13 Shamshi-Adad, Zimri-Lim, Mari, Qatna

A powerful king named Shamshi-Adad was able to build a short-lived empire in northern Mesopotamia and Syria during the 18th century BCE, after the Near East had been in turmoil for some time. Seven or eight major kingdoms had been fighting one another, battling over borders, maneuvering to gain alliances, and stealing one another's vassals. Early in his reign, his land of Ekaletum had been conquered by a neighboring kingdom, forcing Shamshi-Adad to flee to exile in Babylon. But he was able to recapture Ekaletum not long after, and then he kept going, taking over the city of Ashur, which was home to the Assyrian merchants who traded in Anatolia, and then going on to the Habur River and managing to conquer the At this point, Shamshi-Adad's empire extended from the Euphrates to the Tigris rivers, just to the south of what is now Turkey. This included some rich agricultural land. The northern region of the empire gets enough rainfall for dry farming, farming without irrigation. But the rivers were available to provide irrigation water when needed. Shamshi-Adad had a rather grandiose sense of his own importance. Instead of giving a name to his empire, he took the title King of the Universe. In doing so, he was following in the footsteps of Sargon and the other great Akkadian kings who came before him, even though his empire was considerably smaller. We know quite a lot about him because we have some of his personal letters, most of them written to his two sons, as well as his royal inscriptions. Shamshi-Adad's older son was named Isme-Dagan, and the younger one was Yakhma-Adu. They were already adults when Shamshi-Adad had completed his empire, and their father decided to bring them into his administration to help him rule. He would be the great king, but his sons would be kings as well. Each son was set up in a palace in a major city. Isme-Dagan's palace was in Ekalatum, the dynasty's original capital. This was in the Tigris region. Yakhma-Adu's palace was in Mari. Shamshi-Adad created a new capital city for himself between the other two cities, and to the north of them. He called it Shubat-Enlil. All three kings, in turn, had vassal kings who answered to them. This was a new approach to ruling an empire, but it wasn't entirely successful. Yakhma-Adu was in a position to help his father with an important ally, the king of Katna, a kingdom to the west, near the Mediterranean. Yakhma-Adu would marry the king of Katna's daughter. Diplomatic marriages had a long history by this time. It had been more than 600 years since the kings of Ebla had arranged marriages of their daughters to allies and vassals, and similar marriages had taken place ever since. In Yakhma-Adu's case, we can see the actual stages of the marriage. There's a whole sequence of letters found in his palace at Mari about his marriage to Princess Beltum of Katna. It seems Yakhma-Adu didn't have a lot of say in the matter. It was all arranged by his father, Shamshi-Adad, and by Beltum's father, the king of Katna. The preliminaries went something like this. Shamshi-Adad wrote to Yakhma-Adu to tell him about the negotiations that had been completed with the princess's father. The princess was going to be given the title of Queen of Mari. This made her the chief wife, who would be present for major ceremonies with the king. King Yakhma-Adu also had at least one wife already, so the new bride would be coming in at a higher rank than the current one. Both sides provided vast quantities of silver. Shamshi-Adad paid four talents of silver to the king of Katna for what was called the terhatam, a bridal gift. A talent weighed about 60 pounds, so that's 240 pounds, with a present-day market value of about $64,000. But let's compare that to what the bride brought to the marriage and add in some other factors. The king of Katna gave a dowry to his daughter of 10 talents of silver, and garments worth five talents of silver. So this princess brought 600 pounds of silver with her as her dowry, with a present-day value of $160,000. This was an enormous amount of wealth, and like all dowries, it was hers to keep and to pass on to her children. But a manual laborer could hope to earn just one shekel of silver per month, a 60th of a pound. So Beltem's dowry was the equivalent of 3,000 years of pay for a laborer. In modern times, suppose someone earning minimum wage makes about $1,700 a month. Calculated this way, Beltem's dowry in silver alone would have been worth about $61 million. Next, the princess's father wrote to his new son-in-law, Yasma-Adu. It was a friendly letter, telling him that, with this marriage, the two royal houses had become one. He said, and I quote, I am placing in your lap my flesh and future, for this house has become yours, and the house of Mari has now become mine. He also hoped that Yasma-Adu would find Princess Beltem attractive. Apparently, the groom hadn't met his bride yet, and