Kurigalzu I

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Kurigalzu I
Kadašman-Ḫarbe I
SuccessorKadašman-Enlil I
HouseKassite

Kurigalzu I (died c. 1375 BC), usually inscribed ku-

Kadašman-Ḫarbe.[2] Galzu, whose possible native pronunciation was gal-du or gal-šu, was the name by which the Kassites called themselves and Kurigalzu may mean Shepherd of the Kassites (line 23. Ku-ur-gal-zu = Ri-'-i-bi-ši-i, in a Babylonian name-list).[3]

He was separated from his namesake, Kurigalzu II, by around forty-five years and as it was not the custom to assign regnal numbers and they both had lengthy reigns, this makes it exceptionally difficult to distinguish for whom an inscription is intended.[1] The later king is, however, better known for his military campaign against the Assyrians than any building work he may have undertaken. It is now thought, however, that it was he who was the Kurigalzu who conquered Susa and was perhaps instrumental in the ascendancy of the Igehalkid dynasty over Elam, ca. 1400 BC.[4]

Conquest of Elam

When Ḫur-batila, possibly the successor of Tepti Ahar to the throne of Elam, began raiding the Babylonian Empire, he taunted Kurigalzu to do battle with him at Dūr-Šulgi. Kurigalzu launched a campaign which resulted in the abject defeat and capture of Ḫur-batila, who appears in no other inscriptions. He went on to conquer the eastern lands of Susiana and Elam, recorded in the

Ige-Halki, the founder of the new dynasty. A small agate tablet, bored lengthways to make a pendant, is engraved with nine lines of Sumerian on one side, the other side bearing an older dedication of the mother of king Šulgi of Ur (2029 – 1982 BC, short chronology) to Ninlil
:

Kurigalzu, the king of Karduniyas, conquered the palace of the city of Šaša in Elam and gave (this object) for the sake of his life as a gift to Ninlil, his lady.[5]

— Kurigalzu, tablet CBS 8598, University Museum, Philadelphia

The tablet was recovered from Elam during Kurigalzu’s campaign and discovered in a cache of votive inscriptions at Nippur, but was ascribed to Kurigalzu II by earlier historians.

Diplomacy

Through correspondence

Bead with cuneiform inscription of Kurigalzu I.

Prior diplomatic correspondence is evident, from study of the

Tutankhamen that Kurigalzu had turned down a request from the Canaanites to form an alliance against Egypt. [i 4]

Through marriage

He gave his daughter to Amenhotep III, who was a serial practitioner of diplomatic marriages with two Mitannite princesses and one from Arzawa in his harem, and who would even later go on to wed Kurigalzu's granddaughter, the daughter of Kadašman-Enlil.[6]

A Neo-Babylonian copy of a literary text which takes the form of a letter,[i 5] now located in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, is addressed to the Kassite court by an Elamite King and details the genealogy of the Elamite royalty of this period. Apparently, he married his sister to the Elamite king Paḫir-iššan, the son of Ige-Halki, and a daughter to his successor, Ḫumban-numena. This may have been Mishim-ruh, who is cited in royal inscriptions. The princess went on to bear Untash-Napirisha, the next king who subsequently married Burna-Buriaš’ daughter. The author of the letter is thought to be Shutruk-Nahhunte, ca. 1190-1155 BC, who claims descent from Kurigalzu’s eldest daughter and also wed the eldest daughter of Meli-Šipak, the 33rd Kassite king. Unfortunately the letter inserts Nabu-apla-iddina (888 – 855 BC) “an abomination, son of a Hittite”, into the narrative in the place one might have supposed that Marduk-apla-iddina I was to appear, the substitution of dAMAR.UTU by dAG being an unlikely slip of the stylus, making a chronological conundrum and this may be the purpose of the “letter”, to denigrate the later king through the tongue of the earlier one.[7]

Building works

Kurigalzu’s construction efforts are attested to at no less than eleven Babylonian cities.[8] He was responsible for rebuilding the Ningal Temple at Ur, incorporating fragments of the Ur-Nammu Stela in buildings on the ziggurat terrace, the Edublal-Maḫ of Sîn buildings, or “house for hanging up the exalted tablets”, and the building of the gateway.[9]

Door socket from Dur-Kurigalzu

He was the first king to build a royal residence bearing his name,[10] a new capital city founded over an older settlement and built around 1390 BC, named Dur-Kurigalzu, or 'fortress of Kurigalzu', in the far north of Babylonia (modern ‘Aqar Qūf).[11] It was positioned to protect an important trade route that led east across the Iranian plateau to Afghanistan, the source of lapis lazuli.[12] The 170-foot-high ziggurat of Enlil can still be seen on the western outskirts of Baghdad, with its reinforcing layers of reed matting and bitumen and the remains of three temples at its foot. Rawlinson first identified the site in 1861 from the brick inscriptions. Excavated in 1942–45 by Seton Lloyd and Taha Baqir, the city covered 225 hectares and included the Egal-kišarra, or “Palace of the Whole World”, a vast palatial and administrative complex.[13]

In an adoption contract which sternly warns the adoptee, “If [Il]i-ippašra says, ‘you are not my father’, they shall shave his head, bind him and sell him for silver,”[14] the date formula used, “in the month of Šabatu, the 19th day, the year Kurigalzu, the king, built the Ekurigibara,” predates that which was introduced during the reign of Kadašman-Enlil I and that had become de rigueur by the later reign of Kurigalzu II.[15] The Ekurigibara of Enlil was a temple in Nippur.

During the excavation of Dur-Kurigalzu 5 fragments of a larger than life size statue were discovered. They contain the longest yet found Kassite Sumerian inscriptions.[16][17]

The autobiography of Kurigalzu

Autobiography of Kurigalzu.

