Near East Kingdoms

Dur-Rimush (City) (Southern 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.

By the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer was divided into approximately a dozen independent city states which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders. 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. One of these was Dur-Rimush (more correctly Rimuš, with the accented letter pronounced as an 'sh').

The city was a cult centre for the god Adad. It was located at today's archaeological mound of Tell el-Mjelaat, about nine kilometres to the north of Dur-Sharukin, as one of a series of small cities in the River Diyala region. Dur-Sharukin was a northern suburb of Sippar in the northern part of southern Mesopotamia.

During the late nineteenth century BC a confusing array of independent and semi-independent cities in this region swapped allegiences, conquered each other's small territories or were themselves conquered. Dur-Rimush was one of the conquered cities in the period between 1828-1823 BC when it was annexed by Eshnunna under Ibiq-Adad II, along with nearby settlements such as Nerebtum and Shaduppum.

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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: Ancient Worlds, and Evolution of Sumerian kingship (Ancient World Magazine), and Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (Published between 2003-2021, part of the Babylonian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology), and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.)

c.1828 -1823 BC

After about 1862 BC, the city of Eshnunna under Ibiq-Adad II has been expanding its territory to incorporate the Diyala valley as far as its confluence with the Tigris. Previously independent minor cities are now subjugated (seemingly between about 1828-1823 BC).

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)

These include Dur-Rimush, Nerebtum, Shaduppum, and Uzarlulu. It may be Apil-sin of Babylon who takes advantage of this by opportunistically grabbing for himself a few of Shaduppum's territorial holdings.

c.1781 - 1780 BC

Dadusha of Eshnunna uses diplomacy to ally himself around 1781 BC with the dominant regional power at this time, Shamshi-Adad's kingdom of 'Upper Mesopotamia'. His intention is to conquer the region between the two rivers Zab. He does so, with the victory being commemorated in a victory stele on which he states that he hands over the lands to Shamshi-Adad.

It may only be a year or so before Shamshi-Adad turns on his new ally when he seizes Nerebtum and Shaduppum (and doubtless Dur-Rimush and Uzarlulu too), although these and many more small cities are quickly taken back when the kingdom later fails.

The ancient city of Shaduppum - the modern archaeological site of Tell Harmal - now lies in the Baghdad governorate of Iraq, and within the borders of modern Baghdad itself

c.1762 BC

The Babylonians capture the only remaining political power to oppose them when they take Eshnunna, inheriting well-established eastern trade routes and economic stability. A string of small dependant cities also come with this conquest, including Dur-Rimush, Nerebtum, Shaduppum, and Uzarlulu.

Northern Mesopotamia is occupied, ending the independence of small city states such as Andarig, Karana, Qattara, and Razama. Even the relatively powerful Mari falls, as does Malgium. For a century and-a-half, great swathes of Mesopotamia belong to Babylon.