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First Sealand dynasty

Dynasty of southern Mesopotamia

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  • 4 chapters

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The dynasty, which had broken free of the Old Babylonian Empire, was named for the province in the far south of Mesopotamia, a swampy region bereft of large settlements which gradually expanded southwards with the silting up of the mouths of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (the region known as mat Kaldi "Chaldaea" in the Iron Age). Sealand pottery has been found at Girsu, Uruk, and Lagash but in no site north of that.

The later kings bore pseudo-Sumerian names and harked back to the glory days of the Dynasty of Isin. The third king of the dynasty was possibly even named for the ultimate king of the dynasty of Isin, Damiq-ilišu, though it was written differently. Despite these cultural motifs, the population predominantly bore Akkadian names and wrote and spoke in the Akkadian language. In later times, a Sealand province of the Neo-Babylonian Empire also existed.

History

Traditionally, all that was known about Sealand came from a few Kings List entries and the stray chronicle mention. It has been suggested that much of the writing in this period used waxed wooden boards, as a way of explaining the paucity of standard tablets found. Recently (2009) 450 published tablets mainly from the Martin Schøyen collection, the largest privately held collection of manuscripts to be assembled during the 20th century, cover a 15 to 18 year period extending over part of each king’s reign. They seem to originate from a single cache but their provenance was lost after languishing in smaller private collections since their acquisition on the antiquities market a century earlier. Most of the tablets pertain to administration of resources. An additional 32 unpublished Sealand tablets are held in Brussels. The tablets include letters, receipts, ledgers, personnel rosters, etc., and provide year-names and references which hint at events of the period. The tablets also included divinitory texts and literary compositions including an edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh. Messengers from Elam are provisioned, Inzak, a god of Dilmun (ancient Bahrain) appears as a theophoric element in names, and Nūr-Bau asks whether he should detain the boats of Ešnunna, a rare late reference to this once thriving Sumerian conurbation. In addition to normal commercial activity, two omen texts from another private collection are dated to the reign of Pešgaldarameš and a kurugu-hymn dedicated to the gods of Nippur mentions Ayadaragalama. The variant version of the Epic of Gilgameš relocates the hero to Ur and is a piece from this period. Some of the texts have "undeciphered linear inscriptions" thought to be in languages not Sumerian or Akkadian.

Excavations conducted between 2013 and 2017 at Tell Khaiber, around 20 km from Ur, have revealed the foundations of a large mudbrick fortress with an unusual arrangement of perimeter close-set towers. The site is dated, by an archive of 152 (after joins were made) clay cuneiform tablets found there, to the reign of Ayadaragalama. Tablets at Tell Khaiber fell into the same short time period as those published from the Schoyen Collection, that being the later part of Pešgal and early part of Ayadara reigns. Excavators were also able to develop a stratified ceramic array for Sealand allowing other sites to be identified. Sealand ceramics and faunal remains were found at the site of Tell Sakhariya, a few miles east of Ur. The location has been proposed as the Ur III period city of Ga’eš, site of the Akiti festival of Nanna/Sin, held twice a year. The temple of Nanna/Sin was called the Karzida and was located at Ga’eš. Tell Abu al-Dhahab, a single period site belonging to the Sealand dynasty was excavated from 2011 to 2013. A large 65 meter by 52 meter rectangular stone temple building with an attached 59 meter by 35 meter annex was uncovered. A cylinder seal was found with a proposed reading of "A-[x]-Bāni, offspring of Ṣillī-Ištar, Supervisor (of) the divination priests, Servant/slave to Shamash(?)." though the name of the deity is not certain.

The home city of the Sealand Dynasty is currently unknown. A kings list fragment states that Babylon's "kingship passed to E'urukuga". Given its site being known as uru.ku this capital has been speculated as being Lagash of which little is known in this period. Nippur, and Tell Deḥaila are also in consideration. Modern thinking is that the capital was a Dūr-Enlil (or Dūr-Enlile or Dūr-Enlilē). There was a Dūr-Enlil in Neo-Babylonian times in the general area between Uruk and Larsa as well as one in Neo-Assyrian times. It is not clear it either is the same place as the potential Sealand capital.

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