Gutians

The Guti () or Quti, also known by the derived exonyms Gutians or Guteans, were a nomadic people of West Asia, around the Zagros Mountains (Modern Iran) during ancient times. Their homeland was known as Gutium ( Sumerian: ,''Gu-tu-um^ki'' or ,''Gu-ti-um^ki'').

Conflict between people from Gutium and the Akkadian Empire has been linked to the collapse of the empire, towards the end of the 3rd millennium BC. The Guti subsequently overran southern Mesopotamia and formed the Gutian dynasty of Sumer. The Sumerian king list suggests that the Guti ruled over Sumer for several generations following the fall of the Akkadian Empire.

By the 1st millennium BC, usage of the name Gutium, by the peoples of lowland Mesopotamia, had expanded to include all of western Media, between the Zagros and the Tigris. Various tribes and places to the east and northeast were often referred to as ''Gutians'' or ''Gutium''. For example, Assyrian royal annals use the term Gutians in relation to populations known to have been Medes or Mannaeans. As late as the reign of Cyrus the Great of Persia, the famous general Gubaru (Gobryas) was described as the "governor of Gutium".

Origin

Little is known of the origins, material culture or language of the Guti, as contemporary sources provide few details and no artifacts have been positively identified. As the Gutian language lacks a text corpus, apart from some proper names, its similarities to other languages are impossible to verify. The names of Gutian-Sumerian kings suggest that the language was not closely related to any languages of the region, including Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite, and Elamite.

W. B. Henning suggested that the different endings of the king names resembled case endings in the Tocharian languages, a branch of Indo-European known from texts found in the Tarim Basin (in the northwest of modern China) dating from the 6th to 8th centuries BC, making Gutian the earliest documented Indo-European language. He further suggested that they had subsequently migrated to the Tarim. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov explored Henning's suggestion, as possibly supporting their proposal of an Indo-European ''Urheimat'' in the Near East. However, most scholars reject the attempt to connect the two groups of languages, Gutian and Tocharian, that were separated by more than two millennia.

According to some data, the Gutians were a Hurrian tribe.

History

Overview

Since Gutian appears to have been an unwritten language, for information about the Guti, scholars must rely on external sources – often highly biased texts composed by their enemies. For example, Sumerian sources generally portray the Guti as an "unhappy", barbarous and rapacious people from the mountains – apparently the central Zagros east of Babylon and north of Elam. The period of the Gutian dynasty in Sumer is portrayed as chaotic.

Initially, according to the Sumerian king list, "in Gutium ... no king was famous; they were their own kings and ruled thus for three r fiveyears". This may indicate that the Gutian kingship was rotated between tribes/clans, or within an oligarchical elite.

25th to 23rd centuries BC

The Guti appear in texts from Old Babylonian copies of inscriptions ascribed to Lugal-Anne-Mundu (fl. circa 25th century BC) of Adab as among the nations providing his empire tribute. These inscriptions locate them between Subartu in the north, and Marhashe and Elam in the south. They were a prominent nomadic tribe who lived in the Zagros mountains in the time of the Akkadian Empire.

Sargon the Great (r. circa 2340 – 2284 BC) also mentions them among his subject lands, listing them between Lullubi, Armanum and Akkad to the north; Nikku and Der to the south. According to one stele, Naram-Sin of Akkad's army of 360,000 soldiers defeated the Gutian king Gula'an, despite having 90,000 slain by the Gutians.

The epic '' Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin'' claims ''Gutium'' among the lands raided by Annubanini of Lulubum during the reign of Naram-Sin (c. 2254–2218 BC). Contemporary year-names for Shar-kali-sharri of Akkad indicate that in one unknown year of his reign, Shar-kali-sharri captured Sharlag king of Gutium, while in another year, "the yoke was imposed on Gutium".

Prominence during the early 22nd century BC

As the Akkadians went into decline, the Gutians began a decades-long campaign of hit-and-run raids against Mesopotamia. Their raids crippled the economy of Sumer. Travel became unsafe, as did work in the fields, resulting in famine. The Gutians eventually overran Akkad, and as the King List tells us, their army also subdued Uruk for hegemony of Sumer, in about 2147–2050 BC. However, it seems that autonomous rulers soon arose again in a number of city-states, notably Gudea of Lagash.

The Gutians seem also to have briefly overrun Elam at around the same time, towards the close of Kutik-Inshushinak's reign (c. 2100 BC). On a statue of the Gutian king Erridupizir at Nippur, an inscription imitates his Akkadian predecessors, styling him "King of Gutium, King of the Four Quarters".

The Weidner Chronicle (written c. 500 BC), portrays the Gutian kings as uncultured and uncouth:

Decline from the late 22nd century BC onwards

The Sumerian ruler Utu-hengal, Prince of the Sumerian city of Uruk is similarly credited on the King List with defeating the Gutian ruler Tirigan, and removing the Guti from the country in circa 2050 BC (short chronology).

In his Victory Stele, Utu-hengal wrote about the Gutians:

Following this, Ur-Nammu of Ur ordered the destruction of Gutium. The year 11 of king Ur-Nammu also mentions "Year Gutium was destroyed". However, according to a Sumerian epic, Ur-Nammu died in battle with the Gutians, after having been abandoned by his own army.

A Babylonian text from the early 2nd millennium refers to the Guti as having a "human face, dogs’ cunning, ndmonkey's build".

Biblical scholars believe that the Guti may be the "Koa" (''qôa''), named with the Shoa and Pekod as enemies of Jerusalem in Ezekiel 23:23, which was probably written in the 6th century BC. ''Qôa'' also means "male camel" in Hebrew, and in the context of ''Ezekiel'' 23, it may be a deliberate, insulting distortion of an endonym such as ''Quti''.

Physical appearance

According to the historian Henry Hoyle Howorth (1901), Assyriologist Theophilus Pinches (1908), renowned archaeologist Leonard Woolley (1929) and Assyriologist Ignace Gelb (1944), the Gutians were pale in complexion and blond. But this was asserted on the basis of assumed broad links to peoples mentioned in the Old Testament. This identification of the Gutians as fair haired first came to light when Julius Oppert (1877) published a set of tablets he had discovered which described Gutian (and Subarian) slaves as ''namrum'' or ''namrûtum'', one of its many meanings being "light colored". This racial character of the Gutians as light skinned cannot be equated to being blond. But yet it was also claimed by Georges Vacher de Lapouge in 1899 and later by historian Sidney Smith in his ''Early History of Assyria'' (1928).

Ephraim Avigdor Speiser, however, criticised the translation of ''namrum'' as "light colored". A note was published by Speiser in the ''Journal of the American Oriental Society.

There is no linguistic evidence linking Gutians to modern ethnic identities. Most scholars reject the attempt to link Gutian king names to Indo-European languages.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gutian People

States and territories established in the 3rd millennium BC
States and territories disestablished in the 3rd millennium BC
Ancient Mesopotamia
Ancient history of Iran
Former kingdoms