Near East Kingdoms

Ashnakkum (City) (Northern Mesopotamia)

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The city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation emerged a little way ahead of that of Africa's ancient Egypt, and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture.

It developed out of the end of the Pottery Neolithic across the Fertile Crescent, a period which had seen Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond. Southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and the western edge of Iran) was subjected to permanent settlement, initially in the form of pastoralists but soon as farmers too.

At the same time, northern Mesopotamia experienced its own burgeoning development processes, largely starting under the Hassuna culture. These processes took longer here than they did in the south, also including the south-eastern corner of modern Turkey and the eastern wedge of modern Syria as part of ancient Mesopotamia.

An urban lifestyle only really appeared in the third millennium BC, thanks in part to imposed influences from Sumerian empire-building periods. Many of the smaller cities emerged in two broad waves, in the mid-third millennium BC and at the start of the second millennium BC, by which time Ashnakkum (more correctly Ašnakkum) was already around three thousand years old.

Today the remains of this city form the archaeological mount of Tell Chagar Bazar, now in north-eastern Syria, and formerly in Mesopotamia's far northern reaches. The first settlement here along the banks of the River Dara before it meets the Khabur took place during the Neolithic, in the form of a village of early farmers. Excavations have revealed pottery which forms part of the Halaf and Ubaid cultures.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), and from External Links: the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, and Ancient Locations, and Une Histoire du conflit entre Lagash et Umma, Maurice Lambert (Revue d'Assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale, Vol 50, No 3, Presses Universitaires de France, 1956. pp 141-146, available via JSTOR, in French).)

c.5000 BC

The Pottery Neolithic of the Fertile Crescent is spreading far and wide, even entering Nilotic Africa. Older settlements are being reborn or expanded, such as those of Jericho and Susa, while new settlements are also being formed across the region, including those of Ashnakkum, Gebal, and Megiddo.

The current archaeological site of Tel Arad is probably one of the easier ones to link back to its ancient origins, with the early Canaanite city seen at the lower edge of the photo and the first millennium BC Israelite stronghold at the top

c.2225 BC

Akkadian influence becomes noticeable in Urkesh around this time, perhaps due to the regional dominance of Akkad and the partnership which is formed between this empire and Urkesh.

The city of Ashnakkum which has been occupied since the region's Neolithic Farmer period sits about twenty-two kilometres to the south-west of Urkesh, seemingly remaining in Sumerian hands at this time.

c.2004 BC

The waning Sumerian civilisation which has at its centre the city of Ur now collapses entirely when the Simashki ruler of Elam, Kindattu, together with the people of Susa, sacks the city and captures Ibbi-Sin. Ashnakkum is a victim of this collapse, being abandoned around now and remaining so for a good two hundred years.

This general map of Mesopotamia and its neighbouring territories roughly covers the period between 2000-1600 BC. It reveals the concentration of city states in the former Sumer, in the south (click or tap on map to view full sized)

c.1791 BC

Shamshi-Adad's kingdom of 'Upper Mesopotamia' conquers Mari, placing Yasmah-Adad, one of his sons, on the throne there. This grants him control of many small regional cities including Terqa and Urkesh (and likely the nearby Ashnakkum too which bears clear connections to Mari). He also supports the Syrian state of Qatna in its rivalry with Yamkhad, and it could be from this period that Qatna becomes a firm ally.

c.1750s BC

Hurrians begin migrating westwards in this period, where they can be found in cities such as Alakhtum and Ashnakkum. That could be due to Mari allowing its citizens to move freely within its territory, but it is more likely due to Mari's fall at the hands of Babylon around 1761 BC and a sudden lack of regional opposition to Hurrian migration.

Displayed here are two Khabur ware jars which date to the first half of the second millennium BC which were unearthed from the archaeological site of Tell Chagar Bazar (ME 125455 & 125429) (External Link: Creative Commons Licence Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International)