by
Damien F. Mackey
“Why do we have no royal inscriptions or literature, so few year names,
and no monuments—why was the Dynasty’s ideological profile seemingly so spare? Why, beyond its inclusion in Babylonian king lists, does it seem to have impacted Mesopotamian historical memory so slightly?”.
Seth Richardson
How can one possibly build up a plausible history around “so spare” details as a thorough study of the Sealand and its dynasties has presented to zealous historians and archaeologists?
The fact is that one cannot.
It is the sad tale of the Kassites all over again, a Jerry Seinfeld history “about nothing”.
As I wrote in my article:
Horrible Histories: Casualty Kassites
(8) Horrible Histories: Casualty Kassites | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
It is not, I think, too much to say that the Kassites are an enigma for the over-extended conventional scheme.
But, nor do I think that revisionist scholars so far have properly accounted for them.
Georges Roux gave the standard estimate for the duration of Kassite rule of Babylonia: … “… a long line of Kassite monarchs was to govern Mesopotamia or, as they called it, Kar-Duniash for no less than four hundred and thirty-eight years (1595-1157 B.C.)”. This is a substantial period of time; yet archaeology has surprisingly little to show for it.
Georges Roux again:
….
Unfortunately, we are not much better off as regards the period of Kassite domination in Iraq … all we have at present is about two hundred royal inscriptions – most of them short and of little historical value – sixty kudurru … and approximately 12,000 tablets (letters and economic texts), less than 10 per cent of which has been published. This is very little indeed for four hundred years – the length of time separating us from Elizabeth 1.
[Seton] Lloyd, in his book dedicated to the study of Mesopotamian archaeology, can offer only a mere 4 pages (including pictures) to the Kassites, without even bothering to list them in the book’s Index at the back. ….
Incredibly, though the names of the Kassites apparently “reveal a clearly distinct language from the other inhabitants in the region”, as van de Mieroop writes, “and Babylonian texts indicate the existence of a Kassite vocabulary, no single text or sentence is known in the Kassite language”. ….
Obviously, new interpretations are required.
Perhaps a different and more appropriate geography is required for the Kassites along the lines of what Royce (Richard) Erickson has proposed for the Chaldeans and the Elamites:
A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY
(5) A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY | Royce Erickson - Academia.edu
What I wrote here about the Kassites, including the reference to Royce Erickson’s article, may, I think be applied, either as an example, or directly, to the Sealanders.
It may be better to do what Royce Erickson has done, and shift the Land of the Sealand (the Chaldeans) to the NW of Syria, and find there a wealth of geographical sense.
Talk about “ a collection of rags and tatters”, as was applied to ancient Egyptian history: https://aroyking.wordpress.com/2015/05/29/oxford-scholar-egyptian-history-is-a-collection-of-rags-and-tatters/
“Oxford Egyptologist Sir Alan H. Gardiner once wrote that “What is proudly advertised as Egyptian history is merely a collection of rags and tatters”.”
Seth Richardson tells the sad tale of the Sealand in his:
review of O. Boivin, The First Dynasty of the Sealand in Mesopotamia (2018), WZKM 110 (2020): 290-296.
(3) review of O. Boivin, The First Dynasty of the Sealand in Mesopotamia (2018), WZKM 110 (2020): 290-296. | Seth Richardson - Academia.edu
…. Deciding to write a book on The First Dynasty of the Sealand in Mesopotamia (hereafter, FDSM) requires no small amount of courage. Consider how little we know of this ancient state: we can’t say from what capital city it ruled, when it started, or how it ended. The ±200-year period leaves us no identifiable monuments, only a handful of literary products, few if any legal texts, and not much more than 500 texts all told, almost all of them administrative, and almost all without excavated provenance. …. We possess almost none of the sources we usually use to write period histories: no royal inscriptions, no year-name lists, and only about twenty year-names for its ca. two centuries, 17 of which belong to two of twelve kings. …. Only eight of those year-names say anything more than “year when so-and-so was king,” … and only three touch on political or military topics. More than 80% of the texts are dated to those same twenty year-names, which means that the documentation we do have focuses on only about 10% of the dynasty’s lifespan. ….
….
I will focus on one overall desideratum, the lack of a clear vision of the political nature and historical importance of the First Sealand Dynasty. This is a seeming casualty of the book’s lavish attention to detail. There is surely an important role for facts to play here: for a historical period where so much information is lost, the first problem to tackle should indeed be establishing “basic facts,” as this book does, rather than developing fancy theoretical frameworks. But the book could say more about why the Sealand Dynasty state was politically or culturally shaped in the way that it was. Why do we have no royal inscriptions or literature, so few year names, and no monuments—why was the Dynasty’s ideological profile seemingly so spare? Why, beyond its inclusion in Babylonian king lists, does it seem to have impacted Mesopotamian historical memory so slightly? What did it mean that the state apparently ruled not from an existing city, but from an as-yet unidentified (new?) location? If this is a palace archive, why are so few royal officials attested in the texts? .... We could shrug and say that we simply don’t have the evidence to answer. But the situation as a whole is so anomalous that one wants this author’s informed opinion about what it all means, with comparison to the Old Babylonian world that came before and the Kassite times to come. An article from the author on “the big picture” to expand on the brief conclusion of the book, synthesizing the political, economic, and religious data presented, would be most welcome. …. Thus, the book leaves us wanting a second helping, with more explanation of the fascinating facts and analyses provided in the first course. Odette Boivin has by might and main helped to rescue an entire ancient kingdom from out of the darkness. ….
[End of quotes]
Perhaps Odette Boivin, undoubtedly exhibiting “no small amount of courage”, has set herself the impossible task, defending the indefensible.
Do we actually need a complete geographical re-orientation for the Sealand along the lines of Royce Erickson’s ‘tectonic’ shift of the Chaldeans,
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