The Kassite State: Territorial State or Empire?

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Hey all --



I thought I would post here an extract from my dissertation which I am currently working on. The dissertation is on the Isin II dynasty, also known as the fourth Babylonian dynasty (c. 1157–1026). The Isin II dynasty follows the better known Kassite dynasty and together the Kassite and Isin II dynasties are referred to as the "Middle Babylonian" period. In order to frame the Isin II state I first had to discuss and examine the Kassite dynasty so that readers would be able to trace the development of Babylonian statehood in context. Therefore I had to examine the question of why it is that the Kassite state is conventionally called a "state" and not an empire, because, of course, other eras of Babylonian history are seen as definitively imperial. The following discussion then examines the problem of what is empire according to scholarly discussions in the field and why should the Kassite state be deemed a state rather than an empire (or should it be an empire)?



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Turning to the problem of classification, traditional surveys of the history of Mesopotamian empire recognize six instances of imperialism: the Akkadian empire, the Ur III empire, the Old Babylonian empire (or Amorite empires of Šamšī-Adad in the North and Hammurabi in the South), the Middle Assyrian empire, the Neo-Assyrian empire and the Neo-Babylonian empire. Excluded here is Kassite Babylonia, which has been described with near unanimity as a territorial state or a regional state.(424) Excluded here is Kassite Babylonia, which has been described with near unanimity as a territorial state or a regional state.(425) In a chapter which charted the development of Mesopotamian empire and statehood, Barjamovic stated that the Kassites had “restructured south Mesopotamia into a strongly integrated regional state” and that “the state was organized into a small number of territorial provinces, and political power centered on a few influential individuals with extensive workforces of slaves and conscripted laborers at their command.”(426) However, the specific reasons why Kassite Babylonia fails to meet the criteria of empire generally go unarticulated (or have long ceased to be reiterated).(427)

Among those who theorize and attempt to define empire, a general consensus is the following: “empires are expansionist states that hold dominion over diverse subject polities of varying scope and complexity, and that these states are largely concerned with channeling resources from their subject territories to the core polity for the economic benefit and political perpetuation of a limited segment of the population.”(428) Should it be deemed the case that Kassite Babylonia was not territorially expansionist, it would follow (according to this definition) that it was not an empire.



424. As recounted in Larson 1979, 75. For the observation that, in searching for the precursor to the Neo-Assyrian empire Assyriologists have weighed in turn every regional possibility (but did not categorize Kassite Babylonia as such), see Liverani 2017, 535.
425. For example, Larsen 1979, 82; Liverani 2013, 364; Barjamovic 2013, 15; Brinkman 2017, 9.
426. Barjamovic 2013, 15. The description of Kassite Babylonia as having a “small number of territorial provinces” may seem fair in comparison to the size of the Neo-Assyrian empire (some 70 provinces), however, twenty (high-estimate 30) does not seem otherwise to be a small number of provinces.
427. For example, Larson’s overview of Mesopotamian empire devotes a single sentence to Kassite Babylonia: “Babylonia was under Kassite domination in this period and developed into a strong centralized state with links to the east” (Larsen 1979, 82).
428. Parker 2001, 12. Similarly, Heinz (2012, 706–707) stated about empire: “the main spatial characteristic of an empire is its supra-regional geographical extent – i.e., its spatial extension beyond a local center or core region in which a ruling elite exercised power. Politically speaking, the empire is expressed through the domination by one political elite of other ruling elites, whether near or far.”




Yet, those scholars who hold modus operandi and a certain universalizing ideology to be the quintessence of empire might cast the Kassites in a different light. Liverani, describing the “universal empire” of the Neo-Assyrian period, puts it in these terms:

An empire becomes universal not (only) because of its size, but because of its “mission” to dominate the entire known world, a mission entrusted to the emperor by a god. This remains the qualifying feature when we compare empires to other known polities that were perhaps not smaller in a purely material sense but were devoid of such a mission – in other terms, of such an ideology.(429)

