Talk:Third Dynasty of Ur

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Names of the Royal Family

I have deleted the unsubstantiated claim in this section that virtually all of the names of the Ur III royal family were Akkadian. I have been studying this family for several years, and the claim is inaccurate. For verification, I refer you to a decent, preliminary listing of the family members in Douglas Frayne, (1997), The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia Early Period. Volume 3/2. Ur III Period, U. Toronto Press, pp. 85, 166-169, 266-268, 336-337, and 375-376. This has been supplemented by Jacob Dahl, (2004), "The Quest for Eternity. Studies in Neo-Sumerian Systems of Succession", pp. 117-136 in J. G. Dercksen (ed.), Assyria and Beyond. Studies Presented to Mogens Trolle Larsen, Nederlands Instituut Voor Het Nabije Oosten; see especially the chart on p. 134. It can be further supplemented by searching for prince or princess (dumu-lugal, dumu-munus-lugal) in the very user-friendly on-line database, Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts, abbreviated as BDTS or BDTNS, which contains over 88,000 administrative and economic texts written in Sumerian from the Ur III period Ur III database.

I have so far identified 56 men (kings and princes), 22 wives, and 37 daughters of the Ur III royal family. Of the men, 23 have names which are 100% Sumerian, 9 which are 100% Akkadian, 20 names which are mixed, and 4 names which cannot yet be identified as to language. Of the wives, 5 have Sumerian, 5 Akkadian, 7 mixed, and 5 as yet undetermined names. Of the royal daughters, 13 have Sumerian, 11 Akkadian, 10 mixed, and 3 undetermined names. These total to Sumerian-41, Akkadian-25, Mixed-37, and Undetermined-12.

I could further prove my analysis by listing and discussing all of the names, but that would take so long that I am hoping a briefer discussion, with examples, will suffice. Sumerian personal names are typically phrases, and most frequently include a deity's name. For example, from among the princes, there is a Lu₂-Utu (the one of the god Utu) and a Shu-Eshtar (the one of the goddess Eshtar). In the first name, both elements are written in Sumerian, in the second both in Akkadian. Whether or not a name is mixed is complicated by the fact that there is disagreement over which language some names, and in particular some divine names, are, and how they should be read. A good example is the god whose name is always spelled KA-DI in Sumerian. In Akkadian this name can be found written in both Sumerian (KA-DI) or spelled out phonetically as Ishtaran. While this demonstrates that Akkadian-speakers called him Ishtaran, it tells us nothing about how Sumerian-speakers pronounced his name. The initial home of the god appears to have been the trans-Tigridian area, so that KA-DI could be encoding neither a Sumerian nor an Akkadian, but an Elamite name (see F.A.M. Wiggerman (1997), "Transtigridian Snake Gods" pp. 33-49 in I. L. Finkel, M.J. Geller (eds.), Sumerian Gods and Their Representations, Styx Publications). Despite the uncertainty of the origin and the reading of the divine name KA-DI, one often finds the name of princess, who is always spelled with the Sumerian signs Me-Ka-di, transliterated as the totally Akkadian name, Simat-Ishtaran. Not by chance is there is a direct correlation between scholars who contend that Sumerian was no longer a living language during the Ur III period, and those who tend to Akkadianze Sumerian spellings. But such transliterations are based on circular reasoning, relying further on the unproven assumptions that Sumerian was not spoken and that all elements in a name have to be of the same language. In this case, the first assumption leads Akkadianizers to presume that the Sumerian spelling Ka-di "must" actually stand for the Akkadian Ishtaran, while the second assumption motivates their translating the Sumerian word Me as the Akkadian Simat.

To exacerbate the matter even more, the Akkadian equivalent to the Sumerian Me is not even simtum (Simat is the bound form)! Simtum in fact is a translation of the Sumerian compound me-ti, "ornament, adornment; what is fitting", none of which meanings belong to the sign Me when it stands alone. I have no idea how or why Simat was determined to be the Akkadian equivalent for Sumerian names beginning with Me. One of the problems when one delves into the issue of Akkadianization is that its practitioners do not explain their reasoning, they just do it. Yet one would really like to know why they feel justified in translating the princess Me-Ka-di as Simat-Ishtaran, yet not a one of them Akkadianizes the first, Sumerian element in the name of the prince Ur-Ka-di, who is routinely translated as Ur-Ishtaran (Ur is Sumerian for dog). That is, a mixed Sumerian-Akkadian name is deemed acceptable for him, but not for her?! In sum, whatever (if any) principles Akkadianizers are working under, they are do not apply them consistently. In any event, anyone who claims that the bulk of the names of the Ur III royal family were written in Akkadian is subscribing to the notions outlined above, which have not been proven, have rarely been discussed by those who espouse them, and are far from generally accepted by the field.

