Marduk-balassu-iqbi


Marduk-balāssu-iqbi, inscribed mdAMAR.UTU-TI-su-iq-bi or mdSID-TI-zu-DUG4, meaning “Marduk has promised his life,” ca. 819 – 813 BC, was the 8th king of the Dynasty of E of Babylon; he was the successor of his father Marduk-zākir-šumi I, and was the 4th and final generation of Nabû-šuma-ukin I's family to reign. He was contemporary with his father’s former ally, Šamši-Adad V of Assyria, who may have been his brother-in-law, married to whom was possibly his sister Šammu-ramat, the legendary Semiramis, and who was to become his nemesis.

Biography

He was recorded as a witness on a kudurru dated to his father’s 2nd year, 25 years before he ascended the throne, suggesting he was fairly elderly when he assumed power, and he may be a witness on another kudurru, dated to his grandfather’s 31st year, although this individual is identified as the bēl pīḫati, or a “provincial administrator,” a “son” of Arad-Ea. The kudurru pictured is a ṣalmu or commemorative granite stele to Adad-eṭir, the dagger-bearer of Marduk, by his eldest son, where the name Marduk-balāssu-iqbi appears in the context of the donor and possibly may not be the king. The fourth line reads "the king his lord, Marduk-balāssu-iqbi," leading some to assign it to his reign although it is without a succeeding royal determinative and is followed by mārušu rabū, "his eldest son." It is, however, an inscription of this era. He receives a fleeting mention in the Eclectic Chronicle alongside his father.
He seems to have made his capital at Gannanāti, a town on the Diyāla River; he engaged in construction activity in Seleucia, and exerted control over territory encompassing both Dēr and Nippur. His officials, like him, seem to have received their positions through inheritance, such as Enlil-apla-uṣur, the šandabakku or governor of Nippur, and the sons of Tuballiṭ-Ešdar, the sukkallus and šākin ṭēmi, suggesting weak central authority and some local autonomy in the provinces.

Šamši-Adad's campaigns

The Assyrians under, Šamši-Adad V, led two successive campaigns against him, the first of which was his fourth since coming to power. The motivation for these assaults is uncertain, however, Šamši-Adad may have harbored some resentment to the inferior position he had been placed into, in a treaty with Marduk-balāssu-iqbi's immediate predecessor, Marduk-zâkir-šumi.
The eponym year of Šamaš-ilaya records a campaign against “šumme.” The later eponym years of Inurta-ašared and Šamaš-kumua record campaigns against Chaldea and Babylon respectively, and these are thought to correspond with the second campaign against Marduk-balāssu-iqbi and the subsequent overthrow of his successor, Bāba-aḫa-iddina. There is an intervening eponym year of Bêl-lu-ballat which records “campaign against Dēr; Anu the Great went to Dēr”, which probably best represents this first assault.
The campaign route followed the course of the eastern side of the Tigris along the edge of the mountains, as the direct route into Babylonia was blocked by the fortress of Zaddi, the northern most town in Babylonia at this time, a little way south of the Lesser Zab. According to his Annals, Šamši-Adad paused to hunt and kill three fierce lions on the slopes of Mount Epih and then proceeded to leave a trail of devastation in his wake, besieging the town of Me-Turnat on the bank of the Diyāla, which he then crossed at high water, to take and burn, the royal city of Qarne. He looted Di’bina and then assaulted Gannanāti’s suburbs, Datebir and Izduja. He sacked Qiribti-alani, boasting that he had carried away “ spoil, their property, gods, oxen sheep.” Then he despoiled the royal city of Dur-Papsukkal, near Dēr after which he seems to have been successfully countered with a grand alliance of Chaldeans, Elamites, Kassites and Arameans, although the Synchronistic History describes how the Assyrian king “filled the plain with the corpses of warriors,” and his annals record his capture of chariots, cavalry and some of the camp furniture.
The second campaign was apparently a more surgical affair, with Šamši-Adad making a bee-line straight for Gannanāti, causing Marduk-balāssu-iqbi to flee to the Diyāla region where he sought refuge initially in Nimitti-šarri but was cornered following the capture of Dēr and led away in chains to Assyria. Šamši-Adad boasted thirty thousand captives were deported from Dēr in his Gottesbrief, a diviner's literary text recording an address to the king from the god Aššur, from the city of Aššur.
A brick inscription excavated at Tall ‘Umar, ancient Seleucia, in 1933, a neo-Babylonian copy of a legal text recovered from Nippur in 1951 dated to his second year, and a humorous school text described below, are the only extant contemporary inscriptions. The legal text gives as a witness, a certain mdBA.Ú-ŠEŠ-SUM-na, an official who may possibly have been his eventual successor, Bāba-aḫa-iddina.

Ninurta-Pāqidāt's Dog Bite

According to its colophon, "for educating apprentice scribes of Uruk,” Ninurta-Pāqidāt's Dog Bite, also known as The Tale of the Illiterate Doctor in Nippur, has garnered much academic attention and was first published in 1979 by Antoine Cavigneaux when “the text was not properly understood”, from which it can be inferred he did not understand the joke. A certain Ninurta-Pāqidāt, the brother of Ninurta-ša-kunnâ-irammu and nephew of Enlil-Nippuru-ana-ašrišu-ter, of Nippur was bitten by a dog, the symbol of Gula, the goddess of healing. He sought help from Amel-Baba, a priest from Isin, who, after reciting the appropriate anti-rabies incantation:
Ninurta-Pāqidāt must travel to Nippur to collect his fee. On arrival, he encounters Bēltīya-šarrat-Apsî, the daughter of Ra'im-kini-Marduk, who insists in communicating with him in Sumerian, causing much misunderstanding when he mistakes her for mocking him and is threatened with being driven out of town by an outraged mob of apprentice scribes with their buns. Despite the efforts of generations of Assyriologists, such as Erica Reiner, the punch-line remained elusive, until the Sumerian response, en.nu.dúr.me-en, was translated as “O lord, I am a farter,” thus identifying the piece as an early exemplar of lavatorial humor.

Inscriptions