|
Around 2340 B.C., Mari suffered some setbacks. Perhaps
following the military expedition commanded not by Sargon of Agadeh who
had just founded the Akkadian empire in Mesopotamia, but by a king of
Ebla, whose site has just been found some fifty kilometers to the
south-west of Aleppo. For about three and a half centuries, until 1850
B.C., Mari knew the rule of the Shakkanakkou, governors appointed by its
successive masters, the Akkadians of Agadeh, then the Somerians of Ur.
These Shakkanakkou were actually princes of Mari, who on occasion were
even authorized by the sovereigns of the Sumerland to bear the titles of
Kings.
The end of the 3rd millenary witnessed the settling of new populations,
the Amorites, in Mesopotamia and a little later in Syria. They put an
end to the third dynasty of Ur (2111-2003) and founded various kingdoms.
One being Babylon, of which the most famous sovereign was Hammurabi
(1792- 1750) and who was the most powerful (1 St. dynasty, from 1804 to
1595). Around the middle of the 19th century B.C., a new king settled in
Mari, Yahdoon Lim, the son of the Amorite king of Terqa. The site where
he settled was found at Tall Ashara, fifty kilometers upstream in the
valley of the Euphrates.
A little after his death, (some twenty years of rule) Mari fell under
the domination of Assyria, then again under Zimri Lim, a descendant of
Yahdoon Lim. Under his authority the kingdom of Mari recovered for a
short time a power comparable to that which it knew at the time of
archaic dynasties. Numerous written tablets unearthed in the archives
prove this. This prosperity came to a brutal end in 1858 B.C., when
Hammurabi, who destroyed the Kingdom, looted the city and the royal
palace. The site was abandoned, and if occupied later on, it never had
any importance again. |
|
