Turukkum was regarded by the Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia as a constant threat, during the reign of Amorite Shamshi-Adad I (1813-1782 BCE) and his son and successor Ishme-Dagan (1781-1750 BCE). The Turukkaeans were allied to the Land of Ahazum, and they gathered at the town of Ikkallum to face the army of Ishme-Dagan, as Shamshi-Adad wrote in a letter to his other son Yasmah-Adad. Ishme-Dagan destroyed the army reporting "Not one man escaped".[1] Turukkum seems to have been made up of a collection of kingdoms with mixed populations, possibly mostly Hurrian but also heavily Semitic.[2]
The Turukkaeans were reported to have sacked the city of Mardaman, apparently under Hurrian rule, around the year 1769/68 BCE.[3] Babylon's defeat of Turukku was celebrated in the 37th year of Hammurabi's reign (c. 1773 BCE).
A significant early reference to them is an inscription by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, (r.circa 1792 – c. 1752 BCE) that mentions a kingdom named Tukriš(UET I l. 46, iii–iv, 1–4), alongside Gutium, Subartu and another name that is usually reconstructed as Elam. Other texts from the same period refer to the kingdom as Tukru.
Iron Age
By the early part of the 1st millennium BCE, names such as Turukkum, Turukku and ti-ru-ki-i are being used for the same region. In a broader sense, names such as Turukkaean been used in a generic sense to mean "mountain people" or "highlanders".
A map of Mesopotamia and south-western Iran during the 2nd Millennium BCE. The Tukri are generally believed to have been located immediately north of Lullubi (top centre of the map) during this period.
Tukru or Turukkum was said to have spanned the north-east edge of Mesopotamia and an adjoining part of the Zagros Mountains. In particular, they were associated with the Lake Urmia basin and the valleys of the north-east Zagros. They were therefore located north of ancient Lullubi, and at least one Neo-Assyrian (9th to 7th centuries BCE) text refers to the whole area and its peoples as "Lullubi-Turukki" (VAT 8006).
Hurrians
In terms of cultural and linguistic characteristics, little is known about the Tukri. They are described by their contemporaries as a semi-nomadic, mountain tribe, who wore animal skins. Some scholars believe they may have been Hurrian-speaking or subject to a Hurrian elite.[4] According to Horst Klengel[de], "The Turukka people evidently belonged to those late-gentile groups in which the primitive social conditions had already decayed and tribal leaders exercised a permanent function due to close contact, partly established through economic pressure, with the state-organized population practicing rain-fed agriculture in the Rania Plain and the Zagros foothills."[5]
The Turukkeans were closely associated with the Lullubi,[citation needed] and attacked the Hurrian city Madraman.[3]
↑ Sasson, Jack M., "Warfare", From the Mari Archives: An Anthology of Old Babylonian Letters, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 181-214, 2015
↑ Bryce, Trevor (2009). "Turukkum". The Routledge Handbook of The Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. Routledge. p.721.
Yamhad (Yamḫad) was an ancient Semitic-speaking kingdom centered on Ḥalab (Aleppo) in Syria. The kingdom emerged at the end of the 19th century BC and was ruled by the Yamhad dynasty, who counted on both military and diplomacy to expand their realm. From the beginning of its establishment, the kingdom withstood the aggressions of its neighbors Mari, Qatna and the Old Assyrian Empire, and was turned into the most powerful Syrian kingdom of its era through the actions of its king Yarim-Lim I. By the middle of the 18th century BC, most of Syria minus the south came under the authority of Yamhad, either as a direct possession or through vassalage, and for nearly a century and a half, Yamhad dominated northern, northwestern and eastern Syria, and had influence over small kingdoms in Mesopotamia at the borders of Elam. The kingdom was eventually destroyed by the Hittites, then annexed by Mitanni in the 16th century BC.
Shamshi-Adad, ruled c. 1808–1776 BC, was an Amorite warlord and conqueror who had conquered lands across much of Syria, Anatolia, and Upper Mesopotamia.
