ANCIENT HISTORY LIBRARY

 

LOOKING FOR JOSEPH, SON OF JACOB,

FATHER OF ISRAEL

 

BABYLONIA, c. 2120-1800 B.C.

I.

THE THIRD DYNASTY OF UR

 

THE ancient kingship of Sumer, so gloriously regained by Utu-khegal with his expulsion of the Gutians, was his for a very brief space, his reign lasting for not much more than seven years, coming to an abrupt end, and his city of Uruk therewith losing the sovereignty. During these years and for some three decades longer the great impulse of national sentiment and strength which had thrown off the enemy seemed to have exhausted itself in that one exertion. Of Utu-khegal himself nothing more was preserved by the historical memory of his country than his one heroic act and a story about his fate. But the hazard of modern discovery has been kinder; at Ur and in its neighbourhood inscriptions have been found which show the sovereign concerning himself with the affairs of that city, and thereby they explain the origin of the Third Dynasty of Ur which was to supplant Uruk—by conquest, according to the king-list’s unvarying phrase, but nothing is known of a war. In the first of these inscriptions occurs the name of Ur-Nammu, not yet king but only deputy over the city for Utu-khegal, on whose behalf he undertook to restore a part of the great temple at Ur, a work of which so much remains to this day.

The Third Dynasty of Ur began therefore with the appointment of its first member by the preceding king, who doubtless selected one of his principal adherents, perhaps not a native of the place he was given to rule. Another inscription, upon modest little clay cones from unknown sites, is of Utu-khegal himself. These cones are dedicated to the deities Ningirsu and Nanshe, the owners of Lagash, and relate that Utu-khegal fixed the boundary of their possessions ‘to the man of Ur’. It is natural to conclude from this that a boundary dispute had arisen between Ur and Lagash, in which Ur was the aggressor, and that Utu-khegal was called upon, in his superior capacity, to decide, whereupon he drew the boundary between two cities as Mesilim had done in a former age when the disputants were Lagash and Umma, each then, as now, being the domain of its divine landlord. Several of these little clay cones have been found and no doubt hundreds of them were made to fix in a low wall which, together with a canal, marked the boundary. The aggressive ‘man of Ur’, to whom the award is clearly indicated as a rebuff, can be no other than Ur-Nammu, and it is not unlikely that the offence given by this adjudication contributed to his casting off allegiance to Uruk, and possibly provoking a contest in which the rebel was successful.

Sparsity of information about the history of the Third Dynasty of Ur, how it won, sustained, and finally lost its sway, is one of the major disappointments of Babylonian records. The geographical extent of its authority, even if it should not be compared with that conquered by the kings of Agade, was certainly wide, but no royal inscriptions make any mention of it, and few discoveries outside the nearer Babylonian limits shed any light upon it. Most of the information which exists is in the date-formulae appended to business documents, that is, the official ‘names’ given to each year by which almost every administrative or legal tablet was concluded. This cumbrous system had been in use long before, but with the Third Dynasty the formulae are, for the first time, preserved with tolerable completeness. Valuable as these are, their shortcomings as historical evidence are manifest—their extreme brevity, their arbitrary selection of one among the events of a year to give a designation to it, their preoccupation with purely ceremonial occasions, and their dependence for chronological value upon our having the means to fix their order. For reasons unknown the obvious and much more satisfactory method of dating by the regnal years of kings was not brought into general use until the Kassite period. In respect of the Third Dynasty we are fortunate enough not only to possess most of the formulae but to know also their official order, and can therefore take full advantage of such information as they afford. This does not apply to the whole period. At the beginning the dates of Ur-Nammu are largely unknown and unfixed, and even for the first half of his successor’s reign they are not well attested, and have little interest. Again, at the end, when the dynasty was sinking under converging attacks, the gallant and effective struggle of Ibbi-Sin is but faintly adumbrated by the mention of events which cannot be observed in a fixed order.

Ur-Nammu reigned eighteen years, counted probably from his breach with Uruk. By no means so many date-formulae can be attributed with certainty to these years. One of them shows him appointing a son to the priesthood of Uruk, another marks a step to security, when ‘the wall of Ur was built’. From a boast put into his mouth by a hymn it appears that he still had to finish purging the land from the Gutian invaders, but the only positive military achievement which is attested (and that by himself) is a victory over Nammakhni, the ruler of Lagash, as recorded in the prologue to his laws. This forcible reversal of the diplomatic defeat inflicted by Utu-khegal can hardly have been a major event in the rise of Ur to sovereignty, for even amid the general collapse left behind them by the Gutians there must have been stronger rivals than Lagash. Most interesting of the date-formulae preserved is that which proclaims that ‘he made straight the road from below to above’, which can be understood to mean a march from the lower sea (the Persian Gulf) to the upper sea (the Mediterranean, on the north Syrian coast), but nothing more is known about it and there is no external evidence, unless some doubtful indication of a palace-building at the site now called Tell Brak, on the Upper Khabur, may be thought enough to attest the presence of Ur-Nammu in the farther northwest. But nearer home was the city of Mari, on the Middle Euphrates, which clearly owed him no allegiance, for it was then under independent governors whose names have been found in the recent excavations; one of these had a daughter taken by marriage into the family of Ur-Nammu, in the same way as the second king of Ur allied himself with neighbours on his northeastern borders. Moreover, tablets of this period found at Mari do not bear the date-formulae of Ur, and in those formulae themselves, through the whole course of the dynasty, there is little appearance of the Euphratean lands or of Syria until, in the fourth year of Shu-Sin, the ‘wall of Amurru’ was built, and this, so far from a measure of conquest, was a defence against invasion from that quarter. There is the same complete want of information concerning any activity of Ur-Nammu in the districts beyond the Tigris, where his successors had to fight so many campaigns.

The fragmentary Laws of Ur-Nammu have recently received an, at least probable, addition with the publication of two parts of tablets found at Ur. The laws thus preserved deal with sexual offences, with defence of women against such charges, with punishment of a slave-girl who presumes to set herself on a level with her mistress, and with wrongful acts in connection with land belonging to others. Juridical comments upon these have now been published by V. Korosec, J. Klima, and J. J. Finkelstein.

Perhaps in tacit acknowledgement of his limited sway he forbore to take the conquerors’ title ‘king of the four regions’, which was assumed afterwards by his dynasty. The largest attributions of power and wealth to him are made in some extant hymns of praise, one uttered by himself, extravagantly celebrating the benefits he had conferred upon Ur and the glories vouchsafed to him by the grateful gods; indeed, he was hailed as a god himself in a song which, amid much conventional eulogy, has a passing allusion to the ‘righteousness’ of the king, that is, to his laws. Somewhat more explicit is another hymn about him which was evidently composed to honour the king’s exertions and munificence in restoring the temple of the divine ruler at Nippur. A last poem, by contrast, is concerned with the death and obsequies of Ur-Nammu, his laments and the mourning of his family and city, consoled by the knowledge that rich gifts to the underworld deities have secured for him a fitting place among the shades. But the style of boast and flattery, as vague as it is vain, which swelled these courtly compositions and set the pattern for many others in the following generations, is destitute of real information upon the actual events of the reign or upon the personality of the monarch.

Inscriptions of Ur-Nammu are found upon bricks, clay cones, and stone door-hinges from the numerous buildings and other works which he dedicated to the presiding gods in his capital and his subject cities. These works, of which imposing remains still survive, were undertaken principally in and about Ur, Nippur, Uruk, and Larsa. Probably in virtue of his rule at Nippur he assumed a new title ‘king of Sumer and Akka’, and there he built the temple of Enlil, leaving to his son as tradition required the renovation of Tummal, shrine of the god’s consort. At Uruk his chief operations were upon the zikkurrat or temple-tower of the goddess Inanna and the enclosure surrounding it, a worthy counterpart to the greatest of all his monuments, the tower of the Moon-god at Ur. Of this the main structure still exists, impressive alike by its plan, its mass, and the excellence of its construction and materials. Two or three later kings who undertook to repair this gigantic pile have left traces of what seem by comparison pygmy hands upon it. The last builder, Nabonidus, relates that it was begun by Ur-Nammu and carried on by his son, but that even he did not complete the work. Substantially it was the achievement of Ur-Nammu, and the story of its building was related by him in picture and word upon a great stone monument, of which a few scenes remain. Of the inscription nothing is left but the mention of certain canals which the king dug out, among these being one which is the subject of a clay cone found at Lagash—the canal called Nanna-gugal, of which he made ‘its reservoir like a sea’. This waterway, it is added, was a boundary-mark which must have divided the territories of Lagash and of Ur, and since Ur-Nammu goes on to celebrate the ‘justice’ he had established we may surmise that his canal took a different line from that imposed upon Ur in the days of his subordination to Utu-khegal.

Canals indeed figure prominently in the surviving texts of Ur-Nammu, and it is likely that restoration of the country’s means of communication and water-supply accounted for much of his activity in repairing the dire effects of Gutian wastage and neglect. Nor was his purpose only local, although much work no doubt accompanied his re-survey of the boundaries of city-states, in which canals were a notable feature. An operation of much wider importance is attested by clay cones found in an area called Diqdiqqah, north-east of Ur, which relate in rather obscure terms that merchant-ships from Magan were again able to berth in a harbour at this place thanks to the operations of Ur-Nammu who had restored its direct communication with the open sea. This attests the resumption of an overseas trade which had flourished under the Dynasty of Agade, but its range is now found to be more restricted, for the remoter Meluhha (wherever that is to be sought) is never mentioned, and seems no longer to lie within the orbit of voyages from southern Babylonia.

To whatever limits confined, the reign of Ur-Nammu was beyond doubt a time of increasing power and wealth, sufficiently witnessed by his many great public works, although the tablets of administration, which furnish ubiquitous evidence of thriving activity under his successors, make but a scanty appearance in his time. A like progress may be assumed for the earlier years of his successor, a famous king whose name is invariably written with the signs SUL (or DUN)-GI, the reading of which is uncertain, but it is known that the name ended in r; for the present he can be called Shulgi. He reigned most probably forty-eight years, but of these the first twenty-one seem to have passed with little distinction, and the events commemorated by the date-formulae are almost entirely religious observances of a local character. The most interesting exception gives a glimpse of foreign affairs; his eighteenth year was that in which a daughter of his ‘was raised to the ladyship of Markhashe’, the Elamite district (Barakhshe, Warakhshe) which had played so prominent a part in the history of the Agadean kings. But there is no information how this alliance (if such is meant) was brought about—conquest is in no way indicated. In all of these earlier years tablets are still rare, and nearly all of those extant were found at Lagash. In the capital itself, among more than seventeen hundred tablets of this period published from the excavations, not one is dated before the twenty-fourth year of this reign, the same in which these become common at other centres of the administration. It may be concluded that new regulations were issued at this time for strict collection and control of the rev8enues and outgoings, and this is also attested by a date-formula (probably of the twenty-first year) which records that the king, by divine commandment, set in order the registry of lands belonging to the supreme god of Nippur and his consort. From care of this real estate the same rigour of book-keeping extended into all other branches of revenue, expenditure, and temple-business, and henceforth the accounting was so multifarious and minute that even single articles or heads of cattle and temporary lists were consigned to tablets, large or (mostly) small, of excellent quality and writing. Such ‘business documents of the Third Dynasty’ are now by far the most numerous in modern collections of cuneiform tablets.

While it is not possible to explain, for want of evidence, why this increased activity should have been postponed, much contrary to usage, until almost half-way through a long reign, it seems clear that the new fiscal control from the twenty-first year of Shulgi was imposed as a mobilization of resources to support a policy of expansion. The twentieth year was named as that when ‘the men of Ur were sworn in as archers’, and the twenty-fourth carries the record of the first foreign conquest. This campaign set the direction for all that were to follow, as moves in the neverending struggle against the mountain-peoples of the north and east. Its objective, or at least its conquest, on this occasion was a place called Karakhar, as yet unlocated, but its occurrence in company with other localities, attacked in subsequent campaigns, makes it certain that all of these are to be found in southern Kurdistan, among the troublesome neighbours or the elusive victims of later Assyrian kings. Some fixed points determine the general situation of all; Urbilum, captured in later expeditions of Shulgi and of his Son, is the town called by the Assyrians Arba'ilu and now Irbil, in the plain between the two Zab rivers. Another place, Simurrum, has been sought in the neighbourhood of Altin Kopru on the Lesser Zab, or to the south of this, being a neighbour to the land of Lullubum, which lay in the district of Sulaimaniyyah, as indicated by the rock-reliefs of Naram-Sin; and finally the town of Shashrum, conquered by Shulgi and by his son, may with sufficient confidence be found at the place called in the following age Shusharra and now bearing the little-altered name of Shemshara, an ancient mound ‘on the right bank of the Lesser Zab, eight kilometres south-east of Rania and five kilometres west of Darband-i Ramkan (Sungasur Gorge)’.

