Sumerian
1. Muriq Tidnim (conjectural)
Babylonian Line 1
2. Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon to Kish Wall (conjectural)
Babylonian Line 2
3. Habl es-Sakhar (Nebuchadnezzar’s Sippar to Opis Wall,
Median Wall)
Line 3 (uncertain)
4. El-Mutabbaq
5. Sadd Nimrud (also called El-Jalu)
6. Umm Raus Wall (site of Macepracta Wall(?), Artaxerxes’
Trench(?))
Sasanian
Khandaq-i-Shapur
Mesopotamia and the
Rivers Tigris and the Euphrates
Egypt shows that the conjunction of irrigated lands and
nomads produced linear barriers – even if the evidence might seem elusive and
inconclusive. Therefore, might also then Mesopotamia, with the similarly
intensely irrigated Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, produce evidence of walls in
the presence of nomads?
In Mesopotamia, the area of irrigated lands runs along the
flood plains of the Tigris and the Euphrates up to, and somewhat beyond, the
convergence points of the rivers between ancient Babylon and modern Baghdad.
Above that point the alluvial plain peters out and the land becomes too hilly
to allow for intense irrigation. From the north-east flows the Diyala River
which passes through the Zagros Mountains to join the Tigris, linking the high
Persian plateau to Mesopotamia. Around the river was especially valued
irrigated land. The area of convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates constituted
a constricted land corridor. Local nomads and semi-nomads would have been
expected to press particularly hard on the rich and productive irrigated lands
of Mesopotamia.
As in Egypt, civilisation, sustained by the irrigated lands
of Mesopotamia, came early, in the fourth millennia BC, with the Sumerians.
Again, as with Egypt, there is evidence of climate change. In the last century
of the third millennium BC the stream flow of the Euphrates and the Tigris was
very low, according to analysis of sediments in the Persian Gulf. The end of
the Akkadian era, due to defeat by the hated Gutian peoples from the
mountainous east in the twenty-second century BC, coincided with a few decades
of intense drought which was followed by two to three centuries of dry weather.
Ur revived and under Ur-Nammu defeated the Gutians and established the third
dynasty of Ur, commonly abbreviated to Ur III, in 2112 BC. The Sumerians
initiated a short period of cultural renaissance in a time of constant conflict
with the semi-nomadic Martu – more familiar as the biblical Amorites.
Indeed, Ur III may have faced two reasonably distinct
threats. From the north-west there was the Martu whose aim may in part have
been to gain sustenance for their herds in times of drought. The direction of
the threat that they posed would have been through the relatively flat lands
between and to both sides of the convergence point of the Euphrates and the
Tigris. To the north-east were the Elamites and Shimashki confederation in the
highlands to the east of the Tigris. Their lines of attack would have been more
focused down river valleys – perhaps the Diyala River flowing through the
Zagros Mountains to the Tigris.
Mesopotamian linear
barriers
In this early period there is only textual evidence for
linear barriers, based on letters that remarkably survive from the third
dynasty of Ur. These writings between Sumerian kings and their often
disobedient generals and officials, are called the Royal Correspondence of Ur
(abbreviated to the RCU). Much of the correspondence in the twenty-two or so
surviving letters was about defence against the Martu. There was also
information about linear barriers in the year names of Sumerian king lists
(Mesopotamian kings named each year of their reigns after some major event).
The Sumerian kings
Shulgi (2094–2047 BC), Shu-Sin (2037–2029 BC) and Ibbi-Sin (2028–2004 BC) were
mentioned in the context of three walls:
bad-mada/Wall of the Land – The Wall of the Land is known
only from one reference in the king lists: ‘Year 37: Nanna (the god) and Shulgi
the king built the Wall of the land.’10 Shulgi was on the throne for
forty-seven years so the wall belongs to the last quarter of his long reign.
This was a time of increasing pressure on central and southern Mesopotamia from
the Martu.
bad-igi-hur-sag-ga/Wall Facing the Highlands – In the RCU
there are several references to bad-igi-hur-sag-ga – both during Shulgi’s reign
and that of his successors, Shu-Sin and Ibbi-Sin. The bad-igi-hur-sag-ga has
been variously translated as the Wall, Fortress, or the Fortification facing
the highlands or mountains – making it uncertain whether this was a continuous
linear barrier. If, however, Shulgi really did build a long wall then he has
the distinction of being the first known builder of such a barrier. This
obstacle possibly faced a threat coming down the Diyala River as it faced the
Highlands, presumably the Zagros Mountains.
