Chapter IV — The Western Semites and the First Dynasty of Babylon — A History of Babylon by L. W. King

Chapter IV The Western Semites and the First Dynasty of Babylon

The rise of Babylon to a position of pre-eminence among the warring dynasties of Sumer and Akkad may be regarded as sealing the final triumph of the Semite over the Sumerian. His survival in the long racial contest was due to the reinforcements he received from men of his own stock, whereas the Sumerian population, when once settled in the country, was never afterwards renewed. The great Semitic wave, under which the Sumerian sank and finally disappeared, reached the Euphrates from the coast-lands of the Eastern Mediterranean. But the Amurru, or Western Semites, like their predecessors in Northern Babylonia, had come originally from Arabia. For it is now generally recognized that the Arabian peninsula was the first home and cradle of the Semitic peoples. Arabia, like the plains of Central Asia, was, in fact, one of the main breeding-grounds of the human race, and during the historic period we may trace four great migrations of Semitic nomad tribes, which successively broke away from the northern margin of the Arabian pasture-lands and spread over the neighbouring countries like a flood. The first great racial movement of the kind is that of which the effects were chiefly apparent in Akkad, or Northern Babylonia, where the Semites first obtained a footing when overrunning the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates. The second is distinguished from the first, as the Canaanite or Amorite, since it gave to Canaan its Semitic inhabitants; but how long an interval separated the one movement from the other it is impossible to say. The process may well have been a continuous one, with merely a change in the direction of advance; but it is convenient to distinguish them by their effects as separate movements, the sensitization of Canaan following that of Babylonia, but at the same time contributing to its complete success. Of the later migrations we are not for the moment concerned, and in any case only one of them falls within the period of this history. That was the third great movement, which began in the fourteenth century and has been termed the Aramean from the kingdom it established in Syria with its capital at Damascus. The fourth, and last, took place in the seventh century of our own era, when the armies of Islam, after conquering Western Asia and Northern Africa, penetrated even to South-Western Europe. It was by far the most extensive of the four in the area it covered, and, in spite of being the last of the series, it illustrates the character and methods of the earlier movements in their initial stages, when the desert nomad, issuing in force from his own borders, came within the area of settled civilization.

It is true that great tracts of Central Arabia are to-day quite uninhabitable, but there is reason to believe that its present condition of aridity was not so marked in earlier periods. We have definite proof of this in the interior of Southern Arabia, where there is still a belt of comparatively fertile country between the flat coastal regions and the steep mountain range, that forms the southern boundary of the central plateau.1 On the coast itself there is practically no rainfall, and even on the higher slopes away from the coast it is very scanty. Here the herds of goats frequently go without water for many weeks, and they have learnt to pull up and chew the fleshy roots of a species of cactus to quench their thirst. But further still inland there is a broad belt of country, which is marvellously fertile and in a high state of cultivation. The rainfall there is regular during a portion of the year, the country is timbered, and the main mountain range, though possessing no towns of any size, is thickly dotted with strong fighting towers, which dominate the well-farmed and flourishing villages. To the north of the range, beyond the cultivation, is a belt roamed over by the desert-nomads with their typical black tents of woven goat-hair, and then comes the central desert, a region of rolling sand. But here and there the ruins of palaces and temples may still be seen rising from the sand or built on some slight eminence above its level.

At the time of the Sabæan kingdom, as early as the sixth century b.c., this region of Southern Arabia must have been far more fertile than it is at the present day. The shifting sand, under the driving pressure of the simoom, doubtless played its part in overwhelming tracts of cultivated country; but that alone cannot account for the changed conditions. The researches of Stein, Pumpelly, Huntington and others have shown the results of desiccation in Central Asia,2and it is certain that a similar diminution of the rainfall has taken place in the interior of Southern Arabia.3 To such climatic changes, which seem, according to the latest theories, to occur in recurrent cycles,4 we may probably trace the great racial migrations from Central Arabia, which have given their inhabitants to so many countries of Western Asia and North Africa.

It is possible to form a very clear picture of the Semite who issued from this region, for the life of the pastoral nomad, all the world over, is the same.5 And even at the present day, in the hollows of the Arabian desert, there is enough deposit of moisture to allow of a sufficient growth of grass for pasture-lands, capable of supporting nomadic tribes, who move with their flocks of sheep and goats from one more favoured area to another. The life of such a nomad is forced into one mould by the conditions imposed by the desert; for the grass-land cannot support him and he must live on the milk and young of his flocks. He is purely a shepherd, carrying with him the simplest and lightest tents, tools, and weapons for his needs. The type of society is that of the patriarchal family, for each nomad tribe consists of a group of relatives; and, under the direction of their chief, not only the men of the clan, but the women and children, all take an active part in tending the flocks and in practising the simple arts of skin-curing and the weaving of hair and wool. So long as the pasture-lands can support his flocks, the nomad is content to leave the settled agriculturist beyond the desert edge in peace. Some of the semi-nomad tribes upon the margin of the cultivation may engage in barter with their more civilised neighbours, and even at times demand subsidies for leaving their crops in peace. But the bulk of the tribes would normally remain within their own area, while conditions existed which were capable of supplying the needs of their simple life. It is when the pasture lands dry up that the nomad must leave his own area or perish, and it is then that he descends upon the cultivation and proceeds to adapt himself to new conditions, should he conquer the settled races whose higher culture he himself absorbs.