 Other towns listed as destroyed in the unremitting wars of Shulgi and his son in this region are Kimash and Khumurti, named with Madqa, from which Gudea had obtained asphalt, and therefore likely to be near the places associated with the present petroleum industry; and Kharshi, which seems to be identified by a seal-inscription as near Tuz Khurmatli, on the 'Adhaim river. Although the suggestion that Shashrum was an older form of the name of Ashur itself has now been superseded by the discoveries at Shusharra (Shemshara), noticed above, it is evident that so much concern with the immediately neighbouring lands of the later Assyrian kingdom implied control of the Assyrian territory itself by the kings of Ur, and there is direct witness of this. From Ashur itself comes a stone tablet dedicated by Zariqum, calling himself governor of Ashur, ‘for the life of Amar-Sin the mighty, king of Ur, king of the four regions’, whereby it is certain that Ashur was a vassal-city of Ur under its next king. Hardly less clear is the testimony of certain stone figures found in the excavations there; a headless statue and a relief, perhaps also a female figure, are in a style which assigns them to the Third Dynasty. More recently the aforesaid discovery of written documents at Shemshara has revealed how the rule of these neighbouring lands passed naturally to Assyria itself when a powerful kingdom had been established there following upon the collapse of Ur under the flood of West Semitic immigration, and how the troubles of controlling the borderlands with their alien and unruly inhabitants were then transferred to the new overlords.

Compared with the almost boundless conquests achieved by, or at least attributed to, the greatest kings of Agade, these wars of the Ur Dynasty may appear local, but they were far from being mere jars with neighbours, although perhaps waged as much with the ultimate purpose of defence as of acquisition. The theatre of war was at a mean distance of 400 miles from Ur, by the road up the east bank of the Tigris, rendered difficult by the successive tributaries to be crossed and by the nature of the ground. Reason enough for these repeated expeditions of Shulgi and of his sons, in which the same places may be ‘destroyed’ as often as ‘nine times’, may be found in the opponents, among whom still appear the Gutians, unreconciled to banishment from their long supremacy. But these were only one of several peoples  having in common the character of hardy mountaineers, difficult to encounter, and inhabiting towns and villages of simple construction, easily restored after the retirement of each punitive expedition—such troublesome neighbours have continued to pose a problem unsolved by a succession of governments in Mesopotamia even down to the present day. At this time a fresh element of unrest was making its presence felt—the people called Hurrians, first discernible in the period of Agade, were now gathering strength in the north-east, and a number of individuals with names characteristic of this nation appear in the tablets of the Third Dynasty. As yet it seems that they were still mostly confined to the lands east of the Tigris, and that the spread of their population to northern Mesopotamia and Syria took place in the succeeding generations. One of their homes was the oft-stricken Simurrum, and it was perhaps there that Shulgi captured a persistent enemy, Tappa-darakh, as the omens recorded; it is almost the only detail preserved concerning the wars of Shulgi.

More to the south, and despite the nominal rule of an Elamite king of Simashki, the ascendancy of Shulgi over the settled land of Susiana, with its appendages to the east and north, was well established, and what can be discerned of his policy there is described in the next chapter. From the north-west of Babylonia, the region of the Euphrates, there is virtually no news, and peace seems mostly to have been kept. A slight allusion to Mari and Rapiqum appears in a fragmentary letter to the king, there is one mention of ‘booty from Amurru’ towards the end of his reign, and not long beforehand two of the date-formulae appointed were ‘year’ [and ‘year after’] ‘the wall of the land was built’. Nothing, however, is known of the location or purpose of this defence, but it might be at least supposed a predecessor of Shu-Sin’s wall against western invaders, so that Shulgi may have found in his later years a necessity to hold this other front while his main strength was employed in the east. It is true that a very different picture of the situation in this quarter is suggested by one or two isolated tablets which record the delivery of single sheep to the official cattle-park from the governors of four cities not merely of the middle and upper Euphrates (Mari, Tuttul, and Ibla) but of farthest Syria (Byblos itself). Two of these governors have the title of ensi, normally given to local officers appointed by the kings of Ur over their subject cities. But in the total absence of supporting evidence this is not enough to make it seem likely that the dynasty of Ur really held any effective sway in the north-west.

The very little more that tradition has to relate about a king who was nevertheless held to be one of the outstanding figures of the past may suggest that the want of historical records for this period was a real omission, not a mere accident of time. Chronicles and omens, which contribute so much to our knowledge of the Agadean kings, do not entirely omit Shulgi, but what they have to tell of him is jejune, unimportant, and not wholly trustworthy. He was remembered as a builder of the Tummal at Nippur, and he appears in two passages of the chronicles; one of these, from a tablet found at Ashur, relates that the god Marduk ‘gave to Shulgi the son of Ur-Nammu the kingdom over the whole of the lands’, but ‘he did not fulfil the ordinances, he defiled its ritual, and his sin (was grievous)’. In this passage, apart from the neglect of Ur-Nammu as king, the ignoring of everything but the election by Marduk and the forfeiture because of impiety betrays not only the bigotry but perhaps also the ignorance of the compiler. His preoccupation makes it certain that the Ashur chronicle was a copy of a Babylonian original, and it was at Babylon where the other chronicle concerning Shulgi was found. Its notice of the great king is no less trivial and biased—he ‘cared greatly for Eridu which is on the shore of the sea, but he sought after evil, and the possessions of E-sagil and of Babylon he brought forth sacrilegiously’. The care for Eridu, as a rival seat of the god Ea, may have seemed to this partial scribe almost as criminal as the plunder of Marduk’s temple, and it is possible that Shulgi did in fact despoil Babylon. A like accusation against Sargon reveals the same distortion in this writer’s view of history, and his allegations are the more improbable or irrelevant as Babylon was not, in the days either of Sargon or of Shulgi, a place of much importance, though it did receive a royal appointee as governor in the latter years of Shulgi. One or two quite insignificant references in omen-texts, and the beginning of an alleged self-description, are all that we have from later generations concerning one of the greatest kings; unless indications are deceptive, not very much more was long remembered.

But at least until the succeeding age—the Old Babylonian period—Shulgi remained a conspicuous figure in the scribal schools, where two kinds of literary texts concerning him were studied and freely copied by pupils. One of these was letters, written by or to the monarch, and preserved apparently more for their style as courtly addresses and elegant compositions than for the importance of their contents; for most of their lines, when addressed to the king, were occupied by reiterated salvoes of extravagant compliment. Several of such letters belonging to the reign of Shulgi have been identified. The best preserved are a report from Ir-mu, a royal representative abroad, and what is apparently a reply to this from the king. Ir-mu was a very important and powerful officer, probably the one who, under the name of Ir-Nanna, was able later to build a shrine at Lagash to the reigning king and dedicate it with an inscription detailing his great domains and calling himself ‘high commissioner’. In the days of Shulgi he was (if the same) in charge of a military force and detailed to represent his king in discussions with border chieftains. The letter of Ir-mu relates to an occasion of this kind, when the opposite party was an independent or rebellious ruler, perhaps designated by his own name or by a title, but not otherwise known, and having his realm in some northern district no less vaguely called Subir (Subartu). The envoy reports that he was received by this potentate and his court without the becoming marks of respect, the ruler behaving in his presence with ostentatious freedom. He was, nevertheless, entertained honourably, which did not save him from some insults by the servants. What was the outcome of this mission does not appear. Shulgi’s answer was discontented but ineffective—he complains that his representatives did not so act as to compel proper deference from the opponent, and he seems to exhort them to bear themselves more imperiously, but nothing solid can be gathered from the empty phrases which occupy most of the letter.

The other kind of literature, in which Shulgi is more prominent than any other king, is the royal hymns, where he appears saluted with almost divine honours from his court-poets, or speaking of himself in a like strain. Some thirty of these hymns are still extant, in whole or parts; amid much verbiage of extravagant eulogy appears some light upon the personality and even upon the achievements of their hero. The blessings of his rule and the signal favour which he received from the gods are naturally common topics, but this favour was bestowed not upon a stranger, however meritorious, but upon a kinsman, a descendant himself of gods and kings; his father (i.e. ancestor) was, he declares, the ancient demigod-king Lugalbanda, and his mother the goddess Nin-sun, mother also of Gilgamesh, whom Shulgi therefore freely called his ‘brother’. Going still farther, he audaciously claimed a like relation with the Sun-god himself. A boast which he makes of his education and literary talent might suggest that some of these fulsome effusions of his own praise were of his own composition. More factually, the king sometimes refers to his military successes in terms which clearly recall the manifold ‘destruction’ of places so prominent in the date-formulae. The enemies inhabiting these are grouped under the name of ‘Gutians’, evidently as a general designation for the mountain-peoples, of sinister memory. Most informative of all, though concerning a matter more important to the king’s pride than to his history, is the hymn which celebrates a journey made by him at wondrous speed in the same day from Nippur to Ur and back, in defiance of a raging storm of wind and hail. This feat was made possible not only by Shulgi’s own physical powers (described, of course, as superhuman), but by using the roads and relay-houses which his prudence had constructed. Such were the bubbles of regal vanity and of hireling adulation, which were blown anew with the old breath in many of the succeeding reigns, until a desert orator came forward with the bare truth ‘no king is powerful by himself’. But upon Shulgi, at least, in a period of greater consolidation, no such verdict could have been justly pronounced.

As if literary pre-eminence were not enough, a recently published text ascribes also to Shulgi the title of first royal musician, traditionally claimed by David. It reckons up no less than eight instruments upon which he was a master-performer, including the lyre of thirty strings, and the instrument so strangely named after the Sargonic king of Kish, Ur-Zababa.

The half-century-long reign of Shulgi ended with his burial in a splendidly built, and doubtless richly furnished, sepulchre at Ur, but not a trace of his family’s remains or of their funeral pomp has survived the disaster which was to overwhelm the last of his line. Meanwhile, the succession of Amar-Sin (or Bur-Sin), his son, followed without any appearance of domestic strife or revolt, in strong contrast with the experience of the Agadean kings. The legitimacy of the Third Dynasty was accepted by the people, and the splendour of Shulgi’s reign continued to adorn the nine years of his son. There was little respite in the north-east, and the second year of the new reign received the name ‘year (when) King Amar-Sin ravaged Urbilum’, renewing the chastisement inflicted five years before by Shulgi. Likewise the sixth and seventh years were called after expeditions against Shashrum and some new names in the date-lists—Khukhnuri with two other localities perhaps to be read Bitum-rabium and Beshru, and another town called Iaprum. The first of these, Khukhnuri, was afterwards described by Ibbi-Sin as the ‘bolt of the land of Anshan (or, Elam)’, and may perhaps therefore be sought east of Eshnunna : others are unknown but not likely to be far away.

These are all of the incidents which appear in the dates, apart from religious ceremonies, and the evidence of the tablets draws no very different picture. In sundry districts and towns, even upon the eastern frontier, commanders and governors are appointed by, and hold their office in submission to, the king of Ur, often undisturbed from one reign to the next. But there are signs that the empire was consolidated, even if not extended, by Amar-Sin, for governors are found installed for the first time in Mar-khashe, Simanum, Khamazi, and even in the newly subdued Khukhnuri. From the east and north a continual traffic of ‘messengers’ thronged the roads into Babylonia, testifying to and perhaps securing the peaceful condition of the realm. In this happy situation Amar-Sin was able to devote much of his ample revenue to temples and public edifices; he worked extensively at Nippur, where he seems to have received some special mark of favour from the god, which he included in his titles, but his principal activity was in the capital itself, where several important buildings are named in the inscriptions, and others found in the excavations have proved to be his. Most of all, his monument was the vast temple and tower called the apsu in Eridu, where the remains of his great structures cover the site and have been investigated by recent excavators. Here the credit belongs to him more than to his father, despite the beginning made by the latter and the ‘great care’ of the sacred city for which he was praised —or perhaps blamed—by the chronicler. Later tradition knew hardly anything about Amar-Sin : as though in derision of our ignorance an omen mocks us with the detail that he died from the ‘bite’ of a shoe, presumably a poisoned foot. He had built on to the funerary dwelling of his father in Ur a smaller addition with a similar plan, which also included two vaults for the principal burials.

In regular succession again he was followed on the throne by Shu-Sin (or Gimil-Sin), whom the king-list calls his son, but more direct evidence establishes that he was a brother. From the date formulae it might seem that his reign was mostly peaceful, but one of the troublesome neighbours in the north-east, Simanum, had to be punished in the third year, and similarly Zabshali in the seventh. The bare mention of these names is supplemented by the remains of some inscriptions graven upon trophies and monuments which the victor dedicated in Nippur. These inscriptions were copied by scribes, and consequently something of their contents survives while the monuments have long disappeared— just as similar copies are the source of much that is known about the kings of Agade. Both of the campaigns figuring in the date-formulae were represented by sculptured or cast figures. From conquered Simanum captives were carried away and were settled in a new cantonment which the king founded near Nippur, probably as a labour-camp for slaves to toil upon his public works. Of Zabshali more details are preserved from the copied inscriptions. The principal enemy was named Indasu, called governor of Zabshali (but Ziringu, and perhaps another, bear the same title). Together with him some ten more princes are named, with the places over which they ruled; the monument showed the king setting his foot upon the neck of Indasu, followed by the other captives, each marked with his own name, and the whole scene might be imagined not much unlike the celebrated sculpture of Darius at Bihistan. From Zabshali and its neighbouring lands was brought back a rich spoil of metals,1 copper, tin, bronze, but also gold, out of which the king made a figure of himself which he set up before the supreme god Enlil.

