Casting The Dice
“
For children, childhood is timeless. It is always the present. Everything is in the present tense. Of course, they have memories. Of course, time shifts a little for them and Christmas comes round in the end. But, they don’t feel it. Today is what they feel, and when they say, ‘When I grow up,’ there is always an edge of disbelief - how could they ever be other than what they are?”
- Ian McEwan, The Child In Time.
It’s an interesting quote, isn’t it? Especially that last part, “how could they ever be other than what they are”. Is it that removed from the way adults see the world? Maybe we don’t think this about ourselves, but we certainly think exactly like this when we’re thinking about society. The current social paradigm isn’t just the current social paradigm for most people. We have vague memories of things that happened in history, perhaps when our parents or grandparents were young, but the current social paradigm is often assumed to be timeless, even eternal. I imagine if you had been walking down the street in Berlin in 1909 and you had told someone that the German Empire was going to be gutted and collapsed in the next 10 years, and that the German people were going to be using their deutschmarks for kindling in their stoves in the next 20 years, they would have burst out laughing and asked… no, insisted that you were joking. Germany at the time was the economic powerhouse of continental Europe after all, with cozy political relations with the British, the second most powerful nation in the region, while Russia and the Ottoman Empire were lagging behind technologically and militarily. What possible indications could you have that such a radical change was right around the corner? What a fine laugh such a suggestion would have made for. Germany had been through hard times in the past indeed, but nothing that could so utterly destroy it, and if that were going to happen it would be “in the future”, a long time hence, because everything was just stacked too well in its favor right then.
Who was it that said that the last people to realize the empire is collapsing are its citizens? I don’t know, but the saying definitely wrings true, doesn’t it? Nothing lasts forever. All things come to an end. States, empires, nations, ethnic groups, languages, religions, customs… just about everything. Some things last longer than others, though. The Ancient Egyptian civilization lasted about 3,000 years, and their language over 5,000. Other things come and go, like the Celts, who once stretched from Ireland to Turkey in the distribution of Celtic-speaking peoples practicing Celtic culture. Their tenure in Europe was comparatively pretty brief, when you think about it. Compared to say, the Romans who replaced them on the continent and certainly the Greeks. So then… why do some civilizations outlast others? That’s a very loaded question these days, and it’s a complicated one too. Some civilizations seem doomed to failure in hindsight, like the civilizations of Mesoamerica, which developed in splendid isolation from the pathogens that were breeding in Eurasia. Others seem invincible, like Ancient Rome or the Han Dynasty of China, but they too eventually fall by the wayside and make way for something else, right? Sometimes something new is created from the combination of the dying civilization and the incoming invaders, but sometimes nothing is left at all. How about the Hurrians? What did they leave behind besides ruins and a few fossilized words in Armenian? Are there still Hurrian place names, or river names, or maybe personal names floating around? What about their gods? Gone. They’re all gone. All washed away by the sea of time.
So, why even try to preserve the here and now if some day we know that none of it will matter because our species will go extinct and the sun will eventually explode and destroy this planet, thus obliterating any sign that we were ever even here? Because we’re ultimately like children, and all we know is the here and now, and if the here and now is good then it’s worth looking after. If we don’t look after it, then tomorrow might not be anything like today, and what we don’t know and can’t control scares us. Cultivating the here and now is therefore ultimately how we make the best future not only for ourselves, but for our people, and all of us have a people. The boundaries between people are sometimes clear and sometimes mirky, and definitions can change, but everyone has a tribe, and those of us who are sane want that tribe to do well. There’s nothing wrong with that.
One crucial component of preserving the here and now is preserving some image of the past. It helps us understand our place, whether real or imagined, in the present. The thing about history however, is that no matter how meticulously it’s recorded or the level of devotion that the historian doing the recording has to the documentation of the truth, that there’s always something missing. If you were to think of history as a chess board, it usually only records the movements of the more powerful pieces. Anyone who knows how to play chess however, knows that the less powerful pieces, the pawns, have to be moved one way or another to allow the rooks, bishops, and queens (although not the knights) to be mobilized in some sort of strategy. And if the movements of the most powerful pieces on the board are the only ones being passed down to us over time, how much can we say that we really know? Probably a lot less than we think we do, and if we actually know quite a bit less than we think we do, how can we definitively rule out seemingly “outlandish” claims of the past? What makes them so outlandish? Our often heavily redacted records? If there’s one thing I know about life through my own personal anecdotes, it’s that the truth tends to be stranger and often times more scandalous, and even darker than anything I’ve ever read in fiction. But how much of the strange, dark, and sometimes bordering on ridiculous scandals I’ve seen are going to make it into history books? I don’t imagine any of them, and not merely because they’re probably insignificant to the movings of the more powerful pieces on the board, but because knowledge of goings on such as that could upset some future narrative being advanced by people trying to understand their place in the world.
Why would I write all that? Am I about to tell you about the collapse of a great civilization, or the extinction of a people? Not exactly. Am I going to tell you about a dark and strange chapter in the history of another time that, the details of which having been largely omitted by the historians of said time, changed the nature of a civilization? Yes, yes I am.
The
Namḫarkan is so named because it describes more than just a single event of “rebirth” within Khanang, but because it describes cycles of restoration and change. One such chapter, or story rather, contained within the epic is known as the
Kikam Lukallukala’, the “War of Great Men”. This is the tale of a succession crisis within the Possession of Khanang that is said to have resulted in a rather drastic reorganization of political affairs within the country. But, to understand how affairs were reorganized, it’s worth taking a moment to explain how they were organized to begin with.
According to the
Namḫarkan, Lulimnir Andangal reigned as
Engal Enena’ for a hundred years, outliving all of his sons that he installed as rulers in the various cities of the country. Originally, his son Mamaḫra by his queen, Anenthen, the daughter of his foster-father, Usakarešundu, was set to inherit. However, while this son bore no sons of his own, he was outlived by his father by many decades, as was Lulimnir’s eldest son by the lady Khuktiri, the younger daughter of Usakarešundu, whose name is recorded as Kitamaḫti. Even still, Lulimnir outlived almost all of his grandchildren by all of his sons, though his office was slated to pass only through the lines of the daughters of his mentor and foster-father, and so Nindir, the grandson of Kitamaḫti inherited the throne after his great-grandfather. Unlike all other Khanangan kings, the epic tells us that for the courage of his heart and his pious deeds that he was finally rewarded with the restoration of his youth when the god Enkhi came sailing up the Itikna (Tigris) River and bid the old monarch to sail with him to Tilmun, where he would live in eternal youth.
Though Nindir I as he is known in the
Namḫarkan is not corroborated by the archaeological record, the story tells us that he besieged the city of Šušin (Susa) and received the homage of its king, Watshuḫindi, pushing the border of Khanang to the River Ulai (Karkheh). This was after a prolonged 20-year siege in which it is said that the goddess Inanna, still bitter over her repudiation by Usakarešundu, the now long-dead king of Ešnunna, sought to punish his blood, though she eventually succumbed to the fighting spirit of Nindir I and sought his affection rather than that of King Watshuḫindi. But, why would the head of a dynasty bent on redeeming the land of Khanang pursue foreign conquests? Unfortunately, the
Namḫarkan can’t tell us the whole story, because just as many pieces of our own history, it has been edited to reflect a narrative more favorable of its intended audience. No, the
Namḫarkan is rather ambiguous about the demographic shift of the city it calls Šušin, leaving its readers to believe that this was probably the result of the growth of a community of Ungkhananga’ within its walls. Except, the truth is that the city didn’t even have a wall until shortly before the
Engal Enena’ invaded the region, because it wasn’t much of a city at all, but a collection of small towns gathered around the central authority of a temple, much like the city of Unuk had been in its earliest days. The “Khananganization” of Šušin was in fact something of a bloody affair, as the indigenous inhabitants were forced out of their homes and enslaved in every meaningful way (though not officially) by the Khanangan state, as were the inhabitants of all of the other communities that were not ethnically Khanangan between the Itikna and the Ittušia/Kirkinu (Karun) rivers. But, one has to wonder once again… why?
The very purpose of the establishment of the Possession of Khanang was defensive, wasn’t it? The state was formed to preserve the inheritance of the Unkhananga’, the gods’ chosen people to whom they had given the gifts of civilization, correct? And yet, almost immediately after the formation of this state, the grandson of the founder went off in pursuit of foreign conquests? Yes, yes he did. However, he did so because he had a considerably more expansionist vision of just what the “Possession” of Khanang entailed than did his grandfather. Now, of course there was never a historical Nindir I, but rather a monarch named Taramaškha, the son of Tušiathi and grandson of Lulimnir Andangal. And where Lulimnir Andangal thought of the Possession of Khanang as forming its eastern front at the Tutsetse (Adhaim) River and running along the mountains to the Tsetsene (Nahr at-Tib), Taramaškha thought of the land between the Tsetsene and the Kirkinu (Karun) rivers as being within the cultural and ethnic sphere of Khanang, and therefore went about a campaign of “redeeming” the land, just as many parts of northern Khanang had been “redeemed” under his grandfather.
What would have given him such a false impression? Surely, the “city” of Šušin was founded by another people, was it not? Of course it was, but it was very early in the history of this “city” that a substantial number of ethnic Unkhananga’ had migrated there from the area that later became the city of Širphurla. So substantial a number that it was enough to make a noticeable impact on the material culture in the archaeological record, and this minority, though largely absorbed within the urban expanse of Šušin was nonetheless still distinct within the countryside. Thus, to Taramaškha and his political associates, taking the region was merely extending the Possession of Khanang to reflect Khanang as the gods would have intended it.