A neo-Babylonian copy of a text recording the endowment by Kurigalzu, son of Kadašman-Ḫarbe, of a temple of

Ištar with an estate situated on the Euphrates near Nippur, is known as the autobiography of Kurigalzu and comes in the form of a small hexagonal prism[i 6] of light-yellow baked clay[18] and a fragmentary cylinder.[i 7]
In it, he takes credit for being the

…finisher of the wall, kišuru, and the one who completed the Ekur, provider for Ur and Uruk, the one that assures the integrity of the rites of Eridu, the constructor of the temple of An and Inanna, the one who ensures the integrity of the Sattukku (food allowance) offerings of the great gods.[2]

— Autobiography of Kurigalzu, Prism BM 108982 and Cylinder NBC 2503

He “caused Anu the father of the great gods to dwell in his exalted sanctuary”, which is suggested to be referring to the restoration of the Anu cult.[2] The text lacks the linguistic features and script characteristics which would bring one to suppose it is a genuine copy of an ancient inscription and was probably created in late Babylonian times to enhance the prestige of the Ištar cult. The extent to which it preserves tradition from the actual events of the reign of Kurigalzu cannot as yet be determined.[2][19]

Other sources

Kurigalzu is mentioned in a hieroglyphic inscription on a carnelian

Ararat valley of Armenia, providing evidence for the extent of Kassite influence during his reign. Metsamor was an important Hurrian center for metal forging.[20]

A seal is inscribed nur-[d]-x, son of Kurigalzu, and claims the title NU.ÈŠ [d]en.líl, nišakku-priest, which is shared with others, including three governors of Nippur and other princes. He rewarded an individual with this title in a dedicatory cone known as the Enlil-bānī land grant kudurru. The precise meaning of this title and the identity of the Kurigalzu, I or II, are uncertain.[21]

Inscriptions

  1. ^ Chronicle P (ABC 22), tablet BM 92701, column 3 lines 10 through 19.
  2. ^ Tablet EA 1, “The Pharaoh complains to the Babylonian King,” BM 029784 in the British Museum, CDLI, ORACC Transliteration line 62, “Regarding the words of my father, you wrote...”
  3. ^ Tablet EA 11, “Proper escort for a betrothed princess,” VAT 151 in the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, CDLI, ORACC Transliteration lines 19 to 20.
  4. ^ Tablet EA 9, “Ancient loyalties, new requests,” BM 29785 in the British Museum, London, CDLI, ORACC Transliteration lines 19 to 30.
  5. ^ Tablet VAT 17020, “the Berlin Letter”, CDLI
  6. ^ Prism BM 108982 in the British Museum, CDLI.
  7. James B. Nies Collection, Yale University, CDLI
    .

References

  1. ^
    Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago
    . pp. 205–246.
  2. ^
    ISBN 0-931464-41-2
    .
  3. S2CID 163104776
    .
  4. ^ Vallat, F. (2000). "L'hommage de l'élamite Untash-Napirisha au Cassite Burnaburiash". Akkadica (114–115): 109–117.
  5. ISBN 9780631235811
    .
  6. S2CID 161228521
    .
  7. ISBN 9780521564960
    .
  8. ^ Leonhard Sassmannshausen (2004). "Babylonian chronology of the second half of the second millennium BC". In Hermann Hunger; Regine Pruzsinszky (eds.). Mesopotamian Dark Age Revisited. Vienna. pp. 61–70.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ^ Canby, Jeanny Vorys (2001). The Ur-Nammu Stela. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology. p. 6.
  10. ^ Georges Roux (1996). "The Kassite Period 1500 – 700 BC". In Sigfried J. de Laet, Ahmad Hasan Dani (ed.). History of Humanity: From the third millennium to the seventh century B.C. Routledge. p. 484.
  11. S2CID 194075108
    .
  12. ^ Jane McIntosh (2005). Ancient Mesopotamia: new perspectives. ABC-CLIO, Inc. p. 91.
  13. ^ Piotr Bienkowski, Alan Ralph Millard, ed. (2000). Dictionary of the ancient Near East. British Museum. pp. 22–23.
  14. ^ Veysel Donbaz (1987). "Two Documents from the Diverse Collections in Istanbul". In Martha A. Morrison; David I. Owen (eds.). General studies and excavations at Nuzi 9/1. Eisenbrauns. p. 73.
  15. ^ Università di Torino, Centro scavi di Torino per il medio oriente e l'Asia (1993). "Mesopotamia". 28. Giappichelli: 42. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  16. ^ Kramer, S. N.; Baqir, T.; and Levy, S. J., "Fragments of a Diorite Statue of Kurigalzu in the Iraq Museum.", Sumer, vol. 4, pp. 1–38, 1948
  17. ^ [1] Niek Veldhuis, "Kurigalzu's Statue Inscription", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 60, pp. 25-52, 2008
  18. ^ C. J. Gadd (1921). Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, &c., in the British Museum. Vol. XXXVI. pp. 7, 16 and 17. Plates 6 and 7 show a sketch of the obverse and reverse of this prism.
  19. ^ Susanne Paulus. “Fraud, Forgery, and Fiction: Is There Still Hope for Agum-Kakrime?” Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 70, 2018, pp. 115–66
  20. doi:10.2753/aae1061-1959300467
    .
  21. JSTOR 4132216
    .
Neo-Babylonian Empire
(626–539 BC)
X
Babylon under foreign rule (539 BC – AD 224)
Persian period
(539–331 BC)
XI
Hellenistic period
(331–141 BC)
XII
XIII
XIV
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kurigalzu_I&oldid=1197362188"