n. 1 120: 83 n. 1 121: 83 n. 1 TIM 7,: 106: 77 n. 11 135: 76 152: 76 154: 76 157: 76 160: 77 190: 77 191: 77 192: 77 193: 77 194: 77 195: 77 196: 77 197: 77 198: 77

Objects Amiet 1973, no. 202: 58 Amiet 1980,: no. 1292: 59 no. 1348: 50 no. 1415: 51 no. 1421: 51 no. 1428: 52 no. 1429: 51 no. 1430: 51 no. 1431: 52 no. 1432: 51 no. 1433: 51 no. 1434: 51 no. 1438: 50 no. 1441: 52 no. 1443: 52 no. 1448: 53 no. 1478: 59 n. 27 no. 1480: 59 n. 27 AO: 11415–11418: 25 n. 3 12433–12435: 24 12436: 24 12437: 24 12438: 24 12439–12440: 24 12480–12483: 24 12441–12479: 24 12457: 25 12462: 25 18886: 28 18887: 28 19523: 28 19704–19705: 28, 29 201: 29 20113: 28 20146: 28, 29 21117: 28, 29 2776: 30 n. 12 6694bis: 25 As.: 32:587: 57 n. 22 32:739: 57 n. 22 BM 128886-128891: 28 n. 11 Frankfort: no. 245: 58 n. 23 no. 267 (= Kh. II 276): 50, 51 no. 270 (= Kh. II 99): 50, 51 no. 306 (= Kh. IX 136): 50, 51 no. 320: 57 no. 331 (= Kh. III 922): 50, 51

I ndices no. 335 (= Kh. III 742): 50, 51, 53 n. 7, 57, 58, 58 n. 23 no. 339 (= Kh. III 279): 50, 51 no. 342 (= Kh. III 860): 50, 51 no. 353: 58 n. 23 no. 354 (= Kh. I 142): 50, 51 no. 366 (= Kh. IX 92): 50, 51 no. 370: 58 n. 23 no. 383 (= Kh. VI 68): 50, 51 no. 484 (= As. 34:21): 50, 52 no. 495 (= As. 32:1115): 50, 52, 53 n. 7, 57, 57, 58 n. 23 no. 499 (= As. 33:191): 50, 52 no. 502: 57 no. 513 (= As. 32:840): 50, 52 no. 516: 56 n. 18 no. 535: 58 n. 23, 59 no. 551 (= As. 33:193): 50, 52 no. 598: 56 n. 18 no. 621: 56 n. 18 no. 742: 58 no. 757: 58 n. 23, 59 no. 888: 57 no. 895 (= Ag. 36:446): 50, 53 no. 924: 58 n. 23 no. 1348: 50 without number - As. 32: 182: 50, 52 without number - Kh. V 56: 50, 50 n. 6, 51 without number - Kh. I 130: 50, 50 n. 6, 51 IM 95200: 30 n. 12 Kh.: VIII 30: 57 n. 22 VIII 162: 57 n. 22 OIM A9345: 26 n. 6 Sb: 141: 30 n. 13 6: 29 49 = Sb 90: 29 56: 29, 30 57: 30, 30 58: 30 n. 13 61: 30 U.:

11152: 58 13607: 58

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subartu All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.

