Agum III Campaigns Against the Sealand Agum III was a Kassite king of Babylon ca. mid-15th century BC . Little is known about the king, with the only Babylonian reference to him from an expedition he led against the Sealand, ca. 1465 BC,[1] which is described in the Chronicle of Early Kings.[2] His invasion followed that of his uncle, Ulam-Buriyåš, described in the preceding lines of the chronicle, who had previously made himself “master of the land”, i.e. Sealand. Whether the campaign was against a competing Kassite kingdom, a restive province or a resurgent Sealand dynasty is not disclosed. He reputedly conquered the city of Dur-Enlil which is otherwise unknown and destroyed its temple of Egalgašešna, leaving him in control of all of southern Babylonian Empire.[3] The excavation conducted by Béatrice André-Salvini (1995) in Awal Island, ancient Dilmun, yielded around 50 tablets some of which dated to Agum III, whose 3rd and 4th years are attested in the dates of texts found in the area of Qal’at al-Bahrain, when Kassite rule may have extended to the island.[4] It has been suggested that following on from his successes conquering the Sealand, he crossed over to Awal Island, constructed a new palace and installed a local bureaucracy and by his 3rd and 4th years administrative documents began being dated to his reign.[5] A problem arises with this theory due to the date formula. The later kings Kadašman-Ḫarbe I and Kurigalzu I each have texts dated using the archaic “year name” style and it is not until their successors, Kadašman-Enlil I and Burna-Buriaš II that regnal years count from the accession of a king. References: 1- J. A. Brinkman (Jul 1972). Foreign Relations of Babylonia from 1600 to 625 B. C.: The Documentary Evidence. American Journal of Archaeology 76 (3): 271–281. 2. Chronicle of Early Kings (ABC 20) tablet BM 96152 in the British Museum, copy B, lines 16 through 18. 3. I. E. S. Edwards, ed. (1978). The Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge University Press. p. 433. 4. Niek Veldhuis (2000). Kassite Exercises: Literary and Lexical Extracts. Journal of Cuneiform Studies (52): 67–94. 5. D. T. Potts (April 2006). Elamites and Kassites in the Persian Gulf. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 65 (2): 111–119. (jstor.org/discover/10.1086/504986?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21104448773287)
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 21:46:54 +0000
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