Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia

The Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia (also Royaume de Haute-Mésopotamie and Upper Mesopotamian Kingdom) was an ancient Near East kingdom in Mesopotamia during early 2nd millennium BC, part of the rise of Amorite power in the region. It is largely known from texts found at Mari, Chagar Bazar, Tell Bi’a (Tuttul), and Tell Shemshara. It was bordered on the west by the Yamhad kingdom and on the east by the Eshnunna kingdom, Babylon being a minor power at that time. At the height of its power it controlled a wide swath of Mesopotamia the largest since the fall of the Ur. Its main leadership figures were Shamshi-Adad I and his sons Ishme-Dagan I and Yasmah-Adad. After a period of decline following the death of Shamshi-Adad I, its territory was largely absorbed by Mari, Yamhad, and Eshnunna leaving a small rump state centered on Ekallatum. The later rulers of the Middle Assyria attempted to make the much earlier Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia a part of the historical backstory for their reign. This type of revisionist history is not unusual and was often practiced by regimes in this period to support their right to rule. The much later literary composition Assyrian King List thought to have been written in the time of Assyrian ruler Ashurnasirpal I mentions the rulers of Upper Mesopotamia and attempts to legitimize this. The Assyrians also rebranded Šamši-Adad as Šamši-Adad I and Išme-Dagan as Išme-Dagan I to fit them into a mythical list of Assyrian rulers.

The Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia grew out of the as yet unlocated city of Ekallatum. It was largely built by its first ruler, Amorite Shamshi-Adad I and Ekallatum was the kingdoms first political capital. Later the political capital was moved to Šubat-Enlil. Despite its great scope the kingdom was without many features of many other Mesopotamian kingdoms like centralized irrigation, taxation, or religion. Nor was there a state language with Amorite, Hurrian, and Akkadian all in use. The full range of Mesopotamian gods were observed including Dagan, Assur, Istar, and Enlil. Early in the formation of the kingdom the cultic center of Assur was conquered and later became one of the kingdoms cultic sites along with Nurrugum, Mari, and others. Shamshi-Adad I once complained in a text to his son Yasmah-Adad that Mari and Assur "are full of gods", (Mari u Assur-ma ša ilānī malû).

Polities conquered by Upper Mesopotamia abandoned the traditional method of dating by year names and switched to the Ekallatum system of using eponyms. With the decline of the kingdom, most of those polities returned to the traditional system aside from the area that later became Assyria where the eponym dating system remained and continued well into the 1st millennium BC. Polities switching to eponym dating included Mari and the currently unlocated Tigunānum. Based on an analysis of these eponyms it has been suggested that Shamshi-Adad I lived to an age of 70. Interestingly there are a few traditional year names of Yasmah-Adad while he ruled as governor at Mari, presumably before Mari transitioned to a eponym system. These include "Year in which Samsi-Addu seized Mar-Addu and built there the temple of Dagan" and "Year in which Yasmah-Addu brought Nergal into his temple".