While still held within the grip of the desert, there was never any prospect of his development or advance in civilization. The only great changes that have taken place in the life of the Arabian nomad have been due to the introduction of the horse and the camel. But these have merely increased his mobility, while leaving the man himself unchanged. The Arabs of the seventh century b.c., depicted in the reliefs from Nineveh as fleeing on their camels before the advance of the Assyrians, can have differed in no essential feature from their earliest predecessors, who made their way to the Euphrates valley on foot or with only the ass as a beast of burden. For, having once succeeded in domesticating his flocks and in living by their means upon the rolling steppes of pasture-land, the nomad’s needs are fully satisfied, and his ways of life survive through succeeding generations. He cannot accumulate possessions, as he must be able to carry all his goods continually with him, and his knowledge of the uneventful past is derived entirely from oral tradition. The earliest inscriptions recovered in Arabia are probably not anterior to the sixth century b.c., and they were naturally not the work of nomads, but of Semitic tribes who had forsaken their wanderings for the settled life of village and township in the more hospitable regions of the south.

The Amurru, or Western Semites, to whose incursion into Babylonia the rise of Babylon itself was directly due, had long abandoned a nomadic existence, and in addition to the higher standards of the agriculturist had acquired a civilization which had been largely influenced by that of Babylonia. Thanks to the active policy of excavation, carried out during the last twenty-five years in Palestine, we are enabled to reconstruct the conditions of life which prevailed in that country from a very early period. It is, in fact, now possible to trace the successive stages of Canaanite civilization back to neolithic times. Rude flint implements of the palaeolithic or Older Stone Age have also been found on the surface of the plains of Palestine, where they had lain since the close of the glacial epoch. But at that time the climate and character of the Mediterranean lands were very different to their present condition; and a great break of unknown length then occurs in the cultural sequence, which separates that primæval period from the neolithic or Later Stone Age. It is to this second era that we may trace the real beginnings of Canaanite civilization. For, from that time onwards, there is no break in the continuity of culture, and each age was the direct heir of that which preceded it.

The neolithic inhabitants of Canaan, whose implements of worked and polished stone mark a great advance upon the rough flints of their remote predecessors, belonged to the short, dark-skinned race which spread itself over the shores of the Mediterranean. Dwelling in rude huts, they employed for household use rough vessels of kneaded clay which they fashioned by hand and baked in the fire. They lived chiefly by the cattle and flocks they had domesticated, and, to judge by their clay spindle-whorls, they practised a simple form of weaving, and began to clothe themselves with cloth in place of skins. Over these primitive inhabitants a fresh tide of migration swept, probably in the early part of the third millennium b.c. The new-comers were Semites from Arabia, of the same stock as those nomadic hordes who had already overrun Babylonia and had established themselves in a great part of that country. After they had settled in Canaan and Syria they were known to the Babylonians as the Amurru or Amorites. They were taller and more vigorous than the neolithic Canaanites, and they seem to have brought with them a knowledge of the use of metal, acquired probably by traffic with southern Babylonia.6 The flint arrows and knives of their enemies would have had little chance against weapons of copper and bronze. But, whether helped by their superior armament or not, they became the dominant race in Canaan. By intermarrying with their predecessors they produced the Canaanites of history, a people of Semitic speech, but with a varying admixture in their blood of the dark-skinned Mediterranean race of lower type.

Such in origin was the Canaanite branch of the Western Semites, and it may be worth while to glance for a moment at the main features of their culture as revealed by excavation in Palestine.7 One thing stands out clearly: they revolutionized conditions of life in Canaan. The rude huts of the first settlers were superseded by houses of brick and stone, and, in place of villages, cities rose surrounded by massive walls. The city-wall of Gezer was more than thirteen feet thick and was defended by strong towers. That of Megiddo was twenty-six feet in thickness, and its foot was further protected by a slope, or glacis, of beaten earth. To secure their water-supply in time of siege, the arrangements were equally thorough. At Gezer, for example, a huge tunnel was found, hewn in the solid rock, which gave access to an abundant spring of water over ninety feet below the surface of the ground. Not only had the earlier nomad adopted the agricultural life, but he soon evolved a system of defence for his settlements, suggested by the hilly character of his new country and its ample supply of stone.8 Not less remarkable is the light thrown by the excavations on details of Canaanite worship. The centre of each town was the high place, where huge monoliths were erected, some of them, when unearthed, still worn and polished by the kisses of their worshippers. At Gezer ten such monoliths were discovered in a row, and it is worth noting that they were erected over a sacred cave of the neolithic inhabitants, proving that the ancient sanctuary was taken over by the Semitic invaders. The religious centres inherited by the Ba’alîm, or local “Lords” of Canaanite worship, had evidently been sanctified by long tradition. In the soil beneath the high places both at Gezer and at Megiddo numbers of jars were found containing the bodies of children, and we may probably see in this fact evidence of infant-sacrifice, the survival of which into later periods is attested by Hebrew tradition. In the cultural remains of these Semitic invaders a distinct development is discernible. During the earlier period there is scarcely a trace of foreign influence, but later on we find importations from both Babylonia and Egypt.