Titles in Series Stefano Anastasio, The Archaeology of Upper Mesopotamia: An Analytical Bibliography for the Pre-Classical Periods (1995) Farouk Ismail, Walther Sallaberger, Philippe Talon, & Karel Van Lerberghe, Administrative Documents from Tell Beydar (Seasons 1993–1995) (1997) Tell Beydar, Three Seasons of Excavations (1992–1994): A Preliminary Report, ed by Marc Lebeau & Antoine Suleiman (1997) About Subartu: Studies Devoted to Upper Mesopotamia — Volume I: Landscape, Archaeology, Settlement; Volume II: Culture, Society, Image, ed. by Marc Lebeau (1998) Roger Matthews, The Early Prehistory of Mesopotamia (2000) Tell Beydar: Environmental and Technical Studies, ed. by Karel Van Lerberghe & Gabriella Voet (2000) Olivier Rouault & Markus Wäfler, La Djéziré et l’Euphrate syriens de la protohistoire à la fin du second millénaire av. J.C. : Tendances dans l’interprétation historique des données nouvelles (2000) Maria Grazia Masetti-Rouault, Cultures locales du Moyen-Euphrate. Modèles et événements (IIe-Ier millénaires av. J.-C.) (2001) Tell Boueid II: A Late Neolithic Village on the Middle Khabur (Syria), ed. by Olivier Nieuwenhuyse & Antoine Suleiman (2002) The Origins of North Mesopotamian Civilization: Ninevite 5 Chronology, Economy, Society, ed. by Harvey Weiss & Elena Rova (2003) Tell Beydar, The 1995 to 1999 Seasons of Excavations: A Preliminary Report, ed. by Marc Lebeau & Antoine Suleiman (2003) Lucio Milano, Walther Sallaberger, Philippe Talon, & Karel Van Lerberghe, Third Millenium Cuneiform Texts from Tell Beydar (Seasons 1996–2002) (2004) Atlas of Pre-Classical Upper Mesopotamia including a Supplement to ‘The Archaeology of Upper Mesopotamia. An Analytical Bibliography for the Pre-Classical Periods’ and an Analytical Repertory of Archaeological Excavations, ed. by Stefano Anastasio, Marc Lebeau, & Martin Sauvage (eds.) 2004

Das mittelassyrische Tontafelarchiv von Giricano/Dunnu-Sha-Uzibi. Ausgrabungen in Giricano 1, ed. by Karen Radner (2004) Tell Beydar, the 2000-2002 Seasons of Excavations, the 2003-2004 Seasons of Architectural Restoration: A Preliminary Report, ed. by Marc Lebeau & Antoine Suleiman (2004) Si un homme... Textes offerts en hommage à André Finet, ed. by Phillipe Talon & Véronique Van der Stede (2005) Les espaces syro-mésopotamiens. Dimensions de l’expérience humaine au Proche-Orient ancien Volume d’hommage offert à Jean-Claude Margueron, ed. by Pascal Butterlin, Marc Lebeau, J.-Y. Mon­ chambert, J.L. Montero Fenollós, & B. Muller (2007) Tell ‘Acharneh 1998-2004 : Rapports préliminaires sur les campagnes de fouilles et saison d’études. Preliminary Reports on Excavation Campaigns and Study Season, ed. by Michel Fortin (2006) Adelheid Otto, Alltag und Gesellschaft zur Spätbronzezeit: Eine Fallstudie aus Tall Bazi (Syrien) (2006) Andreas Schachner, Bilder eines Weltreichs: Kunst- und kulturgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu den Verzierungen eines Tores aus Balawat (Imgur-Enlil) aus der Zeit von Salmanassar III, König von Assyrien (2007) Beydar Studies 1, ed. by Marc Lebeau & Antoine Suleiman (2008) Philippe Quenet, Les Echanges du Nord de la Mésopotamie avec ses voisins proche-orientaux au IIIe millénaire (ca. 3100-2300 Av. J.-C.) (2008) A propos de Tepe Gawra, le monde proto-urbain de Mésopotamie ; About Tepe Gawra, a Proto-Urban World in Mesopotamia, ed. by Pascal Butterlin (2009) Stefano Anastasio, Atlas of the Assyrian Pottery of the Iron Age (2010) Emar After the Closure of the Tabqa Dam: The Syrian-German Excavations 1996–2002 — Volume I: Late Roman and Medieval Cemeteries and Environmental Studies, ed. by Uwe Finkbeiner & Ferhan Sakal (2010) Alexander Pruss, Die Amuq-Terrakotten. Untersuchungen zu den Terrakotta-Figuren des 2. und 1. Jahr­ tausends v. Chr. aus den Grabungen des Oriental Institute Chicago in der Amuq-Ebene (2010) Holocene Landscapes through Time in the Fertile Crescent, ed. by Katleen Deckers (2011) Greta Jans & Joachim Bretschneider, Seals and Sealings from Tell Beydar/Nabada (Seasons 1995–2001): A Progress Report (2012) Tell Beydar: The 2004/2–2009 Seasons of Excavations; The 2004/2–2009 Seasons of Architectural Restoration. A Preliminary Report, ed. by M. Lebeau, A. Suleiman (2011) Khashuri Natsargora: The Early Bronze Age Graves. Publications of the Georgian-Italian Shida Kartli Archaeological Project I, ed. by Elena Rova & Marina Puturidze (2012) ‘L’Heure immobile’ entre ciel et terre. Mélanges en l’honneur d’Antoine Souleiman, ed. by Philippe Quenet & Mīšāl al- Maqdisī (2012) Ferhan Sakal, Die anthropomorphen Terrakotten der Region am syrischen Mittleren Euphrat im 3. Jahr­ tausend v. Chr. (2013) Tell Beydar: Environmental and Technical Studies, Volume II, ed. by Lucio Milano & Marc Lebeau (2014) Tell Beydar. The 2010 Season of Excavations and Architectural Restoration: A Preliminary Report/ Rapport préliminaire sur la campagne de fouilles et de restauration architecturale 2010, ed. by Marc Lebeau & Antoine Suleiman (2014) Proceedings of the 1st Kültepe International Meeting, Kültepe, September 19—23, 2013. Studies Dedicated to Kutlu Emre. Kültepe International Meetings 1, ed. by Fikri Kulakoğlu & Cécile Michel (2015) Mille et une empreintes : Un Alsacien en Orient. Mélanges en l’honneur du 65e anniversaire de Dominique Beyer, ed. by Julie Patrier, Philippe Quenet, & Pascal Butterlin (2016)

