Near East Kingdoms

Kutha / Kutu / Cuthah (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 minor Sumerian city of Kutha or Kutu (the modern archaeological site of Tell Ibrahim) was situated on the right bank of the eastern branch of the upper Euphrates, to the north of Nippur (in today's Babil governate of Iraq). The city of Urum was immediately to its own north, and a host of smaller cities lay close to it by the start of the second millennium BC, including Akshak, Ishan Mizyad, Mutalu, Nerebtum, Shadlash, Shaduppum, Tutub, and Uzarlulu.

Occupation seems only to have begun in the Akkadian period, after about 2330 BC. It remained occupied to some degree or other until after the Seleucid empire had taken control of the Near East following the untimely death of Alexander the Great and his Macedonian empire.

Its patron deity was Meslamtaea (or Meslamta-ea). The name can be translated as 'he who came/comes out of Meslam'. This is a well-attested Sumerian god, as its name, or at least elements of that name, can be linked to a good many temples of Nergal, king of the underworld, and related deities, with the most famous of them being the E-Meslam temple which was located in Kutha.

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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 The First Empires, J N Postgate (Oxford 1977), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), from Mesopotamian Gods and Pantheons, Thorkild Jacobsen & William L Moran (Part of Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture, Harvard University Press, pp 16-38, 1970), from The Waters of Ur, Jacobsen Thorkild (Part of Toward the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture, Harvard University Press, pp 231-244, 1970), from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and US Central Command Cultural Property Training Resource, and Cutha, Edgar James Banks (The Biblical World, Vol 22, No 1, pp 61-64, 1903 and available via JSTOR).)

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.

Sargon 'the Great', the warrior king of apparently humble origins, unified Sumer for (perhaps) the first time in recorded history through a series of campaigns and the defeat of the current holder of Sumer's equivalent of a high kingship

c.2094 BC

Shulgi extends his father's Ur III empire to include all of the Assyrian city states and their at-present non-Assyrian neighbours such as the Lullubi. He also re-conquers Susa from Elam and its Simashki rulers, and may be responsible for finishing off rebuilding work at Nippur.

A foundation tablet in Nineveh (possibly carried off there at a later date) records that Shulgi builds the E-Meslam temple at Kutha for the god Nergal. Shulgi has not yet been deified, so this occurs early in his reign. Kutha is also one of several locations to supply building materials for Shulgi's large palace at Tummal.

c.1854 BC

Babylon claims conquest of Sippar in the twenty-ninth year of the reign of Sumula-ilum (Sumu-la-el or Sumu-la-ila). This means a date of 1854 BC in the chronology being used here, but 1838 BC is also proposed (by Gwendolyn Leick at least).

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)

The Sippar city wall may be destroyed during the fighting, as there is a year name which records its rebuilding. The city of Kutha also has its walls rebuilt by Sumula-ilum, so it may be friendly or tributary by this stage. It is not conquered, however.

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).

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.

This wheel-thrown incantation bowl was unearthed at Tell Ibrahim, and dated to the late post-Sassanid period when Islamic culture was being introduced to the region (in the seventh century AD), suggesting that some form of occupation either still existed at Kutha or that it had been lightly reinhabited for a while

fl c.1800s BC

Ruler of Kutha.

c.1812 - 1793 BC

By the time of Hammurabi's accession in Babylon, the kings of Babylon had begun to enlarge the state's borders by conquering the Amorite cities of Dilbat, Borsippa, Kish, Kazallu, and Sippar.

Kutha appears also to become a conquered state (or at least tributary). The fate of Ilum-nāsir is unclear, but his city remains occupied - if not thriving - until the late fourth or early third century BC.

651 BC

Ashurbanipal's Assyrian records state that his elder brother, Šamaš-šuma-ukin, captures the southern Mesopotamian city of Cuthah, a foundation (if indeed it is the same location) which dates at least to the twenty-fourth century BC. Kutha is mentioned a few more times, vaguely or briefly as an unimportant aside, before it is abandoned.

Ashurbanipal is illustrated during a lion hunt, almost a ritual in the Assyrian royal search for order amidst the seemingly everyday chaos of life