Now, perhaps if Taramaškha had simply deported all of the non-Khanangan peoples across the Kirkinu River and resettled every one of their settlements as Khanangan military colonies, the conquest of Šušin would not have fomented the political rot that it did within the Possession. However, that’s not what he did at all. Instead, out of the indigenous peoples who didn’t escape to the other side of the Kirkinu, he created a permanent underclass that neither had the legal right to purchase land nor the right to deal commercially in equal terms with the Unkhananga’. Entire communities that had previously been comprised of landowners were evicted to make room for the families of Khanangan soldiers and their families, but allowed to return and work the land, usually for a pittance. Denser, more urban communities, like the “city” of Šušin received an influx of Khanangan migrants, who rebuilt the wall around the city and rededicated its temple to Ningištsita, all the while the indigenous inhabitants were forced to live outside the city walls and work the agricultural estates of the new
ensi.
The
Namḫarkan also tells us that it was during the reign of Nindir I and the Siege of Šušin that the office of
Ukur Engala’, the so-called “sword of the great lord”, was established, as the
Engal Enena’ himself was called away from the front many times to oversee affairs at home. The
Namḫarkan however was composed approximately 4,000 years ago, post-dating the events by about 650 years, give or take a decade or two, after the office of
Ukur Engala’ had evolved to become one of the most powerful in the state, a position that it did not in fact begin to take until after the
Kikam Lukallukala’. Originally, the
Ukur Engala’ was the military governor of the conquered region of Šušin, whose powers, while extensive, were limited to those lands between the Tsetsene and the Kirkinu rivers. He was, after the
Engal Enena’, the highest military authority in his jurisdiction, and as such the office was exclusively reserved for a member of the royal family, usually the younger brother of the head of state, and charged with the maintenance of the common defense, including the staffing and upkeep, and construction of new forts (principally placed at key locations along the northern and eastern borders), the upkeep and manufacture of arms and armor, and the
namgit, which was the first recorded census of any kind that the people of this time have on record. The
namgit however, only applied to males, and specifically males within the draftable age range of 15-30, and it was collected by bureaucrats known as
tsukešetkitḫia, or “troop surveyors”, all of whom reported directly to the
Ukur Engala’ with the results of their tallies.
Taramaškha would pass the throne on to his eldest son, Khuksikeškiri, who is known only from inscriptions on monuments erected in the highlands north of Šušin, as he was such a blasphemous and boastful tyrant that he was overthrown and all but erased from the history of Khanang by his younger brother, the incumbent
Ukur Engala’, whose name was Maḫramen I, who is significant for three primary reasons in the discussion of the evolution of Khanangan politics. First and foremost, he expanded the scope of the authority of the office of
Ukur Engala’ to apply to the entire country as a means of checking the power of the
Engal Enena’, but secondly he is well known in the archaeological record for his instigation of a program of land subsidization for soldiers in the Šušin region, the aim of which was to combat the increasingly common miscegenation of young soldiers and the indigenous inhabitants, but also to phase out the indigenous inhabitants as a means of serf labor on the farms and incentivize them to sell themselves into slavery in the cities. That final part might sound odd in an ancient society without the prerequisite understanding that Lulimnir Andangal had issued an edict against owning foreign slaves, as the presence of foreigners in the Possession would, over time, dilute the purity of Khanangan blood. This made for a society in which slavery was exceptionally rare across a very wide area, one in which the cultural elite had to amass enough capital to properly pay their employees, as the society in question had rapidly become extremely (although not totally) ethnically homogenous and therefore extremely cohesive in the face of exploitation. Strictly speaking however, the edict issued by Lulimnir Andangal stated that slaves could not be brought into the country from foreign markets, nor could peoples outside the borders be owned as slaves, which left the door wide open for anyone
inside the borders to sell themselves as slaves. However, the third significant aspect of Maḫramen I’s reign was that, despite his pursuit of an ethnically puritanical domestic policy, he was himself a miscegenator by way of his marriage to a Ḫamatsian princess, Cirirambhi.
By this time, the structure of the state and its institutions are also known to have been firmly established. The incontrovertible and absolute head of the state was the
Engal Enena’, the domestic, and ultimate military leader who was believed to be the direct descendant of Lulimnir Andangal. This man in turn was advised by a body of elders from the various branches of his extended family that were retired
enensi (municipal governors) though still incumbent
kutukḫia, or high priests of the different cities known as the
ku’ena’, the “Assembly of Lords”. At the head of the Assembly of Lords sat the
šeškalkal, the “great elder brother”, who was democratically elected from within the assembly itself and considered to be the highest religious authority in the country, even above the
Engal Enena’ himself… once he had been confirmed by him, that is. The
šeškalkal was the principle adviser to the
Engal Enena’, and a number of taboos surrounded this office in terms of diet and ritual purity what with his life having been utterly submerged in religious ritual. He had no raw political authority “on paper” as it were, although he exercised immense authority over the affairs of the state not only because of his position as spiritual leader (which was power enough), but because the bulk of the country’s farmlands were increasingly falling into the hands of the clergy as large estates had been dedicated to the gods of the different cities following the expulsion of the Ts’ābū and poorer citizens had been entering into various equity sharing contracts with temple creditors to pay off their debts, despite the farming programs begat by earlier heads of state, specifically Nindir I. This meant that any member of the
ku’ena’ might be in personal control of large shares of the food supply of his city, which gave the
šeškalkal, as the speaker of the
ku’ena’, a particularly high degree of influence over the
Engal Enena’.
