Cultures > Sealand Dynastys

Sealand Dynastys

Background

The Sealand Dynasty, also known as the 2nd Dynasty of Babylon was a short lived dynasty that existed in the aftermath of the collapse of the Old Babylonian Empire that was started by Hammurabi.

The Sealand Dynasty, (URU.KÙKI[nb 1][1][2]) or the 2nd Dynasty of Babylon (although it was independent of Amorite ruled Babylon), very speculatively ca. 1732–1460 BC (short chronology), is an enigmatic series of kings attested to primarily in laconic references in the king lists A and B, and as contemporaries recorded on the Assyrian Synchronistic king list A.117. The dynasty, which had broken free of the short lived, and by this time crumbling Babylonian Empire, was named for the province in the far south of Mesopotamia, a swampy region bereft of large settlements which gradually expanded southwards with the silting up of the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The kings bore fanciful pseudo-Sumerian names and harked back to the glory days of the dynasty of Isin. The third king of the dynasty was even named for the ultimate king of the dynasty of Isin, Damiq-ilišu. Despite these cultural motifs, the population predominantly bore Akkadian names and wrote and spoke in the Akkadian language. There is circumstantial evidence that their rule extended at least briefly to Babylon itself.Contents [hide]1The King list tradition2Evidence of individual reigns2.1Ilum-ma-ilī2.2Damqi-ilišu2.3Gulkišar2.4Pešgaldarameš and Ayadaragalama2.5Ea-gâmil3Inscriptions4Notes5ReferencesThe King list tradition[edit]The king list references which bear witness to the sequence of Sealand kings are summarized below:PositionKing List A[i 1]King List B[i 2]Purported reign[i 1]Contemporary1Ilima[ii]Ilum-ma-ilī60 yearsSamsu-iluna and Abi-ešuh (Babylon)[i 3]2IttiliItti-ili-nībī56 years3DamqiliDamqi-ilišu II36 yearsAdasi (Assyria)[i 4]4IškiIškibal15 yearsBelu-bāni (Assyria)[i 4]5Šušši, brotherŠušši24 yearsLubaia (Assyria)[i 4]6Gulki…Gulkišar55 yearsSharma-Adad I (Assyria)[i 4]6amDIŠ-U-EN[i 4] ?LIK.KUD-Šamaš (Assyria)[i 4]7Peš-galPešgaldarameš,[nb 2] his son, same50 yearsBazaia (Assyria)[i 4]8A-a-dàraAyadaragalama,[nb 3] his son, same28 yearsLullaya (Assyria)[i 4]9EkurulAkurduana26 yearsShu-Ninua (Assyria)[i 4]10MelammaMelamkurkurra7 yearsSharma-Adad II (Assyria)[i 4]11EagaEa-gam[il]9 yearsErishum III (Assyria)[i 4]An additional king list[i 5] provides fragmentary readings of the earlier dynastic monarchs.[3] The king list A totals the reigns to give a length of 368 years for this dynasty. The Synchronistic King List A.117 gives the sequence from Damqi-ilišu onward, but includes an additional king between Gulkišar and Pešgaldarameš, mDIŠ-U-EN (reading unknown). This source is considered reliable in this respect because the forms of the names of Pešgaldarameš and Ayadaragalama match those on recently published contemporary economic tablets (see below).[4]Evidence of individual reigns[edit]The sources for this dynasty are sparse in the extreme, with insufficient evidence to enable their placement in absolute chronology or to support the somewhat dubious length of reigns alleged on the king list A.Ilum-ma-ilī[edit]Ilum-ma-ilī,[i 6] or Iliman (mili-ma-an),[i 2] the founder of the dynasty, is known from the account of his exploits in the Chronicle of Early Kings[i 3] which describes his conflicts with his Amorite Babylonian contemporaries Samsu-iluna and Abi-ešuḫ. It records that he “attacked and brought about the defeat of (Samsu-iluna’s) army.” He is thought to have conquered Nippur late in Samsu-iluna’s reign [5] as there are legal documents from Nippur dated to his reign.[i 7] Abi-eshuh, the Amorite king of Babylon, and Samsu-iluna’s son and successor, “set out to conquer Ilum-ma-ilī,” by damming the Tigris, to flush him out of his swampy refuge, an endeavor which was apparently confounded by Ilum-ma-ilī’s superior use of the terrain.Damqi-ilišu[edit]The last surviving year-name for Ammi-ditana commemorates the “year in which (he) destroyed the city wall of Der/Udinim built by the army of Damqi-ilišu.[i 8] This is the only current contemporary indication of the spelling of his name, contrasting with that of the earlier king of Isin.[6]Gulkišar[edit]Gulkišar, meaning “raider of the earth,” has left few traces of his apparently lengthy reign. He was the subject of a royal epic concerning his enmity with Samsu-ditāna, the last king of the first dynasty of Babylon.[7] The colophon of a tablet giving a chemical recipe for glaze[i 9] reads “property of a priest of Marduk in Eridu,” thought to be a quarter of Babylon rather than the city of Eridu, is dated mu.us-sa Gul-ki-šar lugal-e "year after (the one when) Gul-kisar (became?) king.”[8] A kudurru[i 10] of the period of Babylonian king Enlil-nādin-apli, ca. 1103–1100 BC, records the outcome of an inquiry instigated by the king into the ownership of a plot of land claimed by a temple estate. The governors of Bit-Sin-magir and Sealand, upheld the claim based on the earlier actions of Gulkišar who had “drawn for Nanse, his divine mistress, a land boundary.” It is an early example of a Distanzangaben statement recording that 696 years had elapsed between Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur, Enlil-nādin-apli’s father, and Gulkišar.