The collapse of the Ur III state was gradual in that governors of outlying provinces began to assert their autonomy from the central administration. By the end, these governors had set up their own dynasties, which denied supplies to the capital. The central state was thus vulnerable to outside attack from Iran, and the Elamites invaded (Jacobsen 1953a).
After 2000 bce rival states struggled for political power, and many of them were controlled by Amorite dynasties. The next major attempts at empire were about two centuries later, with two ephemeral states founded upon the personality of the kings, Samsi-Adad I (reigned 1814-1781 bce), an Assyrian king of Amorite descent who was apparently a usurper, and Hammurabi (reigned 1792-1750 bce), a Babylonian king also of Amorite descent. Siamsi-Adad claimed to have conquered all of northern Mesopotamia. He ruled from Shubat-Enlil (most likely Tell Leilan) in Syria. Like his Assyrian successors, he attempted to control the trade routes to both south and north. But the Anatolian colonies were discontinued soon after Samsi-Adad. He had made a conscious attempt at connecting himself with the Akkadian dynasty, claimed descent from Akkadian kings, and rebuilt a temple built by Manishtushu, son of Sargon. However, his empire died with him, as his two sons were unable to keep this large territorial state together.
By Hammurabi’s tenth year and his conquest of neighboring Larsa, he was able to unify southern Mesopotamia for the first time since the Ur III dynasty. It is not easy to verify his claims of ruling all of Mesopotamia, including Assur and Nineveh. His system was apparently a loose confederation of states under control of the Babylonian king. Hammurabi’s successors continued to rule a smaller state in the south.
There do not appear to be any major centralized states in the Near East until the fifteenth century. Then the international political scene was dominated by Egypt and Mitanni, located in northern Mesopotamia. Although there are no royal Mitanni archives preserved, it is evident from Egyptian, Hittite, and Mesopotamian sources that Mitanni was a political term used to describe a confederation of Hurrian-speaking states and vassals. Each of the vassals had its own king who was bound to Mitanni by a treaty sworn under oath.
It appears that by 1500 bce Mitanni had expanded into most of Syria under the reigns of Paratarna and Saushtatar, and likely came into conflict with the expansionist policies ofThutmose III of Egypt (reigned 1504-1450 bce). Later Mitanni kings were known from the Amarna Letters as engaging in diplomatic relations with Egypt, including marriage alliances, probably resulting from the rising powers of Hittites and Assyrians, which threatened the existence of the Mitanni state. Mitanni did become somewhat fragmented during the reign of Tushratta and suffered defeat at the hands of the Hittiteking Suppiluliuma. Thus after 1350 bce the state of Mitanni ceased to play a major role in Ancient Near Eastern politics, although it was a buffer state for nearly two more centuries. The Middle Assyrian empires ofTukulti-Ninurta I (about 1243-1207 bce) and Tiglath-pileser I (about 1114-1076 bce) were precursors to the great Assyrian world state of the first millennium, which will be considered in another essay.
Although it is apparent that it is difficult to define the concept of empire, let alone the state, it is true that the norms of thinking about empires were forged in the Tigris-Euphrates valley over five thousand years ago and were perfected to an extent by the Sargonic kings in the third millennium bce. The early empires were different from the first millennium Ancient Near Eastern and classical empires in degree but not in kind. Though not as competent, the early empires did contain the elements of empire as we understand it, including permanent occupation of conquered territory, military garrisons, economic exploitation of dominated areas, and an effort to provide ideological justification for their control. Thus any study of the nature of empires must begin with the early states of the Ancient Near East.
World History