It is but natural that southern and central Canaan should have long remained inaccessible to outside influence, and that the effects of Babylonian civilization should have been confined at first to eastern Syria and to the frontier districts scattered along the middle course of the Euphrates. Recent digging by natives so far to the north as the neighbourhood of Carchemish, for example, have revealed some remarkable traces of connexion with Babylonia at a very early period.9 In graves at Hammam, a village on the Euphrates near the mouth of the Sajûr, cylinder-seals were found which exhibit unmistakable analogies to very early Babylonian work;10 and the use of this form of seal at a period anterior to the First Dynasty of Babylon is in itself proof that Babylonian influence had reached the frontier of Syria by the great trade-route up the course of the Euphrates, along which the armies of Sargon of Akkad had already marched in their raid to the Mediterranean coast.11 It is not improbable, too, that Carchemish herself sent her own products at this time to Babylon, for one class of her local pottery at any rate appears to have been valued by other races and to have formed an article of export. At the time of the later kings of the First Dynasty a special kind of large clay vessel, in use in Northern Babylonia, was known as “a Carchemisian,” and was evidently manufactured at Carchemish and exported.12 The trade was no doubt encouraged by the close relations established under Hammurabi and his successors with the West, but its existence points to the possibility of still earlier commercial intercourse, such as would explain the occurrence of archaic Babylonian cylinder-seals in early graves in the neighbourhood.

But, apart from such trade relations, there is nothing to suggest that the early culture of Carchemish and its adjacent districts had been effected to any great extent by that of Babylon, nor is there any indication that the inhabitants of the early city were Semites. Indeed, the archæological evidence is entirely in favour of the opposite view. The bronze age at Carchemish and its neighbourhood is distinguished from the preceding period by the use of metal, by different burial customs, and by new types of pottery, and must be regarded as marking the advent of a foreign people. But throughout the bronze age itself at Carchemish, from its beginning in the third millennium to its close in the eleventh century b.c., there is a uniform development.13 There is no sudden outcrop of new types such as had marked its own beginning, and, since in its later periods it was essentially Hittite, we may assume that it was neither inaugurated nor interrupted by the Semites. Its earlier representatives, before the great Hittite migration from Anatolia, may well have been a branch of that proto-Mitannian stock, itself possibly of Anatolian origin, evidence of whose presence we shall note at Ashur before the rise of Babylon’s First Dynasty.14

Carchemish lies out of the direct road from Babylon to Northern Syria, and it is remarkable that any trace of early Babylonian influence should have been found so far to the north as the mouth of the Sajûr. It is farther down stream, after the Euphrates has turned eastward towards its junction with the Khâbûr, that we should expect to find evidence of a more striking character; and it is precisely there, along the river route from Syria to Akkad, that we have recovered definite proof, at the time of the First Dynasty of Babylon, of the existence of Amorite or West-Semitic settlements with a culture that was Babylonian in its essential features. The evidence is drawn mainly from one district, the kingdom of Khana, which lay not far from the mouth of the Khâbûr. One of the chief towns, and probably the capital of the kingdom, was Tirka, the site of which probably lay near Tell ‘Ashar or Tell ‘Ishar, a place situated between Dêr ez-Zôr and Sâlihîya and about four hours from the latter. The identification is certain, since an Assyrian inscription of the ninth century was found there, recording the rebuilding of the local temple which is stated in the text to have been “in Tirka.”15 From about this region three tablets have also been recovered, all dating from the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon and throwing considerable light on the character of West Semitic culture in a district within the reach of Babylonian influence.

One of these documents records a deed of gift by which Isharlim, a king of Khana, conveys to one of his subjects a house in a village within the district of Tirka.16 On a second document is inscribed a similar deed of gift by which another king of the same district, Ammi-baïl, the son of Shunu’-rammu, bestows two plots of land on a certain Pagirum, described as “his servant,” evidently in return for faithful service;17 and, as one of the plots was in Tirka, it is probable that the deed was drawn up in that city. The third document is perhaps the most interesting of the three, since it contains a marriage-contract and is dated in the reign of a king who bears the name of Hammurabih. This last ruler has by some been confidently regarded as identical with Hammurabi of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and it has been assumed that it was drawn up at a time when Khana had been conquered and annexed by that monarch, of whose advance into that region we have independent evidence.18 But since the tablet appears to be the latest of the three, it is clear that Khana had been subject to Babylonian influence long before Hammurabi’s conquest. And, even if we regard Hammurabih as no more than a local king of Khana, the document has furnished us with a West-Semitic variant of Hammurabi’s name, or one that is closely parallel to it.

The remarkable fact about all these texts is that they are drawn up in the style of legal documents of the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon. But, while the terminology is much the same, it has been adapted to local conditions. The early Babylonian method of dating by events 19 has been taken over, but the formulas are not those in use at this period in Babylonia, but are peculiar to the kingdom of Khana. Thus the first deed of gift is dated in the year when Isharlim, the king, built the great gate of the palace in the city of Kash-dakh; the second was drawn up in the year in which Ammi-baïl, the king, ascended the throne in his father’s house; while the marriage-contract is dated in the year that Hammurabih, the king, opened the canal Khabur-ibal-bugash from the city of Zakku-Isharlim to the city of Zakku-Igitlim.20 The names of the months, too, are not those of Babylon,21 and we find evidence that local laws and customs were in force. Each of the deeds of gift, for example, provides that any infringement of the rights bestowed by the king is to be punished by a money-fine of ten manehs of silver, and in addition the delinquent is to undergo the quaint but doubtless very painful process of having his head tarred with hot tar. From the list of witnesses we gather that the community was already organized much on the lines of a provincial district of Babylonia. For, though we find a cultivator or farmer occupying an important position, we meet also a superintendent of the merchants, another of the bakers, a chief judge, a chief seer, and members of the priesthood. It is interesting, too, to note that the kings of Khana were still great landowners, to judge from the fact that the lands conveyed in the deeds of gift were surrounded on almost every side by palace-property. At the same time the chief gods of Khana are associated with the king in the oath-formulæ, since the royal property was also regarded as the property of the Ba’al, or divine “Lord” of the soil.