[9]Pešgaldarameš and Ayadaragalama[edit]Pešgaldarameš, “son of the ibex,” and Ayadaragalama, “son of the clever stag,” were successive kings and descendants (DUMU, "sons" in its broadest meaning) of Gulkišar.Recently published tablets mainly from the Martin Schøyen collection, the largest privately held collection of manuscripts to be assembled during the 20th century, cover a 15 to 18 year period extending over part of each king’s reign. They seem to originate from a single cache but their provenance was lost after languishing in smaller private collections since their acquisition on the antiquities market a century earlier.[4]:v The tablets include letters, receipts, ledgers, personnel rosters, etc., and provide year-names and references which hint at events of the period. Messengers from Elam are provisioned,[i 11] Anzak, a god of Dilmun (ancient Bahrain) appears as a theophoric element in names,[i 12] and Nūr-Bau asks whether he should detain the boats of Ešnunna,[i 13] a rare late reference to this once thriving Sumerian conurbation. In addition to normal commercial activity, two omen texts[i 14] from another private collection are dated to the reign of Pešgaldarameš and a kurugu-hymn mentions Ayadaragalama.[i 15] A variant version of the Epic of Gilgameš relocates the hero to Ur and is a piece from this period.[4]Ayadaragalama’s reign seems to have been eventful, as a year-name records expelling the “massed might of two enemies,” speculated to be Elamites and Kassites, the Kassites having previously deposed the Amorites as rulers in Babylon. Another records the building of a “great ring against the Kalšu (Kassite) enemy” and a third records the “year when his land rebelled.” A year-name gives “year when Ayadaragalama was king – after Enlil established (for him?) the shepherding of the whole earth,” and a list of gods includes Marduk and Sarpanitum, the tutelary deities of the Sealand.[i 16][4]A neo-Babylonian official took a bronze band dedicatory inscription of A-ia-da-a-ra, MAN ŠÚ “king of the world,” to Tell en-Nasbeh, probably as an antique curio, where it was discarded to be found in the 20th century.Ea-gâmil[edit]Ea-gâmil, the ultimate king of the dynasty, fled to Elam ahead of an invading horde led by Kassite chief Ulam-Buriaš, brother of the king of Babylon Kashtiliash III, who conquered the Sealand, incorporated it into Babylonia and “made himself master of the land.”Inscriptions[edit]^ Jump up to: a b Babylonian King List A, BM 33332, i 4 to 14 where the names are abbreviated but give their lengths of reign.^ Jump up to: a b Babylonian King List B, BM 38122, reverse 1 to 13.^ Jump up to: a b Chronicle of Early Kings, tablets BM 26472 and BM 96152, B rev. (Ilum-ma-ilī) 7-10 (Ea-gâmil) 12–14.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k Synchronistic King List A.117, Assur 14616c, i 1 to 10.Jump up ^ Formed from BM 35572 and eleven other fragments.Jump up ^ Tablet Ashm. 1922.353 from Larsa.Jump up ^ Five legal tablets such as CBS 4956, published in Chiera (1914), CBS 11013, published as BE VI 2 text 68, 3N-T 87, UM 55-21-239 catalogued as SAOC 44 text 12, and OIMA 1 45, from Nippur.Jump up ^ Tablets MCS 2 52, YOS 13 359.Jump up ^ Tablet BM 120960 thought to have been recovered from Tall 'Umar (Seleucia) on the Tigris.Jump up ^ Kudurru in the University Museum, Philadelphia, BE I/1 83 15.Jump up ^ MS 2200/40 and MS 2200/455.Jump up ^ MS 2200/394, 444, 321 and so on.Jump up ^ MS 2200/3.Jump up ^ R. Kovacs 5304 and 5309.Jump up ^ R. Kovacs 5306.Jump up ^ MS 2200/81.Notes[edit]Jump up ^ Where ŠEŠ-ḪA of King List A and ŠEŠ-KÙ-KI of King List B are read as URU.KÙ.KIJump up ^ Given as PEŠ.GAL-DÀRA.MAŠ.Jump up ^ Given as A-DÀRA-GALAM.MA.References[edit]Jump up ^ W. G. Lambert (1974). "The Home of the First Sealand Dynasty". Journal of Cuneiform Studies. 26 (4): 208–209.Jump up ^ A. Leo Oppenheim (1977). Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization. University of Chicago. p. 414.Jump up ^ J. A. Brinkman (1999). Dietz Otto Edzard, ed. Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie: Meek – Mythologie. 8. Walter De Gruyter. p. 7.^ Jump up to: a b c d Stephanie Dalley (2009). Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology. Volume 9 Babylonian Tablets from the First Sealand Dynasty in the Schoyen Collection. CDL Press. pp. 1–16.Jump up ^ Albert Kirk Grayson (1975). Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles. J. J. Augustin. p. 221.Jump up ^ William W. Hallo (2009). The world's oldest literature: studies in Sumerian belles-lettres. BRILL. p. 183.Jump up ^ Odette Boivin (2016). "15) On the origin of the goddess Ištar-of-the-Sealand, Ayyabītu". Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires (NABU) (1 (Mars)): 25.Jump up ^ A. Leo Oppenheim (1970). Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Corning Museum of Glass Press. p. 60.Jump up ^ J. A. Brinkman (1968). A political history of post-Kassite Babylonia, 1158–722 B.C. Analecta Orientalia. p. 118.