Relation to the Sargonic Dynasty

This section also claims that the Ur III kings had a noticeable devotion to their Akkadian predecessors of the Sargonic dynasty, and infers from this further proof of a general Akkadianization of Sumerian culture. This claim is accompanied by no citation(s), and is not in fact supported.

The primary dynastic devotion of the Ur III royal family was to their own. Secondarily, they favored the earlier dynasty of Uruk, specifically the once-mortal, now deified king Lugalbanda and his divine wife Ninsun, the parents of Gilgamesh. Many reasons for this preference may be theorized, and I would suggest, for starters, the prominence of Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh as quintessential Sumerian kings, and the connection of the Ur III dynastic founder Ur-Namma with Utu-hegal of Uruk. This preference may be demonstrated with both literary and administrative texts.

Regarding the former genre, both Ur-Namma and Shulgi repeatedly claim Ninsun as their mother. The citations are the hymns Ur-Namma A, lines 16 and 63, Ur-Namma C lines 48 and 113, Ur-Namma E line 6, Shulgi A, line 7, Shulgi B, lines 7 and 184, Shulgi D, lines 41 and 43, Shulgi O line 29, and Shulgi X 47. In addition, Shulgi calls Lugalbanda his father (Shulgi A line 86b, Shulgi D line 42, Shulgi P b lines 23 and 38) and each king calls Gilgamesh his brother (Ur-Namma A lines 112 and 143, Shulgi D line 292, Shulgi O lines 50 and 139). Transliterations and translations of these texts are available on the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature [[1]], under the heading Praise Poems. Note also that ETCL transliterates Nin-sun as Nin-sumun. I know of no instance where any of the Ur III kings claim any kind of familial relationship, even if only on a metaphorical level, with the Sargonic kings.

The genre of administrative texts are just as telling, providing records documenting distributions for sacrifices to various deities disbursed from the central animal facilty at Drehem (also known as Puzrish-Dagan), which was controlled by the crown. These records show a total of 48 sacrifices to Ninsun and Lugalbanda, 4 to Lugalbanda alone. These sacrifices spanned the reigns of 4 of the Ur III kings, with 18 in the reign of Shulgi, 2 in Amar-Suen, 11 in Shu-Suen, 6 in Ibbi-Suen, and 5 for which the year is missing. In contrast, there is only one instance of any sacrifice by the crown to the Sargonic kings; in Shu-Suen 1 one fattened sheep each was offered to the deified Naram-Sin and the deified Sargon in the temple of Enlil (PDT 1 605, BDTNS no. 013312).

Far from elevating the Sargonic kings to a favored model of kingship, the Ur III dynasts gave them a token nod, at the same time playing up their alleged close connection to famous Sumerian kings of Uruk. Thus, the claim that the Ur III kings expressed a special relationship with the Sargonic ones is not supported, which invalidates the inference drawn from this concerning the Akkadianization of Sumerian culture. Therefore, this statement should be removed, or drastically altered. --Mother of Otherness 05:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

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Abraham section should be removed

There is currently no evidence that Abraham existed at all, much less any that can associate him with the Third Dynasty of Ur. The best we can say is that *other* men with what is likely the same name existed in this time period; Ur of the Chaldees might be this Ur, or it could be somewhere else. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.225.209.64 (talk) 21:55, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

Agree: should be removed. The argument for associating Abraham and the purported events of Genesis chapter 11 with this dynasty are not given. Source is not reliable: Infinity Publishing is a vanity press; Edward Nagell is a mechanical engineer, not a cuneiform scholar. In a field where there are thousands if not tens of thousands of PhDs, why cite this? Wikipedia articles for Patriarchal age and Abraham both refrain from giving any dates, other than a rabbinic source, which would put Abraham at 1813 BCE, i.e. after Third Dynasty of Ur. Vagabond nanoda (talk) 10:23, 14 March 2021 (UTC)