This system of government continued for roughly 200 years, from 4,700 to 4,500 years before present. During this time, salinization of the soil produced by poorly drained irrigation necessitated a shift from wheat, whose yields reduced over a period of decades, to barley, which was a more salt-tolerant crop. The social and economic stability of the time resulted in a substantial growth in population, the likes of which had not been seen since the period of Unuk’s hegemony, which created a drastic increase in international trade, while the introverted political doctrine of the time curbed the imperialistic aspirations that might otherwise arise among the noble classes. One such item that was especially sought after was stucco, which was used by the Ungkhananga’ to add elaborate and colorful façades to the step temples we call “ziggurats”. Likewise, the writing that we know as “cuneiform” did not acquire its distinctive wedge-shaped style, but remained pictographic, and with the advent of stucco being traded from the east and the colorful façades of the “ziggurats”, became increasingly artistic and pictographic, giving rise to a monumental, hieroglyphic style. The stucco itself was being traded to Khanang from a country known to the Ungkhananga’ as Nimma, which we might call “Elam” or perhaps “Anshan”, while the primary source for horses, another prize commodity which were becoming increasingly important in the military, was the country of
Sirkanu. The debut of stucco in the country spurred massive governmental building projects, which was enough to keep the young men in the cities occupied for nearly a century while each city competed against the next for the gods’ favor, expanding temple and palatial complexes enormously. The lands of Sirkanu and Nimma would subsequently become steeped in myth and folklore, much like the ancient country of
Arattha.
In the long run however, the peace started to get uneasy, and cracks began to form in the social order. Population growth was one reason, of course. Too many young men without anything to do anywhere at any point in time is a problem. Why? Because reproductively speaking, you only need a few of us to “spray and pray” for the longevity of our species, and because of this simple biological inequality of the scales, every man needs to demonstrate his value to society in one way or another to gain access to sex. When too many young men are denied access to sex because of their insolvency within a society, then tensions begin to rise. One can imagine such tensions might be increased in a polygamous society, where groups of women sometimes crowd around the men deemed to be the most worthy, further marginalizing the others, and this was certainly the case in the Possession of Khanang, where polygamy was widespread. Many of these young men ended up working on construction projects or serving as overseers in the southeastern regions of the country where serfdom was particularly prominent. However, in a society with a steadily increasing population of young men without women to tame them, miscegenation between the strapping youths of Khanang and the natives of this region was common, though often exploitative, given the prevailing socio-political doctrine being the “divinity” of the Ungkhananga’ as the children of the gods.
Another use for young men in the cities was to send them to the border forts, where they fought against increasingly frequent incursions in the east, but also the northwest, as relations between the Ungkhananga’ and the expelled Ts’ābū and Martu peoples were particularly sour. The nobility however, had grown to such a size that available lands for rising young nobles were becoming few and far between. Furthermore, as the nobility was all descended from a single family, the miscegenation of the Ešnunna branch was increasingly viewed with disdain, as all of the other branches were subservient to it, and the practice obviously stood in stark violation of official policy. Remember the aforementioned lady Cirirambhi of “Ḫamatsi”? She was just the first of a number of “Ḫamatsian” princesses married into the Ešnunna branch, as the 70 years that preceded the
Kikam Lukallukala’ were characterized by mounting troubles in the northeastern borderlands. To understand why, I suppose we need to understand a thing or two about Ḫamatsi…
First of all, it was called by its inhabitants
Ḫanmaji, who called themselves the
Ḫanma, and while archaeologists of our own time haven’t been able to pin point with absolute certainty where this ancient city lay, the archaeologists of the time of the
Ríxavaka and the
Namḫarkan really have no trouble in this regard, as the city would figure prominently in the history of the Possession of Khanang on multiple occasions, and the
Namḫarkan as well as later epic texts give specific descriptions of it. For us, its location was in a mountain valley we know as the “Shahrizor Plain”, where a river we call the “Diyala” picks up speed and is fed by a number of tributaries, in the foothills of a mountain range we call the “Zagros Mountains”. The country is arid, but still well-enough watered to sustain agriculture and herds of wild game animals, and most importantly, complex urban civilization. Not anything on par with the Possession of Khanang in its heyday to be sure, as at the time in question the average size of a Khanangan city was 60,000 or more, but the city of Ḫanmaji exceeded 10,000, and so was no country town for its time. The population was also mixed, with the Ungkhanaga’ referring to its people as “many-tongued”, the majority of people speaking a language related to the dialects of the country they called Kuthium to the east and north, themselves having been heavily influenced by a group of languages we would describe as “Hurrian”, as such peoples formed a large group of migrants into the area in centuries passed.