Beltem's father promised that he'd send anything that Yasma-Adu requested. But there was a little bit of a complaint in the letter. Of the groom's father, Shamsi-Adad, he wrote, why is it that whatever I desire from the king, he does not give it? Apparently, Shamsi-Adad wasn't very reliable about reciprocating when it came to gifts. He hoped his new son-in-law would be a better diplomatic partner. But soon after Beltem arrived in Mari, things started going badly for her. Apparently, her husband Yasma-Adu set her up in a house away from the citadel, not in the palace at all. Now, Shamsi-Adad, the groom's father, immediately wrote to intervene, reminding his son that this looked very bad, especially given the high status of the queen. Her father might be really angry about this, seeing it as an insult. And he was an important ally. Shamsi-Adad continued, this is simply not done. There are many chambers in the Palm Palace. A chamber should be prepared for her and house her there. Do not house her externally. So she did end up being moved into the palace, it seems. But once there, a new crisis developed. Palace officials couldn't stand Beltem's nanny. This was a woman who had taken care of the new bride since childhood and still waited on her. When Yasma-Adu was away from the palace at one point, an official wrote him, calling the nanny unreliable. She apparently didn't understand the practices of the Mari palace. For instance, the official wrote, during the siesta, when the palace's bolt was set, she had her bring out songstresses to the Temple of Ishtar in the midst of a ceremony. This was apparently a major faux pas. Worse, Princess Beltem went out in the sun and suffered sunstroke as a result. Officials sent several more letters to her husband, reassuring him that she'd recover. So perhaps he developed some affection for her after all. Two years into the marriage, Beltem's father wrote to Yasma-Adu asking him to bring the princess with him when Yasma-Adu visited Katna with his troops. Bring my daughter along with you so that she could conciliate with the gods of her city and so that I could give her many gifts. She should meet with me so that I could honor her. Presumably the visit happened, and the king of Katna got the chance to hear directly from his daughter about court life at Mari. No doubt she told him about the initial humiliation of being housed outside the palace, and about her illness, and about the treatment of her nanny. But she probably also gave him valuable information about the politics of Mari. We know this from other letters from princesses who married foreign kings. They weren't just wives and mothers, they also sometimes acted as spies for their fathers. In any event, to go back to the relationship between the great king and his sons. One problem with the co-regency was that Beltem's father-in-law, Shamshiadad, tended to micromanage his son's administrations. We can guess that this was true for the elder son, but we don't have those letters. The letters to Yasma-Adu show that Shamshiadad sent messengers to Mari all the time, and that he could be very demanding. He wanted to know why an official hadn't been replaced, or to complain about the servants who had fled the palace, things like that. In fact, all kinds of things upset Shamshiadad about his younger son's rule. Mostly, he worried that Yasma-Adu was immature, and that the young king started projects without giving them enough thought. One time, Yasma-Adu decided to commission statues of six gods. Each one needed to be manufactured of gold and silver. But that was just the start of the project's ancillary expenses. His father wrote to him to complain. These gods that you plan to make require one month of festival sacrifices. What? Where are the oxen and sheep that you must keep providing for sacrifice at festivals? Here you keep writing to me, saying I have no sheep or lambs. Yet you would still fill the town with gods here, when however many sheep now available hardly suffice for a sacrifice to them. He finished the letter by stating, with no flower and sheep whatsoever, without my permission, you would commission the making of gods of gold. You alone must bear the burden of this project. Shamshiadad also accused Yasma-Adu of spending too much time drinking and dancing with servants. It's clear he didn't trust the younger son all that much. He even made sure that particular officials were present when the letters he sent were read aloud to his son. But there's no sign that Yasma-Adu was disloyal to his father. He visited the king often and asked him for advice. Perhaps he did this too much. Shamshiadad wished that he would be more independent and decisive. He wrote, how long shall we govern you? Are you truly a child? Are you not an adult? Is there no beard on your chin? How long will you neglect the administration of your house? Ishmael Dagan, on the other hand, was much more of a chip off the old