The City of Tabetu and the Kings of the Land of Mari

Abstract

The 2005 excavation at Tell Taban (ancient Tabetu), located in the Middle Habur region, brought to light a Middle Assyrian archive which documents the administration of the local palace. This paper offers a preliminary report on this archive as well as a study of the political status of the city in the Middle Assyrian period on the basis of the new material. The cuneiform texts constituting the archive were written during the mid 13th and early 12th centuries B.C.E. The archive reveals that the city had an unusual political position within Assyria: the city was subject to Assyrian rule, but retained a privileged position as a local kingdom, differing from other provinces (pahutu) in many respects. First of all the city was governed not by a governor (bel pahete) but local rulers, who bore the title “king of the land of Mari” (sar mat Mari) and formed a local dynasty at least from the mid 13th to the early 11th centuries B.C.E. It seems very probable that this position was acknowledged in the Assyrian capital, the city of ssur. There is a possibility that the local dynasty was an offshoot of the Assyrian royal family. The geographical name “the land of Mari” in the titles of the local rulers, reminiscent of the city of Mari in the 3rd and early 2nd millennia B.C.E., seems to derive from a local tradition originating in the period when the city of Tabetu was ruled by the city of Mari and its successor, the city of Terqa, in the 18th century B.C.E.