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Lot Essay
The inscription is for an otherwise-unknown governor named Su-Batir, of the ancient city Batir, modern Tell Suleimeh in the Hamrin Basin, in the Diyala area of eastern Iraq. He is perhaps a king of the Lullubu, a largely unknown group living just across the modern Iran/Iraq border in the eastern Zagros Mountains. It is believed that they were comprised of several independent tribes with separate leaders who likely unified for military purposes.
The Lullubu are recorded on the Naram-Sin stele, now in Paris, that celebrates the Akkadian victory over the Lullubu (see no. 59, pp. 195-196 in Aruz, ed., Art of the First Cities: the Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus). For the Lullubu see p. 99 in Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, and p. 425 in Bryce, The Routledge Handbook of the People and Places of Ancient Western Asia: the Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire.
The Lullubu are recorded on the Naram-Sin stele, now in Paris, that celebrates the Akkadian victory over the Lullubu (see no. 59, pp. 195-196 in Aruz, ed., Art of the First Cities: the Third Millennium B.C. from the Mediterranean to the Indus). For the Lullubu see p. 99 in Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, and p. 425 in Bryce, The Routledge Handbook of the People and Places of Ancient Western Asia: the Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the Fall of the Persian Empire.