Karaindash
Encyclopedia
Karaindaš was one of the more prominent rulers of the Kassite
Kassites
The Kassites were an ancient Near Eastern people who gained control of Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire after ca. 1531 BC to ca. 1155 BC...

 dynasty and reigned towards the end of the 15th century, BC. An inscription on a tablet detailing building work calls him “Mighty King, King of Babylonia
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...

, King of Sumer
Sumer
Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....

 and Akkad, King of the Kassites, King of Karuduniaš”.Tablet A 3519, in the collection of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

Eanna of Inanna

Karaindaš’ own eleven-line Sumerian
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer, which was spoken in southern Mesopotamia since at least the 4th millennium BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed a very intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism...

 inscriptionsFor example BM 90287, 11-line brick inscription in the British Museum. adorn bricks from the Temple dedicated to the mother goddess Inanna
Inanna
Inanna, also spelled Inana is the Sumerian goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare....

, in Uruk
Uruk
Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, on the ancient dry former channel of the Euphrates River, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Uruk gave its name to the Uruk...

, where he commissioned the spectacular façade pictured. It is 205 cm high and would originally have been constructed from around five hundred pre-formed baked bricks, which were set in recessed socles
Socle (architecture)
In architecture, a socle is a short plinth used to support a pedestal, sculpture or column. In the field of archaeology, this term is used to refer to a wall base, frequently of stone, that supports the upper part of the wall, which is made of a different material, frequently mud brick...

, depicting both male and female deities holding water jugs. The bearded males wear horned flat caps and double streams of water flow symmetrically to frame the niches. Apart from the simple dedication, there are no significant texts adorning the façades.

The temple to Inanna was originally located in a courtyard of the Eanna, or “House of Heaven”, precinct of Uruk. It was a rectangular building with a long cella
Cella
A cella or naos , is the inner chamber of a temple in classical architecture, or a shop facing the street in domestic Roman architecture...

 and ante-cella surrounded by corridors and the elaborately decorated external wall with corner bulwarks
Bastion
A bastion, or a bulwark, is a structure projecting outward from the main enclosure of a fortification, situated in both corners of a straight wall , facilitating active defence against assaulting troops...

. The inner sanctuary had the cult image at the end, instead of the usual siting in the middle of a long wall.

It was excavated during the 1928/29 season by a team led by Director Julius Jordan under the auspices of the Deutsche Orient Gesellschaft and Deutsche Not-Gemeinschaft. A section of the outer wall has been reassembled and moved to the Vorderasiatisches
Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin
The Vorderasiatisches Museum is an archaeological museum in Berlin. It is in the basement of the south wing of the Pergamon museum and has one of the world's largest collections of Southwest Asian art. 14 halls distributed across 2000 square meters of exhibition surface display southwest Asian...

 wing of the Pergamon Museum
Pergamon Museum
The Pergamon Museum is situated on the Museum Island in Berlin. The site was designed by Alfred Messel and Ludwig Hoffmann and was constructed in twenty years, from 1910 to 1930. The Pergamon houses original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the Pergamon Altar and the Market Gate...

 in Berlin. Parts of the façade were in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, but were stolen during the looting of the museum after the American occupation of Baghdad during the second Gulf War and have since disappeared.

Diplomatic Relations

He concluded a boundary treaty with Aššur-bêl-nišešu
Ashur-bel-nisheshu
Ashur-Bel-Nisheshu was the king of Assyria from 1407 BC to 1398 BC...

 of Assyria (1407-1399; short chronology
Short chronology timeline
The short chronology is one chronology of the Near Eastern Bronze and Early Iron Age, which fixes the reign of Hammurabi to 1728 BC – 1686 BC and the sack of Babylon to 1531 BC....

), “together with an oath” according to the Synchronistic Chronicle."Synchronistic Chronicle" (ABC 21), tablet A, lines 1 through 4.

According to Sassmannshausen, it is very likely that Karaindaš was the Babylonian king who sent precious gifts, including lapis lazuli, to pharaoh Thutmosis III during his 8th campaign, the attack on the Mitanni
Mitanni
Mitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC...

, according to the annals of Thutmosis III
Annals of Thutmose III
The Annals of Thutmose III are composed of numerous inscriptions of ancient Egyptian military records gathered from the 18th dynasty campaigns of Thutmose III's armies in Syro-Palestine. These recordings can be found on the inside walls of the chamber housing the "holy of holies" at the great...

. This was conducted in the 33rd of his reign or around 1447 BC according to the Low Chronology
Low chronology
The term Low Chronology most often refers to the*Low Chronology of the Ancient Near East*Low Chronology of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt...

 of Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...

, suggesting Karaindaš had a very long reign if this chronology coincides with that of the short chronology used for the Near East, but there are chronological difficulties trying to correlate Tuthmosis and Karaindaš.

Burna-Buriash II, in his Amarna correspondence
Amarna letters
The Amarna letters are an archive of correspondence on clay tablets, mostly diplomatic, between the Egyptian administration and its representatives in Canaan and Amurru during the New Kingdom...

 with Pharaoh Akhenaten
Akhenaten
Akhenaten also spelled Echnaton,Ikhnaton,and Khuenaten;meaning "living spirit of Aten") known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV , was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt who ruled for 17 years and died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC...

, in the tablet designated EA 10,El Amarna tablet EA 10 (BM 029786, in the British Museum), lines 8 to 10 describes him as the first to enter into friendly relations with Egypt, “Since the time of Karaindaš, since messengers of your ancestors have come regularly to my ancestors, up to the present they (the ancestors of the two lands) have been good friends.” The Annals of Tuthmosis, inscribed on the inside walls of the corridor which surrounds the granite holy of holies of the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak
Karnak
The Karnak Temple Complex—usually called Karnak—comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings, notably the Great Temple of Amun and a massive structure begun by Pharaoh Ramses II . Sacred Lake is part of the site as well. It is located near Luxor, some...

, record the tribute of Babylon, and include a lapis lazuli ram’s head amongst the inventory.

Other sources

A brown agate cylinder seal, which is in the University Museum
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, commonly called The Penn Museum, is an archaeology and anthropology museum that is part of the University of Pennsylvania in the University City neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.-History:An internationally renowned...

 in Philadelphia, is inscribed “Oh [Shuqamuna], lord who advances in brilliance by your fullness … your light is indeed favourable: Izkur-Marduk, son of Karaindaš, who prays to you and reveres you.”CBS 1108 brown agate seal bearing 7 line Sumerian inscription, University Museum, Philadelphia. Shuqamuna was a Kassite male god symbolized by a bird on a perch often accompanied by his consort, Shumaliya, associated with the investiture of kings. Izkur-Marduk’s name is wholly Babylonian and translates as “he has invoked Marduk”.

His renown was apparently so great, that Shutruk-Nahhunte who would go on to ransack Babylon around 250 years later, boasted “I destroyed Karaindaš”, i.e. Babylonia.
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