The case could be made that the Assyrians owe something of this approach to the Kassites: it has been argued that Middle Assyrian royal titulary gained some of its universal dimension on exposure to Babylonian material;(430) Assyrian royal inscriptions, from Šamšī-Adad on, demonstrate the influence of Babylonian royal inscriptions;(431) the building of the palace at Dūr-Kurigalzu, the door-sockets of which were inscribed with the name “palace of the entire world” (Egal-kišarra), started a trend which would be followed in Assyria and elsewhere (namely, the building of a new royal cities by a charismatic leader).(432) Almost nothing of the painted motifs on the walls of that palace survives to be examined today, but what little that does, evidencing an early procession motif, is held to have influenced designs at later Assyrian palaces;(433) notably, the term pīḫātu for provinces appears first in Kassite Babylonia and subsequently in the Middle Assyrian empire.(434)




429. Liverani 2017, 536. Similarly Nielsen (2012, 403), in considering the strength of the Kassite Babylonia vis-à-vis its Middle Assyrian counterpart and what that may impart to post-Kassite Babylonia, commented “The ideology of empire, which emphasizes the vertical rule of a higher authority over horizontal connections within a nation, can perpetuate an empire regardless of its territorial scale.”
430. Brinkman 1974b, 412. Granted, Tukultī-Ninurta I was in the process of conquering Babylonia upon adopting such titles as “King of Karduniaš” and “King of Sumer and Akkad” (which had not featured in Assyrian titulary previously), however, the argument is more specifically that these titles came about as a result of the fact that “Babylonian tablets were imported into Assyria during his reign” (ibid). Interestingly, the sequence šarru rabû, šarru dannu, šar kiššati which frequently occurs in Assyrian royal inscriptions is first attested for Kurigalzu I (Brinkman 1974, 405). However, “king of the universe” (šar kiššati) was used by already by Sargon of Akkad (and subsequently, by Šamšī-Adad and again by the Middle Assyrian kings — see section 5.3.1.2 below).
431. Grayson 1980, 162; Brinkman 1974b, 412.
432. Beaulieu 2017, 7.
433. Oates 1986, 98; Malko 2014, 171.
434. Sassmannshausen 2001, 22. Machinist (1982, 13–14) indicates that Assyrian policy did not turn to establishing provinces until the thirteenth century.




Paulus has raised numerous objections to the consensus view of Kassite Babylonia. Two of those arguments are summed as follows: i) as indicated by the titles “king of the four quarters” and “king of all” (šar kiššati, which is used frequently by subsequent dynasties), the Kassites saw themselves as running a “world kingdom.” (435) To this might be added the observation of Heinz: “Kurigalzu I called himself “ king of the four quarters” and, for the first time since the Ur III period, had himself deified, a logical step for a ruler who strove for world domination and needed maximum legitimacy.” (436) In fact, it is little discussed that the sole (uncontroversially Kassite) royal inscription mentioning military activities records Kurigalzu’s conquest of Susa (although there is no indication that he held it for any length of time).(437) And ii) Paulus takes the intermittent border disputes between Middle Babylonia and Middle Assyria, which occasionally extended into full on military campaigns, as indicative of the Kassite desire not just to counter Assyria, but to subdue or eliminate it.(438) By thus making the case that the Kassites did not expand, but were nonetheless expansionist, Paulus argues that the Kassites might better be classed as imperialistic and, indeed, an empire.(439)

