Near East Kingdoms

Sadduwatum (City) (Northern Mesopotamia)

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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. 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.

At the same time, northern Mesopotamia experienced its own burgeoning development processes, largely starting under the Hassuna culture. These processes took longer here than they did in the south, also including the south-eastern corner of modern Turkey and the eastern wedge of modern Syria as part of ancient Mesopotamia.

An urban lifestyle only really appeared in the third millennium BC, thanks in part to imposed influences from Sumerian empire-building periods. 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 these was the Amorite city of Sadduwatum (more correctly Šadduwâtum or Šanduwârum).

The archaeological remains of the city can be found in Tall Saadiya Sharqi (or Sadiya Shari), now in eastern Syria but formerly in Mesopotamia's far northern reaches. The ancient city's identification with Tall Saadiya Sharqi was tentatively proposed by D Oates, based on geographical and phonetic reasoning rather than the discovery of written tablets on site. The present tall/tell name could potentially be a direct descendant of 'Sadduwatum'.

The site sits on the west bank of the Tharthar, around forty-four kilometres to the north-west of Assur. The main mound is about ten or fifteen metres in height with a scatter of surface pottery at its foot which suggests an occupation zone of about two hundred metres across. Find dates range between the prehistoric (Neolithic) period and the second millennium BC.

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(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), 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 History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), and from External Links: Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (Published between 2003-2021, part of the Babylonian section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology), and the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, and Studies in the ancient history of Northern Iraq, D Oates (London, 1968, available via ARCHIBAB).)

c.1809 BC

Shamshi-Adad sets up an empire in 'Upper Mesopotamia' which stretches from Tuttul near the Mediterranean to the Assyrians and the foothills of the Zagros mountains.

While southern Mesopotamia flourished during the third millennium BC, it took longer for the same effect to be felt in northern Mesopotamia, with the first larger cities and city states only really emerging towards the end of the millennium (click or tap on map to view full sized)

He hands over Ekallatum to one of his sons to rule in his name, and incorporates Andarig, Ashur (which is rebuilt and expanded), Carchemish, Karana, Qattara, Razama, Sadduwatum, Shehna, Terqa, and Urkesh into his domains, amongst others.

c.1765 BC

A little over a year after the death of Qarni-Lim, Atamrum assumes control of Andarig after being handed the city by Eshnunnan troops (who are presumably stationed there). Soon after he takes back the state of Apum from its Elamite rulers, and it remains under the control of Andarig during the reign of Atamrum's son. The king is also known to control Sadduwatum.

The Sinjar plain (now in northern Iraq) was the location of the city of Andarig, although the city's remains have yet to be discovered and examined by archaeologists

c.1760s? BC

The Yamutbal people - Amorites on the southern margin of the eastern Anatolian highlands - cede the city of Sadduwatum to Ekallatum, with the traded city being the first station on the trading route from Ashur to Kanesh.