The two chief Baalim or “Lords” of Khana were the Sun-god and the West-Semitic deity, Dagon. The latter is constantly referred to in the documents under the Babylonian form of his name, Dagan. He stood beside Shamash on the royal seal and in the local oath-formulæ, and is associated in the latter with Iturmer, who may well have been the old local god of Tirka, deposed after the invasion of the Semites. His temple in Tirka, which we know survived until the ninth century,22 was probably the chief shrine of the city, and the great part he played in the national life is attested by the constant occurrence of his title as a component part of personal names.23 Later evidence proves that Dagon was peculiarly the god of Ashdod, and the princely writer of two of the letters from Tell el-Amarna, who bore the name Dagan-takala, must have ruled some district of northern or central Canaan. The Khana documents prove that already at the time of the First Dynasty his cult was established on the Euphrates, and, in view of this fact, the occurrence of two early kings of the Babylonian Dynasty of Nîsin with the names of Idin-Dagan and Ishme-Dagan is certainly significant. We know, too, that the original home of Ishbi-Ura, the founder of the Dynasty of Nîsin, was Mari, a city and district on the middle Euphrates.24 We may conclude, then, that the Dynasties of Nîsin and Babylon, and probably that of Larsa, were products of the same great racial movement, and that, more than a century before Sumu-abum established his throne at Babylon, Western Semites had descended the Euphrates and had penetrated into the southern districts of the country.

The new-comers probably owed their speedy success in Babylonia in great part to the fact that many of the immigrant tribes had already acquired the elements of Babylonian culture. During their previous residence within the sphere of settled civilization they had adopted a way of life and a social organization which differed but little from that of the country into which they came. That they should have immigrated at all in a south-easterly direction, in preference to remaining within their own borders, was doubtless due to racial pressure to which they themselves had been subjected. Canaan was still in a ferment of unrest in consequence of the arrival of fresh nomad tribes within her settled districts, and, while many were doubtless diverted southwards towards the Egyptian border, others pressed northwards into Syria, exerting an outward pressure in their advance. That the West-Semitic invasion of Babylonia differed so essentially from that of Egypt by the Hyksos is to be explained by this fringe of civilized settlements and petty kingdoms, which formed a check upon the nomad hordes behind them and dominated such of them as succeeded in breaking through. In Egypt the damage wrought by the Semitic barbarians was remembered for generations after their expulsion,25 whereas in Babylonia the invaders succeeded in establishing a dynasty which gave its permanent form to Babylonian civilization.

Nîsin, the city in which, as we have seen, we first obtain an indication of the presence of West-Semitic rulers, probably lay in Southern Babylonia, and we may picture the earlier immigrants as descending the course of the Euphrates until they found an opportunity of establishing themselves in the Babylonian plain. The Elamite conquest, which put an end to the dynasty of Ur, and stripped Babylonia of her eastern provinces,26 afforded Nîsin the opportunity of claiming the hegemony. Ishbi-Ura, the founder of the new dynasty of kings, established his own family upon the throne for nearly a century, and we may probably regard his success in bringing his city to the front as due to the Semitic elements in Southern Babylonia, recently reinforced by fresh accretions from the north-west. The centralization of authority under the later kings of Ur had led to abuses in the administration, and to the revolt of the Elamite provinces; and when an invading army appeared before the capital and carried the king, whom his courtiers had deified, to captivity in Elam,27 Sumerian prestige received a blow from which it never recovered.

Shortly after Ishbi-Ura had established himself in Nîsin, we find another noble, who bore the Semitic name Naplanum, following his example, and founding an independent line of rulers in the neighbouring city of Larsa. But, in spite of the Semitic names borne by these two leaders and by the kings who succeeded them in their respective cities, it is clear that no great change took place in the character of the population. The commercial and administrative documents of the Nîsin period closely resemble those of the Dynasty of Ur, and evidently reflect an unbroken sequence in the course of the national life.28 The great bulk of the southern Babylonians were still Sumerian, and we may regard the new dynasties both at Nîsin and Larsa as representing a comparatively small racial aristocracy, which by organizing the national forces in resistance to the Elamites, had succeeded in imposing their own rule upon the native population. At Nîsin the unbroken succession of five rulers is evidence of a settled state of affairs, and though Gimil-ilishu reigned for no more than ten years, his son and grandson, as well as his father, Ishbi-Ura, all had long reigns. At Larsa, too, we find Emisu and Samum, who succeeded Naplanum, the founder of the dynasty, each retaining the throne for more than a generation. It is probable that the Sumerians accepted their new rulers without question, and that the latter attempted to introduce no startling innovations into their system of administrative control.