Despite all this, the peace in the east was uneasy, for although Shu-Sin was able to put in his officers as governors of Elamite cities (Urua and Susa), and to exact the homage of a temple erected to his ‘divinity’ in Eshnunna, he found it necessary to entrust the warding of the eastern marches to a lieutenant with exceptional powers. For this responsibility he chose Ir-Nanna, governor of Lagash, who subsequently built there a shrine in honour of his master, upon the door-hinge stones of which he inscribed his titles. He was, first, ‘high commissioner (sukkal-mah) of the king, and bore as domestic offices the governorship of Lagash and the priesthood of the god Enki. Others of his styles are governor (ensi) or commander (sakkana) of a number of towns and districts on the eastward frontiers, the best-known of which are Urbilum, Khamazi, and Karakhar, all familiar from the wars of Shulgi, and also the Su-people or Subarians, at that time living in the country east of the modern Mosul, perhaps including Assyria itself, which was certainly subject in the reign of Amar-Sin. Over this extensive lordship the exertions of Ir-Nanna, whatever they were, sufficed to keep order among or against the petty princedoms which existed in a state of semi-independence interspersed between the vassals of the king.

But no doubt the weightiest reason for this appointment of a commissioner in the east was the emergence, early in the reign of Shu-Sin, of a new danger menacing the empire of Ur as it had the Akkadian empire under Shar-kali-sharri. The fourth official formula was ‘year (when) the wall of Amurru was built’, and a fuller version adds that the wall was called Muriq-Tidnim, ‘keeping away Tidnum’, which was another name for the tribes of western origin and the lands from which they came. A double shadow began to fall again over Babylonia, but it could not close in until the successor of Shu-Sin was exhausted by a long and not unsuccessful defence. In what circumstances the tribes attacked is quite unknown, but it seems clear that they were defeated in battle and forced to flee by the way they came, along the Euphrates, pursued by the royal troops who advanced some distance upstream1—how far is not clear. The question depends largely upon the location—whether at Hit or farther north— of a town Duddul or Tuttul; in view of what follows the nearer seems the more likely. How slight a confidence was inspired by this victory is shown by the decision to build a defensive line against a fresh advance of the Amorites, a measure of doubt, if not of despair, whether in Babylonia, in China, or in Britain, when the limits of power are thought to have been reached, and barbarians are to be fenced off, no longer subdued in their own haunts.

This defence for the kingdom of Shu-Sin was ominously close to its heart. A fragmentary Sumerian letter gives some curious and surprising particulars about the extent and location of the ‘Fender of Tidnum’. Its writer was Sharrum-bani, probably not the same as one of that name who had been already a citygovernor in the reign of Amar-Sin; the receiver’s name is missing; it was not the king himself but rather a minister, for Sharrum-bani introduces himself as ‘expert of the committee, your servant’, that is, a member of the board of technicians assembled by the king to plan and execute the great work. His instructions were to take advantage of the repulse of the Amorites and to build a wall so as to bar their further access. The work would involve the breaching of the banks both of the Tigris and the Euphrates (perhaps to fill a moat), but he was to take care that the breaching did not overwhelm the fields. The earthwork began from the Apkallat canal, and certain other intermediate points marked the line, but their names are not adequately preserved for the most part. There is, however, a clear statement that the (total?) length of the wall was 26 danna or beru, that is to say some 275 kilometres or 170 miles.

There are two principal arguments which suggest that the wall ran across the country in a region not far north-west of Baghdad.6The first is its beginning from the Apkallat canal—this name was already modified in a later syllabary to Aplakkat, which may be supposed the same as the Pallakottas canal cleared by Alexander in a later age, and this stream is associated with the town of Pallukat, generally sought in the modern Fallujah. Secondly, the length of the wall, about 170 miles, although much greater than the distance between the rivers at their closest, requires that it should have been situated where they approach each other, for the wall must have rested against some natural bastions on the far sides of each river. For the western end the neighbourhood of the present Lake Habbaniyah is strongly suggested, for the eastern there is only the possibility that a ‘Fortress before the Mountain’ (which was easily carried or outflanked by the nomads) lay near a ridge of high ground between Fallujah and Aqarquf. If subsequent discovery is able to confirm this siting it will be necessary to conclude that Shu-Sin was already narrowly constricted by the twin pressures which were finally to crush his successor. As for his great wall, it proved even more ineffectual than such barriers have always been in the end. No more is heard of this vast and vain work, even if, as seems likely, it furnished a line or a foundation for similar works in later ages. Babylonia has no natural defences, and they were not to be provided by an artificial rampart so long that it could have hardly been effectually garrisoned.

The reign of Shu-Sin closed in this uneasy equilibrium, and his son Ibbi-Sin entered upon a tenure of twenty-four years, destined to be illuminated by flashes of glory and heroic episodes, with which the king himself may be fairly credited, though it was to close in utter disaster. His first two years were untroubled and devoted to civil duties. Then came a routine chastisement of Simurrum, one of the troublesome north-eastern neighbours, then two or three more years of peace, during which, however, the approach of danger was signalled by the need to repair the walls of Ur and Nippur. Chronology after this is uncertain—more date-formulae are preserved, with much interesting information, but no list of their order has been found. It is best, consequently, to consider in distribution the events which the formulae briefly indicate as occurring upon the two warlike fronts and at home.

To begin with the east—Ibbi-Sin in his sixth year repeated the policy of attempting to secure the fidelity of a foreign prince by a marriage-alliance, and sent his daughter Tukin-khatta-migrisha to the ensi of Zabshali, doubtless with as little permanent result as before. A later occasion upon the eastern frontier was one of triumph, for in a long formula Ibbi-Sin claims that he ‘smote like a tempest Susa, Adamdun, and the land of Awan, subdued them in one day, and captured their ruler’. This prisoner may be identified as one of a local dynasty which had recently occupied the throne of a border state named Simashki. His defeat was not severe enough to bring down the state, for a successor upon the throne of Simashki was certainly the wreaker of the great Elamite revenge upon the city of Ur. An ally was found by the insurgents in the land or city of Khukhnuri, the old opponent of Amar-Sin, for over this enemy too Ibbi-Sin boasted of a resounding victory; he calls it ‘the bolt of the land of Anshan’, and says that he smote it ‘like a tempest and a deluge’. These valiant exploits staved off calamity for a considerable time, but it is only too clear that the successes were far from decisive. Other allies of the Elamites, at least in the final struggle with Ur, were the people; however these are to be identified, they seem to have lived in more primitive communities, not such as to suffer much from a mere burning and devastation.

Events at home were closely bound up with those on the Euphrates front, but the defect of chronology obscures the picture. It may be assumed that pressure on this side was continuous, since it had first been felt before the fourth year of Shu-Sin, but with the reign of his successor the menace became formidable. This coincided with the emergence of a dubious figure Ishbi-Erra, the ‘man’, that is governor, of Mari; not, as it seems, a westerner himself but a time-serving vassal who was able to turn the western invasion to his own advantage. There is no doubt that the invaders had easily passed the unavailing wall of Shu-Sin, and were already in the northern parts of the homeland early in the reign of Ibbi-Sin. Two models of the ominous sheep’s liver found at Mari show the fatal marks which accompanied the loss of part of his kingdom—not so much a revolt as detachment of his territory under Amorite lordships. Ibbi-Sin was not without his successes against these intruders, for one of his dates celebrates a year in which ‘the Amorites, a torrent force which from of old knew not a city, made submission’ to him. Cowed as a vanguard may have been by this reverse the following hordes were but little affected and evidence of the inroads of Ishbi-Erra soon became ubiquitous. There are tablets which contain lists of articles in gold, silver, bronze, and copper, collected from the temple-treasuries to pay ‘the price of Isin’, whether as a ransom for the city or to buy supplies for the capital. It is certain that negotiations were going on between the two rulers, possibly up to the eve of the Elamite raid which obliterated Ur and led to the captivity of Ibbi-Sin. In the year of triumph over Susa, Adamdun, and Awan a tablet from Ur registers the issue of a travelling allowance to three men described as ‘messengers of Ishbi-Erra’ and a ‘man of Isin’. By this time, therefore, Ishbi-Erra was in possession of Isin, and the fear which he inspired is proved by this payment to his envoys, perhaps the bearers of other unwelcome messages.

To judge by the cessation of documents bearing the official date-formulae of Ur, the defection of various cities began early in the reign of Ibbi-Sin. But Isin seems to have retained some degree of loyalty until about the twelfth year of its nominal over-lord, after which Ishbi-Erra began using independent formulae as a ruler in his own right. Many scraps of information about the manoeuvres of this man and other wavering vassals are conveyed by a number of letters, very imperfectly preserved in later school-copies. One of the more complete is from Ishbi-Erra himself, written at the time when he was still active in the service of Ur. He had been sent, he writes, to buy supplies of grain in the cities of Isin and Kazallu, north-west of the capital, and had laid out the great sum of twenty talents of silver, with which he had amassed a vast quantity of provisions. But the invaders had broken in and were spreading everywhere, and because of the general insecurity Ishbi-Erra had concentrated his stores in Isin; he now had to find transport to Ur, and his letter asked for 600 barges to be sent up for this purpose. It ended with an encouragement to the king that he should press on with his war against Elam, not being deterred by fears for his own country, since (the writer assures him) there was a great surplus of provisions in hand, and all the cities, particularly Isin and Nippur, were firmly held by him (probably in usurpation). Ibbi-Sin’s reply to this reveals the strait to which he had been reduced —he was willing to pay double the cost of the grain, but he had not the barges to send, his agent must try to find these among the northern cities. As to Isin and Nippur, the king behoved to grant formal confirmation of the authority which Ishbi-Erra had already assumed.

A similar correspondence, of which something is preserved, was going on with the governor of Kazallu, a man who seems to have borne different names at different periods in his career. He is once addressed, by the king, as Puzur-Numushda, but again as Puzur-Shulgi, and in either name there is a letter from him to the king. The alternation is significant, in that he probably changed his name when renouncing the allegiance of Ur, his style of Puzur-Shulgi being official and indicative of loyalty to the empire. Further, it is of interest that a Puzur-Shulgi, so named and not likely to be a different person, was one of the ‘messengers’ of Ishbi-Erra to whom a viaticum was paid by Ibbi-Sin, as related above. The letter of Puzur-Shulgi (or Puzur-Numushda) reports the successful usurpation of Ishbi-Erra, and his attempt to add Kazallu to the cities which had already fallen under his sway. He had sent a messenger with a summons to surrender; the message was a mixture of boasts and promises, detailing the lands which had already acknowledged his rule, along ‘the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the Apkallat and Me-Enlil canals, from the land Khamazi to the sea of Magan’. To these he announced that he would soon add Nippur and Ur itself, and would fortify his own capital Isin. All this, writes Puzur-Shulgi, he has already accomplished; he has seized Nippur, plundered Khamazi, installed his own nominees in Eshnunna, Kish, and elsewhere, and severely chastised those who sought to resist. The letter ends with a despairing appeal to a master who no longer had power to help, for Ibbi-Sin was penned closer and closer in his own territory.

A letter from him to the same vassal, possibly a reply to the above, throws light upon the position in the north—reinforcements, it seems, had already been sent to Kazallu, but had not come into action, for fear of Ishbi-Erra, who had already begun his revolt, with so much success that (the king bitterly concludes) he must have been elected by the gods to rule over Sumer, despite his mean origin and alien birth. Yet Puzur-Numushda should beware—when Ishbi-Erra is master of everything he will be unmindful of those who helped him to triumph, and will not confirm them in the rule of their cities, as they expected. But the hard-pressed king had not yet abandoned hope: the god Enlil (he continues) has brought in the Amorites from their deserts, and he seems to rely also upon alliance with Elam. Evidently the political situation was one of sudden change, with the friends of today becoming the foes of tomorrow. Especially surprising is it to find Ibbi-Sin, at some moment in his reign, looking for aid to an Amorite invasion, for it appears from other places in the letters that the beginning of disaster for Ur had been the breaching of the ‘Amorite wall’. One extremity of this had been the ‘Mountain’ so described in the letter of Sharrum-bani, and this keypoint was defended by a stronghold called ‘Fort before the Mountain’. In one of Ibbi-Sin’s letters there is a bitter complaint that the commander of this, named Puzur-Marduk, had by cowardice or treachery abandoned it to the enemy, thus allowing them to turn the whole flank of the defences.

Neither the course of events nor the final agency of the conquest which led to the downfall of Ur can be accurately described. It was not, at least outwardly, a steady progress of decline, but an era of vicissitude. There was a year remembered for a natural disaster when ‘a great flood by the will of the gods devastated the bounds of heaven and earth’, but Ibbi-Sin was still able to save his city from the wrath of nature as from the envy of man. Other years were tranquil, and once the king had even leisure to admire ‘a huge ape which its country captured’ and sent to him. Upon the whole success predominated and at last seemed secure, with victories over the Amorites and the Elamites, and favourable signs from the gods in heaven, when ‘for Ibbi-Sin, king of Ur, the Moon-god his beloved rose brightly’, and even this seemed to be outshone in a ‘year (when) the god Enlil yoked the splendour of Ibbi-Sin upon the lands’—a plain reference to the appearance of the Yoke-Star (Jupiter) standing in a region of the sky known as the 'way of Enlil', accompanied with other circumstances interpreted as a presage of triumph. But the downfall of an empire, which was in fact portended, required a more fatal sign; an eclipse of the moon was observed with terror by the citizens on the 14th of the month Adar, ‘beginning in the south and ending in the north, beginning in the first watch and ending in the last’. It bore a message to the doomed emperor, ‘desolation of Ur, destruction of its walls’. Even the sign of Jupiter found its true interpretation, after the event, in one of the darkest passages of the astrologers’ books—‘if the Yoke-Star rises with its face towards the west and looks at the face of heaven and no wind blows at all, there will be famine, the ruler will meet the fate of Ibbi-Sin, king of Ur, who went in bonds to Anshan’. The gods, or the stargazers, had cruelly paltered with the people’s faith.

