This chapter explores the related questions of whether or not genocide is found in sources from ancient Mesopotamia and whether ancient Mesopotamian empires carried out genocidal violence. The chapter focuses on the three most relevant sets of sources from Mesopotamia: evidence from the 23rd century BCE related to the violent reprisals of two kings of Akkad, Rimuš and Naram-Sin, against the “rebellious” cities of Sumer and Elam; the Sumerian “city laments” dating to a few centuries later; and first-millennium BCE Neo-Assyrian royal inscriptions. This examination demonstrates that, while mass violence is hardly rare in accounts of Mesopotamian history, finding evidence for genocide is not a straightforward task. Whether or not the Mesopotamians practiced genocide hinges on how one defines that term, and whether the targeted destruction of cities constitutes a type of genocide. In addition to an exploration of urbicide as genocide, the chapter considers how Mesopotamian accounts of mass violence contributed to accounts and practices of violence, including genocidal violence, elsewhere in ancient West Asia in later periods.

While scholars have outlined the general characteristics of ancient Mesopotamian commentaries from the first millennium BCE, much work remains to be done in examining the outliers among these compositions and what they can tell us about this important tradition. In an effort to better understand these outliers, we consider two of the few Mesopotamian commentaries that are extant in multiple copies. Focusing on celestial-divinatory commentaries, which are the best attested genre of commentary in Assyria and Babylonia, this chapter begins by introducing celestial-divinatory commentaries and the source text upon which most seem to comment, the omen series Enuma Anu Enlil (“When (the Gods) Anu, Enlil, (and Ea)”). The bulk of this contribution then considers the commentary on Tablet 14 of Enuma Anu Enlil and the exegetical series Šumma Sîn ina Tamartišu (“If the Moon at Its Appearance”), which are both atypical celestial-divinatory commentaries extant in multiple copies. We ask how the commentary on Enuma Anu Enlil 14 and Šumma Sîn ina Tamartišu interpret and relate to their source texts, how copies of these compositions are associated with one another, why these exegetical texts may have been copied in the first place, and how they may have been used in antiquity. Our analysis illuminates important, understudied aspects of both of these compositions while noting how the features therein should alter our conception of Mesopotamian commentaries on the whole.