Rim-anum

Rim-Anum was a king of the 6th and last dynasty of Uruk , who lived around 1805 BC. Ruled. The exact government dates are not known. His predecessor was Irdanene (1818 -? BC), his successor and last king of Uruk was Nabi-Ilischu (? - 1802 BC). After his reign, Uruk fell to the kings of Larsa and then to the Old Babylonian Empire . Rim-Anum carried the title Lu-Gal , the Sumerian term for “king”, translated roughly synonymous with “great man” or “great man”.

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Even if the historical texts are sparse and only survived as fragments, Rim-Anum is well documented by economic texts. Annual dates of his reign are listed in a good dozen such documents.

The Ahlamu , predatory nomads, perhaps the ancestors of the later Arameans , are also mentioned in Rim-Anum's reign .

Samuel I. Feigin (1934) lists 20 texts from the reign of Rim-Anum about prisoners of war ( asîru ). There is even mention of a bit asiri , a “house of the prisoners”; this indicates numerous armed conflicts: prisoners of war came from Isin , among others ; 102 prisoners who were taken prisoner at the gate of Isin are partly mentioned by name. Some of the prisoners come from Esnunna ; Feigin thinks these are mercenaries. The prisoners were used as assistants to craftsmen, for example brewers, weavers and porters. They apparently also milled flour for themselves and for royal officials and workers of the bît šaprim , possibly the "house of the administrators". The king sacrificed a certain Awêl-Nabium, captured in Isin, to the god Ramanum through his priest Idin Šamašan . Some of the prisoners were probably also ransomed. Prisoners from Kisurra , Mutiabal , Gutium , Sutium , Malgû , Subartu and Elam are also mentioned. A certain Marduk-naṣir, chief of the Amorites ( ^d Marduk-na-ṣir akil Amurrî ), is also on a list that may also include prisoners of war.

Domination

Rim-Anum is one of the Elamite rulers who, as conquerors advancing from the north, succeeded in subjugating parts of Babylonia . A fragment of the text reports that Rim-Anum brought his scattered people back together - perhaps an indication that he was restoring the weakened central authority in Uruk. Furthermore, victories of Rim-Anum against the "land of Emmutbaal" and the allied troops of Esnunna , Isin and Kazallu , who tried to plunder his country, are documented.

In the surviving economic texts from the reign of Rim-Anum, the places Subartu , Ašnunnak , Ašuru or Asiru ( Assyria ), Gutû , Amuru (Martu) are mentioned; accordingly Rim-Anum maintained economic and possibly also power-political relations as far as Mesopotamia and the mountainous countries east of Uruks.

However, the historical sources are so thin that neither his exact reign is known, nor in which city he resided, what influence his government had on the country or in what context his conquests stand for the simultaneous advance of the kings of Babel .

literature

Annunziata Rositani : Rim-Anum Texts in the British Museum . NISABA 4, Dipartimento di Scienze dell 'Antichita dell'universita degli Studi di Messina 2003.
Samuel I. Feigin: The Captives in Cuneiform Inscriptions . In: The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures . Volume 50/4, 1934, pp. 217-245.
P. Koschaker and A. Ungnad: Hammurabi's Law . 1923
Andrea Seri: "The House of Prisoners". Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records, De Gruyter. 2013

Web links

predecessor	Office	successor
Irdanene	King of Uruk 19th century	Nabi-Ilishu

personal data
SURNAME	Rim-anum
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	King of Uruk
DATE OF BIRTH	before 1805 BC Chr.
DATE OF DEATH	19th century BC BC or 18th century BC Chr.