GUTIANS / GUTIUM

The Gutians (Guti, or sometimes Quti) were one of a number of people who formed the population of ancient Mesopotamia. They occupied the central Zagros Mountain range from the last few centuries of the third millennium BC onwards, but nothing concrete is known about their origins. They were not a tribe, as is often stated, simply a collection of nomads who settled together and were later branded under a single name.

For around a generation they appeared in increasing numbers in Sumer and Akkad as settlers, to the extent that they required the royal appointment of an interpreter in Adab. The general region into which they settled became known as Gutium (although there was no single, fixed location by that name), but the settlers themselves came to be referred to as the 'Guti Hordes', as they remained anything but settled and productive new neighbours. Shortly after about 2200 BC they swept down in force into southern and central Mesopotamia, destroying the Akkadian empire at Agade, and subjugating much of Sumer either directly or indirectly. Their numbers by this stage must have been impressive, as the city states of Mesopotamia were long used to fighting tooth-and-nail for regional domination, and Akkad had become the biggest and strongest of them all.

The Gutians based themselves near the ruins of Agade at the northern edges of Sumer and pretty much due west of their Zagros Mountain settlements. The cities in the south were able to enjoy a certain level of freedom, and were able to manage their own affairs to an extent. The Gutians proved to be very poor rulers of Sumer, however. They were crude administrators, clearly not at all used to the complexities of managing an urban society. Prosperity declined alongside proper organisation, particularly in connection with the canal network. This was allowed to sink into disrepair, with famine and death resulting as crops failed. A short dark age swept over Mesopotamia as a result of their arrival and dominance. It was inevitable that they would be ejected.

The questions surrounding Gutian origins have long existed. They may have been an Indo-European people, although assigning them to any specific group of Indo-Europeans requires some degree of speculation as they arrived too early to be part of any of the usual waves of Indo-European migration. There is the possibility, according to some areas of scholarship (W B Henning especially), that they were linguistically related to Tocharians (who ended up settling around the Altai Mountains to the north-west of ancient China - see feature link, right). This, though, would require an early split from the main group of proto-Tocharians which itself split away very early from the main Indo-European collective (something like 4000-3500 BC). Access to the Near East at this time can only have been via the Caucuses and eastern Anatolia, as the later route for Indo-Aryans was still blocked by the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. The length of time between split and arrival suggests a long sojourn in Anatolia itself.

That Anatolian route raises the possibility that they were part of - or had travelled ahead of - the second division of Indo-Europeans in the form of the Anatolian branch (see feature link). This would also produce unique elements of language that would not be seen in the main collective. The Gutians have also been linked to the 'Qutils', a group that has in turn been linked to the Mitanni of the subsequent millennium, and to the modern-day Kurds as the descendants of these ancient groups who occupied the same general territory. However, the names of Gutian rulers that are shown below exhibit almost no apparent Indo-European influence barring two names, those of Inkishush and Iarlaganda. If the bulk of the Gutians were Indo-Europeans then they were almost certainly being dominated by a non-Indo-European elite.

According to the Sumerian king list, a total of 21 kings (MS P4+Ha has 23) ruled for 125 years and 40 days (MS P4+Ha has 99 years), once (one dynasty) in the army of Gutium. This is the seventeenth set of entries on the list comprising kings 98-118. Here, List 1 is primarily used (with names in black in the list below), backed up by List 2 (names in green) and List 3 (names in red - see Sumer for further details). Dates are calculated back from circa 2120 BC, when the Gutians were ejected, and may not be entirely accurate.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information by Edward Dawson, from The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Samuel Noah Kramer (List 1 of Sumerian rulers, Phoenix Books, 1971), from The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David W Anthony, from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Haywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1), Enrico Ascalone (University of California Press, 2007), from The First Empires, J N Postgate (Oxford, 1977), from A History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), from The Sumerian Kings List: Translation, J A Black, G Cunningham, E Fluckiger-Hawker, E Robson, and G Zólyomi (List 2 of Sumerian rulers, via The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford, 1998), from Earth's Ancient History: A Theory About Ancient Times, L C Gerts (List 4 of Sumerian rulers, Chapter 12: The Sumerian king list, 2002), from Indo-European Etymological Dictionary, J Pokorny (online database which updates Pokorny's Indogermanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and Ancient History, Anthony Michael Love (List 3 of Sumerian rulers at Sarissa.org (dead link), and Peering at the Tocharians through Language (Borderless Blogger), and The United Sites of Indo-Europeans, and Linguistics Research Center (University of Texas at Austin), and Indo-European Chronology - Countries and Peoples, and Indo-European Etymological Dictionary, and Encyclopaedia Iranica.)

c.2350 BC :

The short-lived empire of Lugalannemundu of Adab subjects the Gutians. The latter can only recently have arrived in the Zagros Mountains and have been settling the less hostile areas, probably in a series of small, interconnected settlements which nevertheless would seem to be able to muster enough of a military threat that the more established city states feel they need to impose control over them.