block. Like his father, the older son was often on campaign. Shamshiadad sometimes shamed Yasma-Adu by pointing out that he should be more like his older brother. On one occasion he wrote, your brother won a victory, but there you lie among women. Now when you march with the army to Katna, behave as a man. The brothers wrote to one another as well. And Ishmael Dagan advised Yasma-Adu to consult with him before writing to their father. That's understandable. Perhaps Ishmael Dagan was able to arbitrate between them a little. Throughout pretty much all of Shamshiadad's reign, the great king's armies were out campaigning against neighboring kingdoms and fighting to maintain control of the region he'd already claimed. It wasn't a stable empire and it wouldn't survive long after Shamshiadad died in 1776 BCE. Ishmael Dagan became the great king in his father's place, but he had to immediately organize campaigns against Aleppo in the west and Eshnunna in the east. Although we don't know what happened to Yasma-Adu, we do know that soon after Shamshiadad died, the local dynasty took control of Mari again. The new king, Zimri-Lim, took up residence in the palace, though some of Yasma-Adu's letters were left in the archives. Archaeologists found them there, still in Zimri-Lim's archive room, when they excavated the Mari palace centuries later. As it happened, Ishmael Dagan proved to be less brilliant than he'd seemed to his father. He made some clumsy mistakes, including a ham-fisted attempt at diplomacy with the king of Katna. He asked his younger brother's father-in-law for two horses. It was quite normal to ask for gifts. As a king, it was a way of getting luxury goods that you needed. Then you sent something of equal value in exchange. This wasn't trade exactly, because no receipts or contracts were involved, but it wasn't exactly voluntary gift-giving either. Anyway, the king of Katna sent the two horses. In return, Ishmael Dagan sent 20 pounds of tin, apparently thinking this was a fair exchange. But the king of Katna was furious. The horses were worth vastly more than the tin. So he wrote a devastating letter, telling Ishmael Dagan that when you sent me this paltry amount of tin, you had no desire to have honourable discourse with me. The king of Katna went on and on about the rudeness of Ishmael Dagan, and ended by saying, why have you done this? This house is your house. He meant they were connected by marriage and alliance. Ishmael Dagan's obligation was to send what the king of Katna had requested, and certainly to send a gift of equivalent value. Ishmael Dagan's career didn't improve. His kingdom shrank, and he ended up being demoted to a son of the other great kings of the time, rather than continuing as a brother. Hammurabi, the king of Babylon, wrote to Ishmael Dagan, to those kings that write me as sons, you write as brother. The kings who wrote to Hammurabi as his sons were his vassals. According to Hammurabi, Ishmael Dagan was now a brother of those kings, meaning that he was an equal of the vassals, and no longer as powerful as the king of Babylon. The ultimate humiliation was that Zimri-Lim, the king who took over control of Mari, which had been one of Ishmael Dagan's provinces, was now higher up in the pecking order than Ishmael Dagan himself. According to Hammurabi's same instructions, to Zimri-Lim who writes me as a brother, you write as son. Ishmael Dagan had to refer to himself as the son or inferior of Zimri-Lim. He was incensed by this. He had begun his reign as the master of an empire that included Mari. Now he wrote angrily to Hammurabi, stating, you made me write Zimri-Lim as son. Is that man not my servant? He's not sitting on a throne of his own majesty. The appeal was in vain. Ishmael Dagan was a minor king now. Perhaps his political instincts remain bad, even after that tongue lashing the king of Katna had given him. Now let's go back to Mari, where Zimri-Lim took the throne in 1775 BCE and established a new administration. The palace at Mari has been excavated. It's one of the most important excavations in Syria and one of the most important finds for this whole era. In its time, it was famous for being a particularly spectacular royal residence. Even better, for us at least, the palace had been conquered and burned and pretty much abandoned after that. So the mud bricks in the walls were baked hard from the fire and the walls still stood as much as 13 feet tall when the archaeologists found them. I visited the site of Mari some years ago. I found it a very moving experience to stand in the courtyards and rooms of the palace. The French archaeologists who excavated there had installed a roof to At most archaeological sites, you really have to use your imagination to recreate a sense of the ancient place, because just foundations are left. But at Mari, I was standing right there in the palace, inside the very walls where Zimri-Lim had met with his advisors or welcomed