A reference in the correspondence of Ibbi-Sin with his lieutenant, described above, suggests that he may have relied at one moment upon Elamite aid against Ishbi-Erra. In this fragile alliance too were the people of the land of Subartu; for the date formulae of Ishbi-Erra (which he was certainly issuing before the fall of Ur)3relate once that ‘he smote the man of Subartu and Elam’. The wavering passions and faithless conduct of the actors in this many-sided drama are exposed by another of the liver models found at Mari—‘when the Subarians sent unto Ishbi-Erra, but then the Subarians turned elsewhere, this (liver) was thus disposed’. The situation was chaotic, every party fighting the other, but rushing desperately into short-lived leagues ; Elam and Ur were equally threatened, but they had not the wisdom to combine. Meantime, the city had come into desperate straits, and famine prices were prevailing. Tablets found at Ur indicate the values of oxen, sheep, barley, dates, and oil, first in terms of each other, and then in silver, at a level of prices multiplied many times the normal for that period, and still more exorbitantly above those which kings were accustomed to boast or beseech for their prosperous reigns. Despite these marks of distress the tablets detail fairly large supplies of all these commodities, and might be taken to show that Ur had not then, at least, sunk into the plight of Samaria, where ‘an ass’s head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver’ before its miraculous deliverance.

In the final catastrophe, as all the evidence agrees, it was chiefly the peoples of the east and north who turned upon Ur and sacked it with a ferocious thoroughness which was never forgotten in Babylonian tradition. The perpetrators named are the Elamites and the Subarians, to whom are added the Gutians, as the historic enemies. This national disaster was commemorated in two poetical lamentations which, amid much pathetic but prolix detail of ruin and longing for recovery, have some allusions to actual or believed occurrences at the time. According to these, devastation was by no means confined to Ur, but widespread over much of Sumer and Akkad. The first lament has two lists of destroyed or occupied cities, the second has one, very much fuller. All include many cities in the south, some in the middle of the country. It may be observed that in all of them figure Isin itself and Nippur, while Kish, Kazallu, and Eshnunna also make an appearance. Since these cities were respectively the capital of Ishbi-Erra and subsequent acquisitions of his, it is not possible to regard all the places named as victims of a single invasion from the east. To the authors of the laments, citizens of Ur and witnesses of the collapse of its rule together with its walls, all the cities of Sumer and Akkad were limbs of the body centred in Ur, and their disaster was one, whether inflicted by easterners or westerners—for Tidnum too is once numbered among the destroyers. But wherever else ruin descended it was in the capital that the drama centred and has left traces even until today, for the excavations have revealed abundant evidence of plunder and devastation which no later building-up was able to obliterate. Never again was Ur to play an important part in history, and Ibbi-Sin became the typical figure of an ill-starred king, remembered only for his captivity and death in a strange land.

A praise poem of Shulgi(Culgi) (Urim=Ur)

 

To make his name famous for all time until distant days, and to transmit to posterity and the days to come the praise poems of his power, the songs of his might, and the lasting fame of his exceptional intelligence, King Culgi, king of Urim, has brought the songs' latent wisdom before the mighty son of Ninsumun. He praises his own power in song, and lauds his own superior native intelligence:

I am a king, offspring begotten by a king and borne by a queen. I, Culgi the noble, have been blessed with a favourable destiny right from the womb. When I was small, I was at the academy, where I learned the scribal art from the tablets of Sumer and Akkad. None of the nobles could write on clay as I could. There where people regularly went for tutelage in the scribal art, I qualified fully in subtraction, addition, reckoning and accounting. The fair Nanibgal, Nisaba, provided me amply with knowledge and comprehension. I am an experienced scribe who does not neglect a thing.

When I sprang up, muscular as a young lion, galloping like a spirited ass at full gallop, the favour of An brought me joy; to my delight Enlil spoke favourably about me, and they gave me the sceptre because of my righteousness. I place my foot on the neck of the foreign lands; the fame of my weapons is established as far as the south, and my victory is established in the highlands. When I set off for battle and strife to a place that Enlil has commanded me, I go ahead of the main body of my troops and I clear the terrain for my scouts. I have a positive passion for weapons. Not only do I carry lance and spear, I also know how to handle slingstones with a sling. The clay bullets, the treacherous pellets that I shoot, fly around like a violent rainstorm. In my rage I do not let them miss.

I sow fear and confusion in the foreign land. I look to my brother and friend, youthful Utu, as a source of divine encouragement. I, Culgi, converse with him whenever he rises over there; he is the god who keeps a good eye on my battles. The youth Utu, beloved in the mountains, is the protective deity of my weapons; by his words I am strengthened and made pugnacious (?). In those battles, where weapon clashes on weapon, Utu shines on me. Thus I broke the weapons of the highlands over my knees, and in the south placed a yoke on the neck of Elam. I make the populations of the rebel lands -- how could they still resist my weapons? -- scatter like seed-grain over Sumer and Akkad.

Let me boast of what I have done. The fame of my power is spread far and wide. My wisdom is full of subtlety. Do not my achievements surpass all qualifications?

I stride forward in majesty, trampling endlessly through the esparto grass and thickets, capturing elephant after elephant, creatures of the plain; and I put an end to the heroic roaring in the plains of the savage lion, dragon of the plains, wherever it approaches from and wherever it is going. I do not go after them with a net, nor do I lie in wait for them in a hide; it comes to a confrontation of strength and weapons. I do not hurl a weapon; when I plunge a bitter-pointed lance in their throats, I do not flinch at their roar. I am not one to retreat to my hiding-place but, as when one warrior kills another warrior, I do everything swiftly on the open plain. In the desert where the paths peter out, I reduce the roar at the lair to silence. In the sheepfold and the cattle-pen, where heads are laid to rest (?), I put the shepherd tribesmen at ease. Let no one ever at any time say about me, "Could he really subdue them all on his own?" The number of lions that I have dispatched with my weapons is limitless; their total is unknown.

Let me boast of what I have done. The fame of my power is spread far and wide. My wisdom is full of subtlety. Do not my achievements surpass all qualifications?

I am Culgi, god of manliness, the foremost of the troops. When I stretch the bowstring on the bow, when I fit a perfect arrow to it, I shoot the bow's arrow with the full strength of my arms. The great wild bull, the bull of heaven, the wild cow and the bison bellow. As they pass across the foothills of the mountains, I shoot barbed arrows at them with my powerful strength.

As they collapse (?) on the plain, I topple them like old towers. I make their heads plunge to the ground like crushing pestles. For the wild asses I set no snares, dig no pits, shoot no arrows against them. But I race after them as against my own rivals; I do not try to surround them to kill their young, as people kill slim ass foals.

When a burly wild boar (?) is running across the plain, I pierce its lungs with an arrow. With only one shot of mine I bring it to the ground; no single clansman from my regiments can surpass me in archery. I am a man with sharp eyes. When I lead the ...... of the crack troops, I know best of all how to cast the throwstick, running as quick as light radiating from heaven. What I hit no longer rises from its place.

I can throw an ellag (a weapon) as high in the air as if it is a rag. I can bring down quadrupeds lightning-quick with the sling. I, Culgi, can catch a goat with a quick pace; nothing checks my power. ...... has been given to me. Wherever I direct my steps, I always achieve something; when I return from the desert, I always bring something more for her -- for Ninsumun, my own mother, I am her son of five things, of ten things (= of everything) .

Let me boast of what I have done. The fame of my power is spread far and wide. My wisdom is full of subtlety. Do not my achievements surpass all qualifications?

I, the king, am the Land's most excellent fighter against the enemy. I, Culgi, am respected for my immense bodily strength. I am mighty; nothing resists me; I know no setbacks. My barges on the river do not sink (?) under me (alludes to a proverb (?)) ; my teams of asses do not collapse under me. Striding forward like my brother and friend, the youth Utu, as if with the legs of a lion, I am the good groom of my dust-making asses that bray like lions roaring. Like that of a stallion, my strength is unwavering during the running-race; I come first in the race, and my knees do not get tired. I am fearless; I dance with joy. My words shall never be forgotten. Praise for me because of my reliable judgments is on everyone's lips.

I am a ritually pure interpreter of omens. I am the very Nintud (creator deity) of the collections of omens. These words of the gods are of pre-eminent value for the exact performance of hand-washing and purification rites, for eulogy of the en priestess or for her enthronement in the jipar, for the choosing of the lumah and nindijir priests by sacred extispicy, for attacking the south or for defeating the uplands, for the opening of the emblem house, for the washing of lances in the "water of battle" (blood) , for the taking of subtle decisions about the rebel lands. After I have determined a sound omen through extispicy from a white lamb and a sheep, water and flour are libated at the place of invocation. Then, as I prepare the sheep with words of prayer, my diviner watches in amazement like an idiot. The prepared sheep is placed at my disposal, and I never confuse a favourable sign with an unfavourable one. I myself have a clear intuition, and I judge by my own eyes. In the insides of just one sheep I, the king, can find the indications for everything and everywhere.

Let me boast of what I have done. The fame of my power is spread far and wide. My wisdom is full of subtlety. Do not my achievements surpass all qualifications?

I, Culgi, king of Urim, have also devoted myself to the art of music. Nothing is too complicated for me; I know the full extent of the tigi and the adab, the perfection of the art of music. When I fix the frets on the lute, which enraptures my heart, I never damage its neck; I have devised rules for raising and lowering its intervals. On the gu-uc lyre I know the melodious tuning. I am familiar with the sa-ec and with drumming on its musical soundbox. I can take in my hands the miritum, which ....... I know the finger technique of the aljar and sabitum, royal creations. In the same way I can produce sounds from the urzababitum, the harhar, the zanaru, the ur-gula and the dim-lu-magura. Even if they bring to me, as one might to a skilled musician, a musical instrument that I have not played previously, when I strike it up I make its true sound known; I am able to handle it just like something that has been in my hands before. Tuning, stringing, unstringing and fastening are not beyond my skills. I do not make the reed pipe sound like a rustic pipe, and on my own initiative I can wail a sumunca or make a lament as well as anyone who does it regularly.

I bestow joy and gladness, and I pass my days in pomp and splendour. But people should consider for themselves -- it is a matter to keep in one's sights -- that at the inescapable end of life, no one will be spared the bitter gall of the land of oppression. But I am one who is powerful enough to trust in his own power. He who trusts in his own exalted name may carry out great things. Why should he do less? Since it was for my true mother Ninsumun that my mother together with her actually bore me to bestow joy and gladness, lovingly she cherished my unborn fruit. She did not endure scandal from anyone's mouth. Before she released her little one, this lady passed her time in my palace in the greatest joy.

Before Utu son of Ningal, I, Culgi, declare that in my long life in which I have achieved great things since the day that my kingly destiny was determined, in my life in which everything was richly provided in contentment, I have never lacked anything. Until the distant future may this song bless the name of me, the king, with a life of long days. As I am musical, as I am eloquent, I am a heavenly star of steadfastness. It is an awe-inspiring brow that establishes palaces, just as a peg and a measuring cord are the builders of cities. With the awesomeness that radiates from my forehead, which I make the foreign lands wear like a nose-rope, and the fear-inspiring lustre, my personal weapon, which I impose on the Land like a neck-stock, I am able to root out and undo crime. I have the ability to reconcile great matters with one word.

When I ...... like a torrent with the roar of a great storm, in the capture of a citadel in Elam ......, I can understand what their spokesman answers. By origin I am a son of Sumer; I am a warrior, a warrior of Sumer. Thirdly, I can conduct a conversation with a man from the black mountains. Fourthly, I can do service as a translator with an Amorite, a man of the mountains ....... I myself can correct his confused words in his own language. Fifthly, when a man of Subir yells ......, I can even distinguish the words in his language, although I am not a fellow-citizen of his. When I provide justice in the legal cases of Sumer, I give answers in all five languages. In my palace no one in conversation switches to another language as quickly as I do.

When I pronounce a completed verdict, it is heartily welcomed, since I am wise and exalted in kingship. So that my consultative assemblies, sitting together to care for the people, inspire respect in their hearts when the chief herald sounds the horn, they should deliberate and debate; and so that the council should decide policy properly, I have taught my governors to deliberate and to debate. While the words at their dining tables flow like a river, I tackle crime, so that the foundations are securely established for my wide dominions. I vanquish a city with words as weapons, and my wisdom keeps it subjected just as violence with burning torches would. I have taught them the meaning of the words "I have no mother". My words can be words smooth as the finest quality oil; I know how to cool hearts which are hot as fire, and I know how to extinguish a mouth set on fire like a reed-bed. I weigh my words against those of the braggart. I am a man of the very highest standards of value. The importance of the humble is of particular value to me, and they cannot be counter-productive to any of my activities. By command of An and by command of Enlil, prayers are said for the life of the Land and for the life of the foreign lands, and I neither neglect them nor allow them to be interrupted.

