Nomadic origins of the Mari kings

Abstract

The French mission, under the supervision of André Parrot, began in 1933 to excavate the site of Tel Hariri, on the right bank of the Euphrates near the city of Albu Kamal, and that mission succeeded in uncovering a metropolis of the ancient Arab East, Mari, which reached the height of its power and prosperity in The reign of Zimri Lim (1782-1759 BC), the last of its kings, as it was a political and economic power, attested to by its archive, which contained more than twenty thousand cuneiform clay figures, mostly written in Akkadian, and most of them date back to the first half of the eighth century BC. These texts documented the existence of a tribal organization that was divided into two main groups, the tribes of Bensimalite and Benyaminite, and this is a geographical division rather than ethnic, indicating the places of stability of both groups in relation to the Euphrates River, from which a group of tribes branched out, some of which settled in cities and villages and some of them remained in preservation of the life of mobility And grazing. The paper will shed light on the tribal organization of these two Bedouin groups and present a set of texts confirming the lineage of the Mari kings to one of them.