Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Kassites
Summary
The Kassites (ˈkæsaɪts) were people of the ancient Near East, who controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire 1531 BC and until 1155 BC (short chronology).
They gained control of Babylonia after the Hittite sack of Babylon in 1531 BC, and established a dynasty generally assumed to have been based first in that city, after a hiatus. Later rule shifted to the new city of Dur-Kurigalzu. By the time of Babylon's fall, the Kassites had already been part of the region for a century and a half, acting sometimes with the Babylon's interests and sometimes against. There are records of Kassite and Babylonian interactions, in the context of military employment, during the reigns of Babylonian kings Samsu-iluna (1686 to 1648 BC), Abī-ešuh, and Ammī-ditāna.
The origin and classification of the Kassite language, like the Sumerian language and Hurrian language, is uncertain, and, also like the two latter languages, has generated a wide array of speculation over the years, even to the point of linking it to Sanskrit. The Kassite religion is also poorly known. The names of some Kassite deities are known. The chief gods, titular gods of the kings, were Shuqamuna and Shumaliya. As was typical in the region, there was some cross pollination with other religions. After Babylon came within the Kassite sphere of control its city-god, Marduk was absorbed into the Kassite pantheon.
Documentation of the Kassite period depends heavily on the scattered and disarticulated tablets from Nippur, where thousands of tablets and fragments have been excavated. They include administrative and legal texts, letters, seal inscriptions, private votive inscriptions, and even a literary text (usually identified as a fragment of a historical epic). Unfortunately, many of those tablets have not yet been published, including hundreds held in the Ottoman Museum in Istanbul.
About 100 Kassite tablets were found at Dur-Kurigalzu. A few inscribed building materials of Kurigalzu I were found at Kish.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.