Chronicle of Early Kings

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Chronicle of Early Kings
Obverse of Chronicle of Early Kings.[1]
Createdc. 1500 BC
Discoveredbefore 1908

The Chronicle of Early Kings, named ABC 20 in Grayson’s Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles[2] and CM 40 in Glassner’s Chroniques mésopotamiennes[3] is a Babylonian chronicle preserved on two tablets: tablet A[i 1] is well preserved whereas tablet B[i 2] is broken and the text is fragmentary. The text is episodic in character, and seems to have been composed from linking together the

apodoses of omen literature, excerpts of the Weidner Chronicle and kings year-names.[4] The Chronicle begins with events from the late third-millennium reign of Sargon of Akkad and ends, where the tablet is broken away, with the reign of Agum III
, c. 1500 BC.

A third tablet, named Fragment B[2]: 192  or CM 41,[3] deals with related subject matter and may be a variant tradition of the same type of work.

The text

Tablet A begins with a lengthy passage concerning the rise and eventual downfall of Sargon of Akkad, caused by his impious treatment of Babylon:

He dug up the dirt of the pit of Babylon and
made a counterpart of Babylon next to Agade.
Because of the wrong he had done the great lord Marduk became angry and
wiped out his people by famine.
They (his subjects) rebelled against him
from east to west
and he (Marduk) afflicted [him] with insomnia.[2]: 153–154 

— from Chronicle of Early Kings Tablet A, lines 18–23

This seemingly anachronous reference to Babylon reproduces text from the Weidner Chronicle. Little is known of the city of Babylon in the third-millennium with the earliest reference to it coming from a year-name of Šar-kali-šarri, Sargon’s grandson.[5] In contrast, the Chronicle devotes a mere six lines to his nephew, Naram-Sin, and two campaigns against Apišal, a city located in northern Syria,[6]: 51–52  and Magan, thought to be in ancient Oman.[6]: 436–437  That of Apišal appears as an apodosis to an omen in the Bārûtu, the compendium of sacrificial omens.[7]

First Dynasty of Babylon until a consideration of the relative chronologies made this identification unlikely.[8] The tablet concludes with the label or mark GIGAM.DIDLI which may have been a scribal catalog reference or alternatively denote continuing disruption, as GIGAM represents ippiru, “strife, conflict.”[9]

Tablet B opens with a duplication of the six lines telling of the demise of Erra-Imittī, followed by a section relating

Sealand Dynasty, over Samsu-iluna’s army. Abī-Ešuḫ’s damming of the Tigris follows, which fails to contain the wiley Ilum-ma-ilī. The history of the First Babylonian dynasty concludes with the Hittite invasion during the reign of Samsu-ditāna
.

The final two passages switch to events in the early

Ea-gamil, fleeing ahead of the invasion of Ulam-Buriaš and then the second invasion led by Agum III.[2]
: 156 

Principal publications

Inscriptions

  1. ^ BM 26472 (98-5-14, 290) tablet A.
  2. ^ BM 96152 (1902-4-12, 264) tablet B.

See also

References

  1. ^ L. W. King (1907). Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings: Vol. I. Luzac & Co. p. iv.
  2. ^ a b c d e A. K. Grayson (1975). Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles. J. J. Augustin.
  3. ^ a b Jean-Jacques Glassner (1993). Chroniques mésopotamiennes. La Roue à Livres.
  4. JSTOR 43074973
    .
  5. ^ W. G. Lambert (2011). "Babylon: Origins". In Eva Cancik-Kirschbaum; Margarethe Van Ess (eds.). Babylon: Wissenskultur in Orient und Okzident. Walter de Gruyter. p. 71.
  6. ^ a b Trevor Bryce (2009). The Routledge Handbook of The Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. Routledge.
  7. ^ A. R. George (2010). "The Sign of the Flood and the Language of Signs in Babylonian Omen Literature". Proceedings of the 53e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Vol. 1: Language in the Ancient Near East, part 1. Eisenbrauns. p. 328.
  8. ^ D. O. Edzard (1957). Zweite Zwischenzeit Babyloniens. Otto Harrassowitz. pp. 140–141.
  9. ^ Klaus-Peter Adam (2010). "Warfare and Treaty Formulas in the Background of Kings". In Klaus-Peter Adam; Mark Leuchter (eds.). Soundings in Kings: Perspectives and Methods in Contemporary Scholarship. Fortress Press. p. 174. note 82
  10. ^ CAD Ḫ, Ḫuppu A, p. 238.

External links

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