Kingdoms of Mesopotamia

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 those smaller cities was Kuara (Ku'ara) or Kua, located close to Eridu, one of the five cities which were said to have been built 'Before the Flood'. The modern archaeological site of Tell al-Lahm is generally claimed as its location, in today's Dhi Qar province of southern Iraq, but this site has also been linked to Kisiga (Kissik, largely an early first millennium BC city) and Dur-Lakin (the latter only a short-lived Neo-Babylonian fortress).

Asalluhe was the city's god, active alongside the god Enki in magical rituals of lustration (purification). At least in later evolutions of the pantheon Asalluhe was considered to be Enki's son. He may originally have been a god of thundershowers and would therefore have corresponded to the other Sumerian gods, Ishkur and Ninurta. He was later identified with Marduk of Babylon.

A branch of the Euphrates once ran past the site, which would account for its being built here. In the seventh or eighth century AD the river shifted course and is now eighteen kilometres away. The site measures about three hundred and fifty metres by three hundred and is about fifteen metres high. It is primarily formed of a main mound and some peripheral ridges and depressions, with some much later mounds also within its vicinity. Its surface is irregular thanks to its recent use as a cemetery, along with Bedouin camping and defensive digging.

John George Taylor excavated the location over a few days in 1855 but his finds were uninspiring and fragmented. R Campbell Thompson diverted briefly from Eridu in 1918 to find a stamped brick of Ur III's Amar-Sin, plus two bricks of the Neo-Babylonian ruler, Nabonidus (possibly transposed from the contemporary nearby settlement mound to the east).

Fuad Safar conducted soundings in 1949 to build up the site's stratigraphy. The main mound developed from a substantial settlement in the 'Early Dynastic' period at the lowest level to a smaller settlement in the Kassite period in its final levels around the 1500s BC.

Despite the many city names which have been connected to the archaeological site, none of them chronologically overlap, with the potential for all of them to be valid. This is entirely unproven of course, but the Kuara of the third millennium BC was abandoned approximately around 1500 BC.

Then Kissiga is documented from the late second millennium BC to the early first millennium BC, and then a fort named Dur-Lakin existed here. Defunct Sumerian city sites were often repurposed in the first millennia BC and AD as temporary forts, so the theory is not beyond the bounds of realism.

Near East Kingdoms

Ancient Mesopotamia

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