Mari is an ancient city on the Euphrates River in eastern Syria, now in the midst of the ongoing fighting between the US and various Muslim militias. It seems to have been founded as a city around 2900 BC, rather than having grown up from a village.
It always had close ties to Sumer, so it was presumably founded to serve as an outpost of Sumerian trade. As you can see from this early statue of one of its leaders, its arts were in those days entirely Sumerian.
It has been the subject of significant archaeological efforts for a century, first by the French and then by a long-lasting French-Syrian collaboration. In particular, a vast trove of cuneiform tablets has been recovered, which are especially rich for the 2000 to 1759 BC period. We know, therefore, quite a lot about its history. The Louvre has a great many objects in their collection that come from the Temple of Ishtar of the 2500 to 2340 period, including these amulets.
The standard accounts of Mari's history include periods of "abandonment" followed by "refoundings." This is, in fact, what the cuneiform tablets say, but they were produced by kings for their own purposes, and I have always been dubious of this formulation. Suppose a city is "destroyed" by a conqueror. Does it really stay vacant until it is "refounded" by another king a century later? Or are people poking around the ruins the day the destroyer's army moves on, looking for houses intact enough to occupy? I think it is more likely that such a city is never actually empty, just reduced, and the "refounding" consists mainly of rebuilding the palace and chief temple and restoring the walls to a strong defensive posture. I mean, how much damage could a conqueror do to a city built almost entirely of mud brick anyway?
The first "abandonment" of Mari took place around 2600 BC. By 2500 BC it had been refounded and become the center of a large kingdom (above). But this powerful city was "destroyed" around 2300 BC by Sargon of Akkad, who comes down to us as the founder of the first empire. The Akkadians installed a military governor who gloried in the name of Shakkanakku. The Akkadian empire fell apart not long after, and the governors of Mari became independent and their descendants led the city until around 1850 BC.
(Theoretical question about history: Our earliest documents from Mesopotamia describe city states that were all largely independent, but then they start conquering each other. Did that have to be invented? Was there a more "primitive" past when you could destroy a rival village or force them to become your friends, but nobody had conceived of installing your own governor to rule over them? I wonder. But I suppose it must be true that the principles of building and maintaining an empire had to be learned over time.)
It is when we get to the rulers who followed Shakkanakku's line that our knowledge of Mari really explodes. In this period Mari's royal palace grew into a huge and extravagant place, famous throughout Mesopotamia.
Still from
this video of a 3D digital reconstruction.
Surviving fresco, c. 1760 BC, depicting a sacrificial procession.
Surviving fresco from the inner court, called in our texts the Multicolor Court. It depicts one of Mari's rulers receiving the emblems of rulership from Ishtar. We even know a story about this court. Our texts tell us that around 1800 BC a young woman named Beltum arrived at Mari from Qatna to become the principal wife of crown prince Yasmah-Addu. (To give you an idea of how well this period is documented, we have not only detailed lists of the gifts exchanged between the two royal families but a panicky-sounding letter to the palace staff ordering that suitable chambers in the palace be made ready for Beltun's imminent arrival, even if it meant kicking somebody else out.) Beltun brought with her a woman who was identified as her "mother," but from the context it seems that this meant her childhood nurse. Mari's scribes universally held this nanny to be a complete pain in the ass and recorded in detail how annoying she could be; one wrote, "if only this woman, who raised Beltum since her youth and knew her ways, could have been left behind!" One of the complaints against this nanny was that she allowed Beltum to be outside in the Multicolor Court with her singers during the heat of the day, because of which she had fallen ill.
Male harp player, c. 1800 BC
The most amazing thing to me about the court of Mari in this period is the astonishing records of the palace musicians. These numbered more than one hundred, grouped into several different "houses." We have multiple lists of them, because they were all paid, and the scribes of course kept track of every measure of barley they paid out. The main instruments of Mesopotamian music were harps, lyres, flutes, lutes, and various percussion instruments, which ranged from finger cymbals to huge bronze drums taller than a man. These big drums were so expensive and impressive that Mesopotamian rulers sometimes named years of their reigns after the installation of such a drum in a major temple. There was also singing, by choirs and solo performers.
Here's a weird detail about ancient Sumer: Sumerian included a special dialect used only by women (and goddesses), called Emesal or "thin speech." This was apparently spoken in a very high register, and female singers always sang in this dialect; we can tell which hymns were meant to be sung by women by the dialect of the text. (Incidentally it seems that the male priests of Inanna/Ishtar, who had a strange gender status you can parse as trans if you like, sang in Emesal.)
Female lute player, 2000-1600 BC
Most of the musicians in Mari were women, and the women of the best-documented houses seem to have been from noble families. Music was essential for both religious rites and royal entertainments, and it seems that the same musicians performed in both contexts. One of Mari's musical houses was that of Yasmah-Admu, who led 14 "small musicians." "Small" here seems to mean either adolescents or just apprentices. There was also the House of the Tigum – Tigum was an instrument, but we don't know what kind – which seems to have been a conservatory where girls were trained, since the list of its members included many "very small musicians."
It fascinates me to imagine all those elite young women living together in one building or set of rooms, making music. One of the girls in Yasmah-Admu's house, named Bazatum, left the house when she was married to a prominent nobleman in another city. Were these musical houses finishing schools for noble girls, where they learned how to dress and act at court by serving as musicians? Was music-making one of the accomplishments expected of noble women?
Excavations in Mari's Palace, 1930s
Mari's wonderfully documented royal line came to an end in 1759 BC, when Mari was "destroyed" by Hammurabi of Babylon. Hammurabi actually did destroy the famous palace, which was never rebuilt, althogh the city survived for another thousand years. Hammurabi must have taken some grief for this, because he had an explanation carved onto a stone pillar: he had destroyed Mari because the gods commanded him to do so in a dream.
Some of this is from Amanda H. Podany, Weavers, Scribes and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East (2022) on which more to come.
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