Ishme-Dagan I was a monarch of Ekallatum and Assur during the Old Assyrian period. The much later Assyrian King List (AKL) credits Ishme-Dagan I with a reign of forty years; however, it is now known from a limmu-list of eponyms unearthed at Kanesh in 2003 that his reign in Assur lasted eleven years. According to the AKL, Ishme-Dagan I was the son and successor of Shamshi-Adad I. Also according to the AKL, Ishme-Dagan I was succeeded by his son Mut-Ashkur.
Yasmah-Adad was the younger son of the Amorite king of Upper Mesopotamia, Shamshi-Adad I. He was put on throne of Mari by his father after a successful military attack following the assassination of Yahdun-Lim of Mari in 1796 B.C.E. He was responsible for the southwestern section of his father's kingdom, including the Balikh River, Habur River, and Euphrates River. Yasmah-Adad's administrative district bordered the state of Yamkhad and the Syrian steppe. His father controlled the northern part of the kingdom from Shubat-Enlil, and his older brother, Ishme-Dagan, ruled over the southeast area from Ekallatum. Yasmah-Adad's leadership of Mari and the surrounding districts around the Euphrates ended when his father died, and the Amorite Zimri-Lim and his army chased him out of Mari and took his throne in 1775 B.C. The sources do not fully agree, but he was either chased out of his borders or killed before being allowed to flee.
Lullubi,Lulubi, more commonly known as Lullu, were a group of Bronze Age tribes during the 3rd millennium BC, from a region known as Lulubum, now the Sharazor plain of the Zagros Mountains of modern-day Sulaymaniyah Governorate, Iraq. Lullubi was neighbour and sometimes ally with the Hurrian Simurrum kingdom. Frayne (1990) identified their city Lulubuna or Luluban with the region's modern town of Halabja.
Eshnunna was an ancient Sumerian city and city-state in central Mesopotamia 12.6 miles northwest of Tell Agrab and 15 miles northwest of Tell Ishchali. Although situated in the Diyala Valley northwest of Sumer proper, the city nonetheless belonged securely within the Sumerian cultural milieu. It is sometimes, in archaeological papers, called Ashnunnak or Tuplias.
Ekallatum (Akkadian: 𒌷𒂍𒃲𒈨𒌍, URUE2.GAL.MEŠ, Ekallātum, "the Palaces") was an ancient Amorite city-state and kingdom in upper Mesopotamia.
The Old Assyrian period was the second stage of Assyrian history, covering the history of the city of Assur from its rise as an independent city-state under Ushpia c. 2080 BC, and consolidated under Puzur-Ashur I c. 2025 BC to the foundation of a larger Assyrian territorial state and empire after the accession of Ashur-uballit I c. 1363 BC, which marks the beginning of the succeeding Middle Assyrian period. The Old Assyrian period is marked by the earliest known evidence of the development of a distinct Assyrian culture, separate from that of the ethnolinguistically related southern Mesopotamia and was a geopolitically turbulent time when Assur several times fell under the control or suzerainty of foreign kingdoms and empires. The period is also marked with the emergence of a distinct Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language, a native Assyrian calendar and Assur for a time becoming a prominent site for international trade.
Tell al-Rimah is an archaeological settlement mound, in Nineveh Province (Iraq) roughly 80 kilometres (50 mi) west of Mosul and ancient Nineveh in the Sinjar region. It lies 15 kilometers south of the site of Tal Afar. Its ancient name in the 2nd Millennium BC is thought have been Karana though the name of Qattara has also been suggested. In any case Karana and Qattara were very close together and thought to be part of a small kingdom. It has also been suggested that the site's name in the 1st Millennium BC was Zamaḫâ. It is near the circular walled similar archaeological sites of Tell Hadheil, a large Early Dynastic site with Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian occupation, and Tell Huweish. Tell Hamira, known earlier as Tell Abu Hamira, is 16 kilometers to the east and has also been suggested as the site of Karana. Currently, archaology leans toward Qattara as the ancient name of Tell Al-Rimah.
Gutian is an extinct unclassified language that was spoken by the Gutian people, who briefly ruled over Sumer as the Gutian dynasty in the 22nd century BCE. The Gutians lived in the territory between the Zagros Mountains and the Tigris. Nothing is known about the language except its existence and a list of names of Gutian rulers in the Sumerian King List, which may reflect elements of the language.
