Kingdoms of Mesopotamia

The fall of Sumerian civilisation in the form of the 'Ur III' dynasty of Ur circa 2004 BC left a vacuum which lasted for about a century. Conflict and chaos in Mesopotamia were eventually overcome as the Semitic-speaking Amorites began to rise in power and importance, having inherited much of their own civilisation and culture from Sumer. Amorites however were not the only notable late-arriving cultural or ethnic group.

The Kassites were another non-Semitic, non-Indo-European mountain people just like the Amorites, and possibly like the original Sumerians too. Their language matches nothing known today or in the history of the Near East. It seems to have been a Caucasian language, with the Kassites themselves likely being migrants from the Caucasus region to the north.

In Akkadian their name was recoded as Kaššû, which came from the Kassite original, and other regional dialects record very similar forms. Their origins though are less clear. The claim for a Caucasus homeland has been questioned. Documentation from the Old Babylonian city of Susa would has strengthened the case for a homeland in the Zagros mountains, but that evidence is highly questionable.

There seems to be other evidence to suggest that the Kassites were once neighbours of Indo-Europeans, in view of some affinities between their pantheon and the Indo-Aryan one. That could still place them in the Caucasus because Indo-Iranians (almost the same group as their Indo-Aryan derivation) would have neighboured them to their north.

If instead they came from the east then it would have been a good way to the east, close to the collapsing BMAC in Central Asia. Indo-Aryans were generally bottled up by this culture until it ended about 1800-1700 BC. Others have pointed out the fact that the Kassites are first noted as being located in northern Babylonia and to the west of it, along the middle Euphrates and Alalah VII. Again that supports a Caucasian origin.

They invaded Babylonia in the eighteenth century BC under the leadership of their king, Gandash. Although initially defeated, they retired to Mari at a point around 1730 BC or 1715 BC, with those dates probably marking the approximate duration of their campaign into Babylon.

From there they witnessed the dramatic sacking of Babylon around 1595 BC by Mursili I of the Hittite state, and the subsequent power vacuum after the Hittites withdrew. Babylonia had been steadily declining following the appearance of the early Hittite state in the north, but also due to over-farming of the fields which led to increased salinisation and failing crops.

The region entered a short dark age around this time, perhaps aided by a dip in climate cooperativeness and perhaps not coincidentally at the same time as some apparent destabilisation appeared elsewhere, such as in a second wave of Indo-European elements arriving in Bronze Age Iberia just at the point at which the once-virile Argaric culture came to an end.

The Kassites may have been watching out for just such an opportunity as the Hittite raid. They headed back into Babylonia, settling central areas around the city, thoroughly absorbing Babylonian culture, assuming control of the leaderless state to form its 'Dynasty III', and ruling over it and the various Amorite peoples in the region.

In fact, the Kassites had the longest period of rule in Babylonia. Thanks to the relative absence of information for this period, they were long thought to have achieved little in the way of cultural development. That appears to have been incorrect.

It now appears that the kingdom made great strides in cementing the cultural unification of southern Mesopotamia - which in their time truly became 'Babylonia', instead of just another Mesopotamian city state with extensive possessions - and those possessions stretched all the way southwards to Bahrain (the probable Dilmun of the period).

The Kassites moved lock, stock, and barrel into Babylonia, with the result that they were highly focussed there and did not seemingly exist anywhere else to enter recorded history. That suggests a limited population which remained linked and which generally moved together to enter Babylon. Their history would now be that of Babylon itself.

Near East Kingdoms

Ancient Mesopotamia

Images and text copyright © all contributors mentioned on this page. An original king list page for the History Files.