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Who were these powerful and important folk, whose kings vied with those of Mitanni, Egypt and the Hittite Land in importance and prestige? All the evidence suggests they were not native to Mesopotamia and were complete newcomers to the region. According to C. H. W. Johns, “It is usually considered that the horse was introduced to the Babylonians by the Kassites.” (Johns, Ancient Babylonia, (London, 1913) p. 89) This would imply a northern, nomadic, origin. Although their ethnic and linguistic affinities are disputed, it is evident, from their names and from the few words that have come down to us, that their language must have had some affinities with the Indo-European group. This is most obvious from personal names. Thus for example the first Kassite king, Gandash, has a name which is rather obviously reminiscent of the Indian deity Ganesha, whilst other kings such as Abirattash, Kara-indash, and Burnaburish (or Burraburiash) are equally to be placed in the Indo-Iranian family. The name Burraburiash may even be a precise equivalent of the Persian Gobryas.

Now, the Scythians too, by general agreement, spoke an Indo-European, or, more precisely, Indo-Iranian language.

According to Gunnar Heinsohn, the Scythians, who brought devastation to Mesopotamia during the fall of the Assyrian Empire, are generally named Guti, or Cuthi, in the cuneiform texts. The more normal cuneiform rendering of the word “Scyth”, however, as found in inscriptions of the Persian period, is “Saka”. Elsewhere I have argued in great detail that the Saka occur in the Amarna documents as Sa.Gaz, where their banditry and lawlessness (in Syria/Palestine) is continually bewailed. According to Herodotus, after the destruction of Assyria, and an abortive attack on Egypt, groups of Scythians remained in Syria/Palestine to plunder. Contemporary with the Amarna Letters, another group of cuneiform texts, from the Hittite capital Boghaz-koi, speak of the depredations of another group of nomad bandits named variously Gas-ga, or Kas-ka (sometimes also Gas-gas or Kas-kas). There seems little doubt that the Sa.Gaz of Syria/Palestine are identical to the Gas-gas or Kas-kas of Anatolia.

Now, the Gutians, or Cuthians, who plundered Mesopotamia after the fall of Assyria, seem to be identical to the Gas-gas or Kas-kas of Anatolia; and it would appear that the Kassites were one and the same as these. (The sounds “t” and “s” are confused in very many languages) In short, the name we read as “Scyth” was written either as Saka or Kasa. It may be that this is but an artefact; a mistake on the part of scholars transcribing the cuneiform documents. However, it seems more likely that both were alternate renderings of the same name. Such inversion of consonants is by no means uncommon in many languages.

If the Kassites were in fact a Scythian dynasty, it means that the latter people played a much more important role in the history of Mesopotamia than has hitherto been allowed. For Kassite kings ruled much of the Land of the Two Rivers from the rise of the Mitanni (and the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt) right down to the time of the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon, who defeated the last of the Kassites, Marduk-apla-iddin (Merodach-Baladan). We know too that the Kassites were prominent in Babylonia during the latter years of the Eighteenth Dynasty, when Burnaburiash II sent a series of petulant missives to Amenhotep III and Akhnaton.

The earliest reference to the Kassites, or individuals with Kassite names, so we are told, comes in the reign of the “Old Babylonian” king Hammurabi. (Johns, Ancient Babylonia, p. 98) Now, in the thinking of conventional historians, the Old Babylonians preceded by Kassites by several centuries, so it is now held that the Kassites, whoever they were, did not arrive in Mesopotamia at the same time as the Mitanni, by came in, perhaps as peaceful immigrants, over a period of several generations in the centuries before the rise of the Mitanni. However, if the Kassites actually arrived in Mesopotamia as invaders, which seems highly likely given the fact that during the period of the Eighteenth Dynasty their kings contested the leadership of Mesopotamia with the Mitanni and the Assyrians, then those Kassites named on the Old Babylonian documents must have been humble folk who arrived in a great wave of invasion at an earlier stage.

The stratigraphy of Babylon, as revealed by Robert Koldewey, showed that the Old Babylonians directly preceded the Kassites. However, since kings in ancient times used a variety of titles expressive of their rule over differing ethnic and linguistic groups, it seems likely that the “Old Babylonians” were but the earliest of the Kassite kings using Semitic names. It was only in the middle of the Kassite epoch, under the great Burnaburiash II, that the Kassites became the recognizably dominant power in Mesopotamia. What they were doing for the century or so earlier, under comparatively unknown kings like Gandash, Abirattash, and Burnaburiash I, is said be unknown.

It thus seems that the earlier, virtually unknown Kassite kings, were identical to the line of kings we now call “Old Babylonian”. From the time of Burnaburiash II, however, the Kassites, who increasingly associated themselves with the earlier Sumerian (actually Chaldaean) population of Southern Mesopotamia, placed less and less emphasis on their Semitic titles, and more on their Sumerian/Chaldaean and Kassite ones.

Elsewhere I have argued in detail that the king generally known as Burnaburiash II was one and the same as the Sumerian (Third Dynasty of Ur) king Ur-Nammu, and also the same as the Babylonian ruler Nabu-apla-iddin (which could be “biblicized” to Nabopoladan or some such). The last of the Kassite rulers were therefore identical to the Neo-Chaldaean kingdom which ruled Babylonia until the arrival of Cyrus and the Persians. Of the earlier Kassites, I suggest the following equations with the Old Babylonians: