Zimri-Lim

Only a few excerpts from the Epic of Zinul-Lim, which was composed in the eighteenth century bce, have so far been published. lines 137-42 were published by Durand in 1988 and they contain a reference to a prophet as a "sign whom Zimri-Lim sees. In this excerpt Zunri-Iim s enjoyment of divine patronage is much in evidence ... 

For the text see Durand, Archives ipistoLaires, 435-37- The comparison with the Epic of Zimri-Lim is noted by Durand on p. 392 cf Martti Nissinen, Spoken, Written, Quoted, and Invented Orality and Writtenness in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, in Writings and Speech in Israelite and Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, ed. Ehud Ben Zvi and Michael H. Floyd (SBLSymS 10 Atlanta Society of Biblical Literature, 2000), 235-71 (263 n. 105). Jean-Marie Durand, In vino veritas, RA 76 (1982) 43-50 (43-45). 

That there may be some degree of correspondence between eighteenth-century Mesopotamian texts and Old Testament references to prophecy is not, of course, problematic in view of the considerable number of such parallels that have already been noted in the secondary literature. For such parallels within Mesopotamia itself, see Nissinen, Spoken, Written," 263-64 (and n. 106), noting the many" features shared by the excerpt from the Epic of Zimri-Lim and the much later Neo-Assyrian oracles. 

Now there is a very different picture in place. Rather than three mobile pastoralist tribes encompassed by the kingdom of Mari, the Yaminites, Simalites, and Hana, there are but two, the Yaminites and Simalites, hana being a word that literally means tent-dwellers (Durand 1998 417-18). Hana in Zimri-Lim s letters was used primarily to refer to his own tent-dwellers (Fleming 2004), who are now understood to be the Simalites (Charpin and Durand 1986), so that several of the conundrums about the place of mobile pastoralists in the kingdom of Mari - sometimes they seemed to be internal, sometimes external, sometimes they seemed to provide the basis of political power, sometimes they appeared to be bitter enemies - are resolved. The differences are in part between... 

Another connection between Numha and Mari is to be seen in the fact that one of Zimri-Lim s aides was a chief of pasture over Numha and Yamutbal groups as well as Simalites (Fleming 2009 229, nn. 12,23). 

Kingship of City and Tribe Conjoined Zimri-Lim at Mari. In Nomads, Tribes, and the State in the Ancient Near East Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives, edited by J. Szuchman, 227 40. Oriental Institute Seminars 5. Chicago The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. 

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