CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

NORTH MESOPOTAMIA IN

THE THIRD MILLENNIUM BC



Augusta McMahon

INTRODUCTION

W

hat lies to the north of the Sumerian World? How and why did the north and

Sumer interact?

Sumer’s northern neighbour in the third millennium BCremains enigmatic and

under-discussed; this chapter aims to shed light on this region and on the nature of

the north–south relationship. Was northern Mesopotamia a periphery to Sumer’s core,

merely replicating its cultural and economic developments? Was it a less-complex but

resource-rich area targeted by more powerful and resource-hungry political units of the

south? Or did its varied environment and mixed population generate strong and

dynamic independent systems, processes and ideologies?

NORTH OF SUMER

In general and even in specialist literature, ‘Mesopotamia’ is often used to discuss
Sumer/Babylonia, the alluvial plains of southern Iraq with their irrigation agriculture
and long-lived city-states. Northern Mesopotamia, or northern Iraq and northeast
Syria, is a vague adjunct or entirely omitted. Despite recent decades in which
archaeological work in the north has outstripped that in Sumer, the culture–history
of the region rarely appears in modern texts, and north-based research projects are not
widely visible. Northern Mesopotamia is awkward, with idiosyncratic sites and
material culture, particularly in the third millennium BC. It includes Tigris- and
Euphrates-based settlements and cultures; it comprises foothills, rain-fed agricultural
plains, river valleys and steppe. How can we bring together western Kranzhügeln,
Middle Khabur grain distribution sites, Upper Khabur hollow ways and much-debated
Ninevite 5 ceramics into a coherent narrative of the region? We even lack a comfortable
label designation: terms such as ‘une civilisation “syro-mésopotamienne” (Rouault and
Wäfler 2000 : 1 ) have not been comprehensively embraced, while the commonly used
‘Upper Mesopotamia/Haute Mésopotamie’ (e.g., Kuzucuoglu and Marro 2007 ;
Lebeau 2000 ) implies a ‘Lower Mesopotamia’, which, however, appears rarely.
Northern Mesopotamia saw very early explorations in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-
Hittite capital cities (Nimrud, Khorsabad, Nineveh, Carchemish and Tell Halaf ). And
once archaeology replaced exploration, prehistoric investigations also treated northern