visiting dignitaries. We can get an amazing glimpse of what royal life was like during the Old Babylonian period, not just from the Mari palace, but also from the objects and cuneiform tablets found in it. The palace was vast. It had more than 260 rooms divided up into sectors. There were workshops, storerooms, private apartments, kitchens, public spaces, offices, archives, a throne room, bathrooms, and even a temple. It would have taken some time to find your way around. The plan was something of a maze, and there were no signs to tell you where to go. No doubt guards were posted to make sure that visitors didn't wander into private rooms. At the heart of the palace was a courtyard planted with palm trees, and beyond it the throne room where King Zimri-Lim received visitors and messengers. The walls were painted brightly with murals. One showed a procession of sacrificial animals accompanied by high officials. Another showed an investiture scene in which the king stood in front of the goddess Ishtar to receive the symbols of his authority, a rod and a ring. This scene was surrounded with images of palm trees, birds, fantastic winged animals, and goddesses, all painted in bright colors. The paintings might look a little gaudy for modern taste, but the Mesopotamians loved color. Outside the throne room, just in from the courtyard, stood a beautifully carved stone statue of a goddess holding a water jar. The pipe inside the statue turned it into a fountain so that water could pour out of the jar. Zimri-Lim's throne room was vast, 82 feet long and 40 feet wide. At one end was a throne for the king, and at the other a platform containing statues of Zimri-Lim's ancestors. Presumably, the room was decorated with rugs and wall hangings, and there would have been a line of clerestory windows along the top of the wall to bring in light. Everything in the palace confirmed the impression that Zimri-Lim was enormously wealthy and powerful. Even the food served to him was elaborate. In the kitchens, archaeologists found molds for shaping bread into edible works of art. Like old-fashioned jello molds, they allowed the bread to take the shapes of fish or deer or goddesses. King Zimri-Lim had bathrooms with clay bathtubs and indoor plumbing for the toilets. But the bathtubs had no drains, and they must have been filled and emptied by hand. In palace workshops, some skilled artisans made gold jewelry. Every fragment of gold was carefully weighed and recorded on clay tablets. Women were hired to spin wool and weave an embroidered cloth. Again, the scribes kept track of every ounce of dye and wool that was handed out, who received it, which women were working in teams together, what textiles they produced, and what the quality was. The records of all these workshops were carefully archived. The whole palace must have hummed with activity. In the middle of all this, of course, lived King Zimri-Lim and his family. He ruled there for only 13 years, from 1775 to 1762 BCE. But the 22,000 cuneiform tablets found in his archives make it one of the best-known eras in all of Mesopotamian history. The king was constantly in touch with his officials, governors, and family members. Letters were dictated by the king, written down by scribes, and carried across the kingdom by messengers. Letters that arrived in reply were read aloud to him and then archived. Unfortunately for us, the letters weren't dated, so it can be challenging to reconstruct the order of the events they describe. But the overall impression they give us is that Zimri-Lim was a careful diplomat, a strong commander, a meticulous administrator, and a caring husband and father. Unlike Yasma-Adu, the previous ruler of the Mari region, King Zimri-Lim was away on campaign a lot. The wars of Shamshi-Arad's time hadn't come to an end. When Zimri-Lim was gone, his wife, Queen Shiptu, was in charge of the palace affairs, and she wrote frequently to her husband to let him Often, she wrote about important messages from the gods. Any prophecy had to be taken into consideration when planning military moves. These messages sometimes came in the form of dreams, or visions that people had while in temples. Sometimes the prophets were given a potion to drink that induced visions. In one letter, Shiptu describes a reassuring vision of soldiers who proclaimed the king's legitimacy. She wrote, Another vision, also relayed by Queen Shiptu to the king, told him that a rebellion was expected. Sometimes the visions were incredibly specific. Here's one. This was the same Ishmael Dagan of Ekalatim that we've been talking about. But the men and women who told Shiptu about these visions were wrong. Ishmael Dagan didn't die with his head at her husband's feet. Instead, he died much later in his own bed. Other letters were about the day-to-day running of the palace. Shiptu instructed officials on things that needed to be done, and described how she used her cylinder seal to