Near East Kingdoms

Dilbat (City) (Sumer)

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In southern Mesopotamia the city states of Sumer formed one of the first great civilisations in human history (see feature link). This Near Eastern civilisation 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.

As irrigation improved so the more southerly reaches of the Euphrates could at last be occupied by humans and their animals, with permanent settlements arising from the sixth millennium BC. Initially these were pastoralist settlements, but soon farming villages appeared and they gradually grew and improved. 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, in what is now northern Iraq, the western edge of Iran, the south-eastern corner of Turkey, and the eastern wedge of Syria. An urban lifestyle only really appeared in the third millennium BC, thanks in part to such influences being imposed during Sumerian empire-building periods. Archaeology has uncovered a wealth of detail about settlements in this region, but many more sites remain to be examined.

The small city of Dilbat - not to be confused with Delebat, the Sumerian name for the planet Venus - was located a little way to the south-east of Babylon, at what is now the archaeological site of Tell al-Deylam. This city was was an important religious and cultural centre, with ziggurats and temples which were dedicated to Uraš and Ninega.

The site consists of two mounds with the larger, eastern mound containing the remains of earlier building phases which date back as far as the city's founding in the 'Early Dynastic' period, about 2700 BC. The smaller, western mound contains the first millennium BC occupation levels and those of the early first millennium AD. The city survived into the early Islamic period.

Little is known about the cultic topography of this small city. Two first millennium BC ziggurat lists and a few Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian royal inscriptions record the fact that Dilbat's main temple was E-ibbi-Anum and its ziggurat was Eguba'anki, both of which were dedicated to Uraš.

The temple of Ninegal (Bēlet-ēkalli) may have been named Esapar. Recent excavations on the eastern mound have unearthed the Kassite period remains of E-ibbi-Anum. In its three thousand year-plus history the city was mentioned in various records, including the Epic of Gilgamesh and on later neo-Assyrian and Babylonian tablets.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, J N Postgate (Routledge, 1994), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and Ancient History, Anthony Michael Love ('List 3' of Sumerian rulers at Sarissa.org), and Dilbat (Pleiades).)

c.2700 BC

The small city of Kisurra is founded during Sumer's 'Early Dynastic' period, and immediately preceding what may be the end of the Antediluvian period. Even at its height it has an estimated population of less than five thousand inhabitants. Around the same point in time the central Mesopotamian city of Dilbat is also founded.

This fragment of Early Bronze Age pottery was produced in Mesopotamia around 3000 BC, as the early city-building movement began to accelerate towards large-scale city states and a recorded history

c.2254? BC

Kish leads a 'Great Revolt' against the Akkadian empire, rallying the northern Sumerian cities of Apiak, Borsippa, Dilbat, Eresh, Kazallu, Kiritab, Kutha, Sippar, and Tiwa, and placing a well-organised army in the field which is then defeated. Presumably this is the period in which Eresh has its own king in a fractured Sumerian political landscape.

c.2004 - 1900 BC

With the collapse of the Sumerian city states, Mesopotamia endures a century or so of chaos. Amorites, who for several centuries had been living amongst the Sumerians, rise to power in southern and central Mesopotamia, as well as in northern Mesopotamia and Syria.

Some of the earliest cities, such as Sippar, Borsippa, and Kish in the north, and Ur, Uruk, and Eridu in the south, formed the endpoints of what became the complex Sumerian network of cities and canals (click or tap on map to view full sized)

They found or expand cities and create kingdoms of their own, such as Amrit, Amurru, Andarig, Arvad, Dilbat, Ekallatum, Eshnunna, Hamath, Isin, Karana, Qattara, Razama, Terqa, and Tuttul (and probably Der as well, although records here are sketchy). They also assume control of older city states throughout Mesopotamia, Syria, and Canaan, such as Alalakh, Alep (Aleppo), Borsippa, Carchemish, Ebla, Gebal, Jericho, Kazallu, Kish, Lagash, Larsa, Mari, Nippur, Qatna, Sippar, Tuba, Ur and Uruk.

c.1792 BC

By the time of Hammurabi's accession in Babylon, the city's kings had begun to enlarge the state's borders by conquering the now-Amorite cities of Dilbat, Borsippa, Kish, and Sippar. If it had not already also controlled Kazallu from about 1861 BC, it certainly does so by this time.

What in the twentieth century was known as the 'Sea Gate' of the Amorites is dated to about 2000 BC and would appear to be the Canaanite city gate of Ashkelon, which enjoyed good access to the sea

512/511 BC

A text from Dilbat which is now under the control of the Achaemenid empire documents a man named Urash-ana-bitishu being sent to Elam to perform an unspecified form of work for three months while Elamites are also coming in the other direction to work in places such as Babylonia.