Muriq Tidnim/Fender off of the Tidnim – There are three
references to Muriq Tidnim, or fender (off) of the Tidnim and Shu-Sin. First,
the king lists of his fourth regnal year said: ‘Shu-Sin the king of Ur built
the amurru (Amorite) wall (called) ‘Muriq Tidnim/holding back the Tidanum’’
Second, there is an inscription in a temple built for the god Shara: ‘For Shara
Shu-Sin built the Eshagepada, his (Shara’s) beloved temple, for his (Shu-Sin’s)
life when he built the Martu wall Muriq Tidnim (and) turned back the paths of
the Martu to their land.’ Third, the most informative reference to the Muriq
Tidnim is in a letter from Sharrum-bani, an official of Shu-Sin. ‘You sent me a
message ordering me to work on the construction of the great fortification
Muriq Tidnim … announcing: “The Martu have invaded the land.” You instructed me
to build the fortification, so as to cut off their route; also, that no
breaches of the Tigris or the Euphrates should cover the fields with water …
from the bank of the Ab-gal watercourse to the province of Zimudar. When I was
constructing this fortification to the length of 26 danna, and had reached the
area between the two mountain ranges, I was informed of the Martu camping
within the mountain ranges because of my building work.’
In this letter, the construction is described as ‘great’.
Whatever the uncertainties about Shulgi’s earlier edifices, it is difficult not
to interpret this passage as describing a major continuous linear barrier. In
the west the Ab-gal canal is associated with an earlier western course of the
Euphrates and to the east the province of Zimudar is identified as being on the
east side of Tigris in the region of the Diyala river. A danna is about two
hours march so 26 dannas may be over 150 kilometres. Therefore, the edifice
appeared to extend from the Euphrates to the other side of the Tigris because
its length was much greater than the distance between the two rivers. The
instructions to build the walls specifically cite stopping the semi-nomadic
Martu from overwhelming the fields by a breach between the Tigris and the
Euphrates, showing that irrigated land was perceived as particularly
vulnerable.
Analysis – Ur III
In the hillier east controlling access down the Diyala river
area there may have been a single fortification, the bad-igi-hur-sag-ga or the
Wall/Fortress facing the Highlands, first built by Shulgi, which might or might
not have been part of another system bad-mada (the Wall of the Land) built in
the flatter west. During the reign of Shu-Sin it seems more likely that a linear
barrier called Muriq Tidnim was built from new, or it consisted of earlier
lines that were linked and much reinforced including Shulgi’s Wall of the land.
This is all speculation but there is good if circumstantial literary evidence
that Ur III’s strategy for defence against the Martu involved the construction
of what would be the first recorded long continuous non-aquatic linear
barriers.
There does seem to be a fairly general academic acceptance
that under Shulgi and Shu-Sin long walls were built and their purpose was to
keep out nomads. For example: ‘Even as early as year 35 of Shulgi, the (nomad)
problem was becoming so grave that Shulgi constructed a wall to keep them
(pastoral and semi-nomadic Amorites) out, and Shu-Sin built another barrier,
called “fender off of Tidnim,” 200 kilometres long, stretching between the
Tigris and the Euphrates across the northern edge of the alluvial plain.’ Also:
‘Yet despite Shulgi’s talents, within a few years of his death in 2047 BC his
Empire, too, imploded. In the 2030s raiding became such a problem that Ur built
a hundred-mile wall to keep the Amorites out.’
Later Mesopotamia
Looking at later Mesopotamia, after the fall of Ur III, how
did it defend itself in times of necessity? What emerges is three intense periods
of barrier building: firstly, that already discussed, during the short lived Ur
III period; secondly, in the neo-Babylonian period associated with
Nebuchadnezzar in the sixth century BC; and thirdly, later in the fourth
century, aquatic linear barriers were built by the Sasanians. There are also a
number of major but little studied walls, discussed below, north of the Tigris
and Euphrates convergence point, which are not clearly dated.
After Ur III fell to the Elamites and the Shimaskhi
confederation, the so-called Amorite dynasty of Isin completed its breakaway.
Given that lower Mesopotamia had fallen to peoples from outside the region
there was no reason for a barrier between the north and southern Mesopotamia.
Also, Martu or Amorite semi-nomads were becoming increasingly sedentarised.
Subsequently, the Babylonians of the era of Hammurabi were able to project
their power well to the north of Babylon. The Assyrians, coming from the north,
had no need for walls around 700 BC to defend Babylon in this region as they
controlled the regions to its north and south.
The neo-Babylonians recovered control of their city in the
sixth century BC and made it the capital of the region. The second period of
major barrier building materialised in this later Babylonian period, associated
with Nebuchadnezzar and textually with Queens Semiramis and Nitocris.
Nebuchadnezzar II ruled for forty-three years from 604 to 562 BC. The Medes’
conquest of Lydia made Nebuchadnezzar suspicious of their intentions and this
led him to strengthen his northern border. Behind the Medes loomed the
Persians. This was clearly seen, rightly as it turned out, as a real,
unpredictable threat – and one that prompted the construction of a
comprehensive linear barrier system. Notwithstanding this attempt, in 539 BC
Cyrus the Great led the Medes and the Persians into Babylonia which was
absorbed into the Achaemenid Empire.
Linear barriers –
survey
There were three lines of barriers at and above Babylon
looked at here, starting in the south and going to the north.
Babylon to Kish –
Line 1
Two walls of Nebuchadnezzar (604–562 BC) are known from a
clay cylinder, dated to 590 BC when relations between the Babylonians and the
Medes had deteriorated. (These compose Line 1 and Line 2 in this and the next
section.)
Nebuchadnezzar’s Wall from near Babylon to Kish – This
cylinder is inscribed: ‘In the district of Babylon from the chau(s)sée on the
Euphrates bank to Kish, 4 2/3 bēru long, I heaped up on the level of the ground
an earth-wall and surrounded the City with mighty waters. That no crack should
appear in it, I plastered its slope with asphalt and bricks.’ A bēru is the
distance which could be travelled in two hours so is variable according to
terrain. At five kilometres an hour this barrier would be about 47 kilometres
long. The problem is that this is considerably longer than the distance between
Babylon and Kish – which is little more than 10 kilometres – unless the barrier
followed a particularly circuitous route. Also, it would seem a fairly
pointless military exercise building a barrier from Babylon to Kish leaving the
flood plain open to the east from Kish to the Tigris. Using up the surplus kilometres
would take the wall further east to Kar-Nargal, near an earlier channel of the
Tigris, hence blocking the land corridor between the Euphrates and the Tigris.
No physical evidence of this wall has been identified.
Opis to Sippar – Line
2
The second line ran between the cities of Sippar, above
Babylon on the Euphrates, and Opis on the Tigris, the precise position of which
has been lost. A number of walls are associated with this location in texts and
there is a surviving wall called Habl-es-Sakhar.
Nebuchadnezzar’s Wall from Sippar to Opis – Nebuchadnezzar’s
inscribed cylinder described the second wall as follows: ‘To strengthen the
fortification of Babylon, I continued, and from Opis upstream to the middle of
Sippar, from Tigris bank to Euphrates bank, 5 bēru, I heaped up a mighty
earth-wall and surrounded the city for 20 bēru like the fullness of the sea.
That the pressure of the water should not harm the dike, I plastered its slope
with asphalt and bricks.’ This Opis to Sippar wall would have been about 50
kilometres long. Both the Babylon to Kish and the Opis to Sippar walls were
water-proofed by asphalt so they must have been built in proximity to water –
possibly water-courses like canals or in flatlands prone to flooding or
swamping.
Wall of Semiramis – The geographer Strabo, citing
Eratosthenes, when describing Mesopotamia, said the Tigris, ‘goes to Opis, and
to the wall of Semiramis, as it is called.’ Therefore, this wall was in the
region of the Tigris and the Euphrates’ convergence point. (Herodotus mentioned
Semiramis’ works but did not specify a wall. Rather he described levees which
controlled flooding.)
Wall of Nitrocris – Herodotus also described a Babylonian
queen called Nitocris – possibly the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar and the mother of
the Book of Daniel’s King Belshazzar brought down by Cyrus – whose
constructions in Babylon were mainly connected with diverting the Euphrates.
Nitocris built works in the entrance of the country (which is clearly a
description of a land corridor) against the threat of the Medes. ‘Nitocris …
observing the great power and restless enterprise of the Medes, … and expecting
to be attacked in her turn, made all possible exertions to increase the
defences of her empire.’
Wall of Media – In the Anabasis, Xenophon described how he
led the 10,000 Greeks back from Mesopotamia. In it he encountered the Wall of
Media twice. Here what is described is the second occasion when Xenophon
actually crossed the wall itself following the battle of Cunaxa in 401 BC.
‘They reached the so called Wall of Media and passed within it. It was built of
baked bricks, laid in asphalt, and was twenty feet wide and a hundred feet
high; its length was said to be twenty parasangs, and it is not far distant
from Babylon.’ Assuming that a parasang is the same as a bēru or a danna, that
is a two hours march, then the wall was about 100 kilometres long.