I also know how to serve the gods, and I can cool the hearts of the Anuna gods. I am Culgi, whose thick neck becomes fat (?) in majesty. Grand achievements that I have accomplished which bring joy to my heart I do not cast negligently aside; therefore I give pride of place to progress. I give no orders concerning the development of waste ground, but devote my energies to extensive building plots. I have planted trees in fields and in agricultural land; I devote my powers to dams, ......, ditches and canals. I try to ensure a surplus of oil and wool. Thanks to my efforts flax and barley are of the highest quality. The thirst and hunger of the gods are a cause of the greatest anxiety to me; I, Culgi, am the life of Sumer.

I have no equal among even the most distant rulers, and I can also state that my deeds are great deeds. Everything is achievable by me, the king. Since the time when Enlil gave me the direction of his numerous people in view of my wisdom, my extraordinary power and my justice, in view of my resolute and unforgettable words, and in view of my expertise, comparable to that of Ictaran, in verdicts, my heart has never committed violence against even one other king, be he an Akkadian or a son of Sumer, or even a brute from Gutium.

I am no fool as regards the knowledge acquired since the time that mankind was, from heaven above, set on its path: when I have discovered tigi and zamzam hymns from past days, old ones from ancient times, I have never declared them to be false, and have never contradicted their contents. I have conserved these antiquities, never abandoning them to oblivion. Wherever the tigi and the zamzam sounded, I have recovered all that knowledge, and I have had those cir-gida songs brilliantly performed in my own good house. So that they should never fall into disuse, I have added them to the singers' repertoire, and thereby I have set the heart of the Land on fire and aflame.

Whatever is acquired is destined to be lost. What mortal has ever reached the heavens? At some time in the distant future, a man of Enlil may arise, and if he is a just king, like myself, then let my odes, prayers and learned songs about my heroic courage and expeditions follow that king in his good palace. He should take to heart the benefit that has been conferred on him; he should exalt the power of my odes, absorb the exuberance of my songs, and value highly my great wisdom. Just as a strong person can consider on an equal basis even those things which he has not brought about by his own efforts, let him applaud and welcome my achievements. Let him call upon my good name.

But if his heart devises treason against me, and he commits violence against anything of mine, may Nanna then adjudicate against this rebel, and let Utu the torch catch him. Wherever that king's path may lead, his word shall be wiped out. Until he has completed the days of his life, he shall do everything in his power to keep the hymns in their proper form. Through becoming familiar thereby with me, the king, he will speak of me in awed amazement. Because of my extraordinary wisdom and my ancient fame as a master, he should choose my hymns as examples, and himself beget heavenly writings.

In the south, in Urim, I caused a House of the Wisdom of Nisaba to spring up in sacrosanct ground for the writing of my hymns; up country in Nibru I established another. May the scribe be on duty there and transcribe with his hand the prayers which I instituted in the E-kur; and may the singer perform, reciting from the text. The academies are never to be altered; the places of learning shall never cease to exist. This and this only is now my accumulated knowledge! The collected words of all the hymns that are in my honour supersede all other formulations. By An, Enlil, Utu and Inana, it is no lie -- it is true!

Furthermore no one will assert under oath that to this day there is any mention in my inscriptions of a single city that I have not devastated, or wall that I have not demolished, or land that I have not made tremble like a reed hut, or praise that I have not completely verified. Why should a singer put them in hymns? An eminent example deserves eternal fame. What is the use of writing lies without truth? For me, the king, the singer has recorded my exploits in songs about the strength of the protective deity of my power; my songs are unforgettable, and my words shall not fall into oblivion. I am the best king of the Land. From the very first origins until the full flourishing of mankind, there will never be any king who can measure himself against my achievements whom An will let wear his crown or wield his sceptre from a royal throne.

I am gifted with power, insight and wisdom. The high point of my great deeds is the culling of lions before the lance as if they were garden weeds, the snapping of fierce felines like reeds as if under the carding-comb, and the crushing (?) of their throats under the axe as if they were dogs. Great powerful wild cows, indomitable bulls, cattle on their way to their mountain pastures, which were killed in the plain, were ...... the mountains. That the hills were impenetrable and inaccessible ...... -- those are pure lies. Where, in important words on tablets, my wisdom and my power

He who knows, and does not ...... the truth about me as lies, will applaud and praise me.

I am a warrior whose might is enormous might. I am Culgi, whose shadow lies over the mountain lands. I am the king, the weapon and the downfall of rebel lands. Thus I have spread far and wide my everlasting renown.

Now, I swear by Utu on this very day -- and my younger brothers shall be witnesses of it in foreign lands where the sons of Sumer are not known, where people do not have the use of paved (?) roads, where they have no access to the written word -- that the firstborn son is a fashioner of words, a composer of songs, a composer of words, and that they will recite my songs as heavenly writings, and that they will bow down before my words as a ......

For that house, I am the right man to step over the threshold. I am the man whose name has been chosen by Nanna. I am the steward of Enlil's temple, the domestic slave of An. I am Culgi, and my house E-hursaj is the palace of palaces. My royal residence is above all praise; I made it tower up like a lapis-lazuli mountain. Inana, the queen of the gods, the protective deity of my power, has perfected the songs of my might -- the foremost among kings -- in respect of everything in the whole world. It is good to praise me. Praise be to Nisaba.

 

II.

THE KING AND HIS OFFICERS

 

The attempt made in the preceding pages to follow the fortunes of the Third Dynasty of Ur has met at every turn a tantalizing want of information due to the singular unwillingness of the age to record even the triumphs, much less the failures, of its kings. For the internal conditions of the land at this time there is, on the contrary, a wealth of documentation which is hardly less embarrassing; it is copious beyond measure, and yet is very one-sided. The ‘business-documents’ of this dynasty, which are ubiquitous in all collections of tablets, begin to be abundant with the expansion of conquest in the middle years of Shulgi. Visibly under the impulse of the king himself a most meticulous system of bookkeeping was instituted, and since this clerking was consigned to admirably made tablets in a fine clear style of writing, we are now in possession of ample records, from five of the main centres of the kingdom, concerning administration of temple or royal properties, ranging in contents from digests of accounts over a period of time to half-a-dozen lines registering the receipt of a goat. The impression produced by this soulless industry is that of a rigid bureaucracy, a system highly congenial to the Sumerian mind and having its roots deep in their past. The ‘scribe’ is everywhere, busily employed in the presence of almost as many overseers and checkers, without whom not the slightest affair can be transacted.

Over these again stood greater officers, such as the managers of the temple workshops or the city governors or the stewards of the temples who administered the whole of their estates and activities. Above all of them, at the apex of the pyramid, was the king himself. It has already been observed that his was the impulse which set in motion this formidable accounting machinery, and there is evidence that Shulgi was himself the inspirer of more efficient methods of business, for he rearranged the calendar, set up a bureau of standards, and issued accurate weights which were preserved and imitated to the latest days of Babylonian history. Far more than this, the king was the principal contributor to the wealth and offerings of the temples, the head to whom all officials owed their appointments, and he is individually acknowledged as master of all these underlings upon their seals, a few of which are engraved with the image of the king upon the seat and in the attitude of a god, making a presentation of an office and a special mark of favour to the owner of the seal, which itself bears a statement that it was conferred by the king.

A superior rank among his servants was held by the governors of provinces and cities, with the titles of sakkana or ensi, and it is in their position that we may best understand the assumption of divinity by the kings of the Third Dynasty. There is some reason to believe that the revival at this period of the old Sumerian ideas was strict (in reaction against the Gutian oppression), and one of the most deep-seated of these had been the representation of the city-god in earthly affairs by his agent, the ensi. In the older centuries of the Sumerian states interference by the lugal, even in such important matters as the personality of the governor, seems to have been limited, he being content with formal acknowledgement and possibly some payment of tribute and service. But the formation of a great empire by the kings of Agade had put an end to this easy condition, and the constant unrest of the Sumerian cities under their rule had obliged them to take care that only men well-affected towards themselves were placed in positions of control there. The king had thus openly assumed the function of a god, and a god he must become. In the dynasty of Agade this need must already have been sensible, and no doubt the vast accession of power and width of sway won by such a mighty figure as Naram-Sin helped to make him appear superhuman.

In the Third Dynasty of Ur this assumption of divinity coincided similarly with the great expansion in the middle years of Shulgi. Vainglory and popular superstition supported it, but it may also have been deemed a necessary measure of policy to justify the otherwise inadmissible appointment of an earthly governor by another human. There is, indeed, one example of a governor (ensi) who was himself deified, presumably upon the sole account of his achievements, but this must be regarded as anomalous and perhaps merely a piece of flattery. These new-minted gods caused to be set aside or built for them their own temple in each city, receiving the daily provision and special allowances for their images. Thus they lived among their people and upon their own estates and set their own stewards to manage their properties; in short, they fulfilled the strictest ideas of human life and divine government. As there could not well be two masters in a house, it may be supposed that they often tended to dispossess the older patron-deities of their privileges ; it has been noticed above that a city governor is found to have taken the king’s name to the exclusion of the old god of his city, and to have been ready to lay it aside when the power of Ur was visibly doomed.

The other side to this conception of the royal office was the necessity of doing right, of ‘shepherding’ the people under their charge, or committed to the rule of an agent with a like responsibility. At the outset of this period is found the beginning of legal regulation in Babylonia. What the state of formal justice was under the old Sumerian rulers of the Early Dynastic age we have little ability to judge. But the language and proceedings of Urukagina certainly suggest that the ensi of that time was regarded as so entirely the god’s representative that justice was administered by him under his ‘contract’ with the god, and thus depended upon his own sense of propriety and his own integrity alone, so that he could, like Urukagina, quite alter custom and rule, if it seemed to him unjust, and would have the full authority of the god to do so. But now, again, the king had become in an effective measure the local god of each city and found himself thereby obliged to let his will be known in more precise terms, which would apply to an area far wider than one city. Few Sumerian laws survive which are or may be of Third Dynasty date, but it is significant that, in the closely sequent period, compiling of ‘codes’ of law was undertaken by several kings, that of Hammurabi being not unique, but only the first known and the best preserved. This widespread activity does no more than create a supposition that the ideas of fixed law and regular justice were realized in the preceding dynasty, but there is much more positive evidence. Among the multifarious tablets of administration more than 150, mostly from Lagash, form a special class concerned with proceedings and decisions of the law-courts in cases of family transactions, debts, purchases, and criminal offences. These proceedings were heard occasionally before the king himself, but more often by city-governors or members of an order of judges, many of whom, residents in Lagash, are named in the tablets.

 

III.

ECONOMY AND WEALTH

 

To give any sufficient description of the economic system over which the king thus reigned supreme is hardly yet possible, in spite of the superabundant material of one kind offered by the business documents—and indeed also because of this superabundance. For although very large numbers of these tablets have been published perhaps as many more are known to be extant, and to resolve their endless details into a comprehensive picture of the whole society is a task which only the future and perhaps the application of techniques now evolving can expect to master. How these records were kept is partly revealed by clay dockets attached to the boxes or jars which contained various classes. Upon these labels were inscribed the container to which they belonged, the kind of records which it contained, and the date-formula; from the second entry it is possible to summarize the principal orders of accounts which were kept. The simplest were the single lists or mere notes of commodities received and issued. These details were digested and summarized and a kind of balance struck in the larger tablets called ‘reckonings’, which totalled the receipts and outlays over periods of time.

The two other principal classes of documents, according to the container-tickets, and according to the surviving material, were the offering lists, detailing the food and treasures offered to the gods upon ordinary and special days; these tablets yield incidentally much information about the divine ‘inhabitants’ of the temples, their daily life and service, the religious calendar of the months and years, even the topography and furnishings of the various buildings in which the cult was performed. Most interesting of all, perhaps, are the tablets called ‘inspections’ which survey the stocks, personnel, output, expenses, and work in hand of the large workshops which were maintained by the temples to supply their own needs and probably to furnish a quota to the court, even perhaps to sell in the market, but there is little evidence about the disposal of the produce. Wool, dates, and onions seem also to have been distributed in part under a like system. It may be supposed that the surplus produce of the temple estates and manufactories was also put on sale in this way to private consumers.

It has already been said that the abundant evidence of business activity in this period is mostly confined to the temple economy, which covered so many undertakings that it may be considered as no inadequate index of the general economy of the land. But it has the disadvantage that no reliable notion is given of the extent and importance of private property. Just as before, in the old Sumerian period, the accident of the preponderance of one kind of record only has perhaps distorted our view of the affairs and even the polity of that time, so the Third Dynasty appears in its business documents as too exclusively a world of officials and serfs, between whom the private citizen is scarcely visible. Yet among the endless lists there appear ‘contracts’, using already the form and many of the clauses found in the more numerous deeds of the succeeding age, and letter-requisitions (but these are probably official). A book of legal phrases, in Sumerian and Akkadian, which in its extant version belongs mostly to the succeeding period, yet takes some of its formulae out of clauses already exemplified in the private deeds of the Ur dynasty. From both of these sources it may be learnt that property in slaves and houses was bought, sold, and exchanged, though most land, perhaps, belonged to temples and certainly most of the accounts concerning it, including surveys of estates, are records of its cultivation and produce for the profit of these corporations. Borrowing of commodities is also a prominent article in these documents, and there is no proof that the borrowing was always from the temple stores. Among the objects of dealing in this form were cattle, birds, metals, bricks, reeds, and especially wool, an item in the life of the land hardly less important than cereals. Grain, dates, and silver were loaned at interest, the time of due repayment, often after the harvest, being specified, guarantees of payment given, penalties fixed for non-fulfilment, an oath required by the life of the king, and the deed was concluded with names of witnesses and notary and the official date. Such tablets were produced as proof in the courts of law. From this description it will be clear that the general form of the Old Babylonian ‘contracts’ had already been moulded in the preceding age.

A factor in the economy of the Third Dynasty which cannot be overlooked because it is so prominent in the account-tablets was the raising of large and small cattle, and the great numbers of these which were maintained prove in their turn the fertility of the soil and the abundance of the grain-crops. Apart from a religious text glorifying the Moon-god of Ur, which professes to reckon the number of his cows only in multiples of 36,000, there is the more factual evidence of the constant motion of flocks and herds in and out of a central cattle-park, ‘The House of Puzrish-Dagan’, near Nippur, at the site now called Drehem. Lists register, similarly, the quantities of barley and bran fed to animals upon a sheep-run near Lagash; it appears that in one month there was maintained a stock of over 22,000 sheep, nearly a thousand cows, and still more of other meat cattle; in three months fodder was provided for over 50,000 sheep and 1500 oxen, and this was but one of many such stations. If anything like a comprehensive figure could be reckoned for the whole country it would, on this proportion, be massive. Another necessity which employed a great many hands was the grinding of the grain crops; this was largely a female occupation but in some places women were outnumbered by men, and always helped by children. A typical account of one mill which employed about forty hands gives a register of the names of all workers, the kind of work they were doing, and their output, and it shows that their wage accounts were made up daily, these wages being in kind, consisting of the primary articles of diet, barley, beer, and oil, some of which it was permissible to forego in one kind so as to have more of another.

Wool working was the other principal occupation of women and girls, though again not to the exclusion of men. The kinds of wool used, the operations performed, the colouring, and the cloths manufactured and made into garments give rise to a wealth of technical terms which can hardly be interpreted in detail. The wool-workers and tailors were, in the capital at least, but one department of a great manufactory, of which we possess comprehensive surveys. One such establishment comprised no less than eight workshops; apart from the clothiers there were (1) carpenters and joiners who turned out furniture (tables, chairs, boxes, shrines, and cabinets) as well as constructional work, (2) carvers of wood and ivory, who decorated this furniture with inlaid work, and made small figures, (3) smiths, of precious and base metals, with whose work was closely associated that of (4) the jewellers, who produced all kinds of little figures and ornaments and often enriched with gold mounts the beads and other miniature products of (5) the cutters and engravers of gems and semi-precious stones. The last two shops were occupied by (6) the leather workers and (7) those who used reeds and bitumen for making mats and baskets and for waterproofing the seams of boats.

 

IV.

FOREIGNERS FROM THE EAST

 

The foregoing sketch of the economy which reigned in southern Babylonia under the Third Dynasty of Ur gives a measure of the contrast between its wealth and the primitive condition of its neighbours. Babylonian caravans and ships had travelled near and far in search of the primary resources needed to support this complex civilization, and had brought back as associates or slaves inhabitants of the foreign lands, some of whom remained to make a career or at least a living for themselves in the empire, while others returned to inflame their ruder countrymen with tales of the riches to be plundered if ever the strong man armed grew weak. Even while guard was fully maintained the population of Babylonia was unequally affected by peaceful immigration of foreigners from the two directions, north-east and north-west, which had never ceased to pour their bolder spirits into the wealthy plain, favoured by the lack of natural boundaries to keep them out. This inflow was no doubt continuous and mostly unnoticed, producing a turmoil only when it became too violent.

In this period the accession from the eastern frontier is noticeable chiefly in the names of a people, using neither the Sumerian nor the Akkadian language, who, whatever they may have called themselves, are now most often known as Hurrians, a name certainly used by themselves afterwards in their own documents; they were the ‘Horites’ of the Old Testament. This people was to form, in later centuries, a distinct and powerful nation under their own kings, but for a long time after their first appearance they are found only as individuals. That first appearance may be placed under the Dynasty of Agade, when a few names more or less certainly identified with this people are borne by local rulers, some said to have been conquered by Naram-Sin.

The geographical position of their kingdoms (Karakhar, Markhashe, Simurrum, Tukrish, to which other names can be added subsequently— Shashrum, Simanum, Urbilum), although only a few of these have been definitely located, was in most cases within that area which was the persistent enemy of the kings of Ur, bounded by the Tigris, the Diyala, and the mountains to the east. Only two most ancient surviving monuments, has been sought as far west as the tributaries of the Khabur.

Continual hostilities did not prevent inhabitants of these lands beyond the Tigris from moving more and more frequently into Babylonia, so that in the tablets of the Third Dynasty is found a quotum of Hurrian names, most of them, it is true, still dwelling in their home-lands east of the Tigris, where men of this stock are mentioned as governors of cities. But in Babylonia itself there is a sprinkling of these names, some borne even by minor officials who soon showed the thoroughness of their assimilation by giving, in certain instances, Akkadian names to their sons. If these foreigners cannot be said to have introduced a serious or disturbing factor into the life of Babylonia, even less noticeable was the admixture of another eastern race, the people called Su, the Shubaru or Subarians. These tribesmen, against whom one of the campaigns of Sargon had been directed, were also originally inhabitants of a district east of the Tigris, but seem to have spread themselves widely at an early period over North Mesopotamia, whither the Hurrians were to follow them in the years after the end of the Third Dynasty. Indeed, these two peoples were so alike in origin and destiny that their difference has been argued mainly upon dissimilarity of names. There was little difference in the status of their immigrants, who came for the most part as menials or even slaves, occasionally made their way upwards in the society which adopted them, and in either case sank unperceived into the mass.

 

V.

THE AMORITE INVASION

 

Far different was the effect of a much more weighty migration from the north-west, bringing in those forces which were to aid in subverting the kingdom of Ibbi-Sin and, after a second conflict, to expel the Elamites and set up new kingdoms with most of the old traditions in the Babylonian homeland. In the reign of Shu-Sin began an inflow of those western Semites who were called martu or amurru, Amorites, propelled down the valley of the Euphrates by indefinable forces. Neither the name nor, essentially, the people were new; as well as the occurrence of individuals in the older tablets, references to their barbarous character were put even into stories about Lugalbanda and Enmerkar, old kings of legend in the First Dynasty of Uruk, but these are perhaps anachronous. Equally uncertain is a ‘Khuwaruwash king of Amurri’ in a Hittite version of the revolt of seventeen kings against Naram-Sin. As a menace to Babylonia they first appear in the reign of Shar-kali-sharri, who defeated them at Basar, when the double threat from east and west was hanging over him, as later over Ibbi-Sin. Little more is heard of this people until the reign of Shu-Sin, when they came in force upon the north-western quarter of Babylonia and not only compelled the withdrawal of the power of Ur from whatever it held in Syria but could be checked from actual invasion only by the desperate expedient of building the ‘Western Wall’.

These intruders were regarded with distaste by the native Babylonians, who looked upon them as barbarians, had many scornful things to say about their manner of life, and even regarded their territorial god Amurru as a crude nomad who had not so much as a house when he came towards the civilized districts and had to be provided with a decent establishment and a wife before he could be admitted to the divine society. Yet this hostility was almost more of a class than of a national feeling; these Semites were not of the same tribes nor even of the same language among themselves, and none of them were utterly alien to the society of the great southern cities, which already contained as ordinary citizens a large admixture of Semitic immigrants, who differed from the newcomers only in being assimilated to the predominantly Sumerian civilization. Infiltration from the Syrian steppe to the alluvium was, in truth, an unceasing process, which caused no alarm, and even had its advantages, when it was gradual. But when circumstances, always invisible to us, quickened this flow, as at the times of the Akkadian and afterwards the Amorite invasion, the immigrants seized power by their very weight and provoked an indignant reaction which took on the unreal appearance of a national resistance. In turn these strangers themselves were assimilated and though they modified they never could have transformed the society which had striven to reject them. It was possible to speak of driving out Gutians, but after a comparatively few years who could have found the Akkadians or the Amorites, to cast these out from the land where they had ceased to be distinguishable?

The Amorite invasion evidently had all of these characteristics; there is no doubt that ‘Amorites’, that is, men of Syrian origin, were always entering Akkad and Sumer between the days of Shar-kali-sharri and of Shu-Sin. These are not always distinguishable in written records, for they bore (or assumed) names common to the land where they came to sojourn. On entering the country they were recruited as soldiers or as a menial class of ‘coolies’, some having been brought in as slaves, and it is these, no doubt, who are sometimes shown upon monuments wearing a peculiar short dress and occupied in lowly tasks. ‘Amorite’ was indeed a designation signifying ‘workman’ (a term which in Babylonian ideas applied to both civil and military duties), and their work was done in groups under their own officers, with ranks such as ‘general’, ‘chief’, ‘lieutenant’, ‘overseer’, ‘scribe’, the functions of which are barely definable. Though all (when distinguished particularly) were called martu or Amorites it is possible to trace earlier and later waves of these Syrians coming into the south country. The earlier, beginning under the Third Dynasty of Ur, is marked by a set of names characterized by the ending -anum; a later, which followed after the rise of Ishbi-Erra, had names of a very distinctive cast, which are the earliest representatives of what is now called the West-Semitic dialect. Despite the extraordinary limitation of a material confined to a mere set of names, with no other literature, it is beyond doubt that a real difference was found between the language of these newcomers and those both of the Semitic-speaking Babylonians and of previous western immigrants. The clearest indication is the verbal form of the third person which began with ia-, whereas Akkadian used the form beginning with i-. In addition the West-Semitic names contain both ordinary words and special divinities which were unknown to Akkadian and peculiar to the language (that is, the names) of this people.

With this criterion it is possible to discern that the forces which contributed to the overthrow of Ur were somewhat in advance of the tribes with West-Semitic speech. The kings of Isin bore Akkadian names, but the founder of the kingdom at Larsa was Naplanum, whose name was of the older ‘Amorite’ style first found under the Dynasty of Ur.

West-Semitic names come into Larsa with the later kings Abisare and Sumuel, then, with the establishment of a third parallel dynasty at Babylon, about the same time as these, West-Semitic names appear at once in the royal family and become common in the documents of private business. The evidence, given its limitations, is thus fairly clear; at a point of time before half-way through the dynasties of Isin and Larsa a new wave of Syrian invaders, with a characteristic dialect, appeared in southern Babylonia where, although unable to subvert the established if inglorious kings who nominally divided the land, they conquered several cities and finally set up, at a place almost unknown before, a third kingdom which was eventually to devour the survivor of the other two. At about the same time men of this stock were found ruling in Kish and Sippar, in the neighbouring land east of the Tigris, and up the Euphrates at least as far as Mari.

 

VI.

CHANGE IN ART

 

The long-sustained infiltration, sometimes the inrush, of foreign elements and the resultant change in the population is clearly marked for us by its effect upon the representational arts of the country. The period of the Third Dynasty of Ur and of the succeeding, mainly Amorite, kingdoms is still not very well supplied with surviving artistic productions, even after the more recent discoveries both in the capital city and at certain outlying places such as Mari and Eshnunna. It is now evident that stone sculptures continued to be produced in all the principal centres at a high level of technical ability, both in relief and in the round, though our evidence suggests that the latter was the more in favour. The most important monument executed in relief was the great stele of Ur-Nammu at Ur. This work appears to have been, when complete, a vividly descriptive presentation of all the episodes attending that king’s building of the Moon-god’s temple at Ur, of which imposing remains are still to be seen. Both the religious preliminaries and the actual operations were depicted in detail, so that the whole, had it survived, would have been the best illustration we could have of contemporary life.

The most striking difference it shows from the style of the Early Dynastic and Agade periods is in the costume of the principal figures. This dress first comes to notice in the statues of Gudea; it is a wide shawl, with fringed edges, draped round the body and thrown over the left shoulder (leaving the right arm and shoulder bare), with one of the corners tucked into the first fold of the garment and another edge of the shawl supported over the left arm. The material seems to be of smooth texture and is sharply distinguished from the shaggy fleece-like robe worn by the earlier Sumerian figures—this is now reserved for gods. No longer is there, in the figures of this time, the preponderance of shaven heads which marks the style of the earlier ages. Again it is the heads of Gudea which lead the change of fashion; one, perhaps two, of these are still shaven, but the rest wear a kind of turban with an exaggeratedly thick band made of some fabric which displays symmetrical tufts or curls. The same form of head-dress continues in the Ur and Amorite dynasties as a close fitting cap with a less bulky bandage; in the case of a bronze figure from Mari this cap is garnished with horns to mark the ‘divine’ nature of the wearer.