Of the two contemporaneous dynasties in Southern Babylonia, there is no doubt that Nîsin was the more important. Not only have we the direct evidence of the Nippur Kings’ List that it was to Nîsin the hegemony passed from Ur,29 but what votive texts and building-records have been recovered prove that its rulers extended their sway over other of the great cities of Sumer and Akkad. A fragmentary text of Idin-Dagan, the son and successor of Gimil-ilishu, found at Abû Habba, proves that Sippar acknowledged his authority,30 and inscribed bricks of his own son Ishme-Dagan have been found in the south at Ur.31

In all their inscriptions, too, the kings of Nîsin lay claim to the rule of Sumer and Akkad, while Ishme-Dagan and his son Libit-Ishtar 32 adopt further descriptive titles implying beneficent activities on their part in the cities of Nippur, Ur, Erech and Eridu. The recently published inscriptions of Libit-Ishtar, which were recovered during the American excavations at Nippur, prove that in his reign the central city and shrine of Babylonia were under Nîsin’s active control. But he was the last king in the direct line from Ishbi-Ura, and it is probable that the break in the succession may be connected with a temporary depression in the fortunes of the city; for we shortly have evidence of an increase in the power of Larsa, in consequence of which the city of Ur acknowledged her suserainty in place of that of Nîsin. At the time of Libit-Ishtar’s death Zabâia was reigning at Larsa, but after three years the latter was succeeded by Gungunum, who not only bore the titles of king of Larsa and of Ur, but laid claim to the rule of Sumer and Akkad.

At any rate, one member of the old dynastic family of Nîsin acknowledged these new claims. Enannatum, Libit-Ishtar’s brother, was at this time chief priest of the Moon-temple in Ur, and on cones discovered at Mukayyar he commemorates the rebuilding of the Sun-temple at Larsa for the preservation of his own life and that of Gungunum.33 It is possible that when Ur-Ninib secured the throne of Nîsin, the surviving members of Ishbi-Ura’s family fled from the city to its rival, and that Enannatum, one of the most powerful of their number, and possibly the direct heir to his brother’s throne, was installed by Gungunum in the high-priestly office at Ur. It would be tempting to connect Libit-Ishtar’s fall with a fresh incursion of West-Semitic tribes, who, recking little of any racial connexion with themselves on the part of the reigning family at Nîsin may have attacked the city with some success until defeated and driven off by Ur-Ninib. We now know that Ur-Ninib conducted a successful campaign against the Su tribes on the west of Babylonia,34 and in support of the suggestion it would be possible to cite the much discussed date-formula upon a tablet in the British Museum, which was drawn up in “the year in which the Amurru drove out Libit-Ishtar.”35 But since the Libit-Ishtar of the formula has no title, it is also possible to identify him with a provincial governor, probably of Sippar, who bore the name of Libit-Ishtar, and seems to be referred to on other documents inscribed in the reign of Apil-Sin, the grandfather of Hammurabi.36 The date assigned to the invasion on the second alternative would correspond to another period of unrest at Nîsin, which followed the long reign of Enlil-bani, so that on either alternative we may conjecture that the city of Nîsin was affected for a time by a new incursion of Amorites.

Whether the fall of Libit-Ishtar may be traced to such a cause or not, we now know that it was during the reigns of Ur-Ninib and Gungunum, at Nîsin and at Larsa respectively, that a West-Semitic Dynasty was established at Babylon. Northern Babylonia now fell under the political control of the invaders, and it is significant of the new direction of their advance that the only conflict connected in later tradition with the name of Sumu-abum, the founder of Babylon’s independent line of rulers, was not with either of the dominant cities in Sumer, but with Assyria in the far north. On a late chronicle it is recorded that Ilu-shûma, King of Assyria, marched against Su-abu, or Sumu-abum,37 and though the result of the encounter is not related, we may assume that his motive in making the attack was to check encroachments of the invaders towards the north and drive them southward into Babylonia. Ilu-shûma’s own name is purely Semitic, and since the Amorite god Dagan enters into the composition of a name borne by more than one early Assyrian ruler, we may assume that Assyria received her Semitic population at about this period as another offshoot of the Amorite migration.

This assumption does not rest entirely on evidence supplied by the royal names, but finds indirect confirmation in recent archæological research. The excavations on the site of Ashur, the earliest Assyrian capital, tend to show that the first settlements in that country, of which we have recovered traces, were made by a people closely akin to the Sumerians of Southern Babylonia.38 It was in the course of work upon a temple dedicated to Ishtar, the national goddess of Assyria, that remains were found of very early periods of occupation. Below the foundation of the later building a still older temple was found, also dedicated to that goddess. Incidentally this building has an interest of its own, for it proved to be the earliest temple yet discovered in Assyria, dating, as it probably does, from the close of the third millennium b.c. Still deeper excavation, below the level of this primitive Assyrian shrine, revealed a stratum in which were several examples of rude sculpture, apparently representing, not Semites, but the early non-Semitic inhabitants of Southern Babylonia.

The extremely archaic character of the work is well illustrated by a head, possibly that of a female figure,39 in which the inlaying of the eyes recalls a familiar practice in early work from Babylonia. But the most striking evidence was furnished by heads of male figures, which, if offered for sale without a knowledge of their provenance, would undoubtedly have been accepted as coming from Tello or Bismâya, the sites of the early Sumerian cities of Lagash and Adab. The racial type presented by the heads appears to be purely Sumerian, and, though one figure at least is bearded, the Sumerian practice of shaving the head was evidently in vogue.40

In other limestone figures, of which the bodies have been preserved, the treatment of the garments corresponds precisely to that in archaic Sumerian sculpture. The figures wear the same rough woollen garments, and the conventionalized treatment of the separate flocks of wool is identical in both sets of examples.41 The evidence is not yet fully published, but, so far as it is available, it suggests that the Sumerians, whose presence has hitherto been traced only upon sites in Southern Babylonia, were also at a very early period in occupation of Assyria.

The violent termination of their settlement at Ashur is attested by an abundance of charred remains, which separate the Sumerian stratum from that immediately above it. Had we no evidence to the contrary, it might have been assumed that their successors were of the same stock as those early Semitic invaders who dominated Northern Babylonia early in the third millennium b.c., and pushed eastward across the Tigris into Gutium. But it is recognized that the founders of the historic city of Ashur, records of whose achievements have been recovered in the early building-inscriptions, bear names which are quite un-Semitic in character. There is a good deal to be said for regarding Ushpia, or Aushpia, the traditional founder of the great temple of the god Ashir,42 and Kikia, the earliest builder of the city’s wall,43 as representing the first arrival of the Mitannian race, which in the fourteenth century played, under new leadership, so dominant a part in the politics of Western Asia.44 Not only have their names a Mitannian sound, but we have undoubted evidence of the worship of the Mitannian and Hittite god Teshub as early as the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon; and the fact that the Mitannian name, which incorporates that of the deity, is borne by a witness on a Babylonian contract, suggests that he came of a civilized and settled race.45

It is true that the name Mitanni is not met with at this period, but the geographical term Subartu is,46 and in later tradition was regarded as having ranked with Akkad, Elam and Amurru as one of the four quarters of the ancient civilized world.

In the astrological and omen texts, which incorporate very early traditions, the references to Shubartu are interpreted as applying to Assyria,47 but the term evidently had an earlier connotation before the rise of Assyria to power. It may well have included the North-Mesopotamian region known afterwards as the land of Mitanni, whose rulers are found in temporary occupation of Nineveh, as their predecessors may have established themselves at Ashur. But, however that may be, it is clear that the historic city of Ashur was not in its origin either a Sumerian or a Semitic foundation. Its later racial character must date from the period of the Western Semites, whose amalgamation with an alien and probably Anatolian strain, which they found there, may account in part for the warlike and brutal character of the Assyrians of history, so striking a contrast to that of the milder and more commercial Semites who settled in the lower Euphrates valley. As in Babylonia, the language and to a great extent the features of the Semite eventually predominated; and the other element in the composition of the race survived only in an increased ferocity of temperament.

This was the people of whose attack on Sumu-abum, the founder of Babylon’s greatness, later ages preserved the tradition. No conflict with Assyria is commemorated in Sumu-abum’s date-formulæ, and it is possible that it took place before he secured his throne in Babylon, and built the great fortification-wall of the city with which he inaugurated his reign. When once he was settled there and had placed the town in a state of defence, he began to extend his influence over neighbouring cities in Akkad. Kibalbarru, which he fortified with a city-wall in his third year, was probably in the immediate neighbourhood of Babylon, and we know that Dilbat, the fortification of which was completed in his ninth year, lay only about seventeen miles south of the capital.48 The five years which separated these two efforts at expansion were uneventful from the point of view of political achievement, for the only noteworthy episodes recorded were the building of a temple to the goddess Nin-Sinna and another to Nannar, the Moon-god, in which he afterwards set up a great cedar door. It may be that the conflict with Assyria should be set in this interval; but we should then have expected some sort of reference to the successful repulse of the enemy, and it is preferable to place it before his first year of rule.

His success in the encounter with Assyria may well have afforded this West-Semitic chieftain the opportunity of fortifying one of the great towns of Akkad, and of establishing himself there as its protector against the danger of aggression from the north; and there is no doubt that Babylon had long had some sort of local governor, the traditions of whose office he inherited. Since we have references to E-sagila in the time of the Dynasties of Akkad and of Ur,49 the former rulers of Babylon were probably no more than the chief priests of Marduk’s sanctuary. That Sumu-abum should have changed the office to that of king, and that his successor should have succeeded in establishing a dynasty that endured for nearly three centuries, is evidence of the unabated energy of the new settlers. Even the later members of the dynasty retained their original West-Semitic character,50 and this fact, coupled with the speedy control of other cities than Babylon, suggests that the Western Semites had now arrived in far greater numbers than during their earlier migration farther down the Euphrates.

It is possible to trace the gradual growth of Babylon’s influence in Akkad under her new rulers, and the stages by which she threw out her control over an increasing area of territory. At Dilbat, for example, she had no difficulties from the very first, and during almost the whole period of the First Dynasty the government of the city was scarcely distinguishable from that of Babylon. The god Urash and the goddess Lagamal were the patron deities of Dilbat, around whose cult the life of the city centred; and there was a local secular administration. But the latter was completely subordinate to the capital, and no effort was made, nor apparently was one required, to retain a semblance of local independence. The treatment of Sippar, on the other hand, was rather different. Here Sumu-abum appears to have recognized the local ruler as his vassal; and, as a further concession to its semi-independent state, he allowed the town the privilege of continuing to use its own date-formulæ, derived from local events.51 Oaths, it is true, had to be taken in the king of Babylon’s name and in that of the great Sun-god of Sippar; but the city could arrange and use its own system of time-reckoning without reference to the capital’s affairs. Perhaps the most interesting example of Babylon’s early system of provincial government is that presented by the city of Kish, for we can there trace the gradual extension of her control from a limited suzerainty to complete annexation.

