IN the closing years of Hammurabi's reign Babylon had reached the climax of her early power. The proud phraseology of the Prologue to his Code conveys the impression that the empire was solidly compact, and its component cities the willing recipients of his royal clemency and favour. And there can be no doubt that he owed his success in great measure to the efficient administration he had established under his personal control. His son, Samsu-iluna, inherited his father's traditions, and in his letters that have survived we have abundant evidence that he exercised the same close supervision over the judicial and administrative officers stationed in cities distant from the capital. And it would appear that the first eight years of his reign passed under the same peaceful conditions, that had prevailed at the time of his accession to the throne. He cut two canals, and the names he gave them commemorate the wealth and abundance he hoped by their means to bestow upon the people. It was in his third and fourth years that the Samsu-iluna-nagab-nukhush-nishi and the Samsu-iluna-khegallum Canals were completed, and the royal activities were then confined to the further adornment of the great temples of Babylon and Sippar. His ninth year marks the crisis, not only in Samsu-iluna's own reign, but in the early fortunes of the kingdom. It is then that we first hear of Ivassite tribes appearing in force upon Babylon's eastern frontier, and, though Samsu-iluna doubtless defeated them, as he claims to have done, it is clear that their emergence from the foothills of Western Elam, followed speedily by their penetration of Baby­lonian territory, was the signal for setting the empire in a blaze.

They must have met with some success before their onslaught was arrested by the army sent against them, and the renewal of hostilities in any form must have aroused once more the fighting instinct of the Elamite border tribes, which had been temporarily laid to rest by Hammurabi's victories. Hammurabi's old antagonist, Rim-Sin himself, had long been living in comparative retirement, and, in spite of his advanced age, the news fired him to fresh efforts. His name was still on the lips of those who had fought under him, and since the death of his conqueror, Hammurabi, his prestige must have tended to increase. When, therefore, his native land of Emutbal, allying itself with the neighbouring Elamite district of Idamaraz, followed up the Kassite onslaught by an organized invasion, Rim-Sin raised a revolt in Southern Babylonia, and succeeded in gaining possession of Erech and Nisin. It would appear that the Babylonian garrison in Larsa, too, was overcome, and that the city passed once more under the independent control of its old ruler.

With the whole south of the country in arms against him, we may conjecture that Samsu-iluna detailed sufficient forces to contain Rim-Sin, while he dealt with the invasion of Babylon's home-territory. He had little difficulty in disposing of the Elamites, and, marching southwards, he defeated Rim-Sin's forces and reoccupied Larsa. It may be that it was at this time he captured, or burnt, Rim-Sin alive, and that the palace where this took place was the rebel leader's old palace at Larsa, which he had been making his headquarters. But the revolt was not completely subdued. Ur and Erech still held out, and it was only after a further campaign that Samsu-iluna recaptured them and razed their walls. He had thus succeeded in crushing the first series of organized attacks upon the empire, but the effort of dealing simultaneously with invasion and internal revolt had evidently strained the national, resources. Garrisons had probably been reduced in distant provinces, others had been cut down in order to reinforce his armies in the field, and it is not surprising that in his twelfth year these outlying districts should have followed the prevailing lead. In that year it is recorded that all the lands revolted against him.

We may with some confidence trace the main source of Samsu-iluna's fresh troubles to the action of Iluma-ilum, who, probably at this time, headed a revolt in the Sea-Country on the shore of the Persian Gulf, and declared his independence of Babylon. Samsu-iluna's answer was to raise further levies and lead them against his new foe. The subsequent battle was fiercely contested on the very shore of the Gulf, for a later chronicler records that the bodies of the slain were carried off by the sea; yet it was either indecisive, or resulted in the discomfiture of the Babylonians. We may conjecture that the king was prevented from employing his full forces to stamp out the rebellion, in consequence of trouble in other quarters. For in the following two years we find him destroying the cities Kisurra and Sabum, and defeating the leader of a rebellion in the home-territory of Babylon itself.

Iluma-ilum was thus afforded the opportunity of consolidating his position, and we may perhaps see evidence of his growing influence in Southern Babylonia in the fact that at Tell Sifr not a single document has been found dated in a later year of Samsu-iluna's reign than the tenth. In view of the fact that the central city of Nippur eventually passed under Iluma-ilum's control, we may probably assume that he was already encroaching northwards, and that territory in the south of Sumer, perhaps including the city of Larsa, passed now into his possession. In support of this suggestion it may be noted that, when Samsu-iluna, after suppressing the Akkadian usurper, began repairing the damage wrought in six years of continuous fighting, it is at Nisin and at Sippar that he rebuilds the ruined walls, and in Emutbal that he repairs the great garrison-fortresses. Nisin may well have marked the most southerly limit of Babylon's control, and we may picture the gradual expansion of the Sea-Country, as the power of Babylon declined. The ''rebellious land," which Samsu-iluna boasts that he overthrew in his twentieth year, was perhaps the Sea-Country, for we know that he conducted a second campaign against Iluma-ilum, who this time secured a victory. If the Babylonian army succeeded in retreating in comparatively good order, it would have formed a sufficient justification for Samsu-iluna's boast that he had given the rebellious land a lesson.

The fringe of territory in the extreme south-east of Babylonia always exhibited a tendency to detach itself from the upper riverain districts of Babylonia proper. Forming the littoral of the Persian Gulf, and encroaching in its northern area upon Elam, it consisted of great stretches of rich alluvial soil interspersed with areas of marsh-land and swamps, which tended to increase where the rivers approached the coast. The swamps undoubtedly acted as a protection to the country, for while tracks and fords were known to the inhabitants, a stranger from the north-west would in many places have been completely baffled by them. The natives, too, in their light reed-boats could escape from one district to another, pushing along known passages and eluding their pursuers, when once the tall reeds had closed behind them. The later Assyrians at the height of their power succeeded in subduing a series of revolts in the Sea-Country, but it was only by enlisting the help of native guides and by commandeering the light canoes of neighbouring villages. The earlier kings of Babylonia had always been content to leave the swamp-dwellers to themselves, and at most to exact a nominal recognition of suzerainty. But it is probable that fresh energy had been lately introduced into the district, and of this Iluma-ilum doubtless took advantage when he succeeded, not only in leading a revolt, but in establishing an independent kingdom.

swamp in southern babylonia or the sea-country An Assyrian conquest of the country is hero represented, amid all the difficulties presented by its swamps and reed-beds. [After a bas-relief at Nineveh.]

 

It is clear that the pressure exerted upon Babylonia by the West-Semitic migration must have tended to displace sections of the existing population. The direction of advance was always down-stream, and the pressure continued in force even after the occupation of the country. Those strains in the population, which differed most radically from the invaders, would be the more likely to seek sanctuary elsewhere, and, with the exception of Elam, the Sea-Country offered the onlv possible line of retreat. We may assume, therefore, that the marsh-dwellers of the south had been reinforced for a considerable period by Sumerian refugees, and, though the first three rulers of the new kingdom bore Semitic names and were probably Semites, the names of later rulers of the Sea-Country suggest that the Sumerian element in the population afterwards secured the control, no doubt with the assistance of fresh drafts from their own kindred after their successful occupation of Southern Babylonia. Under the more powerful kings of the Second Dynasty, the kingdom may have assumed a character resembling that of its predecessors in Babylonia. The centre of administration was certainly shifted for a time to Nippur, and possibly even further north, but the Sea-Country, as the home-land of the dynasty, must have always been regarded as a dominant province of the kingdom, and it offered a secure refuge to its rulers in the event of their being driven again within its borders. In spite of its extensive marshes, it was capable of sustaining its inhabitants in a considerable degree of comfort, for the date-palm flourished luxuriantly, and the areas under cultivation must have been at least as productive as those further to the north-west. Moreover, the zebu, or humped cattle of Sumer, thrived in the swamps and water-meadows, and not only formed an important source of supply, but were used for ploughing in the agricultural districts.

With such a country as a base of operations, protected in no small degree by its marshes, it is not surprising that the Sea-Country kings should have met with considerable success in their efforts at extending the area of territory under their control.

the zebu or humped oxen oF the sea-country

After his second conflict with Iluma-ilum, Samsu-iluna appears to have reconciled himself to the loss of his southern province, and to have made no further effort at reconquest. He could still boast of successes in other districts, for he destroyed the walls of Shakhna and Zarkhanum, doubtless after the suppression of a revolt, and he strengthened the fortifications of Kish. He also retained the control of the Euphrates route to Syria, and he doubtless encouraged the commercial enterprise of Babylon in that direction as a set-off to his losses in the south. We possess an interesting illustration of the close relations he maintained with the west in the date-formula for the twenty-sixth year of his reign, which tells us that he procured a monolith from the great mountain of the land of Amurru. This must have been quarried in the Lebanon, and transported overland to the Euphrates, and thence conveyed by kelek to the capital. From the details he gives us of its size, it appears to have measured some thirty-six feet in length, and it was no small achievement to have brought it so far to Babylon.

During this period of comparative tranquillity Samsu-iluna devoted himself once more to rebuilding and beautifying E-sagila and the temples of Kish and Sippar; but in his twenty-eighth year Babylon suffered a fresh shock, which appears to have resulted in still further loss of territory. In that year he claims to have slain Iadi-khabum and Muti-khurshana, two leaders of an invasion, or a revolt, of which we have no details. But it is clear that the victory, if such it was, resulted in further trouble, for in the following two years no fresh date-formulas were promulgated, and it is probable that the king himself was absent from the capital. It is significant that no document has been recovered at Nippur which is dated after Samsu-iluna's twenty-ninth year, although in the preceding period, from the thirty-first year of Hammurabi onward, when the city first passed into Babylon's possession, nearly every year is well represented in the dated series. It is difficult not to conclude that Samsu-iluna now lost the control of that city, and, since one of the documents from Nippur is dated in Iluma-ilum's reign, it can only have passed into the latter's possession. Further evidence of the diminishing territory of Babylon may be seen in the fact that Samsu-iluna should have rebuilt the old line of fortresses, founded by his ancestor Suma-la-ilum at a time when the kingdom was in its infancy. This work was doubtless undertaken when he foresaw the necessity of defending the Akkadian border, and he must have lost one at least of the fortresses, Dur-Zakar, when Nippur was taken. His activitives during his closing years were confined to the north and west, and to the task of keeping open the Euphrates route. For he cut a canal beside Kar-Sippar, recovered possession of Saggaratum, and probably destroyed the cities of Arkum and Amal. His defeat of an Amorite force some two years before his death is of interest approving that the Western Semites of Akkad, nearly two cen­turies after their settlement in the country, were experiencing the same treatment from their own stock that they themselves had caused to the land of their adoption.

Samsu-iluna, with the possible exception of Ammi-ditana, was the last great king of the West-Semitic dynasty. It is true that his son Abi-eshu' made a fresh attempt to dislodge Iluma-ilum from his hold upon Central and Southern Babylonia. A late chronicle records that he took the offensive and marched against Iluma-ilum. It would seem that his attack was in the nature of a surprise, and that he succeeded in cutting off the king and part of his forces, possibly on their return from some other expedition. It is clear that he came into touch with him in the neighbourhood of the Tigris, and probably forced him to take refuge in a fortress, since he attempted to cut off his retreat by damming the river. He is said to have succeeded in damming the stream, but he failed to catch Iluma-ilum. The chronicle records no further conflict between the two, and we may assume that he then adopted his father's later policy of leaving the Sea-Country in possession of its conquered territory. In some of his broken date- formulge we have echoes of a few further campaigns, and we know that he cut the Abi-eshu Canal, and built a fortress at the gate of the Tigris, which he also named after himself, Dur-Abi-eshu. This was probably a frontier fortification, erected for the defence of the river at the point where it passed from Babylon's area of control to that of the Sea-Country. He also built the town of Lukhaia on the Arakhtu Canal in the immediate neighbourhood of Babylon. But both Abi-eshu and his successors on the throne give evidence of having become more and more engrossed in cult-observances. The supply of temple-furniture begins to have for them the importance that military success had for their fathers. And it is a symptom of decadence that, even in the religious sphere, they are as much concerned with their own worship as with that of the gods.

It is significant that Abi-eshu should have named one of his years of rule by his decoration of a statue of Entemena, the early patesi of Lagash, who had been accorded divine honours, and, at some period after Hammurabi's occupation of that city, had received a cult-centre of his own in Babylon. For the act indicates an increased interest, on Abi-eshu's part, in the deification of royalty. This honour was peculiarly associated with the possession of Nippur, the central city and shrine of the country, and Babylon had adopted the practice of deification for her kings after Nippur had been annexed by Hammurabi. Though the city had now passed from Babylon's control, Abi-eshu did not relinquish the privilege his father and grandfather had legitimately enjoyed. Since Babylon no longer possessed the central shrine of Enlil, in which his own divine statue should have been set up, he dedicated one in Enlil's local temple at Babylon. But not content with that he fashioned no less than five other statues of himself, which he set up in the temples of other gods, at Babylon, Sippar and elsewhere.

His three successors followed the same practice, and Ammi-ditana and Ammi-zaduga, his son and grandson, have left descriptions of some of these cult-images of themselves. A favourite character, in which the king was often represented, was holding a lamb for divination, and another was in the attitude of prayer. The later kings of the First Dynasty love, too, to dwell on their sumptuous votive offerings. Marduk is supplied with innumerable weapons of red gold, and the Sun-god's shrine at Sippar is decorated with solar disks of precious dushu-stone, inlaid with red gold, lapis-lazuli, and silver. Great reliefs, with representations of rivers and mountains, were cast in bronze and set up in the temples; and Samsu-ditana, the last of his line, records among his offerings to the gods the dedication to Sarpanitum of a rich silver casket for perfumes.

Incidentally, these references afford striking proof of the wealth Babylon had now acquired, due no doubt to her increased commercial activities. Elam on the one side and Syria on the other had furnished her with imports of precious stone, metal, and wood; and her craftsmen had learnt much from foreign teachers. In spite of the contraction of Hammurabi's empire, the life of the people in both the town and country districts of Akkad was not materially altered. The organized supervision of all departments of national activity, pastoral, agricultural and commercial, which the nation owed in great measure to Hammurabi, was continued under these later kings; and some of the royal letters that have been recovered show that orders on comparatively unimportant matters continued to be issued in the king's name. We know, too, of a good many public works carried out by Ammi-ditana, Abi-eshu's son. He cut only one canal, and he built fortresses for the protection of others, and named them after himself. Thus, in addition to the Ammi-ditana Canal, we learn of a Dur-Ammi-ditana, which he erected on the Zilakum Canal, and another fortress of the same name on the Me-Enlil Canal. He strengthened the wall of Ishkun-Marduk, which was also on the Zilakum, and built Mashkan-Ammi-ditana and the wall of Kar-Shamash, both on the bank of the Euphrates.

The systematic fortification of the rivera and canals may perhaps be interpreted as marking an advance of the frontier southward, in consequence of which it was advisable to protect the crops and the water-supply of the districts thus recovered from the danger of sudden raids. On two occasions Ammi-ditana claims, in rather vague terms, to have freed his land from danger, once by restoring the might of Marduk, and later on by loosing the pressure from his land; and that, in his seventeenth year, he should have claimed to have conquered Arakhab, perhaps referred to as "the Sumerian", is an indication that the Sea-Country kings found ready assistance from the older population of the South. Moreover, of the later West-Semitic kings, Ammi-ditana alone appears to have made headway against the encroachments of the Sea-Country. The most conclusive proof of his advance is to be seen in the date-formula for his thirty-seventh year, which records that he destroyed the wall of Nisin, proving that he had penetrated to the south of Nippur. That Nippur itself was held by him for a time is more than probable, especially as one of his building-inscriptions, still unpublished, is said to have been found there; and we know also, from a Neo-Babylonian copy of a similar text, that he claimed the title "King of Sumer and Akkad". Under him, then, Babylon recovered a semblance of her former strength, but we may conjecture that the Sea-Country retained its hold on Larsa and the southern group of cities.

We are furnished with a third valuable synchronism between the dynasties of Babylon and of the south by the reference to Ammi-ditana's destruction of the wall of Nisin, for the date-formula adds that this had been erected by the people of Damki-ilishu. The ruler referred to is obviously the third king in the dynasty of the Sea-Country, who succeeded Itti-ili-nibi upon the throne. We may conclude that it was in his reign, or shortly after it, that Ammi-ditana succeeded in recovering Nisin, after having already annexed Nippur on his southward advance. In his thirty-fourth year, two years before the capture of Nisin, he had dedicated an image of Samsu-iluna in the temple E-namtila, and we may perhaps connect this tribute to his grandfather with the fact that in his reign Babylon had last enjoyed the distinction conferred by the suzerainty of Nippur.

In the year following the recovery of Nisin Ammi-zaduga succeeded his father on the throne, and since he ascribes the greatness of his kingdom to Enlil, and not to Marduk or any other god, we may see in this a further indication that Babylon continued to control his ancient shrine. But the remaining date-formulae for Ammi-zaduga's reign do not suggest that Ammi-ditana's conquests were held permanently. A succession of religious dedications is followed in his tenth year by the conventional record that he loosed the pressure of his land, suggesting that his country had been through a period of conflict; and, though in the following year he built a fortress, Dur-Ammi-zaduga "at the mouth of the Euphrates", the nearly unbroken succession of votive acts, commemorated during his remaining years and in the reign of his son Samsu-ditana, makes it probable that the kings of Sea-Country were gradually regaining some of the territory they had temporarily lost. (Success doubtless fluctuated from one side to the other, Ammi-zaduga in one of his later years commemorating that he had brightened his land like the Sun-god, and Samsu-ditana recording that he had restored his dominion with the weapon of Marduk. How far these rather vague claims were justified it is impossible to say. Apart from votive acts, the only definite record of this period is that of Ammi-zaduga's sixteenth year, in which he celebrates the cutting of the Ammi-zaduga-nukhush-nishi Canal.).

But it was not from the Sea-Country that the West Semitic Dynasty of Babylon received its death-blow. In the late chronicle, which has thrown so much light on the earlier conflicts of this troubled period, we read of another invasion, which not only brought disaster to Babylon but probably put an end to her first dynasty. The chronicler states that during the reign of Samsu- ditana, the last king of the dynasty, "men of the land of Khatti marched against the land of Akkad", in other words, that Hittites from Anatolia marched down the Euphrates and invaded Babylonia from the north-west. (We may confidently regard the phrase as referring to the Anatolian Hittites, whose capital at Boghaz Keui must have been founded far earlier than the end of the fifteenth century when we know that it bore the name of Khatti. It is true that, after the southern migration of the Hittites in the twelfth century. Northern Syria was known as "the land of Khatti", but, if the invasion of Babylonia in Samsu-ditana's reign had been made by Semitic tribes from Syria, no doubt the chronicler would have employed the correct designation, Amurru, which is used in an earlier section of the text for Sargon's invasion of Syria. In the late omen-literature, too, the use of the early geographical terms is not confused. Both chronicles and omen-texts are transcripts of early written originals, not late compilations based on oral tradition).The chronicle does not record the result of the invasion, but we may probably connect it with the fact that the Kassite king Agum-kakrime brought back to Babylon from Khani, the old Khana on the middle Euphrates, the cult-images of Marduk and- Sarpanitum and installed them once more with great pomp and ceremony within their shrines in E-sagila. We may legitimately conclude that they were carried off by the Hittites during their invasion in Samsu-ditana's reign.

If the Hittites succeeded in despoiling Babylon of her most sacred deities, it is clear that they must have raided the city, and they may even have occupied it for a time. Thus the West-Semitic Dynasty of Babylon may have been brought to an end by these Hittite conquerors, and Samsu-ditana himself may have fallen in defence of his own capital. But there is no reason for supposing that the Hittites occupied Babylon for long. Even if their success was complete, they would soon have returned to their own country, laden with heavy spoil; and they doubtless left some of their number in occupation of Ivhana on their withdrawal up the Euphrates. Southern Babylonia may also have suffered in the raid, but we may assume that its force was felt most in the north, and that the kings of the Sea-Country profited by the disaster. We have as yet no direct evidence of their occupation of Babylon, but, as their kingdom had been Babylon's most powerful rival prior to the Hittite raid, it may well have increased its borders after her fall.

To this period we may probably assign a local dynasty of Erech, represented by the names of Sin-gashid, Sin-gamil and An-am. From bricks and foundation-records recovered at Warka, the site of the ancient city, we know that the first of these rulers restored the old temple of E-anna and built himself a new palace. But the most interesting of Sin-gashid's records is a votive cone, commemorating the dedication of E-kankal to Lugal-banda and the goddess Ninsun, for, when concluding his text with a prayer for abundance, he inserts a list or tariff, stating the maximum-price which he had fixed for the chief articles of commerce during his reign. Sin-gamil was An-am's immediate predecessor on the throne of Erech, and during his reign the latter dedicated on his behalf a temple to Nergal in the town of Usipara. An-am was the son of a certain Bel-shemea, and his principal work was the restoration of the wall of Erech, the foundation of which he ascribes to the semi-mythical ruler Gilgamesh.

Doubtless other local kingdoms arose during the period following Babylon's temporary disappearance as a political force, but we have recovered no traces of them, and the only fact of which we are certain is the continued succession of the Sea-Country kings. To one of these rulers, Gulkishar, reference is made upon a boundary stone of the twelfth century, drawn up in the reign of Enlil-nadin-apli, an early king of the Fourth Dynasty. On it he is given the title of King of the Sea-Country, which is also the late chronicler's designation for E-gamil, the last member of the dynasty, in the account he has left us of the Ivassite invasion. Such evidence seems to show that the administrative centre of their rule was established at those periods in the south ; but the inclusion of the dynasty in the Kings' List is best explained on the assumption that at least some of its later members imposed their suzerainty over a wider area. They were evidently the only stable line of rulers in a period after the most powerful administration the country had yet known had been suddenly shattered. The land had suffered much, not only from the Hittite raid, but also during the continuous conflicts of more than a century that pre­ceded the final fall of Babylon. It must have been then that many of the old Sumerian cities of Southern and Central Babylonia were deserted, after being burned down and destroyed; and they were never afterwards re-occupied. Lagash, Unima, Shuruppak, Kisurra and Adah play no part in the subsequent history of Babylonia.

Of the fortunes of Babylon at this time we know nothing, but the fact that the Kassites should have made the city their capital shows that the economic forces, which had originally raised her to that position, were still in operation. The Sumerian elements in the population of Southern Babylonia may now have enjoyed a last period of influence, and their racial survival in the Sea-Country may in part explain its continual striving for independence. But in Babylonia as a whole the effects of three centuries of West-Semitic rule were permanent. When, after the Kassite conquest, Babylon emerges once more into view, it is apparent that the traditions inherited from her first empire have undergone small change.

 

CHAPTER VII

KASSITE DYNASTY AND RELATIONS WITH EGYPT AND THE HITTITE EMPIRE