435. Paulus 2014b, 91–92. cf. Liverani (2001, 23) who points out that Kurigalzu I was the first Kassite king to adopt the title šar kiššati and that it was subsequently adopted by successive Kassite kings. In Liverani’s understanding, titles such as these evoke an ideology of “universal control”; in the Mesopotamian context, such an ideology entails control of the upper sea and the lower sea. The author further contends that such titles are part of “the demonstrative materialization of success,” that is, they are not idle whimsy. The king must demonstrate his capacity to carry out the agenda signaled in his titles. Liverani opts to use Assyrian and Hittites examples to demonstrate this point, however (Liverani 2001, 26). The original universalizing royal ideology was, of course, that of the Akkadian empire (Larson 1979, 78).
436. Heinz 2012, 717.
437. CBS 8598, a short votive inscription of Kurigalzu I which, nevertheless, mentions that this king conquered the city of Susa (Brinkman 1976, 61, 233 = Q.2.63; for a recent discussion and edition of the text see Radner 2005, 184–186).
438. Paulus 2014b, 91–93.
439. Paulus 2014b, 93. Such a view is currently in the minority, but one might also note Heinz (2012, 716) “it is obvious that in a relatively short period of time the Kassites were able to expand their political power to such a degree that we can speak of a Kassite empire.” The author is less explicit about his reasoning in classifying Kassite Babylonia as an empire, but emphasizes the titulary assumed by Kassite kings such as Kurigalzu I (discussed above). Naturally, Paulus’ position will be challenged by some and Richardson (2020, 168 n. 8), responding directly to these arguments for empire, opined: “These are all accurate descriptions of the Kassite state, but I do not think them particularly imperial in comparison to more typical criteria, especially expansionism (or an ideology thereof), rule over a periphery in an unequal relationship of power, a change in self-conception (as in an “Augustan transformation”), or, as analyzed here, a conception of futurity and durability.” Incidentally, Richardson’s discussion of “futurity,” as it pertains to Isin II royal ideology, will be discussed in section 5.3.1.3.




Düring, whose definition of empire requires only that an expansive state, consisting of a minimal of two pre-existing states, govern in a way that sustains itself and its imperial control (to paraphrase), refers to a Kassite empire.(440) (And, by that definition, it might be supposed that the Kassites had met the territorial prerequisite of empire already with the acquisition of the Sealand). The author describes the Kassite stratagem as mirroring that of other ANE empires in terms of its interference in and remodeling of settlement systems, construction of a new capital, its imposition of a provincial system and its universalizing royal ideology. He further maintains that the Kassites “were at least in part pursuing territorial strategies in their efforts to dominate their territories, that is they were actively intervening in landscapes and societies they dominated in order to create a more solid foundation for their rule.”(441)

Further, on the topic of the classification of the Kassite state, there are several aspects of Kassite geography that are worth examining: at its fullest extent, the Kassite state stretched from the lower sea to the border with Assyria in the northwest and to the Zagros foothills in the east.(442) It might be added that whether any of this territory (which may include Dilmun) should entail foreign territorial acquisition depends on how one delineates the Babylonian heartland (or rather, how the Babylonians did). With Fuchs, it might be admitted that the current empirical basis for this assessing the extent of Kassite territory is not particularly strong: the kidney shape (“nierenförmiges”) of the Kassite territory, which is the shape that the state tends to assume when mapped by modern scholarship, has rightly been hailed as indicative how sparse the evidence actually is (“wie spärlich die vorhandenen Hinweise sind”).(444)

Although the present writer maintains the conventional “territorial state” as a descriptor for Kassite Babylonia, the arguments for a Kassite empire are advanced here as worthy of deliberation. In the future, they may result in a redefinition of the not only the third, but also the fourth Babylonian dynasty (or compel the adoption of some nuanced descriptor such as incipient-empire, or proto-empire).



440. Düring 2020, 9.
441. Düring 2020, 19–20, 111.
442. Paulus 2014b, 92.
443. The Sargon Geography, lines 6–30, sketches an area corresponding to Sargon’s empire, which, by the evidence of this text, seems to have redefined the notion of heartland in Babylonian reckoning. Accordingly, in the emic view, the Babylonian heartland stretched from Mari on the Euphrates, to the borders of the Arabian desert in the West, to the Zagros in the East, and south to the Persian Gulf, even to Magan and Meluḫḫa (Horowitz 1998, 81). If the inferences which Horowitz’ makes about these lines are correct, the Babylonian notion of heartland had swollen and become empire size (specifically, the empire of Sargon I). Could it be said that Kassite ambitions to secure the homeland were, in effect, imperial? An emic notion of geography of this sort would, in any case, undermine the prospect of delineating what is foreign and what is local on the basis of the Babylonian worldview.
444. This from Fuchs (2017, 123) who refers to “des Reiches der Kassitendynastie.” As for a kidney shaped area Fuchs is here referring to the Nashef’s depiction of Kassite Babylonia in the TAVO atlas, but see Roaf 1990, 142 for a similar result (also kidney shaped).