by
Damien F. Mackey
Amazingly - though not really surprisingly under the circumstances
- Lagash and Girsu seem to ‘fall permanently off the political map’,
according to Seth Richardson (and that is because they do not belong on this map).
There is yet much to be said about the recent geographical tsunami that is changing forever the face of ancient geography.
It is well exemplified, for instance, by Royce (Richard) Erickson’s shocking article (2020):
A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY
(3) A PROBLEM IN CHALDAEAN AND ELAMITE GEOGRAPHY | Royce Erickson - Academia.edu
whose Figure 6 here tells of the dramatic geographical shift for Chaldea and Elam:
Figure 6 – Consensus Versus Proposed Route of Flight to Nagite
I, in my article:
Surreptitiously shifting sideways, southwards, some supposedly safe Sumerian sites
(1) Surreptitiously shifting sideways, southwards, some supposedly safe Sumerian sites | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
told of the re-location that I envisaged for some notable sites of Sumer and its environs.
Thus I wrote:
Geographical Revolution
When, only a few months ago, I began writing a book, History of the Fertile Crescent, I had no idea whatsoever that I would end up denuding Sumer and its environs of many of its famous, supposed sites.
I had already come to accept, though - what others, too, were realising - that Sumer could not have been the biblical Shinar.
Apart from the two names not being a good inter-fit, why had archaeologists failed to find Akkad? - whose associated sea-trading partners, Magan and Meluhha, I well knew to have been, respectively, Egypt and Ethiopia (presumably ports therein), and not, say, Oman and the Indus Valley.
This led me to search for Akkad as a major city accessible by sea to Egypt and Ethiopia, and for the associated Dilmun, which, as I now began to realise, could have nothing to do with Bahrain, as is thought.
Clearly, now, Akkad (Sumerian Agade) was Ugarit, known to the Egyptians as IKAT. Dilmun, known to the Greeks as Tylos, was another most famous Mediterranean port city, now, obviously, Tyre (Tylos = Tyros).
Sargon of Akkad’s famous Inscription had to be re-interpreted:
‘The ships from Meluhha [read Ethiopia]
the ships from Magan [read Egypt]
the ships from Dilmun [read Tyre] he made tie-up alongside the quay of Akkad [read Ugarit]’.
I then lifted it into another gear:
It gets worse.
I then came to the shock realisation that the often associated Eshnunna and Lagash were not locations in Sumer at all - despite detailed histories being built around that notion - but were, instead, to be located in Judea, that ‘they’, in fact, represented a name-combination that I had, quite some time ago, established from the inscriptions of Sargon II of Assyria:
Ashduddu was the strong fort of Lachish;
Ashdu-dimmu was the coastal Ashdod
There were two strong cities, “Ashdod” (meaning ‘strong’), and one of these was Lachish, second only in importance to the fort of Jerusalem.
Historians and archaeologists have for long been taking Judean history - from the time of the United Monarchy (kings Saul, David and Solomon) - and writing it into a far more ancient (though fictitious) Sumerian history – just as they had done in the case of the biblical Nimrod, by Sumerian-ising his major cities, such as Akkad and Babel, instead of locating these, as they should have done, hundreds of kilometres to the NW.
This is a typical map, with all of Akkad, Eshnunna and Lagash, wrongly designated there.
In light of my new geographical perspective, the Girsu (also on the map) that is regularly associated with Lagash, as its capital city and religious (Temple)-cult centre, can only be Jerusalem itself (Girsu = Jerus-).
Amazingly - though not really surprisingly under the circumstances - Lagash and Girsu seem to ‘fall permanently off the political map’, according to Seth Richardson (and that is because they do not belong on this map):
Ningirsu returns to his plow: Lagaš and Girsu take leave of Ur (2008)
(5) Ningirsu returns to his plow: Lagaš and Girsu take leave of Ur (2008) | Seth Richardson - Academia.edu
The Ur III state came to its end through a series of passive defections of individual provinces over the course of about twenty years, rather than by any single catastrophic event. This pattern of defections is nowhere better reflected than in the gradual progression of provinces abandoning the use of Ibbi-Sîn’s year names over his years 2–8.
Among the cities that fell away from the control of Ur in those years were Girsu and Lagaš, where Ur III year names are not attested after Ibbi-Sîn’s sixth year.1 Like Puzriš-Dagān and Umma (but unlike Larsa, Uruk, Isin, and Nippur), these cities seemingly fell permanently off the political map of lower Mesopotamia following their departure from Ur’s control, never again the seat of significant institutional life to judge by the low number of texts and inscriptions coming from the sites. At the same time, it is difficult to assert from evidence that any hardship or conflict either precipitated or resulted from Lagaš-Girsu’s decamping from Ur’s authority; no especial difficulty marks the event. ….
Considering that Puzrish-Dagan and Umma likewise fall off the map, we may need now to begin critically examining these two places as well.
Happily, for Sumeriologists and the like, Larsa, Uruk, Isin, and Nippur, seem to be firmly established in Sumer.
Though I would distinguish between the well-known Sumerian Uruk and the Urukku seemingly associated with Girsu (my Jerusalem) as its sanctuary.
(Ur, Uruk, appear to have been very common ancient names, widely distributed).
Also to be distinguished, in this context, are the Sumerian Ur and the home of Abram, “Ur of the Chaldees”, which is Urfa (Şanliurfa) in SE Turkey, far from Sumer.
Finally, given my view (and that of others) that Jerusalem was the same site as the antediluvian Garden of Eden, then the Gu-Edin (Guedena) over which the king of Lagash, Eannatum … and the king of Umma, fought, could perhaps be a reference to the region of Jerusalem (or some place closely associated with it).
[End of quote]
With Sumer now de-nuded and gaping, like a mouth emptied of its many teeth, may it not be time to consider for it as well a new, more westerly, location?
The stand-out candidate for Sumer, I think, must be the important SUMUR, a virtually identical name, which is a Syrian city situated between Byblos and Arwad.
It is known under variant names: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumur_(Levant)
“Sumur (Biblical Hebrew: צְמָרִי [collective noun denoting the city inhabitants]; Egyptian: Smr; Akkadian: Sumuru; Assyrian: Simirra) …. It was a major trade center. The city has also been referred to in English publications as Simyra,[1] Ṣimirra, Ṣumra,[2] Sumura,[3] Ṣimura,[4] Zemar,[5] and Zimyra.[6]”
Sumer, for its part, was known by the standard Babylonian name of Shumeru, a name that is linguistically very close to Sumur as, say, Ṣimura.
We continue to read of Sumur at Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumur_(Levant)
Sumur (or "Sumura") appears in the Amarna letters (mid-14th century BCE); Ahribta is named as its ruler. It was under the guardianship of Rib-Addi, king of Byblos, but was conquered by Abdi-Ashirta's expanding kingdom of Amurru. Pro-Egyptian factions may have seized the city again, but Abdi-Ashirta's son, Aziru, recaptured Sumur. Sumur became the capital of Amurru. ….
It is likely, although not completely certain, that the "Sumur" of the Amarna letters is the same city later known as "Simirra."…. Simirra was claimed as part of the Assyrian empire by Tiglath-Pileser III in 738 BCE, but rebelled against Assyria in 721 at the beginning of the reign of Sargon II…..
It has been linked by Maurice Dunand and N. Salisby to the archaeological site of Tell Kazel in 1957. ….
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