Mari: a palace that is also an archive

The explanations distinguish finds, interpretations and open questions. Sources appear at the end of the page.

What the source says

On the Met's timeline page for Mesopotamia, 2000-1000 BCE, under about 1800-1600 BCE, the text says that Hammurabi, as part of his expansionist policy, destroyed the palace of King Zimri-Lim at Mari on the Euphrates River in Syria. The palace, according to the page, was decorated with wall paintings and stone statuary, and a massive archive of cuneiform tablets found there provides a wealth of information about the political events of the time. The overview on the same page presents Hammurabi as king of Babylon, about 1792-1750 BCE. Source 1.

Three kinds of evidence in one building

The wall paintings, the stone statuary and the tablets come, according to the source, from the same palace, but they are different kinds of evidence. The art tells how the building was decorated; the archive tells of politics and events, from the point of view of those who wrote and kept the tablets. The source does not say in which rooms the paintings or the tablets were found, what the paintings show, or how many tablets the archive held. Without such details no particular room can be linked to a particular text; one can only say that the three kinds of evidence came from one building. Source 1.

The destruction as a point in time

The page places the destruction in the section for 1800-1600 BCE and gives it no year. Combined with Hammurabi's dates in the overview, about 1792-1750 BCE, the destruction falls, on the page's own data, within his reign. That is a combination of two sentences from the source, not a date the source states. The statement that the destruction was part of an "expansionist policy" is the source's interpretation. Source 1.

Its place on the timeline

On the same page the Middle Bronze Age is dated about 2000-1600 BCE, and within it the Old Babylonian period in the south and the Old Assyrian period in the north, both with the same bounds. Mari lies, according to the source, on the Euphrates in Syria, yet it appears on the page for Mesopotamia; on this site the article is placed in the Middle Bronze Age in Mesopotamia, following the page on which the site appears. Source 1.

Scope of reading: the Met timeline page for Mesopotamia, 2000-1000 BCE, was read on 24 October 2026. The Mari excavation reports and the editions of the tablets were not read, so this page gives no plan of the palace, no description of the paintings, no number of tablets and no quotation from the archive.