Ur-Nammu Explained

Ur-Nammu
Queen:Watartum
Predecessor:Utu-hengal
Religion:Sumerian religion
Dynasty:3rd Dynasty of Ur
Succession:King of the Neo-Sumerian Empire
Reign:c. 2112  BC – 2094  BC

Ur-Nammu (or Ur-Namma, Ur-Engur, Ur-Gur, Sumerian:, ruled c. 2112 BC – 2094 BC middle chronology) founded the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, following several centuries of Akkadian and Gutian rule. Though he built many temples and canals his main achievement was building the core of the Ur III Empire via military conquest, and Ur-Nammu is chiefly remembered today for his legal code, the Code of Ur-Nammu, the oldest known surviving example in the world. He held the titles of "King of Ur, and King of Sumer and Akkad". His personal goddess was Ninsuna.

Reign

According to the Sumerian King List, Ur-Nammu reigned for 18 years. Year-names are known for 17 of these years, but their order is uncertain. One year-name of his reign records the devastation of Gutium, while two years seem to commemorate his legal reforms ("Year in which Ur-Nammu the king put in order the ways [of the people in the country] from below to above", "Year Ur-Nammu made justice in the land").[1]

Among his military exploits were the conquest of Lagash and the defeat of his former masters at Uruk. He was eventually recognized as a significant regional ruler (of Ur, Eridu, and Uruk) at a coronation in Nippur, and is believed to have constructed buildings at Nippur, Larsa, Kish, Adab, and Umma. He was known for restoring the roads and general order after the Gutian period. In the internegum after the fall of the Akkadian Empire a number of cities became independent and an area in the northeast came under the control of Elam. Ur-Nammu in his Sumerian language inscriptions reports defeating a coalition of Kutik-Insusinak, Elamite ruler, and a number of other cities including Tutub and Eshnunna. It has been suggested that this was another name for the Elamite ruler Puzur-Inshushinak, about whom little is known. There is equal support for the idea that Puzur-Inshushinak with contemporary with Akkad ruler Naram-Sin a century earlier.[2]

Ur-Nammu was also responsible for ordering the construction of a number of ziggurats, including the Great Ziggurat of Ur.[3] It has been suggested, based on a much later literary composition, that he was killed in battle after he had been abandoned by his army.[4] He was succeeded by his son Shulgi. One known daughter, Ama-barag, married a local man. The other known daughter was consecrated as the en-priestess of Nanna in Ur, taking the clerical name En-nir-gal-an-na (En-nirgal-ana). Two inscriptions found in Ur read:

A later Sumerian literary composition known variously as "The Coronation of Ur-Nammu" and "Ur-Namma D" lists canals built by Ur-Nammu.[5] It is known in three Old Babylonian Period recensions, from Nippur, Ur, and of an unknown provenance. There are number of known Sumerian literary compositions about Ur-Namma, labeled from A to H. The other important later Sumerian literary work is the "Death of Ur-Nammu" (Ur-Namma A), variously described as a "hymn', "lamentation" or "wisdom".[6] It describes the death, funeral, and passge through the underworld of Ur-Nammu. It is known from about 9 damaged tablets and fragments, held in various museums, which together allow restoration of much of the text. The description of Ur-Nammu's death is damaged, vague, and metaphoric, which has not stopped later scholars from interpreting it to say Ur-Nammu died in battle at the hands of his own troops.[7] [8] [9]

Deification debate

Ur-Nammu is notable for having been one of the few Mesopotamian kings of the third millennium BC who was not deified after his death. This is testified by the posthumous Sumerian literature which never includes the divine determinative before Ur-Nammu's name (this can be seen on the transliterations for the texts on ETCSL), the themes of divine abandonment in "The Death of Ur-Nammu", and the fact that Shulgi promoted his lineage to members of the legendary Uruk dynasty as opposed to Ur-Nammu. While some translations of Sumerian texts had included the divine determinative before Ur-Nammu's name more recent evidence indicates this was a mistaken addition. Despite this, the belief that the king was deified after death has been expressed just as recently, demonstrating a lack of certainty on this issue (though these were written during the same year as the new interpretations of the evidence and thus could not refer to them). Sharlach has more recently noted that favour for Ur-Nammu not having been deified has been accepted by many scholars.

