Kassite (also Cassite) was a language spoken by the Kassites in Mesopotamia from approximately the 18th to the 7th century BC. From the 16th to 12th centuries BC, kings of Kassite origin ruled in Babylon until they were overthrown by the Elamites. As only a few dozen words are known, none of which have been demonstrably linked to any living or dead language family, Kassite is considered an unclassified language at present, possibly an isolate or belonging to the Hurro-Urartian languages.
Based on the patchy distribution of extant cuneiform texts, the SemiticAkkadian language of the native Babylonians was mostly used for economic transactions during the Kassite period, with Sumerian used for monumental inscriptions. Traces of the Kassite language are few:
a Kassite-Babylonian vocabulary with 48 entries, listing bilingual equivalents of god names, common nouns, verbs, and adjective(s), such as dakaš "star", hašmar "falcon", iašu "country", janzi "king", mašḫu "deity", miriaš "nether world", simbar "young", and šimdi "to give";[1]
the translations of 19 Kassite personal names on the fourth column of a neo-Assyrian era name list, which occasionally contradicts information given in the Kassite-Babylonian vocabulary;[2]
scattered references in Akkadian lexical lists to Kassite equivalents of divine names, plants, etc.; for example, the plant names included in the four-tablet Babylonian Pharmacopoeia, uru.an.na = maštakal, such as ḫašimbur, kuruš, pirizaḫ and šagabigalzu, and terms in the eight-tablet synonym list Malku = šarru, such as allak "rim" (of a wheel), and ḫameru "foot";
many proper names in a variety of Akkadian language documents, principally from Babylonia (especially in the period 1360–850 BC), from Nuzi and from Iran; giving names of deities, people, places and equids;
technical terms relating to animal husbandry, including marks and color designations of horses and asses, found in Akkadian documents, such as those found on a list of Kassite horse names, sambiḫaruk, meaning unknown,[3] and alzibadar, ḫulalam, lagaštakkaš, pirmaḫ, šimriš, and timiraš, color and marking designations of equids; iškamdi, "bit" for a horse; akkandaš, "spoke" of a wheel; kamūsaš and šaḫumaš for bronze parts of a chariot, in contemporary texts;
scattered Kassite words, such as the title bugaš; dardaraḫ, "small metal ornament"; and baziḫarzi, a leather object, in an Akkadian context.
A lack of Kassite texts makes the reconstruction of Kassite grammar impossible at present.
Genetic relations of the Kassite language are unclear, although it is generally agreed that it was not Semitic; a relation with Elamite is doubtful.
Relationship with or membership in the Hurro-Urartian family has been suggested,[4] based on a number of words. It is not clear whether Kassite was a distinct language in the Hurro-Urartian phylum, or simply a Southern dialect of Hurrian. If it was the latter rather than the former, it could be surmised that the Kassites were merely a tribe of Hurrians that expanded from the north into the south and settled in Mesopotamia. On the other hand, if Kassite is the former rather than the latter, this suggests that Hurro-Urartian was an even larger language group and more significant to the region than historical experts have observed, and was perhaps spoken by far more people than previously thought.
Morphemes are not known; the words buri ('ruler') and burna ('protected') probably have the same root.[citation needed]
Babylonia was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia. It emerged as an Akkadian populated but Amorite-ruled state c. 1894 BC. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was retrospectively called "the country of Akkad", a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. It was often involved in rivalry with the older ethno-linguistically related state of Assyria in the north of Mesopotamia and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom centered around the city of Babylon.
Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC.
The Hurrians were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria, upper Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia.
Akkadian literature is the ancient literature written in the Akkadian language in Mesopotamia during the period spanning the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age.
The Kassites were people of the ancient Near East, who controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire c. 1531 BC and until c. 1155 BC.
Elam was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq. The modern name Elam stems from the Sumerian transliteration elam(a), along with the later Akkadian elamtu, and the Elamite haltamti. Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the Ancient Near East. In classical literature, Elam was also known as Susiana, a name derived from its capital Susa.
Cuneiform proper is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts in general are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions which form their signs. Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia.
The Hurro-Urartian languages are an extinct language family of the Ancient Near East, comprising only two known languages: Hurrian and Urartian.
Assyriology, also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC through to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD. The topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria" within the name.
Ningal was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the wife of the moon god, Nanna/Sin. She was particularly closely associated with his main cult centers, Ur and Harran, but they were also worshiped together in other cities of Mesopotamia. She was particularly venerated by the Third Dynasty of Ur and later by kings of Larsa.
Pinikir, also known as Pinigir, Pirengir, Pirinkir, and Parakaras, was an Ancient Near Eastern astral goddess who originates in Elamite religious beliefs. While she is only infrequently attested in Elamite documents, she achieved a degree of prominence in Hurrian religion. Due to her presence in pantheons of many parts of the Ancient Near East, from Anatolia to Iran, modern researchers refer to her as a "cosmopolitan deity."