Tell Shemshara is an archaeological site located along the Little Zab in Sulaymaniyah Governorate, in the Iraqi Kurdistan autonomous administrative division of Iraq. The site was inundated by Lake Dukan until recently.
The timeline of ancient Assyria can be broken down into three main eras: the Old Assyrian period, Middle Assyrian Empire, and Neo-Assyrian Empire. Modern scholars typically also recognize an Early period preceding the Old Assyrian period and a post-imperial period succeeding the Neo-Assyrian period.
Išḫi-Addu or Ishi-Addu was king of Qatna in the first half of the 18th century BC.
Mardaman was a northern Mesopotamian city that existed between ca.2200 and 1200 BC. It was uncovered in 2018 after translation of 92 cuneiform tablets. The tablets were discovered in summer 2017, near the Kurdish village of Bassetki, by a team of archaeologists. The team hailed from Tübingen's Institute for Ancient Near Eastern Studies, and were led by Prof. Dr. Peter Pfälzner of the University of Tübingen. The city-god of Mardaman was the Hurrian goddess Shuwala. After the time of Assyrian occupation it is uncertain if this continued. It is thought that later in the 1st millennium BC a temple of Gula was at Mardaman.
Simurrum was an important city state of the Mesopotamian area from around 2000 BCE to 1500 BCE, during the period of the Akkadian Empire down to Ur III. The Simurrum Kingdom disappears from records after the Old Babylonian period. It is thought that in Old Babylonian times its name was Zabban, a notable cult center of Adad. It was neighbor and sometimes ally with the Lullubi kingdom.
Belet Nagar was the tutelary goddess of the ancient Syrian city Nagar. She was also worshiped by the Hurrians and in Mesopotamia. She was connected with kingship, but much about her role in the religions of the ancient Near East remains uncertain.
Shuwala (Šuwala) was a Hurrian goddess who was regarded as the tutelary deity of Mardaman, a Hurrian city in the north of modern Iraq. She was also worshiped in other Hurrian centers, such as Nuzi and Alalakh, as well as in Ur in Mesopotamia, Hattusa in the Hittite Empire and in the Syrian cities Emar and Ugarit.
Jørgen Læssøe was a Danish Assyriologist and professor at the University of Copenhagen. He directed the Danish excavations at Tell Shemshara, uncovering an Old Assyrian palace complex and a substantial cache of cuneiform texts known as the Shemshara Archives, which became his main object of study. He also worked on inscriptions from Max Mallowan's excavations at Nimrud, served as the field director of the Scandinavian Joint Expedition to Sudanese Nubia, and published a number of popular history books on Assyriology in Danish, including his magnum opus, The People of Ancient Assyria (1963).
Kurd Qaburstan, is an ancient Near East archaeological site in the Erbil Governorate, in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, 22 kilometers southwest of Erbil. It is considered one of the most important archaeological sites in the region. The site is strategically located between the Upper and Lower Zab rivers. The modern village of Yedi Kizlar is adjacent to and covers a portion of the southeastern lower town. The site is primarily a single-period site dating to the early 2nd millennium BC, the Middle Bronze Age. There is also a compact Late Bronze Age occupation on the high mound. Kurd Qaburstan has been proposed as the location of the ancient city of Qabra. The site is located near Tell Halawa, Tell Aliawa, Tell Baqrta, and Qasr Shemamok (Kilizi), other prominent sites on the Erbil plain.
Šimānum was an ancient Near East city-state whose location is not yet known. Its areal location is known to be in the northernmost part of Mesopotamia or the southernmost part of Anatolia, in the vicinity of the Tigris river, north of the Upper Zab river, and near the confluence of the Tigris and eastern Habur river. It is well documented during the time of the Ur III Empire in the late 3rd Millennium BC. It has been proposed that Šimānum was known, under different names, in other periods. If those proposals are correct the site was active from the Akkadian Empire period though the Old Babylonian period. Šimānum is also the name of an Old Babylonian month.
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