The First Dynasty of the Sealand in History and Tradition

In the latter half of the eighteenth century B.C.E. (in the Middle Chronology), the southernmost regions of Mesopotamia started rebelling against Babylonian royal power, merely one generation after Hammurapi of Babylon had unified the land in annexing the small kingdoms that had emerged at the beginning of the millennium. This rebellion eventually resulted in the formation of a poorly documented kingdom, the Sealand, which would last as an independent state for over two centuries, maintaining itself long after the Amorite dynasty of Babylon fell. Because of the dire lack of sources, this entire period has remained for us largely in the dark, historically and culturally. Late Old Babylonian royal inscriptions are few and the year names become less evocative of political events, early Kassite evidence is even scarcer, and until recently Sealand I sources were near to non-existent. Our incomplete understanding of pottery sequences and the apparent abandonment of several urban centres in southern Babylonia in that period have made and kept this dynasty very elusive. Until now it was known to us almost exclusively through its inclusion into later king lists and chronicles. The publication in 2009 of well over four hundred archival texts bearing date formulae of Sealand I rulers, soon to be followed by a few literary and divinatory texts, finally made it possible to start filling this hiatus. This dissertation proposes a history of the Sealand I kingdom, based on this new evidence and on a reevaluation of the previously known sources. The aspects examined are: the recording and transmission of knowledge on the Sealand I dynasty in Mesopotamian historiography; the political history, including a discussion of the geography and the relative chronology; the panthea and the palace-sponsored cult, which show how the Sealand I kings positioned their rule in a Larsean tradition, but with supra-regional ambitions; the economy â mainly the palatial administration and transformation of agricultural and animal resources, which also reveal a very specific model of institutional integration between the palace and temples.Ph.D.2018-11-30 00:00:0