Syrian and
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
n cities from which
Sargon II
Sargon II (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "the faithful king" or "the legitimate king") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 722 BC to his death in battle in 705. Probably the son of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727), Sargon is genera ...
,
King of Assyria
The king of Assyria (Akkadian: ''Išši'ak Aššur'', later ''šar māt Aššur'') was the ruler of the ancient Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria, which was founded in the late 21st century BC and fell in the late 7th century BC. For much of its ear ...
, brought settlers to take the places of the exiled
Israelites
The Israelites (; , , ) were a group of Semitic-speaking tribes in the ancient Near East who, during the Iron Age, inhabited a part of Canaan.
The earliest recorded evidence of a people by the name of Israel appears in the Merneptah Stele o ...
(). II Kings relates that these settlers were attacked by
lion
The lion (''Panthera leo'') is a large Felidae, cat of the genus ''Panthera'' native to Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; short, rounded head; round ears; and a hairy tuft at the end of its tail. It is sexually dimorphi ...
s, and interpreting this to mean that their worship was not acceptable to the deity of the land, they asked Sargon to send an Israelite priest, exiled in Assyria, to teach them, which he did.
The result was a mixture of religions and peoples, the latter being known as "
Cuthim" in
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and as "
Samaritans" to the
Greeks
The Greeks or Hellenes (; el, Έλληνες, ''Éllines'' ) are an ethnic group and nation indigenous to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea regions, namely Greece, Greek Cypriots, Cyprus, Greeks in Albania, Albania, Greeks in Italy, ...
.
Kutha is also the name of the capital of the Sumerian underworld,
Irkalla.
In the Assyrian inscriptions "Cutha" occurs on the
Shalmaneser obelisk, line 82, in connection with
Babylon.
Shulgi (formerly read as Dungi), King of
Ur III, built the temple of
Nergal at Cuthah, which fell into ruins, so that
Nebuchadnezzar II
Nebuchadnezzar II ( Babylonian cuneiform: ''Nabû-kudurri-uṣur'', meaning " Nabu, watch over my heir"; Biblical Hebrew: ''Nəḇūḵaḏneʾṣṣar''), also spelled Nebuchadrezzar II, was the second king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, ruli ...
had to rebuild the "temple of the gods, and placed them in safety in the temple". This agrees with the Biblical statement that the men of Cuthah served Nergal.
Josephus
Flavius Josephus (; grc-gre, Ἰώσηπος, ; 37 – 100) was a first-century Romano-Jewish historian and military leader, best known for '' The Jewish War'', who was born in Jerusalem—then part of Roman Judea—to a father of priestly d ...
places Cuthah, which for him is the name of a river and of a district, in
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkme ...
, and Neubauer says that it is the name of a country near
Kurdistan
Kurdistan ( ku, کوردستان ,Kurdistan ; lit. "land of the Kurds") or Greater Kurdistan is a roughly defined geo-cultural territory in Western Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population and the Kurdish culture, languages ...
.
The so-called "Legend of the King of Cuthah", a fragmentary inscription of the
Akkadian literary genre called ''narû'', written as if it were transcribed from a royal stele, is in fact part of the "
Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin", not to be read as history, a copy of which found in the cuneiform library at
Sultantepe
The ancient temple-complex, perhaps of Huzirina, now represented by the tell of Sultantepe, is a Late Assyrian archeological site at the edge of the Neo-Assyrian empire, now in Şanlıurfa Province, Turkey. Sultantepe is about south of Urfa o ...
, north of
Harran.
Sumu-la-El, a king of the
1st Babylonian Dynasty, rebuilt the city walls of Kutha. The city was later defeated by
Hammurabi
Hammurabi (Akkadian: ; ) was the sixth Amorite king of the Old Babylonian Empire, reigning from to BC. He was preceded by his father, Sin-Muballit, who abdicated due to failing health. During his reign, he conquered Elam and the city-state ...
of Babylon in the 39th year of his reign. In his 40th year Hammurabi reports working on the Emeslam temple of
Nergal at Kutha.
Ibn Sa'd in his ''Kitab Tabaqat Al-Kubra'' writes that the maternal grandfather of Abraham, Karbana, was the one who discovered the river Kutha.
In ''The Last Pagans of Iraq: Ibn Waḥshiyya and His Nabatean Agriculture'',
Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila says:
"One might also mention the rather surprising story, traced back to
'Ali
Ali is a common unisex name.
In Arabic, Ali is derived from the Arabic root ʕ-l-w, which literally means "high", "elevated" or "champion", and is used as both a given name and surname. Islamic traditional use of the name goes back to the Isla ...
, the first Imam of the Shiites, where he is made to identify himself as “one of the Nabateans from Lutha” (see
Yaqut, Mu'jamIV: 488, s.v. Kutha). It goes without saying that the story is apocryphal, but it shows that among the Shiites there were people ready to identify themselves with the Nabateans. Thus it comes as no surprise that especially in the so-called ''ghulàt ''movements (extremist Shiites) a lot of material surfaces that is derivable from Mesopotamian sources (cf. Hämeen-Anttila 2001), and the early Shiite strongholds were to a great extent in the area inhabited by Nabateans.
"Yaqut also notes, "the identification of Kutha as the original home Shiah Muslims believe to be the Abrahamic roots of Islam. Yet the identification of Kutha, and by extension also Abraham, with the Nabateans is remarkable."
Al-Tabari
( ar, أبو جعفر محمد بن جرير بن يزيد الطبري), more commonly known as al-Ṭabarī (), was a Muslim historian and scholar from Amol, Tabaristan. Among the most prominent figures of the Islamic Golden Age, al-Tabari ...
says in ''The History of Prophets and Kings'' that the prophet
Ibrahim was the son of his mother Nuba or Anmatala, who was the daughter of Karita who dug the river Kutha, named after his father Kutha.
See also
*
Cities of the Ancient Near East
*
Short chronology timeline
The chronology of the ancient Near East is a framework of dates for various events, rulers and dynasties. Historical inscriptions and texts customarily record events in terms of a succession of officials or rulers: "in the year X of king Y". Com ...
Notes
References
Further reading
*Julian Reade, Hormuzd Rassam and His Discoveries, Iraq, vol. 55, pp. 39–62, 1963
External links
Digital Images of Tablets from Kutha/CuthahTemple Hymns at ETCSLIncantation bowl found at Kutha - British Museum
{{JewishEncyclopedia, article=Cuthah, url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=941&letter=C, author= Emil G. Hirsch and Gerson B. Levi Gerson may refer to:
Given name:
*Gerson von Bleichröder (1822–1893), Jewish German banker
* Gérson Caçapa (born 1967), Brazilian former footballer
*Gerson Goldhaber (1924–2010), German-born American particle physicist and astrophysicist
* G ...
Babil Governorate
Samaritan culture and history
Hebrew Bible cities
Archaeological sites in Iraq
Former populated places in Iraq