goods, and a command post at the entrance. The palace was like a highly complex
organism at the heart of the kingdom. It sheltered the king, his servants and his
women; here he administered his kingdom and exercised his power; he dealt with
affairs of state, economic matters, manufacturing, storage, the taking of decisions;
workshops lay out of the palace, outside in the town and elsewhere in the kingdom.
The importance of the storage depots lay in the fact that they provisioned the palace
itself while goods such as food, oil and clothing were redistributed as payment to the
servants. Here the king received the homage of his servants and met with visiting
dignitaries, sometimes from far away; here he gave banquets, even if there are other
places where this could have happened. Here ritual ceremonies closely tied to the
exercise of power took place, power which was founded on the Kispum ritual in
honour of dead kings from whom the legitimacy of the dynasty came.The temples
Under the Amorite dynasty the temple of the Lions and the temple of Ninhursag were
only slightly modified, while the temple of Shamash was transformed. King Iahdun-
Lim decided to rebuild the temple of Shamash and his rebuilding ensured that the
very old plan survived till the fall of Mari, something which is shown by the
foundation nails of City II which he carefully replaced in the new sanctuary beside his
own. These took the form of nine baked bricks inscribed with a long text of self-
glorification.
Alongside this apparent archaism is an important innovation: a high terrace for
the cult was built against the northwest edge of the temple in the form of a terrace
15. 30 mx 14. 30 m in size, standing 1. 70 m high when it was uncovered. Three faces were
decorated with niches and the fourth was occupied by a staircase. This terrace, known
as the Massif à Redans, was integrated with the temple by a system of interconnections
at ground floor level and probably by another at the higher level. Perhaps it was an
observatory for studying the sky and the stars, or perhaps for bird watching. There is
a new aspect to this terrace, it was not used by all the temples but only by one. This
was new at Mari, but there are examples in other places at the same time, at Tell Rimah
in Assyria for example and at Alalakh in Syria.
THE END OF MARI
Mari vanished in 1760 according to the middle chronology, or perhaps about a century
later according to H. Gasche (Gasche et al. 1998 ). Hammurabi of Babylon conquered
successively Elam, Eshnunna and Larsa before turning back to vanquish Mari in turn.
Babylonian troops were installed at Mari and Hammurabi’s servants took the time to
sort the archives and then carried off as booty everything in the way of riches or art
objects in the city. Finally, they set fire to all the monuments, the palace and the
temples, before knocking down the walls. Although there is no direct evidence, we can
assume that most of the population were led away into exile.
Mari ceased to exist, not only because of a military disaster, she had been reborn
after several such events, but also because the parameters of economic life had changed
(movement of the centres of decision-making in the north and at the foot of the
mountains). Changes too in the means of transport (overland transport, caravans and–– J.-C. Margueron, trans H. Crawford ––