Emengir, the tongue of Khanang, had also lent to a number of borrowed words concerned with material culture and socio-political organization. The most recent, but still longstanding immigrant community had come from the region of Ambhan, which the Ungkhananga’ knew as Awan, who had unified the country and eclipsed the older colonists from Khanang that had migrated there during the hegemony of Unuk, subsequently forming the bulk of the upper class. The city was itself agriculturally independent of Khanang, though it bought grain reserves from Ešnunna specifically, and it controlled a wide area of the plain that surrounded it, known to its inhabitants as
Burrarum. Its primary source of wealth however, was the taxation of goods passing through the region, being the most politically centralized of the valleys that acted as gateways to the plateau beyond. That political stability was under threat however, as the
Namḫarkan tells us:
“
The barbarians of Khur plundered the caravans from Waraḫše to Tshumurzu, and no man was able to outrun the gallop of their horses, who were swift as the desert wind on his heels with arrows ready to drain his blood. Such was the threat to the sovereignty of the ancient country, that their king demanded of every Engal Enena’ that his son marry a daughter of his blood and 5,000 warriors to garrison his forts, lest he would open the mountains that the barbarians might enter Khanang.”
This is something of a simplification of history, as one might expect from such a piece. It is indeed true that a certain group of horse-riding nomads had exploded onto the plateau beyond the mountains, a place we know as the “Iranian Plateau”, but they weren’t mere savages and their quarrel with Ḫanmaji went far beyond matters of profit. Ḫanmaji represented an important client as a buffer between Ešnunna, the somewhat removed capital of Khanang, and the wider, wilder world beyond the Plain of Burrarum, and the political marriages helped to ensure the continuation of that relationship.
Of course, none of the mixed children of the Ešnunna branch of the royal family had ever inherited the kingship, and so the stain of the miscegenation remained for the most part invisible for the first few generations… to the wider public. That is, until Maḫramen I’s grandson, Enparparra I, had elevated his eldest son, Kukkantser, the half-bred son of the Ḫanmajian princess Tajentaṣaḫam, to the office of
Ukur Engala’. The shock of such an action was felt wide around the country, and indeed many of the cadet branches of the royal family in the various more “tenured” cities thought of it as an insult, as there were more purebred sons of their daughters that were brothers to Enparparra who were, in their minds, just as fit, but the insult would ultimately go unanswered for the time being.
No, it would take twelve years more of simmering for the water to finally boil, and during this time, the affairs of the Possession’s favorite client would play a crucial role in turning up the heat.
The city-state of Ḫanmaji had a southerly sister, Tshenḫaje, who was smaller, but nonetheless had a considerably better handle politically on the tribes that surrounded it, having been able to bost control over the two principle valleys that surrounded it, together known as the land of Tshi’um. Tshenḫaje was positioned on a place we call “Kermanshah”, representing the cultural capital of the people known to the Unkhananga’ by the exonym
Lullupu, and it was actually founded by colonists from Ḫanmaji who shared ancient blood ties with the so-called
Lullupu, though the inhabitants had long “gone native”, and no longer thought of Ḫanmaji as their metropolis. Rather, their ancient metropolis was now thought of as a direct competitor for trade. As aforementioned, Ḫanmaji was now within the sphere of influence of the Possession of Khanang, as was the town of Ḫalmanu, at a place we call “Sarpol Zahab”. The traditional understanding of Khanang’s relationship with these two cities, which is rather accurately elaborated upon in the
Namḫarkan, was that while the latter were under the former’s protection, this was only in terms of territorial sovereignty, and therefore Khanang was not to involve itself in Ḫanmaji’s or Ḫalmanu’s commercial conflicts with its neighbors, which were at times extensive. The kings of Ḫanmaji and Ḫalmanu were patrons of several native tribes in the highlands that separated the valley of Burrarum from the valley of Tshi’um. They were known to give logistical and financial support to these tribes in times of conflict with Tshenḫaje and her allies. However, Tshenḫaje would acquire a powerful patron of her own in the years leading up to the
Kikam Lukallukala’ in the form of the expanding “Kingdom of Ambhan”.
After “Šušin” had been reduced and its inhabitants exiled or all but enslaved by the Possession of Khanang 4,700 or so years ago, there had been a drastic shift in the politics of the highlands. Where formerly the sense of ethnic identity among the people inhabiting the mountains directly north of the city
they knew as Ċuṣan had been fairly loose, and more or less comparable to the concept of who was or was not a
Hélēn in our own Ancient Greece, a sort of secondary state had been coalescing around a stronger sense of identity over the past 150 years led by certain strong men in the area. This was principally in response to the perceived threat of incursion by the Khanangan monarchs which was all too real under the reign of Khuksikeškiri, who campaigned in the highlands to bring an end to incessant raids into the lowland country of Šušin. The most important of these strong men at the time was a man named Ḫaĉirirĵana, the
ċunkir (“king” or “chief”) of the highland town known at the time as Giṣambhe (Khorramabad). Ḫaĉirirĵana might be compared to a certain Vercingetorix of our own time, in that he had been able to form a coalition of tribes in response to the incursions of the Ungkhananga’ under Khuksikeškiri, though they differed in that Ḫaĉirirĵana had been successful in bringing the invaders to a stalemate, and in so doing was able to garner a reputation from whence he could hold his coalition together under his authority. This was accomplished not only through his military prowess, but also through the practice of reciprocal gift-giving to his fellow
ċunkiph, often times repaying tributes sent to him by towns under his patronship with gifts of like value or of twice or three times the value. Such would be the relationship between the kings of Tshenḫaje and the
ċunkiph of Giṣambhe.