Another difference in the sculpture is the apparent preference for harder stones. Once more the change comes in with the statues of Gudea. It was made possible by an increasing access to, or at least exploitation of, foreign supplies, such as Gudea describes. Something may be due also to improved methods of stone-working, but of this there is no clear evidence. The statues themselves are undoubtedly much better rendered, and beginning from the Gudea figures the level remains generally high. Among the Gudeas there are indeed some markedly inferior, especially in the fault of a squat appearance, a lack of proportion being accentuated by shortness or even absence of the neck. Under the Amorite dynasties the costume remains much as it was under the kings of Ur, save that there is an increasing tendency to decoration; the robe is more richly ornamented, and the beards are fancifully dressed. These characteristics are particularly noticed upon examples of the more provincial art which come from Ashur, Mari, or Eshnunna. Two beautiful little female heads found at Ur give an indication of what the capital made and might have yielded if the Elamite sack had not been so thorough.

A still more notable change was in the style of the cylinder seals which, in fact, underwent two alterations within the periods of Ur and of the Amorites. The first was the more complete, for it meant turning away entirely from the highly varied, closely packed, narrative themes of the Agade period and reducing the device almost to a bare uniformity of subject. This produced the familiar ‘introduction scene’, in which three figures only are essential, and occasionally there are less. It can hardly be doubted that the centralizing effort of royal policy brought about the imposition of this style. Most of the surviving seals and impressions are those of officials in various ranks, with whom the expression of individual piety, or interest in the scene, gave place to the need for an act of homage to the king or the local governor, that is, the inscription became paramount. In a few of the Third Dynasty seals the royal prescription of the device is peculiarly apparent; these examples actually portray the king in the dress and attitude of the gods (except perhaps for the horns) seated on the throne in the god’s usual place, and receiving, like him, the owner of the seal, sometimes with his advocate. The monarch tenders to his worshipper a small vial, and the inscription declares that the king ‘has presented to him’ (this seal), no doubt along with his office, a prerogative which, in certain cases, he seemed to have usurped from the god himself.

The second change began to come into the seals under the dynasties of Isin and Larsa, but was not in full vigour until about the middle of the First Dynasty of Babylon. The ‘introduction scene’ continued to be the common device and the individuality to depend mainly upon the inscription, but most often now the god was standing, not seated, and there is a preponderance of western weather-gods, Amurru or Adad. The escorting deity now hardly ever takes the owner by the hand, but is generally a goddess and stands beside the owner, holding up hands in prayer for him. Yet whatever the fresh elements of the population may have been able to effect in altering certain styles of art, the remarkable absorptive power of the old Sumerian civilization was still impressively demonstrated. Barbarian leaders began almost instantly to play the traditional part of kings, to adopt language, expression, and modes of thinking accepted from their Sumerian predecessors, while the subjects, though they introduced no small changes in the social and economic structure of the country, adopted with equal rapidity and thoroughness a city life under gods and kings, conformed with the general pattern of their physical and cultural environment, and produced articles of use, devotion, and luxury little different in their various kinds from the traditional types. It cannot be observed that any new art was invented or any old one discarded by the Amorite kingdoms, if compared with the Early Dynastic cities of Sumer. Indeed, in a few details such as the reintroduction of clay cones1 and bronze figures as bearers of foundation records, this age went back to the customs of its remoter forerunners.

 

VII.

SUCCESSORS OF THE UR DYNASTY

 

After the few stirring years when Ishbi-Erra was engaged in war and intrigue against the last king of Ur, and then in a struggle with his Elamite associates from whom he finally wrested the devastated city, his reign, of thirty-three years in all, was devoted to the defence of his capital and his territories by the building of fortifications, to the discharge of his religious functions as king, and to the forming of widespread commercial relations—with cities of the Upper Euphrates, the eastern lands of Karakhar and Simurrum (old enemies of the Third Dynasty), and even with overseas Tilmun. He had no scruple (though he had several competitors) in assuming, while the empire of Ur yet subsisted, the divine designation9 and also the title of universal dominion, and he plainly regarded himself and his city of Isin as the legitimate successors of Ur in the old Sumerian tradition of struggle for the ‘kingship’. Accordingly, it is this dynasty which concludes the Sumerian king-list, and the obvious attention given to its compilation at this time, bringing down the tale of succession from ‘the Flood’ to the present, evinces the ambition of Isin11 to claim a supremacy as of right amid circumstances which were far from assenting to it.

Even while Ishbi-Erra was struggling to free himself from the failing grasp of Ur, similar local potentates, former vassals of the empire or newcomers, were active in setting up ‘kingdoms’ for themselves in their own cities and as much of the neighbouring territories as they could control. Almost at the same time as Ishbi-Erra arose a parallel founder of a dynasty at Larsa, one Naplanum, of whom nothing more is known than what can be inferred from the form of his name—he was the first of the immigrant Amorites to make himself a ruler in Babylonia. East of the Tigris, and thus farther removed from the old seat of power, rulers at Eshnunna and also at Der, not far away, set themselves up as ‘gods’, as royal benefactors, as independent rulers, and even as conquerors. In the following generations appeared yet others, including that which was finally to absorb them all—a veritable ‘heptarchy’ (if the number be taken no more strictly in Old Babylonian than in Old English history), more or less flourishing within limits much narrower than the recent dominions of Ur, and little exceeding the old homeland of Sumer and Akkad.

Amid this growing confusion the parallel dynasties of Isin and Larsa settled down as best they could to divide a limited realm which they ruled long but uneventfully. That they could thus subsist for about two centuries less than a hundred miles apart without more than occasional jars simply proves their weakness. Nearly all that is known of these obscure kings has to be gathered from date-formulae of their years, incompletely preserved and sometimes lacking a fixed arrangement. Their few inscriptions are limited to building-records, and in later tradition there is nothing but a slight anecdote concerning the succession of a ‘gardener’ Enlil-bani, to his master Erra-imitti on the throne of Isin. Even the date-formulae mostly concern religious occasions, thus leaving their age one of the dimmest in Babylonian history. But it is hardly probable that more evidence would have much to reveal about the unenterprising figures who occupied the twin thrones of Isin and Larsa for so many years. Each of the cities could boast one ruler of some distinction, but their achievements were different and although their reigns partly coincided, neither city challenged the other. 

A recently-published Sumerian text has revealed an important incident in the broils of cities during these rather uneventful years. The city of Larsa was attacked and reduced to great straits (described in very conventional language) by an uncertain enemy, perhaps the Babylonians. The inscription was set up by King Sin-iddinam, the sixth king of Larsa, to accompany a silver statue of his father Nur-Adad, which, according to the ideas of the times, was to address the Sun-god in the terms of the inscription. Nur-Adad, to whom the tablet ascribes a special election by the Sun-god, waged a victorious campaign by means of which he restored the water-supply of Larsa and overcame the enemy. Sin-idinnam claims for himself the rule over Ur, Larsa, Eridu, and Lagash.

At Larsa it was Gungunum, the fifth king, who in a reign of twenty-seven years won a certain meed of military glory. His arms were directed against the eastern boundary-lands; in the king’s third year is recorded the devastation of Bashimi, a city belonging to the Elamite king, and in the fifth year an attack was pressed home into Anshan itself. The land was overrun and, though no more than the bare event is recorded in the date formulae, some further details are perhaps to be gathered from an inscription of Anum-muttabil, governor of Der, who claimed to have smitten the heads of Anshan, Elam, Simashki, and to have conquered Warakhshe: but it is uncertain whether these two rulers were contemporaries, and thus whether the date-formula and the inscription relate to the same campaign. It is significant that about this time the long line of kings who had lorded over Elam from the city of Simashki came to an end, the last of his line being Indattu II.

After this success early in his reign Gungunum devoted himself to peaceful works until his nineteenth year, when in circumstances unknown he defeated the army of Malgium, a place on the Elamite border, built relay-houses along his roads, as the great Shulgi had done before him, and set in order the waterways of his realm. An event of importance in his reign was the transfer of Ur into his authority from that of Isin. This is, strangely, not recorded in any date-formula, and has been revealed only by inscriptions found at Ur; why the transfer was made, and by what process, warlike or peaceful, is unknown. An ancient and especially sacred institution at Ur was the office of high-priestess to the Moon-god, which was always held by daughters or sisters of reigning monarchs. Ishme-Dagan, fourth king of Isin, had accordingly dedicated his own daughter, who took the sacerdotal name of Enannatum, after a pattern prescribed by custom. In several inscriptions this lady calls herself only ‘child of Ishme-Dagan, king of Sumer and Akkad’, but in three she invokes blessings upon the life of ‘Gungunum, mighty man, king of Ur’, whereby it appears not only that Gungunum had taken over the charge of Ur from the king of Isin, but that he had, out of scruple or perhaps by agreement, allowed the daughter and nominee of the former masters of the city to remain undisturbed, in return for an overt expression of her homage. This transfer, unexplained and only indirectly attested, took place under Lipit-Ishtar, himself the most considerable figure of his line after its founder.

The glory of Lipit-Ishtar sprang from a work of peace notable rather for what still remains of it than for any unique quality it had in its own age. In a date-formula at the outset of his reign, and in various inscriptions, he refers with pride to his having ‘made righteousness’ in Sumer and Akkad. The phrase employed, both Sumerian and Akkadian, became almost a hall-mark of the Old Babylonian kings from Ishme-Dagan of Isin downwards, and was often embroidered with other phrases announcing in high but vague terms the reforms and justice which the ruler had bestowed upon his land—the tradition of these goes back to the beginning of the Third Dynasty and even, in the earlier period, to Urukagina. There is ample evidence to prove that the immediate significance of the phrase was a cancellation of charges upon certain classes or individuals arising out of social conditions or out of specific contracts; a typical example is the clause in a later enactment (of the Babylonian king Ammisaduqa) decreeing that all inhabitants of certain cities and lands in the king’s dominions who had been compelled by debt to sell themselves or their families into slavery should be forthwith released and restored to freedom, ‘since the king has made righteousness for the land’. Either in connexion with such proclamations or later in their  reigns a number of kings issued ‘codes’ of laws, as best exemplified in the celebrated ‘Code of Hammurabi’, generally garnished with a prologue and an epilogue setting forth the king’s services to the gods and to men, and embodying those rules and principles of conduct which he ordered to be observed and was prepared to enforce. These were by no means always changes, for much of each ‘code’ appears in the others, so far as their preservation allows of a judgement, but they aimed to demonstrate their authors' attachment to justice, as opinion at the time conceived it.

Some later material bearing upon the ‘righteousness’ (mesarum) decreed by kings has now been obtained; there is a new edict of King Samsuiluna of Babylon and discussions by J. J. Finkelstein and J. Klima. The laws of Lipit-Ishtar have also received a probable accession.

The laws of Lipit-Ishtar, so far as they are preserved, are written in Sumerian; it is possible that an Akkadian version was also published. The existing provisions, all from the latter part of the document, treat a variety of civil causes—hire of boats, care of orchards, regulations concerning slaves, possession of a house, family laws concerning marriage and inheritance, nearly all of which have more or less close analogies with the better-known laws of Hammurabi, nearly a century and a half later in date. Even more markedly is this the case with the laws of Eshnunna, large extracts of which have recently been recovered; it has been reckoned that the substance of about three-quarters of these reappears in the Hammurabi ‘Code’, and the rest are concerned with similar subjects. The date of these laws, which are written in Akkadian, is not certain—the extant copies seem to be of about the time of Dadusha, a contemporary of Hammurabi himself, but their composition may go back to the age of the earlier legislator, Lipit-Ishtar.

Eshnunna was not the least among the powers contending for mastery or at least independence in these centuries of division. Like many other cities it had broken away in the last days of the Ur Dynasty and proclaimed its own kings, only to fall later under the precarious sway of Isin. Emerging gradually from this, in proportion as the grasp of Isin loosened, Eshnunna was to have its years of glory under three kings, Naram-Sin, Dadusha, and Ibalpiel II, whose reigns occupied the century ending with  Hammurabi. The first of these even made himself for a while king of Assyria, and all three were prominent in the affairs of Upper Mesopotamia, the last of them being directly concerned in putting an end to the Assyrian rule in Mari, and attaining a height of power such that he could at one moment be reckoned the equal both of Hammurabi and of Rim-Sin. But fortune declared for Hammurabi, and in rapid succession both Larsa and Eshnunna fell before him. Being somewhat out of the direct path of the invaders, Eshnunna had no West-Semitic names of kings until the end of their line; on the contrary, its faith in the old tradition is testified by the Sumerian names Ur-Ninmar and Ur-Ningizzida borne by two of its earlier kings.

