Near East Kingdoms

Kiritab (City) (Sumer)

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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.

As irrigation improved so the more southerly reaches of the Euphrates could at last be occupied by humans and their animals. 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. Cultures around the edges of this progression included the Hassuna and Samarra which began this settlement process, and perhaps elements of the Hissar culture in the Iranian highlands were also involved.

By the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer was divided into approximately a dozen city states which were independent of one another and which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders. Many early historical events in the region are found only in the Sumerian king list, which notates the rulers of the city states (and see feature link), but archaeology has also uncovered a wealth of detail.

The city of Kiritab was undoubtedly small, and was probably one of the later examples in its region to be founded, likely between about 2700-2300 BC. Unfortunately no location is known as no tablets have been found in a location which can definitively pin that location to the city name.

The city of Apiak (or Api'ak) to the south of Kiritab flourished from the late third millennium BC, one of a network of smaller cities in the northern areas of Sumer, immediately to the south of Akkad (itself a late flourisher). As with Kiritab its precise location is unknown but it can be confirmed as being close to the Tigris, and to the east of Nippur.

Both cities are known to have lain along the Abgal Canal which branched off the Euphrates to the south of Kish. The canal continued southwards to reach Marad. This territory was controlled for a time by the Amorite rulers of Kish, with two year names under Halium mentioning the Abgal.

The textual cadaster of Ur-Nammu who founded the Ur III empire defines four neighbouring provinces (out of a total of nineteen provinces): Kiritab, Apiak, [Uru]m, and Marada. Ur-Nammu lays out relatively detailed directions - although they are sometimes obscure - and names the warrior god Meslamtaea as Apiak's protective god.

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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 Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, Peter Bellwood (Second Ed, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), and from External Links: A New Look at Naram-Sin and the 'Great Rebellion', Steve Tinney (Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol 47, pp 1-14, 1995, and available via JSTOR), and Sargonic and Gutian Periods (2234-2113 BC), Douglas Frayne (RIM The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, University of Toronto Press, 1993, and available via JSTOR), and Ancient Mesopotamia (Oracc).)

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 (potentially Abu Slalabikh) has its own king in a fractured Sumerian political landscape.

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)

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.

c.1860 - 1836 BC

Cuneiform inscriptions on foundation cones record the building and rebuilding of various god and goddesses temples in Mesopotamia. One of these cones records the building by Enlil-Bani of Isin of the temple of the god Numushda in the city of Kiritab in the Old Babylonian era between about 2003-1595 BC.