In fact, not only was the tribute reciprocated between the kings of Tshenḫaje and Ḫaĉirirĵana and his successors, but the senior princes of Giṣambhe were often warded at Tshenḫaje, while the senior princes of the other towns of Ambhan were warded at Giṣambhe. As one might expect, the cohabitation of members of various royal families from childhood often resulted in strong personal relationships between them going into adulthood that further cemented their loyalty to one another. Furthermore, the allies and political clients of Tshenḫaje gradually came to be thought of as among the allies and political clients of Giṣambhe, and increasingly so, the country of Ambhan as a more solidified political unit. Thus, when Nambhĵila, the third son of Ḫaĉirirĵana and widely perceived as a worthy heir to his father’s name wanted to expand his sphere of influence further westward, he sought to do so by lending logistical support to Kenkeṣawuṣ, the King of Tshenḫaje, in his invasion of the Valley of Silulu in the land of Majamua, which was an important stop on one of the primary mountain routes from the plateau to Burrarum.
The Valley of Silulu refers to the land around a certain lake of the same name, a place we call Lake Zrebar, while the surrounding country of Majamua refers more or less to a place we call Kurdistan Province in modern Iran. Therefore, the seizure of Silulu would redirect its tributes from Ḫanmaji to Tshenḫaje, ultimately swelling the growing chest of Giṣambhe, and obviously represented a direct affront to the control over trade into Khanang that the kings of Ḫanmaji had enjoyed. Thus, a certain King Ṣakkanko of Ḫanmaji, a cousin to the incumbent
Ukur Engala’, Kukkantser (the half-brother of Enparparra I), personally invaded the country to protect the integrity of his native allies there, while at the same time sending envoys north to the tribes of Turukkum, beseeching them to attack the land of Ambhan so as to direct the focus of Nambhĵila to the defense of his more immediate clients. One might therefore ascertain that the true nature of this conflict was between Ḫanmaji and Giṣambhe, but it was one that was fought by proxy between the allies of the two cities, at least initially. The tribespeople of Silulu were badly beaten by the men of Tshenḫaje, which quickly put the Ḫanma on the front lines as their Turukkean allies rode into the country of Ambhan on horseback, plundering and burning its lowland towns before retreating westward through the mountain passes into Tshi’um to lay siege to Tshenḫaje and force its armies back to their home. Though, the Turukkoḫḫena quickly found themselves in a world that was rather unfamiliar to them, not only in terms of the political goings on between sedentary towns (as they themselves were nomadic pastoralists who had only recently adopted equestrian nomadism), but also the religious and spiritual practices, which they found to be blasphemous and wretched, and were enough to send them on their way.
The
Namḫarkan, as aforementioned, was compiled during a period long after the one in question, and so many of the more vile details of the period are left out. Specifically, the role that a nefarious cult that surrounded morbid human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism, particularly of children, was to play in the unfolding of events was something that was left out of the narrative. You see, many of the tribes of Tshi’um, in the days before the coming of the Ungkhananga’ or the men of Šušin to the area, engaged in child sacrifice as a means of propitiating malevolent spirits thought to be associated with disease, pestilence, and drought. However, with the introduction of urbanized life by colonists from the previously heavily Khananganized city of Ḫanmaji, this morbid practice grew in popularity under the influence of local shamans looking to further their own wealth who preached that the blood and body parts of children had a closer connection to the spirit world than those of adults and were therefore the most fitting for sacrifice in the interests of material and/or social gain. Say perhaps, if a man had attempted other more “legitimate” means of obtaining wealth through the sacrifice of his own livestock or livestock purchased at the temple market, he might try to propitiate spirits of pestilence or disease to grant him what he wished or, at the very least, “make room” for him within the social hierarchy. The more extreme the demand of course, the more extreme the price, and a shaman might ask for one’s own child if the demand was serious enough. A local story told of a chief who had sought to overthrow the King of Tshenḫaje a century earlier who had sacrificed his own daughters - one of them still a toddler - rather than marry them to the prince of that city.
Surely, the Turukkoḫḫena could contextualize human sacrifice as they themselves dabbled in it here and there, but their rituals differed markedly from those of the wild country of Tshi’um, and they certainly did not involve children as anything more than spectators to such events. What was worse, they discovered that the sacrifice of children was not limited to the wild tribes of the countryside, but was also concentrated among the urban elite not only of that country, but of Ḫanmaji, as it was the case that local children, abducted or sometimes offered up by their own parents for enormous sums of money had their blood drained and dried to be ground up and used in the wine of Ḫanmaji’s social elites. Though there was no explanation given to the Turukkoḫḫena warriors who first encountered this malevolent practice, it was believed in both Ḫanmaji and Tshenḫaje that the connection of people to the spirit world wains with time and that this is what causes the progressive weaknesses of the aging process. Certain tribes of especially ancient pedigree were believed to contain specific magical qualities within their blood, imbuing those who ingested it with supernatural powers tied to the ancient gods of the country, gods many times more ancient than the city of Unuk itself. This utterly repulsed the Turukkoḫḫena, and they left the country almost as swiftly as they had arrived, leaving a trail of scorched earth and bodies of the inhabitants behind them.