Kish lay far nearer to Babylon than Dilbat,52 but it had a more illustrious past to inspire it than the other city. It had played a great part in the earlier history of Sumer and Akkad, and at the time of the West-Semitic occupation of Babylon it was still governed by independent kings. We have recovered an inscription of one such ruler, Ashduni-erim, who may well have been Sumu-abum’s contemporary, for the record reflects a state of affairs such as would have been caused by a hostile invasion and gradual conquest of the country.53 Although Ashduni-erim lays claim only to the kingdom of Kish, he speaks in grandiloquent terms of the invasion, relating how the four quarters of the world revolted against him. For eight years he fought against the enemy, so that in the eighth year his army was reduced to three hundred men. But the city-god Zamama and Ishtar, his consort, then came to his succour and brought him supplies of food. With this encouragement he marched out for a whole day, and then for forty days he placed the enemy’s land under contribution; and he closes his inscription rather abruptly by recording that he rebuilt the wall of Kish. The clay cone was probably a foundation-record, which he buried within the structure of the city-wall.

Ashduni-erim does not refer to his enemy by name, but it is to be noted that the hostile territory lay within a day’s march of Kish, a description that surely points to Babylon. The eight years of conflict fit in admirably with the suggestion, for we know that it was in Sumu-abum’s tenth year, exactly eight years after his occupation of Kibalbarru, that his suzerainty was acknowledged in Kish. Sumu-abum named that year of his reign after his dedication of a crown to the god Anu of Kish,54 and we may conjecture that Ashduni-erim, weakened by the long conflict which he describes, came to terms with his stronger neighbour and accepted the position of a vassal. Having given guarantees for his fidelity, he would have received Sumu-abum in Kish, where the latter as the suzerain of the city performed the dedication he commemorated in his date-formula for that year. This would fully explain the guarded terms in which Ashduni-erim refers to the enemy in his inscription, the rebuilding of the city-wall having, on this supposition, been undertaken with Babylon’s consent.55

That Kish was accorded the position of a vassal state is certain, for, among contract-tablets recovered from the city, several were drawn up in the reign of Mananâ, who was Sumu-abum’s vassal. In these documents the oath is taken in Mananâ’s name, but they are dated by the formula for Sumu-abum’s thirteenth year, commemorating his capture of Kazallu. The importance of the latter event may be held to explain the use of the suzerain’s own formula, for other documents in Mananâ’s reign are dated by local events, proving that at Kish, as at Sippar, a vassal city of Babylon was allowed the privilege of retaining its own system of time-reckoning. If we are right in regarding Ashduni-erim as Sumu-abum’s contemporary, it is clear that he must have been succeeded by Mananâ within three years of his capitulation to Babylon. During the next few years the throne of Kish was occupied by at least three rulers in quick succession, Sumu-ditana, Iawium, and Khalium,56 for we know that by the thirteenth year of Sumu-la-ilum, who succeeded Sumu-abum on the throne of Babylon, the city of Kish had revolted and had been finally annexed.

The conquest of Kazallu, winch Sumu-abum carried out in the last year but one of his reign, was the most important of Babylon’s early victories, for it marked an extension of her influence beyond the limits of Akkad. The city appears to have lain to the east of the Tigris, and the two most powerful empires in the past history of Babylonia had each come into active conflict with it during the early years of their existence. Its conquest by Akkad was regarded in Babylonian tradition as the most notable achievement of Sargon’s reign; and at a later period Dungi of Ur, after capturing the Elamite border city of Dêr, had extended his empire to the north or east by including Kazallu within its borders.57 Sumu-abum’s conquest was probably little more than a successful raid, for in the reign of Sumu-la-ilum Kazallu in its turn attacked Babylon, and, by fully occupying her energies, delayed her southward expansion for some years.

In the earlier part of his reign Sumu-la-ilum appears to have devoted himself to consolidating the position his predecessor had secured and to improving the internal resources of his kingdom. The Shamash-khegallum Canal, which he cut immediately on his accession, lay probably in the neighbourhood of Sippar; and later on he further improved the country’s system of irrigation by a second canal to which he gave his own name.58 The policy he thus inaugurated was energetically maintained by his successors, and much of Babylon’s wealth and prosperity under her early kings may be traced to the care they lavished on increasing the area of land under cultivation. Sumu-la-ilum also rebuilt the great fortification-wall of his capital, but during his first twelve years he records only one military expedition.59 It was in his thirteenth year that the revolt and reconquest of Kish put an end to this period of peaceful development.

The importance attached by Babylon to the suppression of this revolt is attested by the fact that for five years it formed an era for the dating of documents, which was only discontinued when the city of Kazallu, under the leadership of Iakhzir-ilum, administered a fresh shock to the growing kingdom by an invasion of Babylonian territory. Iakhzir-ilum appears to have secured the co-operation of Kish by inciting it once more to rebellion, for in the following year Babylon destroyed the wall of Anu in that city; and, after re-establishing her authority there, she devoted her next campaign to carrying the war into the enemy’s country. That the subsequent conquest of Kazallu and the defeat of its army failed to afford a fresh subject for a nascent era in the chronology is to be explained by the incompleteness of the victory; for Iakhzir-ilum escaped the fate which overtook his city, and it was only after five years of continued resistance that he was finally defeated and slain.60

After disposing of this source of danger from beyond the Tigris, Sumu-la-ilum continued his predecessor’s policy of annexation within the limits of Akkad. In his twenty-seventh year he commemorates the destruction and rebuilding of the wall of Cuthah, suggesting that the city had up to that time maintained its independence and now only yielded it to force of arms. It is significant that in the same year he records that he treated the wall of the god Zakar in a similar fashion, for Dûr-Zakar was one of the defences of Nippur,61 and lay either within the city-area or in its immediate neighbourhood. That year thus appears to mark Babylon’s first bid for the rule of Sumer as well as of Akkad, for the possession of the central city was regarded as carrying with it the right of suzerainty over the whole country. It is noteworthy, too, that this success appears to correspond to a period of great unrest at Nîsin in Southern Babylonia.