Ištaran was a Mesopotamian god who was the tutelary deity of the city of Der, a city-state located east of the Tigris, in the proximity of the borders of Elam. It is known that he was a divine judge, and his position in the Mesopotamian pantheon was most likely high, but much about his character remains uncertain. He was associated with snakes, especially with the snake god Nirah, and it is possible that he could be depicted in a partially or fully serpentine form himself. He is first attested in the Early Dynastic period in royal inscriptions and theophoric names. He appears in sources from the reign of many later dynasties as well. When Der attained independence after the Ur III period, local rulers were considered representatives of Ištaran. In later times, he retained his position in Der, and multiple times his statue was carried away by Assyrians to secure the loyalty of the population of the city.
The Kassite dynasty, also known as the third Babylonian dynasty, was a line of kings of Kassite origin who ruled from the city of Babylon in the latter half of the second millennium BC and who belonged to the same family that ran the kingdom of Babylon between 1595 and 1155 BC, following the first Babylonian dynasty. It was the longest known dynasty of that state, which ruled throughout the period known as "Middle Babylonian".
Kurigalzu I, usually inscribed ku-ri-gal-zu but also sometimes with the m or d determinative, the 17th king of the Kassite or 3rd dynasty that ruled over Babylon, was responsible for one of the most extensive and widespread building programs for which evidence has survived in Babylonia. The autobiography of Kurigalzu is one of the inscriptions which record that he was the son of Kadašman-Ḫarbe. Galzu, whose possible native pronunciation was gal-du or gal-šu, was the name by which the Kassites called themselves and Kurigalzu may mean Shepherd of the Kassites.
Ulam-Buriaš, contemporarily inscribed as Ú-la-Bu-ra-ra-ia-aš or mÚ-lam-Bur-áš in a later chronicle and meaning “son of Buriaš”, was a Kassite king of Sealand, which he conquered during the second half of 16th century BC and may have also become king of Babylon, possibly preceding or succeeding his brother, Kaštiliašu III. His reign marks the point at which the Kassite kingdom extended to the whole of southern Mesopotamia.
Kassite deities were the pantheon of the Kassites, a group inhabiting parts of modern Iraq, as well as Iran and Syria, in the second and first millennia BCE. A dynasty of Kassite origin ruled Babylonia starting with the fifteenth century BCE. Kassites spoke the Kassite language, known from references in Mesopotamian sources. Many of the known Kassite words are names of Kassite deities. Around twenty have been identified so far. The evidence of their cult is limited, and only two of them, Šuqamuna and Šumaliya, are known to have had a temple. Other well attested Kassite deities include the presumed head god Ḫarbe, the weather god Buriaš, the sun god Saḫ and the deified mountain Kamulla.
The cuneiform lexical lists are a series of ancient Mesopotamian glossaries which preserve the semantics of Sumerograms, their phonetic value and their Akkadian or other language equivalents. They are the oldest literary texts from Mesopotamia and one of the most widespread genres in the ancient Near East. Wherever cuneiform tablets have been uncovered, inside Iraq or in the wider Middle East, these lists have been discovered.
The Amorites were an ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking Bronze Age people from the Levant. Initially appearing in Sumerian records c. 2500 BC, they expanded and ruled most of the Levant, Mesopotamia and parts of Egypt from the 21st century BC to the late 17th century BC.
The Middle Babylonian period, also known as the Kassite period, in southern Mesopotamia is dated from c. 1595 – c. 1155 BC and began after the Hittites sacked the city of Babylon. The Kassites, whose dynasty is synonymous with the period, eventually assumed political control over the region and consolidated their power by subjugating the Sealand dynasty c. 1475 BC. After the subjugation of the Sealand dynasty, the Kassites unified the region of Babylonia into a single political entity. At the height of the Middle Babylonian period, the Kassite kings were engaging in commerce, trade, and organising diplomatic marriages with the kings of Egypt and other regional powers. However, after a period of gradual decline, the Middle Babylonian period collapsed with the fall of the Kassite dynasty c. 1155 BC. The collapse came as a result of an Assyrian invasion, that temporarily displaced the Kassites from their rule over southern Mesopotamia. Finally, the Elamites conducted various raids and eventually invaded Babylonian c. 1158 BC, which brought the Kassite dynasty and Middle Babylonian period to an end.
Manzat (Manzât), also spelled Mazzi'at, Manzi'at and Mazzêt, sometimes known by the Sumerian name Tiranna (dTIR.AN.NA) was a Mesopotamian and Elamite goddess representing the rainbow. She was also believed to be responsible for the prosperity of cities.
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