Episode 32 – Amorite 1 Lay of the Land

Today we resume our history with the massive political upheaval which accompanied the collapse of the Ur III dynasty. We are entering a terribly complex period of history, and this episode we are going to do a quick survey of all the major powers of the region circa 2000 BCE. We will be looking at the Amorite kingdoms of Isin, Larsa, Mari, Ebla, and Qatna, the free Akkadian kingdom of Assyria, some of the minor cities of the period, and a brief look at the very fringes of Mesopotamia as far away as India and Egypt.

So, after this episode went live, I was in fact persuaded to start a facebook page, which you can find by searching Oldest Stories in facebook if you would be interested in liking or sharing this show.

Today’s show is a bit of an info dump, but I want to have a point of reference for getting started, even though the fact is that while quite a lot starts in 2000 BCE, we don’t actually know much about what is going on. As I go through all these places in future episodes, I will fill in more details.

Oh my god, my accent came out this episode, and there was construction in the room above my apartment. Not the best audio quality this episode, sorry.

It is very hard to find good maps of the Isin-Larsa period, partly because much is obscure and because it shifted quite a bit, but here is a map from the fall of the Ur III Dynasty:

And here are a few from about 200 years later, that should help situate where things are in the broad sense: