Gutians

The Gutians were a group of people from the Zagros mountains in western Iran who rose to prominence in Mesopotamia after the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, roughly in the late 3rd millennium BCE. In Mesopotamian records they are called Gutians or Gutu; in Akkadian sources they are referred to as the Guti. They established a short-lived dynasty that controlled parts of southern Mesopotamia, commonly labeled the Gutian Dynasty of Sumer, with conventional dates around 2150 to 2050 BCE. The period is characterized in later sources by political fragmentation and economic disruption, as central authority weakened and various city-states vied for influence. The exact extent and longevity of Gutian rule remain debated among scholars, but it is clear that their governance was eventually supplanted by the Ur III state founded by Ur-Nammu.

The Gutians likely originated in the Zagros region, but their ethnolinguistic identity is not known with certainty. The surviving inscriptions do not preserve a readable Gutian language, and the names of Gutian rulers are few. Some researchers have proposed connections with Hurrian or other groups of western Iran, but no consensus exists.

Contemporary evidence for the Gutians consists of later king lists and a small number of administrative tablets and inscriptions that mention them as rulers of Sumer or as a disruptive force in the region. Because material remains from their period are relatively scarce, much about Gutian culture—if any distinct Gutian cultural traits existed—remains unknown.