Kassites
The
Kassites were a Near Eastern mountain tribe of obscure origins, who spoke a non-
Indo-European, non-
Semitic language. They conquered
Mesopotamia, bringing the
Old Babylonian era to an end and for the first time welding together the network of independent, feuding city-states into a territory that can be called '
Babylonia.' According to the conventionally used
Middle Chronology, Kassite
hegemony in
Babylon,
Nippur and other centers lasted from about
1595 to
1155 BC.
The original homeland of the Kassites is obscure, but appears to have been located in the
Zagros Mountains in
Luristan [
1] [
2]. Their first historical appearance occurred in the
18th century BC when they attacked
Babylonia in the 9th year of the reign of
Samsu-Iluna (reigned
1749 BC -
1712 BC), the son of
Hammurabi. Samsu-Iluna repelled them, but they subsequently gained control of northern Babylonia sometime after the fall of
Babylon to the
Hittites in
1595 BC, and conquered the southern part of the kingdom by about
1475 BC. The Hittites had carried off the idol of
Marduk, but the Kassite rulers regained possession, returned Marduk to Babylon, and made him the equal of the Kassite Shuqamuna. The circumstances of their rise to power are unknown, due to a lack of documentation from this
so-called "Dark Age" period of widespread dislocation. No inscription or document in the Kassite language has been preserved, an absence that cannot be purely accidental, suggesting a severe retraction of literacy in official circles. Babylon under Kassite rulers, who renamed the city
Karanduniash, re-emerged as a political and military power in the
Ancient Near East. A newly built capital city
Dur-Kurigalzu was named to honour
Kurigalzu I (ca. 1400 — ca. 1375). His successors
Kadashman-Enlil I (c. 1375-c. 1360) and
Burnaburiash II (c. 1360-c. 1333) were in correspondence with the Egyptian rulers Amenhotep III and Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) (see
Amarna letters).
Their success was built upon the relative political stability that the Kassite monarchs achieved. They ruled Babylonia practically without interruption for over four hundred years— the longest rule by any dynasty in Babylonian history. Even after a minor revolt in
1333 BC and a seven-year Assyrian hiatus in the
13th century BC, the ruling Kassite family managed to regain the throne.
The transformation of southern
Mesopotamia into a territorial state, rather than a network of allied or combatative temple-cities, made Babylonia an international power. Kassite kings established trade and diplomacy with
Assyria,
Egypt,
Elam, and the
Hittites, and the Kassite royal house intermarried with their royal families. There were foreign merchants in Babylon and other cities, and Babylonian merchants were active from Egypt (a major source of
Nubian gold) to Assyria and Anatolia. Kassite weights and seals, the packet-identifying and measuring tools of commerce, have been found in
Thebes in Greece, in southern
Armenia, and even in a shipwreck off the southern coast of Turkey.
The Kassite kings maintained control of their realm through a network of provinces administered by governors. Almost equal with the royal cities of Babylon and Dur-Kurigalzu, the revived city of
Nippur was the most important provincial center. Nippur, the formerly great city, which had been virtually abandoned about
1730 BC, was rebuilt in the Kassite period, with temples meticulously re-sited on their old foundations.
Other important centers during the Kassite period were
Larsa,
Sippar and
Susa. Even after the Kassite dynasty was overthrown in
1155 BC, the system of provincial administration continued and the country remained united under the succeeding rule, the
Second Dynasty of Isin. Comparisons of Kassite Babylonia with
feudalism are now considered more misleading than useful, but the prestige of Nippur was enough for a series of
13th century Kassite kings to reassume the title 'governor of Nippur' for themselves.
Documentation of the Kassite period depends heavily on the scattered and disarticulated tablets from Nippur, where thousands of tablets and fragments have been excavated. They include administrative and legal texts, letters, seal inscriptions,
kudurrus (comparable to land grants and administrative prerogatives), private votive inscriptions, and even a literary text (usually identified as a fragment of a historical epic).
Kassite rulers in Babylon were also scrupulous to follow existing forms of expression, and the public and private patterns of behavior "and even went beyond that — as zealous neophytes do, or outsiders, who take up a superior civilization — by favoring an extremely conservative attitude, at least in palace circle." (
Oppenheim 1964, p. 62). In the course of centuries, however, the Kassites were absorbed into the Babylonian population. Eight among the last kings of the Kassite dynasty have
Akkadian names, and Kassite princesses married into the royal family of
Assyria.
The
Elamites conquered Babylonia in the
12th century BC, thus ending four hundred years of Kassite rule. The last Kassite king,
Anllil-nadin-akhe, was taken to
Susa and imprisoned there, where he also died.
The contributions that Kassites brought to native Babylonian culture are still being debated, partly through identifying the few hundred later Akkadian words of Kassite origin, about ten percent of them are names of gods.
The Kassite tribe of Khabira seems to have settled in the Babylonian plain. Remnants of Kassite tribes were living in the mountains northwest of Elam, immediately south of Holwan, when
Sennacherib attacked them in
702 BC. They are doubtless the "Kossaeans" of
Ptolemy, who divides
Susiana between them and the Elymaeans.
Alexander the Great battled Kossaeans in the winter of
323 BC on his way from
Ecbatana to Babylon; according to
Strabo (xi. 13,3,6) the Kossaeans were the neighbours of the
Medes.
Theodor Nöldeke (Gott. G. G., 1874, pp. 173 seq.) has shown that they are the Kissians of the older Greek authors who are identified with the Susians by
Aeschylus (
Choephorae 424,
Persians 17, 120) and by
Herodotus (v. 49, 52).
Language
Like the other languages of the non-
Semitic tribes of
Elam, that of the Kassites was agglutinative; a fragment of Kassite vocabulary has survived in a single
Cuneiform tablet. There is also a list of Kassite names with their Semitic equivalents, and a few technical terms. Some of the Kassite deities were introduced into the Babylonian pantheon. Nothing else remains. Kassite is not descended from
Indo-European languages, as had once been supposed. The study of Kassite is hindered by the fact that the Kassite bureaucracy conducted business in Akkadian. Consequently, lists of Kassite
names have assumed a prominent importance.
Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911.
*A. Leo Oppenheim,
Ancient Mesopotamia: portrait of a dead civilization, 1964.
*
Daniel A. Nevez, 'Provincial administration at Kassite Nippur' abstract of a dissertation gives details of Kassite Nippur and Babylonia.
*
Christopher Edens, "Structure, Power and Legitimation in Kassite Babylonia"*
Richard Hooker, "The Kassites: 1530-1170 The Kassite Interregnum"*
David W. Koeller, "Kassite rule in Mesopotamia"