Habl-es-Sakhar – There is a surviving wall in the vicinity
of Sippar. In 1867 one Captain Bewsher described the ruins of a wall then
called Habl-es-Sakhar – which translates from the Arabic as a line of stones or
bricks. ‘The ruins of this wall may now be traced for about 10½ miles and are
about 6 feet above the level of the soil. It was irregularly built, the longest
side running E.S.E. for 5½ miles; it then turns to N.N.E. for another mile and
a half. An extensive swamp to the northward has done much towards reducing the
wall.… There is a considerable quantity of bitumen scattered about, and it was
probably made of bricks set in bitumen. I can see nothing in Xenophon which
would show this was not the wall the Greeks passed, for what he says of its
length was merely what was told him.’ The description of the ‘baked bricks laid
upon bitumen’ is like Nebuchadnezzar’s description of his wall between Opis and
Sippar: plastered with asphalt and bricks.
In 1983 a joint team of Belgian and British Archaeological
Expeditions to Iraq investigated the ruins of Habl-es-Sakhar. This confirmed
that Habl-es-Sakhar was built by Nebuchadnezzar, for bricks marked with his
name were found during its excavation. The team reported that Habl-es-Sakhar is
the name of ‘a levee 30 metres wide and 1 metre high which could be followed
for about 15 kilometres. A trench across the levee to the north of the site of
Sippar revealed baked brick walls (largely robbed) on either side of an earth
embankment. The earth core was about 3.2m wide and the brick walls about 1.75m
in width. Between the brick courses was a skin of bitumen. On the bottom of
each brick was a stamp of Nebuchadnezzar. If the wall extended to the ancient
line of the Tigris it would have been nearly 40k long.’
The wall stood astride the northern approaches to Babylon
itself. The wall’s function appeared primarily to have been military as it was
not well situated to protect land against the flooding of the Euphrates which
lay to the south. It is ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ that Habl-es-Sakhar is
Nebuchadnezzar’s wall and Xenophon’s Wall of Media due to the location north of
Sippar, the details of the construction, and the stamped bricks set in bitumen.
This is rather satisfying because a surviving wall has been matched up with
literary text.
Umm Raus to Samarra –
Line 3
A third line of walls runs from Samarra on the Tigris to
Ramadi on the Euphrates which delineated the upper limits of the alluvial plain
where intense irrigation was possible. Here the fertile plain is not continuous
between the Tigris and the Euphrates but the regions close to the rivers fit
the description of valued irrigated land. As the rivers have diverged already
significantly in the area of the third uppermost line, compared to the lower
two lines, a wall that extended the whole distance would have had to have been
much longer. Central sections might also have been purposeless as there was little
valued, highly irrigated, land to protect and attackers would not have wanted
to stray too far into less fertile land. This area is the site of two walls
described in ancient texts and three surviving linear barriers.
Trench of Artaxerxes – In the Anabasis Xenophon described
the march along the Euphrates, at the point where canals began, thereby
indicating intense irrigation: ‘Cyrus … expected the king to give battle the
same day, for in the middle of this day’s march a deep sunk trench was reached,
thirty feet broad, and eighteen feet deep.… The trench itself had been
constructed by the great king upon hearing of Cyrus’s approach, to serve as a
line of defence.’ The trench does not appear to have survived but the site
might have been reused to build later walls – the first being the Wall of
Macepracta, discussed next, and second the surviving wall at Umm Raus.
Wall of Macepracta – Ammianus Marcellinus, describing the
assault in AD 362 by the apostate Emperor Julian on the Sasasian Empire of
Shapur II, wrote: ‘our soldiers came to the village of Macepracta, where the
half-destroyed traces of walls were seen; these in early times had a wide
extent, it was said, and protected Assyria from hostile inroads.’
There is a surviving belt of linear barriers which extends –
with long gaps – between the Euphrates and the Tigris. The three walls mark the
line where the fertile Babylonian plain peters out. There is the rampart
starting at Umm-Raus which extends east from the Euphrates; El-Mutabbaq is a
burnt brick wall with towers running west from the Tigris; and between them is
a dyke named Sadd Nimrud (also called El-Jalu). Their dating is very uncertain.
Wall at Umm Raus – The wall, running east from the
Euphrates, has been described: ‘From Umm Raus we see the wall running inland
for a distance of about 7 miles, with rounded bastions at intervals for 2½
miles.… The wall appeared to be about 35–45 ft broad, with bastions projecting
about 20ft. to 25ft., set at a distance of about 190 feet axis to axis. At its
highest point the mound made by the wall is about 7 to 8 feet high. From the
air it can be seen that there are about forty buttresses in all.’
