Kassite dynasty

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 (Old Babylonian Empire; 1894-1595 BC). It was the longest known dynasty of that state, which ruled throughout the period known as "Middle Babylonian" (1595-1000 BC).

The Kassites (kaššû in Mesopotamian and kossaioi in later Greek sources) were a people whose origins are unknown, although it has been suggested that they originated in the Zagros Mountains. It took their kings more than a century to consolidate their power in Babylon under conditions that remain unclear. Despite their external origin, the Kassite kings did not change Babylon's ancestral traditions and, on the contrary, brought order to the country after the turbulence that marked the end of the first dynasty. They undertook a great deal of construction work, notably on the great temples, they contributed to the expansion of agricultural land, and under their auspices Babylonian culture flourished and expanded throughout the Middle East. The Kassite period is still very poorly known, due to the scarcity of sources relating to it, of which few are published. The economic and social aspects, in particular, are very poorly documented, with the exception of what relates to the royal donations attested by the characteristic donation stelae of the period, the kudurrus.

Despite its long duration, the period of the dynasty is poorly documented: sources are scarce and few of them have been published. Architectural and artistic traces of this period are also scanty; they come mainly from the site of Dur-Kurigalzu, where the only monumental complex of the Kassite period was found, consisting of a palace and several cult buildings. Other buildings were discovered at several larger Babylonian sites, such as Nippur, Ur, and Uruk. Other minor sites belonging to the Kassite kingdom have also been discovered in the Hanrim hills: Tel Mohammed, Tel Inlie and Tel Zubeidi. Further afield, at the site of Terca in the Middle Euphrates, and on the islands of Failaka (in what is now Kuwait) and Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, there are also some traces of Kassite rule. The low reliefs engraved on kudurrus and seal-cylinders are the best-known testimonies to the accomplishments of the artists of the time.

From an epigraphic standpoint, J. A. Brinkman, a leading expert on sources from the period, has estimated that approximately 12,000 texts from the period have been found, most of them belonging to the administrative archives from Nippur, of which only about 20% have been published. They were found in American excavations carried out mainly during the late 19th century and are stored in Istanbul and Philadelphia. The rest come from other sites: there are forty tablets found at Dur-Kurigalzu that have been published, others from Ur, in the city of Babylon sets of private economic tablets and religious texts have been found that have not been published. In the sites of the Hanrim hills, tablets have also been found, most of them unpublished, and there are also tablets whose provenance is unknown (the "Peiser archive"). Most of this documentation is of an administrative and economic nature, but there are also some royal inscriptions and scholarly and religious texts.

The royal inscriptions of the Kassite kings, few in number and generally brief, provide little information about the political history of their dynasty. It is necessary to turn to the later sources, which are the historical chronicles written in the early first millennium BC, the Synchronic History and the P Chronicle, which provide information mainly about the conflicts between the Kassite kings and the Assyrian kings. The royal inscriptions of the latter, which are very abundant, provide essential information about the same wars. The Elamite royal inscriptions are somewhat less reliable. To these sources are also added some letters from the diplomatic correspondence of the Kassite kings with Egypt and the Hittites. The former are part of the so-called Amarna Letters, found in Amarna, the ancient Akhetaten, capital of the pharaoh Akhenaten. The latter were found at Boğazköy, on the site of the ancient Hittite capital, Hattusa.

The type of textual source concerning the administrative and economic life of Kassite Babylon that has attracted the most attention of scholars is a form of royal inscription, found on stelae known as kudurrus (which the Babylonians called narû), commemorating royal donations. Some forty kudurrus are known from the Kassite period. Their texts usually consist of a brief description of the donation and any privileges, a long list of witnesses, and curses for those who did not respect the act.

In 1595 BC, Samsi-Ditana, king of Babylon, was defeated by Mursili I, king of the Hittites, who seized the statue of Marduk kept in the Esagila, the great temple of the city of Babylon, which he took with him. This defeat marked the end of the Babylonian Amorite dynasty, already greatly weakened by the various rivals, among them the Kassites. According to the Babylonian royal list, Agum II would have taken over Babylon after the city was sacked by the Hittites. According to the same source, Agum II would have been the tenth sovereign of the dynasty of the Kassite kings (founded by a certain Gandas), who would have reigned who knows where during the second half of the 18th century BC. Possibly the Kassites were allied with the Hittites and supported their campaign to seize power.

There are no mentions of the exact origin of the kassites in ancient texts. The first mention of them dates from the 18th century BC in Babylon, but they are also mentioned in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia in the following centuries. However, most experts place their origin in the Zagros mountain range, where Kassites were still found during the first half of the first millennium BC. The first Kassite sovereign attested as king of Babylon seems to be Burna-Buriash I. This dynasty had as its rival that of the Sea Country, located south of Babylon around the cities of Uruk, Ur and Larsa, which was defeated in the early 15th century BC by the Kassite sovereigns Ulamburiash and Agum III. After this military victory, Babylon's preponderance in southern Mesopotamia was not challenged again and the Kassite sovereigns dominated the entire territories of Sumer and Akkadia, which became the country of Karduniash (Karduniaš; the term Kassite equivalent to Babylon), which was one of the great powers of the Middle East.