secure storerooms when necessary. She would have rolled the seal on a lump of clay attached to the door. This was a way of locking the room, since the seal had to be broken if anyone entered. Zimri Lim wrote to the queen as well, asking her in some letters to take care of various administrative needs, and in others to consult prophets or oracles, or to meet him at a different city in the kingdom. It's clear that the queen was not just his wife, but also a highly trusted advisor and surrogate. Zimri Lim was surrounded by women during his lifetime. He had several wives and at least 11 daughters. No sons are mentioned in the letters. You won't be surprised to hear that many of the daughters were married off to Zimri Lim's allies and vassals, along with high officials like governors and controllers. He counted on his daughters to be loyal to him, and to keep him up to date with news. The messages brought to the court from the Mari princesses are almost Shakespearean in their convoluted politics. One daughter wrote, if in truth my lord, that's Zimri Lim, loves the city Shuna, her husband's capital, and his servant Ili Ishtar, do hurry here a hundred soldiers and your trustworthy officer, and do save your city and servant, else the enemy will seize the city. A couple of the king's daughters were thoroughly unhappy in their marriages, and not at all afraid to tell their father about it. They dictated frank letters to their messengers to be carried to the king. Princess Inib Shari, for example, was first married off to a tribal leader, who soon died. Then she was married to another of her father's vassals. Her letters are full of the misery of her life, because her second husband neglected her and preferred another wife. My eyes are full of tears and my mouth hungers, she wrote. Adding about her spouse, he has reinforced the guard over me. In a later letter she says, I am lacking food and firewood, so that events are much worse than before. Over and over again, Zimri Lim's forlorn daughter tells him to rescue her. My lord should send his servants to fetch me to my lord, so that I can see my lord's face. Another of Zimri Lim's daughters, Kirim, was married to a violent and reckless king, who threatened to kill her. This husband was also married to another of Zimri Lim's daughters, whom he much preferred. As Kirim's situation worsened, even her servants were taken away. In one letter to her father, she quoted her husband as saying, Since I plan to have you killed, he, Zimri Lim, should come and take you back. Kirim wrote, If my lord does not fetch me back to Mari, I shall grasp my nose and jump from the roof. It's unclear whether Zimri Lim ever did manage to rescue her. He certainly tried at least once, but a letter about it says her husband refused to release her. We can only hope that both of the unhappy princesses, Inib Shari and Kirim, eventually obtained divorces and returned to the safety of Mari. Among Zimri Lim's allies was King Hammurabi of Babylon. Hammurabi, you remember, had instructed the demoted Ishmael Dagan to refer to himself as the son of Zimri Lim, who in turn was a brother or equal of Hammurabi. Zimri Lim and Hammurabi shared common enemies and sometimes sent troops to support one another. But Hammurabi was becoming more aggressive to his neighbors, and Zimri Lim began to worry. What were Hammurabi's real motives? Zimri Lim wrote a letter to Shiptu, asking her to consult with the various prophets and diviners at the palace to find out about Hammurabi's intent for the future. He wrote, For now, inquire about Hammurabi of Babylon. Will this man die? Will he be honest with us? Will he battle against us? Shiptu's answer was somewhat reassuring. She said that she'd had a man take a potion, and he'd had a revelation from the gods, which was as follows. This man, Hammurabi, plots many things against this land, but he will not prevail. You will capture him and stand over him. His days are numbered. He will not live long. Unfortunately for both Shiptu and Zimri Lim, and for the whole land of Mari, this prediction was just as wrong as the one about Ishmael Dargan had been. Hammurabi didn't die, and Zimri Lim didn't capture him. Instead, Hammurabi led his troops to Mari and conquered the city. He seems to have robbed the palace thoroughly, sending the jewelry, textiles, statues, and other valuable goods back home. He even had his men go through the palace archives, removing many of the letters that pertained to his own affairs. Then, the palace was set on fire. The wooden roof beams, and the door and window frames, and the remaining textiles burned readily. The walls of the upper story collapsed, and the great palace was abandoned. It gradually was covered with windblown dirt and sand, left untouched until 1933, when some local villagers discovered a statue there. A French team of archaeologists excavated the site for decades, gradually bringing Zimri Lim and his world back to life.