The line may follow that of Artaxerxes’ trench. It is not a
brick wall but an earth rampart. It was ‘never defensible, perhaps never
finished’. Also: ‘This wall must have been designed … to protect the suddenly
broadening area of fertile irrigated land to its south from raids and
infiltration; large armies entering Iraq by the Euphrates would not have found
it a serious obstacle.’
Again, there is the explicit mention of defending irrigated
land. The Umm Raus rampart must date between 401 BC, as it is not mentioned by
Xenophon, and AD 363, when a ruined wall was described at Macepracta by
Ammianus Marcellinus.
El-Mutabbaq – The modern name, El-Mutabbaq, means built in
layers or courses of bricks. This is a massive rampart lying at the boundary of
the irrigatel alluvium of the widening Tigris valley south of Samarra and the
desert to the north-west. It is about forty kilometres long and ‘has traces of
turrets and moat on the north-west side and follows … the natural contours of
the land. The rampart was four to six metres high, thirty metres wide at the
bottom.’ It is, ‘a mud-brick wall three and a half bricks wide behind which is
10.5m of gravel-packing held in by a small mud-wall. The gravel packing was
compartmented by mud-brick cross walls. There are projecting towers at regular
intervals and a ditch about 20 to 30m. wide which is now about 2m. deep.’
The following description shows El-Mutabbaq as being
designed to protect valued land against a nomad threat: ‘Herzfeld (a German
explorer and historian) attributed construction to the threat of the Bedouin
invading the fertile area along the Tigris by the river Dujail.’ These walls
were seen as intended to stop nomads thereby affirming their ineffectiveness
against great armies: ‘Cross-country walls of this type are notoriously
inefficient at stopping great armies; this particular example could be
outflanked without any difficulty at all. A stronger objection to any theory
that it was designed to stop a great army is that it blocks the one route into
southern Mesopotamia which, because of natural obstacles north of Samarra,
invading armies have preferred never to use.’ The walls were intended to defend
irrigated land: ‘El-Mutabbaq was more probably intended to help protect the
irrigated land from unwanted settlers and raiding parties coming from the
desert.’ There is no consensus as to the builder although they are described as
Sasanian. Basically, these linear barriers do not seem to have been examined
since the 1960s and remain effectively undated.
Sadd Nimrud – A dyke called Sadd Nimrud or El-Jalu, which is
about forty kilometres long, that lies to the west of El-Muttabaq. This linear
barrier does not extend the full distance between El-Muttabaq and the Wall at
Umm Raus: ‘The fortification in the central area peters out in the direction of
Falluja – perhaps as a considerable gap did not need to be defended – as armies
could not advance far into the desert away from water.’ No date, other than
this possibly being pre-Islamic, has been suggested.
Analysis – three
lines at the Euphrates and Tigris convergence point
These three barriers between the Tigris and the Euphrates
present a very baffling picture. They follow roughly the line where intense
irrigation ceases. Rather than being a single response, however, they seem to
be three discrete AD hoc reactions to separate threats to irrigated lands near
the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. They can lay claim to being among the longest
and oldest walls outside China, excepting certain Roman and Sasanian walls, yet
there appears to have been no very detailed study of them. The attribution is
generally vague – with comparisons made to features on Sumerian to Sasanian
walls, in other words millennia apart. Generally commentators do regard them as
forming part of a local response to the need to protect valued irrigated land
in the immediate vicinity, rather than as having any strategic purpose to block
routes into central and southern Mesopotamia.
Sasanian aquatic
barriers
In the early fourth century AD a semi-nomadic people, the
Lakhmid Arabs, who were originally from the Yemen, emerged as a serious threat
to Sasanian Mesopotamia.
Khandaq-i-Shapur – Arab tradition associates Shapur II (AD
309–379) with a defensive dyke that reputedly ran west of the Euphrates, from
Hit to Basra. This barrier is looked at again later when Sasanian barriers are
discussed. It is clear however that the linear barrier was built to hinder the
nomadic Arab people from the desert. Although this Khandaq is much later than
the Egyptian Walls of the Ruler, it throws an interesting perspective on it.
Firstly, there is neat symmetry. In the face of a threat from nomadic Asiatics,
the response to both the east and the west of the Arabian Desert was to build a
moat or canal. Secondly, the historian Yāqūt, writing later in the Islamic period,
said that Anushirvan (531–579) who rebuilt Shapur’s earlier work, ‘built on it
(the moat) towers and pavilions and he joined it together with fortified
points.’ Therefore, this was a continuous fortified aquatic linear barrier. The
fact that such a barrier was constructed by the Sasanians perhaps meant that
Egypt’s early Walls of the Ruler were also a continuous aquatic barrier,
strengthened by forts.
