Malgium
Alternative name | Tulūl al-Fāj / Tell Yassir |
---|---|
Location | Iraq |
Coordinates | 32°33′41″N 45°6′0″E / 32.56139°N 45.10000°E |
Type | settlement |
History | |
Periods | Bronze Age |
Cultures | Old Babylonian |
Site notes | |
Excavation dates | 2018 |
Archaeologists | Abbas Al-Hussainy |
Condition | Ruined |
Ownership | Public |
Public access | Yes |
Malgium (also Malkum) (Ĝalgi’a or Ĝalgu’a in Sumerian, and Malgû(m) in Akkadian) is an ancient
Archaeology
The site of Tell Yassir is a single mound covering around 15 hectares. It is one of a group of tells collectively called Tulūl al-Fāj which have now been identified as the location of Malgium. After the 2003 invasion Iraqi archaeologists with the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage conducted a surface survey at Tell Yassir and found that the site was heavily looted, to the extent that administrative and palatial structures visible from earlier satellite images could no longer be found. Along with pottery shards a number of inscribed bricks were found including those of Ur III rulers (
dšu-dMAR.TU |
dŠu-Amurrum, |
In 2017 Iraqi archaeologists, led by Abbas Al-Hussainy of the University of Al-Qadisiyah began an archaeological survey of an area east of the Euphrates. This team worked at Tulūl al-Fāj (the group of tells including Tell Yassir) in 2019. During this survey about 50 inscribed bricks or Malgium rulers were found, with 48 of the inscriptions being stamped. One of the stamped bricks, from ruler Tulūl al-Fāj, also contained a handwritten inscriptions.[9]
The site was also visited several times beginning in 2018 by an Italian team from the University of Venice led by Lucio Milano though as yet no results from this have been published.
History
Three of its rulers have been identified with certainty, through attestation in their inscriptions as šàr (lugal) ma-al-gi-imki, dTakil-ilissu, son of Ištaran-asû,
The kings of Larsa targeted Malgium in their pursuit of territorial expansion with
Malgium is also mentioned in the literary composition "Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin" ie "He has summoned against me a mighty foe. [. . . ] battle against me as far as Malgium."[17]
See also
- Cities of the ancient Near East
References
- ^ a b Douglas Frayne (1990). Old Babylonian Period (2003-1595 BC): Early Periods, Volume 4 (RIM The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia). University of Toronto Press. pp. 668–670.
- ^ a b Trevor Bryce (2009). The Routledge Handbook of The Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. Routledge. pp. 441–442.
- ^ a b c Rients de Boer (2013). "An Early Old Babylonian Archive from the Kingdom of Malgium?". Journal Asiatique. 301 (1): 19–25.
- ^ Kutscher, R., "Malgium", RlA 7/3–4, pp. 300–304, 1988
- ^ Watanabe, Chikako E., "The symbolic role of animals in Babylon: a contextual approach to the lion, the bull and the mušḫuššu", Iraq, vol. 77, pp. 215–24, 2015
- ^ Ahmed Ali Jawad, Barhan Abd Al-Reza, Ali Jabarat Nasir, Ahmed Abbas As’id, "The Discovery of the Location of Malgium (Tell Yassir)", Sumer 65, pp. 63–91, 2019 (in arabic)
- ^ Mohammed, Ahmed Kamil, "A New Text from Tell Sulayma — Diyala Region", Interdisciplinary research on the Bronze Age Diyala, Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, pp. 63-72, 2021
- S2CID 224834784.)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ Al-Hussainy, Abbas, Jawdat, Jacob and Marchesi, Gianni. "New Inscribed Bricks of Takil-ilissu, King of Malgûm" Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, 2023
- JSTOR 41680358.
- ^ R. de Boer, "Another New King of Malgium: Imgur-Sin, son of Ili-abi", NABU 2013/7, 2013
- ^ Földi, Z. J., "Eine Urkunde mit einem neuen Jahresnamen des Königs Imgur-Sin von Malgium", NABU 2020
- ^ Mayr, R. H., "Seal Impressions on Administrative Tags from the Reign of Šu-Amurru", in: T. Boiy [e. a.] (ed.), The Ancient Near East, A Life! Festschrift Karel Van Lerberghe, OLA 220. Leuven, pp. 409–42, 2012
- ^ Ozaki, Tohru, Sigrist, Marcel and Steinkeller, Piotr, "New Light on the History of Irisaĝrig in Post-Ur III Times", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 111, no. 1, pp. 28-37, 2021
- ^ [1] Archived 2023-08-01 at the Wayback MachineColonna d’Istria, L., "Noms d’annés de rois du Malgium sur quelques étiquettes", NABU 2020/10, pp. 17-23, 2020
- JSTOR 23281366.
- ^ Finkelstein, J. J., "The So-Called ‘Old Babylonian Kutha Legend.’", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 83–88, 1957
Further reading
- de Boer, Rients, "Malgum, A Synthesis", Journal of Cuneiform Studies 75.1, pp. 13-26, 2023
- Boer, Rients de., "From the Yaḫrūrum Šaplûm archives: the administration of harvest labor undertaken by soldiers from Uruk and Malgium", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 106.2, pp. 138-174, 2016
- Kutscher, R./C. Wilcke, "Eine Ziegel-Inschrift des Königs Takil-iliśśu von Malgium, gefunden in Isin und Yale", ZA 68, pp. 95-128, 1978
- Wilcke, Claus, "Ein dritter Backstein mit der großen Inschrift des Königs Takil-ilissu von Malgûm und der Tonnagel des Ipiq-Ištar", At the Dawn of History: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honour of J. N. Postgate, edited by Yağmur Heffron, Adam Stone and Martin Worthington, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 737-752, 2017