Marduk-apla-uṣur, inscribed ^dAMAR.UTU-A-ŠE small>Š''Dynastic Chronicle'' (ADD 888) vi 3’-5’. or ^mdŠID-A- ''Synchronistic King List'' fragment VAT 11345 (KAV 13), 3’. meaning “O Marduk, protect the heir” was an 8th century BC

Chaldea Chaldea () was a small country that existed between the late 10th or early 9th and mid-6th centuries BCE, after which the country and its people were absorbed and assimilated into the indigenous population of Babylonia. Semitic-speaking, it was ...

n tribal leader who ruled as King of Babylon after the reign of Marduk-bēl-zēri. He is known only from three inscriptions and ruled during a period of chaos. He should not be confused with the Marduk-apla-uṣur who ruled Suḫi on the middle

Euphrates The Euphrates () is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia ( ''the land between the rivers''). Originating in Turkey, the Euph ...

and paid tribute to Salmānu-ašarēdu III a generation or so earlier.

Biography

His

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the ...

n contemporaries were probably Salmānu-ašarēdu IV (783 - 773 BC) and/or

Ashur-dan III Ashur-dan III (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning " Ashur is strong") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 773 BC to his death in 755 BC. Ashur-dan was a son of Adad-nirari III (811–783 BC) and succeeded his brother Shalmaneser IV as kin ...

(773 - 755 BC) and the latter one is known to have campaigned in northern Babylonia on three occasions: 771 BC (against Gannanāti), 770 BC (against

Marad Marad (Sumerian: Marda, modern Tell Wannat es-Sadum or Tell as-Sadoum, Iraq) was an ancient Near Eastern city. Marad was situated on the west bank of the then western branch of the Upper Euphrates River west of Nippur in modern-day Iraq and roug ...

) and 767 BC (against Gannanāti again). Into the vacuum created by the devastation, the southern Chaldeans were able to rise to power and he seems to have been the first member of the tribal group to have made pretensions to the Babylonian throne. His place in the sequence of kings is known from a ''Synchronistic King List'' fragment. His length of reign and dynastic affiliation are unknown, as he was recorded as belonging to a separate one from his predecessor and successor, but the

Dynastic Chronicle The Dynastic Chronicle, ''"Chronicle 18"'' in Grayson's ''Assyrian and Babylonian Chronicles'' or the ''"Babylonian Royal Chronicle"'' in Glassner’s ''Mesopotamian Chronicles'', is a fragmentary ancient Mesopotamian text extant in at least four k ...

records that “the dynasty of Chaldea was terminated. Its kingship was transferred to the Sealand,” and, as his successor was Erība-Marduk, the archetypal ancestor figure of the later Chaldean monarchs, it is surmised his origins were with a different Chaldean group than that of Erība-Marduk's Bīt-Yakin tribe. He is mentioned in a fragmentary Neo-Babylonian narrative text from Uruk''Chronographic document concerning Nabu-šuma-iškun'' a
Livius
excavation number W 22660/0, published as SpTU III no. 58 and CM 52 in J. J. Glassner’s “Chronique Mésopotamiennes,” 1993, pp. 235–240. ("The

Crimes and Sacrileges of Nabu-šuma-iškun The Crimes and Sacrileges of Nabû-šuma-iškun is an ancient Mesopotamian chronicle extant in a single late- Babylonian copyExcavation number W22660/0. from Hellenistic Uruk of the library of the exorcist, or ''āšipu'', Anu-ikṣụr. The vitri ...

") which provides no further enlightenment about his time apart from a passing observation that “forced labor and

corvée Corvée () is a form of unpaid, forced labour, that is intermittent in nature lasting for limited periods of time: typically for only a certain number of days' work each year. Statute labour is a corvée imposed by a state for the purposes of ...

were imposed.”

Inscriptions

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Marduk-apla-usur 8th-century BC Babylonian kings Chaldean kings 8th-century BC rulers