A like resistance, however unavailing, to the all-pervasive inflow of the tribes is still better attested at Uruk, the very kernel of Sumerian culture, which also makes its appearance in this ‘heptarchy’. Not only did two of its kings similarly bear Sumerian names, Anam and Irdanene, but the former, when he repaired the city wall, recalled with patriotic pride that it was an ‘ancient work of the divine Gilgamesh’. The anxiety of these kings to rescue their city and its treasured values from the enveloping flood of tribesmen, whose aid they nevertheless did not scruple to call in against their local enemies, is exposed by a curiously prolix and embarrassed letter, mingling explanations, excuses, appeals, and protests, which Anam addressed to Sin-muballit of Babylon, the father of Hammurabi. Not unexpectedly in view of the West-Semitic names among his predecessors, Sin-muballit is addressed as the acknowledged ruler of bedawin tribes called Amnan-Iakhrur and Iamutbal, which had established themselves mainly in the neighbourhood of Sippar and in a district east of the Middle Tigris. It is in singular contrast with the deep distrust of the nomads manifested by Anam in his letter that Sin-kashid, the first of this line of kings at Uruk, took pride in his title as chief of the Amnan. The purpose, in fact, of this oddly rambling screed is to justify and to maintain Anam’s refusal to admit into his city the tribal auxiliaries sent by Sin-muballit as a military reinforcement, almost certainly against Rim-Sin of Larsa, although no enemy is named. It appears also from the letter that ever since the early days of the dynasties at Babylon and Uruk, when Sabium and Sin-kashid were kings, there had been continual co-operation (as there was also a marriage alliance) between the two kindred families. But the Babylonian branch had later, as it seems, taken over the headship of the tribes, for Anam appeals to a friendship only once interrupted in the past, and protests his loyalty in the present. Since the letter was found at Uruk it was evidently not despatched, and may perhaps be regarded as a draft for an actual missive which should be better considered and kept more to the point.

After seven kings each had reigned at Isin and Larsa in a mutual forbearance which they durst not violate, their impotence was exposed by the setting up of a third power within an even shorter distance on the other side of Isin. At Babylon, which herewith comes for the first time into history as a capital city, the Amorites founded a dynasty which established itself without effective opposition from either of the constituted kings. Absence of hostility from Larsa is partly explained by names of the two contemporary kings, Abisare and Sumuel, which show that the Amorites had gained a footing at the same moment in that older seat of power. Isin itself, since the reign of Lipit-Ishtar, was probably no longer formidable, and the kings, both of Babylon and of Larsa, were then more preoccupied by a danger from the town of Kazallu, where a turbulent character named Iakhzirel continued to give trouble for several years, notwithstanding the defeats which the armies of Babylon and of Larsa are alleged by the date-formulae to have inflicted upon him.

Thus the three major dynasties which now divided Sumer and Akkad included by no means all the independent rulers of that day. Petty kings set themselves up in cities hard by the greater seats of power and were little molested by these. At about the same time as Sumuabum possessed himself of Babylon other Amorite chiefs were ruling over Kish, only a short distance away, others were at Sippar, a related line has been noticed at Uruk, others again at Marad, and elsewhere, all of them revealed by no more than a few date-formulae or by their names in oaths ratifying private contracts. As an epitome of its age may be viewed the inscription which Ashduni-arim, a minor potentate otherwise unknown but calling himself king of Kish, has left written upon appropriately diminutive clay cones which sort ludicrously with the pompous language in which his achievements are set forth. The four regions of the world (no less) were at enmity with him, and he fought for eight years until his army was reduced to three hundred men. But the gods of Kish came to his aid; he took provisions, went out a full day’s march, and in forty days he subdued the hostile land. Then he repaired the wall of Kish and of another place and put in order two canals. The success was real, but only among dwarfs could so small a figure boast himself a giant.

 

VIII.

 INTERVENTION FROM ABROAD

 

When the gaze is lifted to a wider horizon than Sumer and Akkad alone still other faces are seen bearing in upon that centre. Withdrawal of the power of Ur had left in fragments the whole of the world once under its sway, and some of these fragments had coalesced into powers now able to exercise considerable influence in the opposite direction. The greatest of these was certainly Subartu, a land which had been in various conflict with Sumerian and Akkadian rulers since the Early Dynastic period. Though its limits are always hard to define there can be no doubt that it included, at this time, the city and land of Ashur, or that its rulers, whatever the extent of their authority, may be identified with the early kings of Assyria, known both by their own inscriptions and from their inclusion in the royal lists of that country. One of these, Ilushuma, who lived in the generation before Sumuabum, founder of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and uses the old title islak of the god Ashur, has left two inscriptions in which, after relating his continuance with building the temple of Ishtar, he adds that he established the immunity of Akkad, specifying as recipients of his benefit the cities of Ur and Nippur in Sumer together with Awal, Kismar, and Der of the god Sataran in the lands east of the Tigris. These he decreed to be in the same status as Ashur with respect to freedom from taxation, for this is the meaning of the term he employs. If he imagined these arrangements were likely to be long-enduring he was much deceived. There is no record from the south which gives any hint of this Assyrian incursion, nor of the king at whose expense it was made. Despite the suggestion of permanence, it can have been no more than a raid, and the six next successors of Ilushuma, although there were powerful kings among them, did not again interfere in the affairs of Sumer and Akkad.

Nearly a hundred years after this a new dynasty was founded in Assyria by Shamshi-Adad, the greatest figure of his generation, who was to exercise upon the politics of Babylonia an influence which far outmatched any of the principalities established there. His own inscriptions claim the control of ‘the land between the Tigris and Euphrates’, and boast the tribute of the kings of Tukrish and the ‘upper land’, districts to the east of Assyria. Far wider conquests in the west are announced not only by himself but by much other evidence. The history of his origin and of his reign does not belong to this place, but he seems to have been a freebooter chief who had in his earlier days been obliged to escape into Babylonia before a danger which threatened him, evidently from the reigning king of Assyria. After certain years of exile strength or opportunity allowed him to re-enter Assyria with forces sufficient to depose the reigning king and raise himself to a throne which he occupied for thirty-three years. That he afterwards interposed strongly in the affairs of Babylonia is not directly attested, but one who wielded decisive power in two of the neighbouring states must have largely controlled the fortunes of the south itself in the period of native decline before a limited supremacy was achieved by Hammurabi. The death of Shamshi-Adad is known to have occurred after the tenth year of Hammurabi, so that his reign in Assyria had extended back over Sin-muballit’s reign in Babylon. But he was not paramount in the south for all this time, as is proved by the freedom of those kingdoms to indulge in mutual strife, which they could never have done under an effective overlord. Nevertheless it is at least probable that the early years of Hammurabi himself were passed in a state of deference, if not subservience, to this formidable neighbour.

The later years of the dynasties of Isin and of Larsa coincide with the middle years of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and thus for some sixty years they were sharing a territory of only moderate extent, without more than occasional collisions. The date formulae of all three cities exhibit sporadic conflicts, both with one another and with places farther afield. But these broils were intermittent, and not apparently of much importance, the three being, in fact, too weak or too much subject to pressures from outside to indulge in a struggle to the death. This became a possibility only with a change in the ruling family at Larsa, where after the brief and violently interrupted reign of Silli-Adad the throne was taken by Warad-Sin, as a nominee of his father, Kudur-Mabuk.

The advent of this family, father and two sons, to power in Larsa and Ur is an event of which no specific record exists. But in several inscriptions Kudur-Mabuk alludes to enemies who had done mischief to Larsa and its Sun-temple, of which he proclaims himself the vindicator. In one place these enemies are specified as the armies of Kazallu and Mutiabal, and Kudur-Mabuk boasts of having expelled these from Larsa, pursued them into Emutbal and discomfited them, and then captured Kazallu and beaten down its wall. The same victory is also commemorated in the second year-formula of Warad-Sin, and must therefore have been won in the first year of his reign, preluding his occupation of the throne. The father’s patronage in this appointment is repeatedly attested by the son, who includes his father in prayers for blessings to be vouchsafed in reward for his pious foundations. Throughout all his reign, and even into that of his brother Rim-Sin, who came to the throne twelve years later, the father’s influence was predominant; the origin and the rise of such a commanding figure are consequently of interest.

First, his name itself is significant in the same sense as his father’s, whom he often mentions, Simti-Shilkhak, for there can be no doubt that these are Elamite : Kudur(Kutir)- is unmistakable, although -Mabuk, which should be a divine name, is unknown, and again -Shilkhak perhaps derives from, and certainly recalls, the king Shilkhakha, who reigned not much before this time, and was celebrated through a long line of Elamite dynasts. These names, consequently, leave no doubt that both father and son had passed their lives at least on the border of Elamite territory, and had probably assumed names in compliment to the Elamite court. But s7econdly, in seeming opposition to this stands a curious title ‘father of Amurru’, or ‘of Emutbal’, double both in form and content, for as well as the geographical difference, it is also written both in Sumerian and Akkadian. The location of Emutbal is fairly well fixed—it lay in the plains east of the Tigris and in front of the mountains, the district traversed by the Diyala river. On the other hand, the name Amurru denoted for the Babylonians their north-west in general, the home of those Amorites whose invasions dominated the history of this period. The seeming contradiction must be explained by the movement, probably a generation before, of the Amorite tribe Iamutbal which, instead of following the Euphrates downstream, had crossed the steppe and settled in the east-Tigris land, where their chiefs had accepted some kind of vassalage to the Eparti kings of Elam. It was, therefore, from this neighbouring chieftaincy that the powerful tribal leader Kudur-Mabuk had moved into the boundaries of Larsa during a period of decline, possessed himself of the city itself, driving out an enemy in brief possession, and set up there as kings in succession his two sons who were for a while to revive its fortunes.

Warad-Sin has left a number of wordy inscriptions, chiefly upon clay cones from buildings which he repaired in Ur and Larsa, but his rule extended over Nippur and some other minor cities as well. Perhaps the most interesting event of his untroubled years was the appointment of his sister to the high dignity of priestess to the Moon-god at Ur, an office customarily reserved for the closest female relatives of kings. The solemn occasion was registered as one of the year-formulae, a ceremonial name Enanedu, in the form prescribed by ancient usage, was assumed by the new abbess who later in the reign of her second brother was able to restore her ‘convent’ at Ur with funds provided by him after his final victory over Isin. Of this work she had composed a memorial written upon clay cones in a high-flown Sumerian style; this was recovered and perused with satisfaction by Nabonidus in the last years of Babylonian independence, and has lately reappeared after another twenty-five centuries.

Rim-Sin, who succeeded his brother, must have been a young man at his accession, for not only was he to reign sixty years but it would seem that some natural anxiety recalled Kudur-Mabuk to supervise his first steps in kingship, for the father’s name occurs again in dedications by his son. This tutelage cannot have lasted long in Rim-Sin’s reign, which began to unroll quietly enough in the company of the rival dynasties of Isin, now in its decline, and Babylon, now approaching the verge of its greatest days. These early years have nothing to record but religious buildings, care of canals, and dedications of statues representing Kudur-Mabuk, his brother Warad-Sin and, surprisingly, his predecessor Sin-iddinam. The first warlike enterprise is mentioned in the date of his fourteenth year, when ‘the army of Uruk, Isin, Babylon, Sutium, and Rapiqum, and Irdanene, king of Uruk, were smitten with weapons’, an event related in similar terms upon clay cones found at Ur, which add the picturesque detail that he trod with his foot upon the head of the hostile king of Uruk as though he had been a serpent. This struggle was in itself no more than characteristic of the petty warfare which had been endemic since the strong control of Ur had disappeared, but it was nearly the end of the local dynasty at Uruk, and it foreshadowed the contest for supremacy with Isin and Babylon, whereas the more distant alliance with Rapiqum and of the Sutu nomads must have been the outcome of a temporary political grouping.

In this fourteenth year of Rim-Sin the last king, Damiq-ilishu, was on the throne of Isin, and Sin-muballit recently come to that of Babylon. The succeeding years were divided between civil undertakings and desultory warfare in which Rim-Sin captured several towns of little account and uncertain location; in his twenty-first year he claims a victory, which he used mercifully, against Uruk. At length, in his twenty-fifth year, he appears as beginning the decisive struggle with Isin, for he announced the capture of a ‘city (of) Damiq-ilishu’ with thousands of prisoners whom he brought captive to Larsa and ‘established his victory for ever’. Despite this emphatic language and the name of Damiq-ilishu it is difficult to construe this as the capture of Isin itself, for that triumph was not expressly claimed until five years later, and it is still more curious that in the seventeenth year of Sin-muballit, a year which fell between the twenty-fifth and the thirtieth year of Rim-Sin, a capture of Isin is actually recorded by the king of Babylon. The strange situation that a complete victory over Isin was related on at least two and possibly three occasions within five years, and that by two different rulers, is not one that we can elucidate with the slight information that we have. What is certain is that Rim-Sin upon his thirtieth year published a long and almost lyrical date-formula to describe how ‘with the exalted weapon of Anu, Enlil, and Enki the true shepherd Rim-Sin captured Isin, the royal city, with every one of its inhabitants, as many as there were, and then bestowed life upon its widespread people, and made his royal name famous for evermore’.

Thus ended the kingdom saved by Ishbi-Erra out of the ruins of Ur and lost by Damiq-ilishu two and a quarter centuries afterwards. Its fall left the dominion to be contested by two powers, so long its rivals, Larsa and Babylon itself. The decision was to be delayed for another thirty years, during which Rim-Sin rested so complacently upon his laurels that he suffered no other reckoning of time than ‘year x (after) he captured Isin’, thereby cutting off our only supply of historical information. This royal lethargy, however, was by no means typical of the times, for there is massive and ever-growing testimony that the reigns of Rim-Sin, of Hammurabi, and of his son Samsuiluna embraced the period when literature, crafts, and all kinds of learning, true and false, were cultivated and even created with an ardour and achievement never matched again. Concerning these something may be reserved for a more general survey of what is called, from its dominant figure, the age of Hammurabi.