Lullubi and Gutium

The Lullubi or Lulubi were a group of tribes during the 3rd millennium BC, from a region known as Lulubum, now the Sharazor plain of the Zagros Mountains of modern Iran. Frayne (1990) identified their city Lulubuna or Luluban with the modern Kurdish town, Halabja.

The early Sumerian legend “Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird”, set in the reign of Enmerkar of Uruk, alludes to the “mountains of Lulubi” as being where the character of Lugalbanda encounters the gigantic Anzud bird while searching for the rest of Enmerkar’s army en route to siege Aratta.

Lullubum appears in historical times as one of the lands Sargon the Great subjugated within his Akkadian Empire, along with the neighboring province of Gutium to the south. Sargon’s grandson Naram Sin defeated the Lullubi and their king Satuni, and had his famous victory stele made in commemoration.

After the Akkadian Empire fell to the Gutians, a tribe from northern and central ranges of Zagros mountains that overran southern Mesopotamia when the Akkadian empire collapsed in approximately 2154 BC., the Lullubians rebelled against the Gutian king Erridupizir, according to the latter’s inscriptions.

Sumerian sources portray the Gutians as a barbarous, ravenous people from Gutium or Qutium (Sumerian: Gu-tu-um or Gu-ti-um) in the mountains, presumably the central Zagros east of Babylon and north of Elam. Gutium is also mentioned based in modern-day Kurdistan The Sumerian king list represents them as ruling over Sumer for a short time after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, and paints a picture of chaos within the Gutian administration.

Next to nothing is known about their origins, as no “Gutian” artifacts have surfaced from that time; little information is gleaned from the contemporary sources. Nothing is known of their language either, apart from those Sumerian king names, and that it was distinct from other known languages of the region (such as Sumerian, Akkadian, Hurrian, Hittite and Elamite).

The Gutian language (Qutian) was spoken by the Gutian people who briefly ruled over Sumer around 2100 BCE during the Gutian dynasty of Sumer, who lived in the territory between the Zagros and the Tigris in present-day Iranian and Iraqi Kurdistan.

Nothing is known about the language except its existence and a list of Gutian ruler names in the Sumerian king list. The existence is attested by a list of languages spoken in the region, found in a clay tablet from the Middle Babylonian period presumably originating from the city of Emar,:p.13, which also lists Akkadian, Amorite, Sutean, “Subarean” (Hurrian), and Elamite. There is also record of “an interpreter for the Gutean language” at Adab.

Based on the Gutian king names from the Sumerian list, some scholars claim that the Gutian language was neither Semitic nor Indo-European, and was unrelated to the languages spoken around it. However, according to Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov, Gutian language was close to Tocharian languages of the Indo-European family.

The Guti appear in Old Babylonian copies of inscriptions ascribed to Lugal-Anne-Mundu 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 also mentions them among his subject lands, listing them between Lullubi, Armanu and Akkad to the north, and Nikku and Der to the south.

The epic Cuthaean Legend of Naram-Sin of a later millennium mentions Gutium among the lands around Mesopotamia raided by Annubanini of Lulubum during Naram-Sin’s reign in Akkad. Contemporary year-names for Shar-kali-sharri of Akkad indicate that in one unknown year of his reign, he captured Sharlag king of Gutium, while in another year, “the yoke was imposed on Gutium”.

As Akkadian might went into a decline, the Gutians began to practice hit-and-run tactics on Mesopotamia; they would be long gone by the time forces could arrive to deal with the situation. 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 – although it seems that autonomous rulers soon arose again in a number of city-states, notably Gudea of Lagash.

The Gutians also seem to have briefly overrun Elam at the close of Kutik-Inshushinak’s reign, around the same time. and in an inscribed statue of Gutian king Erridupizir at Nippur, in imitation of his Akkadian predecessors, he assumes the title “King of Gutium, King of the Four Quarters”.

Following the Gutian period, the Neo-Sumerian (Ur-III) ruler Shulgi is said to have raided Lullubi at least 9 times; by the time of Amar-Sin, Lullubians formed a contingent in the military of Ur, suggesting that the region was then under Neo-Sumerian control.

Another famous rock carving depicting the Lullubian king Anubanini with the Assyrian-Babylonian goddess Ishtar, captives in tow, is now thought to date to the Ur-III period; however, a later Babylonian legendary retelling of the exploits of Sargon the Great mentions Anubanini as one of his opponents.

The Sumerian ruler Utu-hengal of Uruk is similarly credited on the King List with defeating the Gutian ruler Tirigan, and removing the Guti from the country (ca. 2050 BC (short)).[11] Following this, Ur-Nammu of Ur had their homeland of Gutium devastated, though according to one lengthy Sumerian poem, he died in battle with the Gutians, after having been abandoned by his own army.

In the first millennium BC, the term “Gutium” was used to refer to the region between the Zagros and the Tigris, also known as western Media. All tribes to the east and northeast who often had hostile relations with the peoples of lowland Mesopotamia, were referred to as Gutian or Guti. Assyrian royal annals use the term Gutians to refer to Iranian populations otherwise known as Medes or Mannaeans; and as late as the reign of Cyrus the Great of Persia, the famous general Gubaru (Gobryas) was described as the “governor of Gutium”.

In the following (second) millennium BC, the term “Lullubi” or “Lullu” seems to have become a generic Babylonian / Assyrian term for “highlander”, while the original region of Lullubi was also known as Zamua. However, the “land of Lullubi” makes a reappearance in the late 12th century BC, when both Nebuchadnezzar I of Babylon (in c. 1120 BC) and Tiglath-Pileser I of Assyria (in 1113 BC) claim to have subdued it.

Neo-Assyrian kings of the following centuries also recorded campaigns and conquests in the area of Lullubum / Zamua. Most notably, Ashur-nasir-pal II had to suppress a revolt among the Lullubian / Zamuan chiefs in 881 BC, during which they constructed a wall in the Bazian pass (between modern Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah) in a failed attempt to keep the Assyrians out.

They were said to have had 19 walled cities in their land, as well as a large supply of horses, cattle, metals, textiles and wine, which were carried off by Ashur-nasir-pal. Local chiefs or governors of the Zamua region continued to be mentioned down to the end of Esarhaddon’s reign (669 BC).

The historical Guti have been widely regarded as among the ancestors of the Kurdish people, including by the modern Kurds themselves.

The Kurds as an ethnic group appear in the medieval period. The Kurdish people are believed to be of heterogenous origins combining a number of earlier tribal or ethnic groups including Median, Lullubi, Guti, Cyrtians, Carduchi. They have also absorbed some elements from Semitic, Turkic and Armenian people.

LULUBI – Encyclopaedia Iranica