Malgium

Malgium (also Malkum) is an ancient Mesopotamian city identified as Tell Yassir which thrived especially in the Middle Bronze Age, ca. 2000 BC - 1600 BC.[1] Located on the river Tigris, south of where the Diyala River branches off and upstream of Maškan-šapir, it formed a small city-state in an area where the edges of the territories controlled by Larsa, Babylon and Elam converged.[2] Inscribed in cuneiform as ma-al-gi-imKI, its chief deities were Ea and Damkina.[3]: 20 

Tell Yassir
Malgium is located in Iraq
Malgium
Shown within Iraq
Alternative nameMalgium
LocationIraq
Coordinates32°33′41″N 45°6′0″E
Typesettlement
History
PeriodsBronze Age
CulturesIsin-Larsa
Site notes
ArchaeologistsIraqi archaeologists
ConditionRuined
OwnershipPublic
Public accessYes
Malgium possible location on the Tigris

Tell Yassir

The site is a single mound covering around 15 hectares. Iraqi archaeologists conducted a surface survey. The site was heavily looted after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to the extent that administrative and palatial structures visible from earlier satellite images could no longer be found. Along with pottery shards a number of inscribed bricks were found including those of Ur III rulers (Shulgi and Shu-Suen) and rulers of Malgium[4] An example brick inscription:

History
Inscribed clay nail of Ipik-Ishtar, king of Malgium, 1770 BCE. From Malgium, Iraq. Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin

Three of its rulers have been identified with certainty, through attestation in their inscriptions as šàr (lugal) ma-al-gi-imki, Takil-ilissu, son of Ištaran-asû,[6] Imgur-Sin, son of Ili-abi, and, probably the last one, Ipiq-Ištar, son of Apil-Ilišu, a contemporary of Ḫammu-rāpi of Babylon, who celebrated conflict with the city in two of his year names (10 and 35).[7][8] A further three rulers have been proposed, Šu-Kakka, Nabi-Enlil (son of Šu-Kakka) and Šu-Amurrum (son of Nabi-Enlil), three generations of a dynasty, based upon Šu-Kakka’s year name honoring the goddess Damkina and seal impressions.[9] Their absolute position is uncertain but they seem to have reigned from the immediate aftermath of the downfall of the Ur III empire.[3]: 19  Cuneiform tablets from the city of Irisaĝrig (now believed to be the nearby Tell al-Wilayah), now published, show that Malkum conquered that city roughly after year 10 of Ibbi-Sin, the last ruler of the Ur III empire. The tablets also included year names showing that kings Nur-Eštar (previously unknown), Šu-Kakka, Nabi-Enlil, Šu-Amurrum, Imgur-Sin, and Ištaran-asu ruled over Irisaĝrig.[10][11]

The kings of Larsa targeted Malgium in their pursuit of territorial expansion with Gungunum celebrating its conquest in his 19th year name, circa 1914 BC,[3]: 22  Sin-Iddinam its defeat in his 5th year name ca. 1844 and Warad-Sîn commemorated mu ugnim mà-al-gu-umki gištukul ba(-an)-sìg, “Year : the army? of Malgium was smitten by weapons”, ca. 1831 BC.[12] Ḫammu-rāpi, in a grand coalition with Shamshi-Adad I and Ibal-pi-El II (of Eshnunna), campaigned against the city-state until its ruler bought them off with 15 talents of silver. Freed from its vassalage to Elam, by Ḫammu-rāpi’s triumph over them, Malgium’s king, Ipiq-Ištar, concluded a treaty and subsequently provided aid and soldiers in Ḫammu-rāpi’s campaign against Larsa. For as yet uncertain reasons, Ḫammu-rāpi turned on his erstwhile ally and sacked the city ca. 1758, deporting much of its populace to Babylonia. Its state in the Middle Babylonian Period and later periods was much more humble as an administrative district called Malgu and a settlement referred to as Maliki.[2]

See also

References
  1. Douglas Frayne (1990). Old Babylonian Period (2003-1595 BC): Early Periods, Volume 4 (RIM The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia). University of Toronto Press. pp. 668–670.
  2. Trevor Bryce (2009). The Routledge Handbook of The Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. Routledge. pp. 441–442.
  3. Rients de Boer (2013). "An Early Old Babylonian Archive from the Kingdom of Malgium?". Journal Asiatique. 301 (1): 19–25.
  4. Ahmed Ali Jawad, Barhan Abd Al-Reza, Ali Jabarat Nasir, Ahmed Abbas As’id, "The Discovery of the Location of Malgium (Tell Yassir)", Sumer 65, pp. 63–91, 2019 (in arabic)
  5. Ahmed Ali Jawad, Barhan Abd Al-Reza, Ali Jabarat Nasir, Ahmed Abbas As’id, and Rients de Boer (2020). "The Discovery of the Location of Malgium (Tell Yassir)". Journal of Cuneiform Studies. American Schools of Oriental Research. 72: 65–86. doi:10.1086/709308. S2CID 224834784.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. Thorkild Jacobsen (1939). "The Inscription of Takil-ili-su of Malgium". Archiv für Orientforschung. 12: 364. JSTOR 41680358.
  7. R. de Boer, "Another New King of Malgium: Imgur-Sin, son of Ili-abi", NABU 2013/7, 2013
  8. Földi, Z. J. (2020): Eine Urkunde mit einem neuen Jahresnamen des Königs Imgur-Sin von Malgium, NABU 2020/
  9. Mayr, R. H. (2012): Seal Impressions on Administrative Tags from the Reign of Šu-Amurru, in: T. Boiy [e. a.] (ed.), The Ancient Near East, A Life! Festschrift Karel Van Lerberghe. OLA 220. Leuven, 409–42
  10. Ozaki, Tohru, Sigrist, Marcel and Steinkeller, Piotr. "New Light on the History of Irisaĝrig in Post-Ur III Times" Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie, vol. 111, no. 1, 2021, pp. 28-37
  11. Colonna d’Istria, L. (2020): Noms d’annés de rois du Malgium sur quelques étiquettes, NABU 2020/
  12. Kathleen Abraham (2008). "New Evidence for Warad-Sîn's Mu-Malgium-Basig ('The Destruction of Malgium') Year Name". Revue d'Assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale. 102: 29. JSTOR 23281366.
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