Stanford Humanities Center

Due to its great importance for Kassite archaeological and historical research as well as its proximity to Baghdad, the site of Dur-Kuriglazu attracted the attention of the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage whose excavations lasted over fifty years. As a result, Dur-Kuriglazu is the only Kassite site that has been excavated widely enough to permit the detailed examination of a Kassite city organization and function.

This Kassite city consists of several administrative and religious institutions as well as some residential areas. However, the location of these institutions and their distribution within the city raises several important questions such as what type of city Dur-Kurigalzu was? Are we actually dealing with more than one city? Can Dur-Kurigalzu be considered a Kassite administrative center rather than a typical Babylonian city?

In the following, I will examine the city’s spatial organization through detailed account of its architectural and material culture as reported in unpublished Iraqi reports. The focus will be on the temple complex and ziggurat area, and Tell Ahmar and Mound 1. Following this examination, I will present some interpretation of the data and a discussion of their relevance to Kassite archaeological research.

From the 14th to the 7th centuries B.C., Babylonian royal land grants and tax exemptions were  engraved on stone stelae, decorated with divine symbols, inscribed with curses against offenders, and placed in a temple. These stone memorials (traditionally called kudurrus) shed light on contemporary sociopolitical, economic, and artistic history of an era that can be termed as Kassite and post-Kassite Babylonia. 
The Babylonian kudurru stones emerged onto a cultural landscape already shaped by a long established history of literary and visual expression. This paper aims to investigate the development of this genre of artifacts in relation to the evolving sociopolitical and cultural developments taking place in Babylonia during this rather obscure period.

This paper presents the richness of Mosul’s cultural heritage and its historical roots. It also lays out the various elements which played a role in the loss of important cultural heritage sites throughout the city, particularly in the last ten years. While modernization and development, neglect and decay, wars and economic sanctions have taken their toll on the city’s cultural heritage, the absence of historic preservation legislation, preservation authority, national register, and planning authority have resulted in even greater losses. In spite of the antiquity laws which protect and preserve the heritage of Mosul and of Iraq, many archaeological and historical monuments have been destroyed and lost. While examples of successful preservation projects are present in the city, more work is urgently needed to prevent further damage.

يقدم هذا ألمقال ألتراث ألحضاري ألغني لمدينة ألموصل و أصولها ألتاريخية. حيث يقوم بعرض ألعناصر ألمختلفة ألتي لعبت دور في تلف و فقدان مواقع ألتراث ألحضاري في ألمدينة و خاصة في ألعشر سنوات ألأخيرة. بالأضافة  الى ألتمدن و ألتطور ألحضاري ، ألأهمال و ألتلف ، ألحروب و ألحصار  ألأقتصادي فأن غياب قانون ألحفاظ على ألتراث ألحضاري ، هيئة ألحفاظ ، سجل وطني شامل للمواقع الحضارية، هيئة ألتخطيط  أدى ألى خسائر أكبر في تراث ألموصل ألحضاري. على ألرغم من وجود قوانين ألأثار التي تحمي و تحافظ على تراث ألموصل و ألعراق فأن ألعديد من ألمواقع و ألنصب    ألتاريخية قد دمرت و فقدت الى ألأبد. بألرغم من وجود عدة أمثلة ناجحة لمشاريع ألحفاظ على ألتراث ألحضاري، هناك حاجة ملحة ألى ألمزيد من ألعمل ألجدي و ألفعال لمنع ألمزيد من ألضرر في ألمسقبل.

From 1531 to 1155 B.C. Babylonia was ruled by the Kassites, a foreign group with a distinctive cultural background who possibly originated in the area of the Zagros Mountains. After the collapse of the previous Old Babylonian state, the Kassites succeeded to establish a new royal house, which unified the Babylonian lowlands resulting in significant sociocultural developments. Although this period is characterized by important social and cultural changes, previous scholarship has portrayed the Kassites as a passive group who adopted Babylonian traditions without innovation, and who contributed little or nothing to Babylonian art and culture. In contrast to the previous approach, this paper argues that although Kassite monarchs promoted Babylonian art, they did not simply imitate it. Instead, they appear to have selected visual elements that preserved remnants of their distinctive culture, including their religion and mountainous environment, thus recreating Babylonian traditional art, including art-in- miniature.

