TheFirst Sealand dynasty (URU.KÙKI[nb 1][1]), or the2nd Dynasty ofBabylon (although it was independent ofAmorite-ruled Babylon), very speculatively c. 1732–1460 BC (short chronology), is an enigmatic series of kings attested to primarily in laconic references in theKing Lists A andB, and as contemporaries recorded on theAssyrianSynchronistic king list A.117. Initially it was named the "Dynasty of the Country of the Sea" with Sealand later becoming customary.[2][page needed]
The dynasty, which had broken free of the short lived, and by this time crumblingOld Babylonian Empire, was named for the province in the far south ofMesopotamia, a swampy region bereft of large settlements which gradually expanded southwards with the silting up of the mouths of theTigris andEuphrates rivers (the region known asmat Kaldi "Chaldaea" in theIron Age). Sealand pottery has been found at Girsu, Uruk, and Lagash but in no site north of that.[3]
The later kings bore pseudo-Sumerian names and harked back to the glory days of theDynasty 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 theAkkadian language. There is circumstantial evidence that their rule extended at least briefly toBabylon itself. In later times, a Sealand province of theNeo-Babylonian Empire also existed.[4]
Traditionally, all that was known about Sealand came from a few Kings List entries and the stray chronicle mention. It has been suggested that much of the writing in this period used waxed wooden boards, as a way of explaining the paucity of standard tablets found.[5] Recently (2009) 450 published tablets mainly from theMartin 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.[6] 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market a century earlier.[7]: v Most of the tablets pertain toadministration of resources.[8] An additional 32 unpublished Sealand tablets are held in Brussels.[9] The tablets include letters, receipts, ledgers, personnel rosters, etc., and provide year-names and references which hint at events of the period. Messengers fromElam are provisioned,[i 1]Inzak, a god ofDilmun (ancient Bahrain) appears as a theophoric element in names,[i 2] and Nūr-Bau asks whether he should detain the boats ofEšnunna,[i 3] a rare late reference to this once thriving Sumerian conurbation. In addition to normal commercial activity, two omen texts from another private collection are dated to the reign ofPešgaldarameš and a kurugu-hymn dedicated to the gods ofNippur mentions Ayadaragalama.[10] A variant version of theEpic of Gilgameš relocates the hero toUr and is a piece from this period.[7]
Excavations conducted between 2013 and 2017 atTell Khaiber, around 20 km fromUr, have revealed the foundations of a largemudbrick fortress with an unusual arrangement of perimeter close-set towers.[11] The site is dated, by an archive of 152 (after joins were made) clay cuneiform tablets found there, to Ayadaragalama.[12][13][14] Tablets at Tell Khaiber fell into the same short time period as those published from the Schoyen Collection, that being the later part of Pešgal and early part of Ayadara reigns. Excavators were also able to develop a stratified ceramic array for Sealand allowing other sites to be identified. Sealand ceramics and faunal remains were found at the site ofTell Sakhariya, a few miles east ofUr. The location has been proposed as the Ur III period city ofGa’eš, site of the Akiti festival ofNanna/Sin, held twice a year. The temple of Nanna/Sin was called the Karzida and was located at Ga’eš.[15][16]
The home city of the Sealand Dynasty is currently unknown. A kings list fragment states that Babylon's "kingship passed to E'urukuga". Given its site being known as uru.ku this capital has been speculated as beingLagash of which little is known in this period.[17] Nippur, and Tell Deḥaila are also in consideration.[18] Modern thinking is that the capital was a Dūr-Enlil (or Dūr-Enlile or Dūr-Enlilē). There was a Dūr-Enlil in Neo-Babylonian times in the general area between Uruk and Larsa as well as one in Neo-Assyrian times. It is not clear it either is the same place as the potential Sealand capital.[19][20]
An additional king list[i 8] provides fragmentary readings of the earlier dynastic monarchs.[21] Theking list A totals the reigns to give a length of 368 years for this dynasty. TheSynchronistic 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).[7]
Ilum-ma-ilī,[i 9] or Iliman (mili-ma-an),[i 5] the founder of the dynasty, is known from the account of his exploits in theChronicle of Early Kings[i 6] 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 conqueredNippur late in Samsu-iluna’s reign[22] as there are legal documents from Nippur dated to his reign.[i 10][23]Abi-eshuh, theAmorite king of Babylon, andSamsu-iluna’s son and successor, “set out to conquer Ilum-ma-ilī,” by damming theTigris, to flush him out of his swampy refuge, an endeavor which was apparently confounded by Ilum-ma-ilī’s superior use of the terrain.