But they didn’t leave for good. No, the Turukkoḫḫena traded with the Ḫanma regularly, importing wine from Khanang and from Tshi’um. Their chiefs had visited Ḫanmaji before, and had even been offered certain “magic” wines by Ḫanmajian socialites and nobles in gift-giving ceremonies that they had consumed, trusting in the integrity of men they considered to be worthy political and business associates. Now that the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, everyone was naturally wondering whether or not the magical qualities of the wines their chiefs had drank came from the blood of the children of Tshi’um, and if so, if it was the intent of the Ḫanma to bring misfortune on the Turukkoḫḫena by enticing them to unknowingly violate their own taboos. Some of the clans took a neutral stance, as one might expect, but others weren’t so inclined to give the Ḫanma the benefit of the doubt. To these people, the Ḫanma were consorting with devils and had invited their own social and spiritual elite to do the same unbeknownst, and the treachery had to be repaid not only for the sake of honor, but of ritual purity. So, it could be said that the motivation for the regular raiding of Burrarum and the pressure put on Ḫanmaji was not solely a matter of greed, but of principle, and religious principle at that, though one would be a fool to say that certain key players in the conflict weren’t motivated by their desire to increase their wealth. In fact, the raids on Burrarum were so brutal in their nature that they forced the city of Ḫanmaji into paying regular tributes to the Turukkoḫḫena, which themselves easily amounted to enough grain and silver to finance more ambitious expeditions out onto the plateau. These expeditions started with a raid on the nearby town of Yiχχwanmulalni (Ghabrestan-e Yasukand), and later some 200 miles out to the city of Tsatstsants’ola (Qoli Darvish), eventually reaching as far way as Khanagnarwa (Sabzevar), all in a period of 10 years.
So, what role do these rather horrific details about the private goings-on of the cultural elite of Ḫanmaji have to do with a war of succession in Khanang? Certainly they explain the threat that the kingdom faced from the Turukkean nomads, but they also cut right to the heart of the succession crisis itself, as the wretched practice of consuming the dried blood of the children of Tshi’um in wine was not one that was limited to Ḫanmaji, Tshenḫaje, or their satellites, as the Ḫanmajian or “Ḫamatsian” princesses that married into the Ešnunna branch of the extensive royal family of Khanang had brought the custom with them, and rumors of its practice by the
Engal Enena’ and his immediate circle had begun to float around the higher echelons of Khanangan society. It was of course one thing indeed to have so sullied the divine blood of Lulimnir Andangal himself, which was thought of by the more purebred branches of other cities as being insult enough, but it was another entirely for such savage and debaucherous customs to have contaminated that most venerated family. However, though the tensions would rise in the preceding two decades, it was not until precisely 4,591 years before present (2491 BC) that the façade became completely untenable. Enparparra I died abruptly in a riding accident, leaving the question of his succession open.
As the king had only been able to sire two sons between three wives (an unusually low number of wives for his office), the nature of the situation was without precedent, and how it was to be solved depended on how the social norms that governed the politics of the country were to be interpreted. You see, on one hand, primogeniture had been the unwritten rule of the succession, with the kings passing their office to their eldest sons, who were usually experienced politicians and military commanders by the time of their ascension. On the other however, it was commonly understood that the heir had to be of pure blood, given the prevailing hyper-nationalistic ideology of the society of the time. So, while Kukkantser, the incumbent
Ukur Engala’ was himself a seasoned military commander with no less than four campaigns under his belt, he was the son of a Ḫanmajian princess and second wife of the king, the first wife, the lady Ulḫarupa of Larsam having only been able to sire daughters with him before her own untimely death some hours after the birth of their last child. The other potential heir was far too young to inherit, at only 10 years old, Prince Alama certainly had no experience in the military or in politics whatsoever, but he was of pure blood, as the son of Enparparra and his third wife, Namennung of Urim, who was the grand-niece of the incumbent
šeškalkal, Tumusang Muškhimeki of Isin.
There were no laws legitimizing one over the other, only opinions. Was it more important to give the throne to an easily manipulated child who had the proper pedigree, or to a competent and proven man who didn’t?
Further complicating the matter was the particularly close relationship between the two half-brothers. Kukkantser might have been savage in his harrying of his province of Šušin during repeated serf revolts, but he was a loving elder-brother to Prince Alama, who loved and idolized him for it. Therefore, even if Alama were to inherit, Kukkantser would still be in effective control of the government so long as things stayed unspoiled between the two. So the question for those that would rather see Alama succeed his father was then how to go about spoiling them, and how to do it without getting killed? After all, Kukkantser was a formidable, influential, well-connected, and most importantly brutal foe that was not only loved by much of the common people, but also outside of the legal reach of any other politician as he answered only to the
Engal Enena’ directly.