Directed by Prof. Zainab Bahrani of Columbia University, MMM provides digital records for Mesopotamian standing monuments and facilitates future conservation work to preserve Mesopotamian cultural heritage as a significant part of global cultural heritage. We began the project in northern Iraq, with the goal of eventually including the rest of the country. Our first official season took place in October 2013.

This thesis focuses on the study of foreign ruling minorities in traditional state societies. It investigates how the Kassites, as a foreign ethnic group, were able to control and maintain political power over the Babylonian majority for four centuries. In addition, it examines Kassite-Babylonian cultural interaction both on state and domestic levels as reflected in the material cultural and historical records. This study uses two contrasting ethnohistorical models of foreign ruling elites of the Arabs in Spain and the Mamluks in Egypt to evaluate the mechanisms employed by the Kassites to maintain power and the nature of their interaction with the Babylonian majority. Although the Kassites adopted Babylonian culture and traditions, they still maintained their language, names, deities, and social organization. Despite their small number and foreign background, the Kassites’ political and socioeconomic practices continued long after their supremacy ended, leaving a long term imprint on Babylonian culture and society.
This research shows that the Kassites’ military skills combined with the ruralization of Babylonia and the power vacuum at Babylon by the end of the Old Babylonian period paved the way for their take over. Furthermore, it argues that the Kassites were able to maintain political authority and economic power through the establishment of a centralized administration system headed by the foreign monarchy, and the incorporation of rural and urban populations into the state provincial system which allowed them to access additional material resources and manpower. Furthermore, the Kassites appear to have sustained the state apparatus through a centralized taxation system that was imposed on a variety of agricultural products. Taxes were collected from both urban and rural settlements and were used to support the state dependents and public projects. In addition, control over landownership and transfer played a crucial role in enhancing the foreign monarch’s authority. Royal land grants and tax exemption served the economic needs of both the recipient and the king. While these grants rendered revenues to the recipients, they combined land and labor and reduced the direct cost to the crown for agriculture, while still generating revenues through taxes in kind and labor services. Ideologically, Kassite royal land grants tied the recipients closely to the king through a patron-client relationship creating a feeling of obligation and loyalty among the recipients to the king. Likewise, control over trade of exotic items, such as lapis lazuli and horses, enabled the state to sustain its political power over a long period of time.
Culturally, the Kassites successfully manipulated both the religion of the majority and their tradition of kingship to legitimize their authority and maintain their rule. While the Kassite monarchs ruled in the name of the Babylonian gods and adopted Babylonian titles, they created a new geopolitical world in Babylonia. Although the Kassites promoted Babylonian religious and royal traditions, they did not imitate traditional Babylonian temples and palaces. However, while early Kassite architecture reflects Kassites’ innovation and influence on Babylonian religious and royal architecture, later temples and domestic structures indicate the gradual Kassite adaptation to the local socio-religious and architectural traditions. The Kassite-Babylonian cultural interaction resulted in the continuity of the Babylonian house form and household socioeconomic role both in urban centers and rural settlements. Similarly, funeral practices reflect continuation of the broader Babylonian customs with exception of the phenomenon of the “supine position”, which may indicate a Kassite cultural aspect that was subsequently swamped by mainstream Babylonian mortuary practices. Thus, the Kassites appear to have maintained and legitimized the control of power by manipulating the Babylonian local elite stratum without interfering with the socioeconomic organization of the Babylonian households and local traditions.

Since the appearance of the so-called Islamic State or Daesh in Syria and Iraq, the world has been faced with a vicious attack on cultural heritage aimed at erasing the rich and diverse history of the people in this region. Local and international scholars have been working to document and assess the damage inflicted on archaeological and historical sites through various projects that grew in response to Daesh’s activities.

However, the destruction and looting of cultural heritage sites and monuments in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, has a longer history rooted in the aftermath of the US invasion of the country and the complete destruction of its infrastructure in 2003. For many years, security worries and chaos prevented archaeologists and heritage specialists from onsite documentation of the heritage sites. It was not until a few years ago when slowly Iraq became accessible once again for archaeologists, and documentation with a possibility for future conservation could begin. It was with this in mind that the idea of the project Mapping Mesopotamian Monuments was born.