Near East Kingdoms

Marad (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. Irrigation improvements saw the more southerly reaches of the Euphrates 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. By the late fourth millennium BC, Sumer was divided into approximately a dozen city states which were independent of one another.

The small city of Marad (or Marda in Sumerian) today is better known as the Iraqi archaeological site of Tell Wannat es-Sadum (otherwise Tell as-Sadoum or Wana-Sedoum). It was located on the west bank of what, at the time, was the western branch of the upper Euphrates to the west of Nippur. The Abgal Canal ran close by, connecting Babylon to Isin.

The site was identified in 1912 after a Neo-Babylonian inscription had been translated. This was found on a truncated cylinder which was issued during the reign of Nebuchadrezzar. It noted the restoration of the city's temple, but the cylinder's provenance is uncertain, as is to a degree the site identification as Marad.

The site itself consists of a series of small mounds and a main mound which together cover about fifty hectares of land, and with its main temple standing on its northern edge. The city was founded about 2700 BC, during the 'Early Dynastic II' period.

The main temple was a ziggurat which was known as E-igi-kalama, or 'house which is the eye of the land'. It was dedicated to Lugal-Marada who is sometimes thought to be a manifestation of Ninurta. He was the god of earth and the plough, while the temple was built by a son of Naram-Sin during the height of the Akkadian empire.

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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 First Farmers: The Origins of Agricultural Societies, Peter Bellwood (Second Ed, Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), 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 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 Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, J N Postgate (Routledge, 1994), 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 The Ancient Near East, A Life, Piotr Michalowski & Gary Beckman (Orientalia lovaniensia Analecta 220, 2012, and available to download as a PDF), and Seal Impressions on Tablets from Umma, Rudolf H Mayr (2005, and available via Academia.edu).)

c.2700 BC

Following Lugalbanda's reign in Uruk, military domination of Sumer passes back to Kish, although the Sumerian king list (see feature link) still has Uruk as possessor of the official kingship. Possibly Kish initially defers to Uruk's originally-greater sense of authority and prestige. Into this network of politics the city of Marad is founded around this time.

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.2016 BC

The governor of Kazallu appeals to Ibbi-Sin of Ur for help against the encroaching forces of Ishbi-Erra of Isin. Help is refused, and within three years Kazallu falls to Isin, as does a soon-to-be Amorite-dominated Marad.

Marad / Marda (Amorite City) (Southern Mesopotamia)

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The city of Uruk had been one of the first great cities in Sumer, and across Mesopotamia as a whole (largely covered by today's Iraq and southern Turkey). It seems to have been singly responsible for the Uruk IV period in the fourth millennium BC (see feature link), and was a major Sumerian city throughout the third millennium BC.

Civilisation in Sumer waned towards the end of that millennium, seemingly due to the Euphrates undergoing a major shift in course, but also to a degree of aridisation and climate dryness which was being felt around the world. Sumerian civilisation collapsed entirely when the Simashki ruler of Elam sacked Ur and captured its king around 2004 BC.

Semitic-speaking Amorites had been inhabitants of Sumer for some centuries, and it was they who rose to fill the gap left by the end of Sumerian civilisation. Under them the small and hitherto not-especially important city of Kazallu briefly became a regional power, vying first against Isin and then against Babylon.

The city, which had been an ally of Ibbi-Sin's Ur, conquered a swathe of territory following the line of the canals south to the city of Marad, but held onto it for perhaps only half a century. Marad was a small city of approximately five thousand inhabitants which was situated on what was at the time the west bank of the Euphrates, to the west of Nippur.

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c.1950 BC

Kazallu initially remains a minor city state with no power outside its own territory and under the governance of Isin. That city has already gained control of the Sumerian spiritual centre of Nippur, along with another culturally symbolic and commercially crucial town, Uruk, and the province of Lagash of which Larsa is a part.

c.1900? BC

Perhaps benefiting from Isin's considerable problems at this time, Kazallu seems fully to break away from Isin to form a state of its own. It expands along the canal network to its south which is where Marad lays. It holds the city for some time, ruling it directly through its own kings (who are not repeated here to avoid unnecessary duplication of somewhat brief notes).

Babylon began life as a modest town which had been seized from Kazallu, but was quickly fortified by the building of a city wall in the nineteenth century BC

c.1897 BC

Upon the death of Sumuditama, Kish and Babylon both succeed in freeing themselves from Kazallu's domination. Kazallu still controls a large swathe of territory from Sippar in the north to Marad in the south. Details of its rulers amount to little more than the odd inscription.

c.1883? BC

Sumuabum of Babylon (still a relatively small power-player at this time) lays waste to his implacable enemy in Kazallu, but it appears the city survives and continues to hold a position of some power in the region.

Lugal of Marad. Independent of Kazallu?

c.1880s? BC

Sumu-Amnānum of Shadlash is known only from two inscriptions, one of which comes from Nerebtum while the other comes from Uzarlulu. Both are dedications to Inanna, 'the lady of Šadlaš'.

This general map of Mesopotamia and its neighbouring territories roughly covers the period between 2000-1600 BC. It reveals the concentration of city states in the former Sumer, in the south (click or tap on map to view full sized)

When precisely he rules at Shadlash is unknown, but it probably takes place before the reign of Sumu-numhim - who is known from the Nerebtum treaty - so approximately during the time of Sumu-nabi-yarim (or Sumun-abi-yarim) of Uzarlulu or that of Mašparum.

The latter's home city is unknown, as are those of two other contemporary kings - Abdi-Erah and Šiqlānum (possibly of Eshnunna) - but all of them are dated between about 1900-1880 BC. It is Mašparum who is involved in negotiating with Ḫalun-pi-umu of Marad regarding his intentions to go to war, seemingly as a king who is independent of Kazallu.

c.1861? BC

In the expectation of trouble, the Babylon king drives out Yakhzir-ilu, ruler both in Kazallu and Marad. Two years later the ramparts are torn down and Babylon fights the city's inhabitants, finally killing the king seven years after he is first driven out.

The modern archaeological site of Tell Wannat es-Sadum is generally thought to be the ancient city of Marad, although this has not been conclusively proven (External Link: Creative Commons Licence Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

c.1838? BC

A year name which is issued by Sin-iqisham of Larsa records the 'year (Sin-iqiszam) made (statues) of / for Numuszda, Namrat, and Lugal-apiak and brought them into the city of Kazallu'. Those seemingly good relations do not last very long at all.

c.1836 BC

To commemorate Year 5 of his reign (his last, as it turns out), Sin-iqisham of Larsa gives it the name '[the] year Uruk, Kazallu, the army of the land of Elam, and Zambija the king of Isin were defeated'. This would be the coalition which seemingly had been forming since the reign of Sin-iddinam of Larsa.

c.1800s BC

If Babylon has not already integrated Kazallu and Marad into its domains by this point, it certainly does so by around 1800 BC. This immediately follows a period of domination of Kazallu by Rim-Sin of Larsa during which he uses Kazallu's troops in a failed attack on Uruk.

The main mounds at the modern archaeological site of Tell Sifr have been identified as the location of the ancient Sumerian city of Kutalla, largely a dependency of Larsa during the early second millennium BC

The city of Marad survives into the first millennium BC, but diminished, and possibly unoccupied for a spell towards the end of the second millennium BC. After the Neo-Babylonian period it is certainly left to the sands.