Whatever the current state of the deification debate, Ur-Nammu was clearly worshiped after his death. The palace at Tummal included funerary chapels for Ur-Nammu (e Tum-ma-al Ur-dNamma) and his wife. His wife is known to have been named SI . A.tum, read as Watartum. Building materials came from as far away as Babylon, Kutha, and Adab. The ki-a-nag, or funerary offerings for Ur III ruler Ur-Nammu were carried out at Tummal. As his grave was not found in Ur this has sparked speculation he was buried in Tummal.

Year names of Ur-Nammu

Almost all of the year names of Ur-Nammu are known, documenting the major events of his reign. The main year names are:

The Ur-Nammu Stela

A portion of the stela fragments were found during excavations at Ur in the 1920s, primarily in 1925, by Leonard Woolley under the auspices of the Joint Expedition of The University Museum and The British Museum in the temple precinct of Nanna.

The first publisher of the stela called it the "Stela of the Flying Angels". Most fragments were found near the base. Some fragments had been moved and used for other purposes, including door sockets, and found on the Kassite period (c. 1595-1155 BC) levels, over half a millennium later. One side was noticeably better preserved than the other. One large fragment was recovered in the 1932-1933 season. As a few fragments were found in the level from fall of the Ur III Empire the excavator indicated that the stela had been shattered at the end of the reign of the final Ur III ruler Ibbi-Sin (c. 2028–2004 BC) and the pieces later used as convenient construction material by the Kassites.

The limestone slab measures 3 meters high and 1.52 meters across, assuming it has been re-assembled properly. The stela fragments have been assembled several times, beginning in 1927, each time differently. The underlying basis for re-assembly is 1) one face is noticeably better preserved, 2) figures on the stela are larger the higher up they are, and 3) the edges of the stela are smooth. It is believed that there were originally five horizontal registers on each side. The identification and meaning of the surviving scenes has been much debated. When the stela was disassembled in 1989 for study mineralogical analysis showed that several fragments did not in fact belong to the stela. At the same time more fragments then in storage were identified as belonging to the stela of Ur-Nammu. This brought the fragment total to 106 including one fragment held at the British Museum (two others there are suspected as also belonging to the Ur-Nammu stela). This stela and the Utuhegal Stela were excavated at the same time and the finds divided between the sponsors. The issue of what fragments belong to this stela is still open. It is currently held at the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania.

See also

References

Sources

Further reading

External links

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Notes and References

  1. http://cdli.ucla.edu/tools/yearnames/HTML/T6K1.htm Year-names for Ur-Nammu
  2. Hallo, William W., "Royal Titles from the Mesopotamian Periphery", Anatolian Studies, vol. 30, pp. 189–95, 1980
  3. Web site: The ziggurat (and temple?) of Ur-Nammu . 2007-07-08 . https://web.archive.org/web/20070708050958/http://lib.haifa.ac.il/www/art/ur.html . 2007-07-08 . dead.
  4. [William J. Hamblin|Hamblin, William J.]
  5. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.4.1.4&display=Crit&charenc=gcirc&lineid=c2414.1.1#c2414.1.1 "Ur-Namma the canal-digger (Ur-Namma D)" at ETSCL
  6. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.4.1.1&display=Crit&charenc=gcirc&lineid=c2411.1.1#c2411.1.1 "The death of Ur-Namma (Ur-Namma A)" at ETSCL
  7. Kramer, Samuel Noah, "The Death of Ur-Nammu and His Descent to the Netherworld", Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 21, pp. 104–22, 1967
  8. Castellino, G., "Urnammu. Three Religious Texts", in Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 52, pp. 1-57, 1957
  9. Kramer, Samuel Noah, "The Death of Ur-Nammu", in Near Eastern Studies. Dedicated to H.I.H. Prince Takahito Mikasa on the Occasion of His Seventy-Fifth Birthday.. Mori, Masao, Ogawa, Hideo, and Yoshikawa, Mamoru (ed). Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, pp. 193-214, 1991
  10. https://cdli-gh.github.io/year-names/HTML/T6K1.htm

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