The question of the succession of course had been on the table of political discussion for some time before the king’s riding accident however, and so there were already some vaguely formed factions behind both claims. Thus, well before the king was smashing his skull on the hardened desert soil, there was already a plot to accuse Kukkantser of black magic, which was centered on the rumors about what was in the magic wines of Ḫanmaji, but also on his dabbling in snake charming and his regular fraternization with the horse trainers of Sirkanu.
Despite being an explicitly nationalistic epic, the
Namḫarkan describes the charges against its version of Kukkantser, who is called Tsakinaka’us, as being meritless, and it specifically states that the discontented members of the
ku’ena’ that invented them out of hole cloth had to bribe the
šeškalkal, the supreme religious authority of the country, to allow the charges to be heard on the floor of the assembly, let alone by the
Engal Enena’ himself. That’s not entirely true however, because the incumbent
šeškalkal needed no persuading whatsoever in the face of his own ambition, being the great-uncle to the woman that would be the dowager queen if Alama were to inherit. In fact, the
šeškalkal expanded on the charges and bribed witnesses to describe how they had personally witnessed Kukkantser speaking spells on the king’s horse. Of course, snake charming was not thought of as a form of witchcraft or “black magic”, but considering that Enparparra I had died in a riding accident caused by his horse having been bitten by a snake, there were those who thought it was possible that Kukkantser might have bewitched both the horse and the snake, and servants were bribed to place a snake of the same species in his personal collection. He was subsequently arrested during the night, while still at his father’s bedside, and bound, gagged, and dragged to the canals of the city where he was forcibly submerged in the water to ascertain his innocence. His mother, the lady Tajentaṣaḫam, had already fled the city for Tieir (Der) with some 200 cavalry to escort her, having pled with her son for hours to leave with her. Kukkantser’s loyalty to his father would ultimately cost him his life, as it was the law that any man, no matter his station, who falsely accused another of engaging in black magic would suffer the penalty for the crime himself. The members of the plot included the
šeškalkal himself, Mantsittu of Ešnunna (younger brother to Enparparra and uncle to Kukkantser), Sangmenula’ of Isin (the
šeškalkal’s grandson), Siama of Urim (brother to Namennung), Nannamaḫti of Urim (father to Namennung), Tsaraḫ and Ekiaphiringa of Umma (the mother and grandmother of Namennung, respectively), and many others who weren’t present. Though the now dowager queen had no hand in the plot herself, as the
Namḫarkan accurately records, she was aware of it, it was spearheaded by her family, and her father, Nannamaḫti, and her younger brother, Siama specifically. Her mother and grandmother, Tsaraḫ and Ekiaphiringa also played their part, as did her cousin Sangmenula’, and the
šeškalkal, all of whom watched Kukkantser’s submersion into the canal, and all of whom agreed to submerge him three more times until he died.
The king’s blood was not even cold, and his eldest son had drowned while his wife’s own family stood and watched. Alama would wear the horned crown of Lulimnir Andangal within the week, and though Tajentaṣaḫam was in open rebellion, it seemed only a matter of time before the young king’s victory over the foreign interloper would be carved into stucco on the wall of some new wing of his palace. Except, Tajentaṣaḫam was pregnant, already six months along, and if her child was a boy, she could possibly rouse the country to her cause, as her now deceased son was the favored of the two by the common people, and hardly a single person accepted the charges of witchcraft brought against him in the dead of night.
This chapter covers the background of the Kikam Lukallukala’, the “War of Great Men”, as well as some of the political development of the Possession of Khanang (Sumer) as a unitary state and her entangling alliances. Khanang is an ally of the city state of Ḫanmaji (Ḫamazi), a Gutian-speaking political entity in the Plain of Burrarum (Shahrizor), where the primary trade routes with the Iranian Plateau pass through. Khuksikeškiri’s harrying of the Elamite-speaking region of Ambhan (Awan), in the mountains north of Šušin (Susa) has turned the once cordial Awanites into competitors who now seek to reroute the trade routes through the lands of their client, the Gutian-speaking city of Tshenḫaje (Silḫazi) in the Valley of Tshi’um (near Kermanshah).
Ḫanmaji and Ambhan fight a war by proxy, funding the tribes of Silulu and the city of Tshenḫaje respectively, but when the tribes of Silulu are pushed back the Ḫanmajians placate the Hurro-Gutian tribes of Turukkum (Iranian Azerbaijan), who have adopted horse nomadism from the Indo-Europeans of Sírkana (Azerbaijan proper). The Turukkeans discover the practice of child sacrifice and ritual cannibalism and they flee the country, burning everything they can behind them, and declare war on Ḫanmaji. This increasingly entangles the Possession of Khanang with Ḫanmaji, as the Turukkeans have a vendetta against the city and its kings and have to be driven out on multiple occasions by the nobility of Khanang (Sumer).
However, when the king dies and the question of the succession is left open, it is this practice of ritual cannibalism along with an accusation of bewitching the king’s horse and charming snakes that sees the king’s eldest son executed by a faction led by his junior wife, Namennung of Urim (Ur).
. I will also be including updates on the linguistic development of different language groups, as we are starting out waaaaaaaaaaaay back in time, and there will be lots and lots of time for some crazy developments, I think.