The last surviving year-name forAmmi-ditana commemorates the “year in which (he) destroyed the city wall ofDer/Udinim built by the army of Damqi-ilišu.[i 11] In the original "MU am-mi-di-ta-na LUGAL.E BÀD.DA UDINIMki.MA (ÉREN) dam-qí-ì-lí-šu.KE4 BÍ.IN.DÙ.A BÍ.IN.GUL.LA".[24] This is the only current contemporary indication of the spelling of his name, contrasting with that of the earlier king of Isin.[25]
Gulkišar, meaning “raider of the earth,” has left few traces of his apparently lengthy reign. He was the subject of a royal epic (Tablet HS 1885+ plus 2 recent fragment joins) concerning his enmity withSamsu-ditāna, the last king of the first dynasty of Babylon.[26] The text describes Gulkišar addressing his troops and being accompanied by the god Istar.[27] The colophon of a tablet giving a chemical recipe for glaze[i 12] reads “property of a priest of Marduk in Eridu,” thought to be a quarter of Babylon rather than the city of Eridu, is datedmu.us-sa Gul-ki-šar lugal-e "year after (the one when) Gul-kisar (became?) king.”[28] A kudurru[i 13] of the period of Babylonian kingEnlil-nādin-apli, c. 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 aDistanzangaben statement recording that 696 years had elapsed betweenNabû-kudurrī-uṣur, Enlil-nādin-apli’s father, and Gulkišar.[29]
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.[27]
Ayadaragalama’s reign seems to have been eventful, as a year-name records expelling the “massed might of two enemies,” speculated to beElamites andKassites, the Kassites having previously deposed theAmorites 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 includesMarduk andSarpanitum, the tutelary deities of the Sealand.[i 14][7]
A neo-Babylonian official took a bronze band dedicatory inscription ofA-ia-da-a-ra,MAN ŠÚ “king of the world,” toTell en-Nasbeh, probably as an antique curio, where it was discarded to be found in the 20th century.
Ea-gâmil, the ultimate king of the dynasty, fled toElam ahead of an army led byKassite chiefUlam-Buriaš, brother of the king of BabylonKashtiliash III, who conquered the Sealand, incorporated it intoBabylonia and “made himself master of the land.” Agum III, successor to Ulam-Buriaš, is also described as attacking Sealand and destroying a temple in "Dūr-Enlil".[30]
Aserpentine ordiorite mace head or possibly door knob found in Babylon,[31] is engraved with the epithet of Ulaburariaš, “King of Sealand”.[32] The object was excavated at Tell Amran ibn-Ali, during the German excavations of Babylon, conducted from 1899 to 1912, and is now housed in thePergamon Museum.
^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.
^Al-Hamdani, A. (2020). The Settlement and Canal Systems During the First Sealand Dynasty (1721–1340 BCE). In S. Paulus & T. Clayden (Ed.), Babylonia under the Sealand and Kassite Dynasties, Berlin, pp. 28–57.
^Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Ea-dayān, Governor of the Sealand, and Other Dignitaries of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 54, pp. 99–123, The American Schools of Oriental Research, 2002
^Paulus, Susanne, "Die babylonischen Kudurru-Inschriften von der kassitischen bis zur frühneubabylonischen Zeit. Untersucht unter besonderer Berücksichtigung gesellschafts-und rechtshistorischer Fragestellungen", AOAT 51, Münster: Ugarit Verlag, 2014
^[1]Chapin, Michael Arthur, "'My-Mother-Is-Precious': Names and Naming Practices in the First Dynasty of the Sealand (ca. 1500 BCE)", Dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, 2023
^abcdStephanie 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.
^Odette Boivin, "Agricultural Economy and Taxation in the Sealand I Kingdom", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 68, pp. 45–65, 2016
^Boivin, Odette, "Accounting for livestock: principles of palatial administration in Sealand I Babylonia", Iraq, vol. 78, 2016, pp. 3–23, 2016
^Gabbay, Uri and Boivin, Odette. "A Hymn of Ayadaragalama, King of the First Sealand Dynasty, to the Gods of Nippur: The Fate of Nippur and Its Cult during the First Sealand Dynasty" Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 108, no. 1, pp. 22-42, 2018
^[4] Eleanor Robson, Information Flows in Rural Babylonia c. 1500 BC, in C. Johnston (ed.), The Concept of the Book: the Production, Progression and Dissemination of Information, London: Institute of English Studies/School of Advanced Study, January 2019ISBN9780992725747
^Dalley, S. (2020). The First Sealand Dynasty: Literacy, Economy, and the Likely Location of Dūr- Enlil(ē) in Southern Mesopotamia at the end of the Old Babylonian Period. In S. Paulus & T. Clayden (Ed.), Babylonia under the Sealand and Kassite Dynasties (pp. 9-27). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter
^MacGinnis, J., "Further Evidence for Intercity Co-Operation among Neo-Babylonian Temples", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 16, no. 2, pp. 127–32, 2006
^Wiseman, D. J., "The Vassal-Treaties of Esarhaddon", Iraq, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. i–99, 1958
^J. A. Brinkman (1999). Dietz Otto Edzard (ed.).Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie: Meek – Mythologie. Vol. 8. Walter De Gruyter. p. 7.
^Albert Kirk Grayson (1975).Assyrian and Babylonian chronicles. J. J. Augustin. p. 221.
^Steinmeyer, Nathan, "Samsuiluna and the Reconquest of Nippur", The IOS Annual Volume 23:"Drought Will Drive You Even Toward Your Foe", Brill, pp. 37-55, 2022
^Horsnell, M. J. A., "The Year- Names of the First Dynasty of Babylon", 2 vols. Hamilton: McMaster University Press, 1999
^Elyze Zomer (2019).Middle Babylonian Literary Texts from the Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection, Jena. Harrassowitz Verlag. pp. 3–38.
^abZomer, Elyze. "Chapter 25. Enmity Against Samsu-ditāna". Law and (Dis)Order in the Ancient Near East: Proceedings of the 59th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale Held at Ghent, Belgium, 15–19 July 2013, edited by Katrien De Graef and Anne Goddeeris, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, 2021, pp. 324-332
^A. Leo Oppenheim (1970).Glass and Glassmaking in Ancient Mesopotamia. The Corning Museum of Glass Press. p. 60.
^J. A. Brinkman (1968).A political history of post-Kassite Babylonia, 1158–722 B.C. Analecta Orientalia. p. 118.
^Boivin, Odette, "A political history of the Sealand kingdom", The First Dynasty of the Sealand in Mesopotamia, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 86-125, 2018
^B. Landsberger (1954). "Assyrische Königsliste und "Dunkles Zeitalter" (Continued)".Journal of Cuneiform Studies.8 (2):70–71.doi:10.2307/1359531.JSTOR1359531.S2CID224831525. n. 182
Al-Zubaidi, Ahmed K. Taher, and Mohammed S. Attia, "A Cylinder Seal From TELL Abu Al-Dhahab Dated To THE First Sealand Dynasty (1740–1374 BC)", IRAQ 83, pp. 13-24, 2021
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