Emmanuel Laroche, Études anatoliennes, ed. by Alfonso Archi & Hatice Gonnet (2016) At the Northern Frontier of Near Eastern Archaeology: Recent Research on Caucasia and Anatolia in the Bronze Age/An der Nordgrenze der vorderasiatischen Archäologie: Neue Forschung über Kaukasien und Anatolien in der Bronzezeit. Publications of the Georgian-Italian Shida-Kartli Archaeological Project 2, ed. by Elena Rova & Monica Tonussi (2017) Proceedings of the 2nd Kültepe International Meeting, Kültepe, 26–30 July 2015. Studies Dedicated to Klaas Veenhof. Kültepe International Meetings 2, ed. by Fikri Kulakoǧlu & Gojiko Barjamovic (2017) Barbara Couturaud, Les incrustations en coquille de Mari (2019) Thomas L. McClellan, El-Qitar: A Bronze Age Fortress on the Euphrates (2019) Andreas Schachner, Ausgrabungen in Giricano — Volume II: Die chalkolithische Siedlung von Giricano am Oberen Tigris (2020) After the Harvest: Storage Practices and Food Processing in Bronze Age Mesopotamia, ed. by Noemi Borrelli & Giulia Scazzosi (2020) Circular Cities of Early Bronze Age Syria, ed. by Corinne Castel, Jan-Waalke Meyer & Philippe Quenet (2020) Integrative Approaches to the Archaeology and History of Kültepe-Kaneš: Kültepe, 4–7 August, 2017, ed. by Fikri Kulakoğlu, Cécile Michel & Güzel Öztürk (2020) Cultural Exchanges and Current Research at Kültepe and its Surroundings: Kültepe, 1–4 August, 2019, ed. by Fikri Kulakoğlu, Guido Kryszat & Cécile Michel (2021)

In Preparation Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia in Context: Papers from the Workshop held at the 11th ICAANE, Munich, April 5th 2018, ed. by Johnny Samuele Baldi, Marco Iamoni, Luca Peyronel & Paola Sconzo