Sumur (Levant)

Sumur (Biblical Hebrew: צְמָרִי‎ [collective noun denoting the city inhabitants]; Egyptian: Smr; Akkadian: Sumuru; Assyrian: Simirra) was a Phoenician city in what is now Syria. Zemar was a major trade center. The city has also been referred to in English publications as Simyra,[1] Ṣimirra, Ṣumra,[2] Sumura,[3] Ṣimura,[4] Zemar,[5] and Zimyra.[6]

Sumur
The location of Zimyra/Sumur (in the north)
Shown within Syria
Alternative nameSumura, Zemar, etc.
LocationSyria
RegionTartus Governorate
Coordinates34.7081°N 35.9861°E / 34.7081; 35.9861

Sumur (or "Sumura") appears in the Amarna letters (mid-14th century BCE); Ahribta is named as its ruler. It was under the guardianship of Rib-Addi, king of Byblos, but was conquered by Abdi-Ashirta's expanding kingdom of Amurru. Pro-Egyptian factions may have seized the city again, but Abdi-Ashirta's son, Aziru, recaptured Sumur. Sumur became the capital of Amurru.[7]

It is likely, although not completely certain, that the "Sumur" of the Amarna letters is the same city later known as "Simirra."[8] Simirra was claimed as part of the Assyrian empire by Tiglath-Pileser III in 738 BCE, but rebelled against Assyria in 721 at the beginning of the reign of Sargon II.[9]

It has been linked by Maurice Dunand and N. Salisby to the archaeological site of Tell Kazel in 1957.[10]

References
  1. Archibald Henry Sayce (1903). The Hittites: the story of a forgotten empire. The Religious Tract Society. p. 164.
  2. Oded Lipschitz (2005). The Fall and Rise of Jerusalem: Judah Under Babylonian Rule. Eisenbrauns. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-57506-095-8.
  3. Shlomo Izre'el; Itamar Singer; Ran Zadok (1998). Past Links: Studies in the Languages and Cultures of the Ancient Near East. Eisenbrauns. p. 393. ISBN 978-1-57506-035-4.
  4. Niels Peter Lemche (1 March 1991). The Canaanites and Their Land: The Tradition of the Canaanites. A&C Black. p. 78. ISBN 978-1-85075-310-0.
  5. Archibald Henry Sayce (1895). Patriarchal Palestine. Library of Alexandria. p. 24. ISBN 978-1-4655-5042-2.
  6. I. E. S. Edwards; C. J. Gadd; N. G. L. Hammond; E. Sollberger (3 May 1973). The Cambridge Ancient History. Cambridge University Press. p. 863. ISBN 978-0-521-08230-3.
  7. Trevor Bryce. The Kingdom of the Hittites. p. 182.
  8. Trevor Bryce (10 September 2009). The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia. Routledge. p. 672. ISBN 978-1-134-15907-9.
  9. Trevor Bryce (10 September 2009). The Routledge Handbook of the Peoples and Places of Ancient Western Asia: The Near East from the Early Bronze Age to the fall of the Persian Empire. Routledge. p. 654. ISBN 978-1-134-15907-9.
  10. Badre, Leila., Tell Kazel-Simyra: A Contribution to a Relative Chronological History in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Late Bronze Age, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, 2006.
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