During the preceding period of forty years the southern cities had continued to rule within their home territory without interference from Babylon. In spite of Sumu-abum’s increasing influence in Northern Babylonia, Ur-Ninib of Nîsin had claimed the control of Akkad in virtue of his possession of Nippur, though his authority cannot have been recognized much farther to the north. Like the earlier king of Nîsin, Ishme-Dagan, he styled himself in addition Lord of Erech and patron of Nippur, Ur and Eridu, and so did his son Bûr-Sin II., who succeeded his father after the latter’s long reign of twenty-eight years. Of the group of southern cities Larsa alone continued to boast a line of independent rulers, the throne having passed from Gungunum successively to Abi-sarê 62 and Sumu-ilum; and in the latter’s reign it would seem that Larsa for a time even ousted Nîsin from the hegemony in Sinner. For we have recovered at Tello the votive figure of a dog, which a certain priest of Lagash named Abba-dugga dedicated to a goddess on his behalf,63 and in the inscription he refers to Sumu-ilum as King of Ur, proving that the city had passed from the control of Nîsin to that of Larsa. The goddess, to whom the dedication was made, was Nin-Nîsin, “the Lady of Nîsin,” a fact suggestive of the further possibility that Nîsin itself may have acknowledged Sumu-ilum for a time. It may be noted that in the list of Nîsin kings one name is missing after those of Itêr-pîsha and Ura-imitti, who followed Bûr-Sin on the throne in quick succession.64 According to later tradition Ura-imitti had named his gardener, Enlil-bani, to succeed him,65 and in the list the missing ruler is recorded to have reigned in Nîsin for six months before Enlil-bani’s accession. It is perhaps just possible that we should restore his name as that of Sumu-ilum of Larsa,66 who may have taken advantage of the internal troubles of Nîsin, not only to annex Ur, but to place himself for a few months upon the rival throne, until driven out by Enlil-bani. However that may be, it is certain that Larsa profited by the unrest at Nîsin, and we may perhaps also connect with it Babylon’s successful incursion in the south.67

There is no doubt that Sumu-la-ilum was the real founder of Babylon’s greatness as a military power. We have the testimony of his later descendant Samsu-iluna to the strategic importance of the fortresses he built to protect his country’s extended frontier;68 and, though Dûr-Zakar of Nippur is the only one the position of which can be approximately identified, we may assume that the majority of these lay along the east and the south sides of Akkad, where the greatest danger of invasion was to be anticipated. It does not seem that Nippur itself passed at this time under more than a temporary control by Babylon, and we may assume that, after his successful raid, Sumu-la-ilum was content to remain within the limits of Akkad, which he strengthened with his line of forts. In his later years he occupied the city of Barzi, and conducted some further military operations, details of which we have not recovered; but those were the last efforts on Babylon’s part for more than a generation.

The pause in expansion gave Babylon the opportunity of husbanding her resources, after the first effort of conquest had been rendered permanent in its effect by Sumu-la-ilum. His two immediate successors, Zabum and Apil-Sin, occupied themselves with the internal administration of their kingdom and confined their military activities to keeping the frontier intact. Zabum indeed records a successful attack on Kazallu, no doubt necessitated by renewed aggression on that city’s part; but his other most notable achievements were the fortification of Kâr-Shamash, and the construction of a canal or reservoir.69 Equally uneventful was the reign of Apil-Sin, for though Dûr-muti, the wall of which he rebuilt, may have been acquired as the result of conquest, he too was mainly occupied with the consolidation and improvement of the territory already won. He strengthened the walls of Barzi and Babylon, cut two canals,70 and rebuilt some of the great temples.71 As a result of her peaceful development during this period the country was rendered capable of a still greater struggle, which was to free Sumer and Akkad from a foreign domination, and, by over-coming the invader, was to place Babylon for a time at the head of a more powerful and united empire than had yet been seen on the banks of the Euphrates.

The country’s new foe was her old rival Elam, who more than once before had by successful invasion affected the course of Babylonian affairs. But on this occasion she did more than raid, harry, and return: she annexed the city of Larsa, and by using it as a centre of control, attempted to extend her influence over the whole of Sumer and Akkad. It was at the close of Apil-Sin’s reign at Babylon that Kudur-Mabuk, the ruler of Western Elam, known at this period as the land of Emutbal, invaded Southern Babylonia and, after deposing Sili-Adad 72 of Larsa, installed his own son Warad-Sin upon the throne. It is a testimony to the greatness of this achievement, that Larsa had for some time enjoyed over Nîsin the position of leading city in Sumer. Nûr-Adad, the successor of Sumu-ilum, had retained control of the neighbouring city of Ur, and, though Enlil-bani of Nîsin had continued to lay claim to be King of Sumer and Akkad, this proud title was wrested from Zambia or his successor by Sin-idinnam, Nur-Adad’s son.73 Sin-idinnam, indeed, on bricks from Muḳayyar in the British Museum makes a reference to the military achievements by which he had won the position for his city. In the text his object is to record the rebuilding of the Moon-god’s temple in Ur, but he relates that he carried out this work after he had made the foundation of the throne of Larsa secure and had smitten the whole of his enemies with the sword.74 It is probable that his three successors on the throne, who reigned for less than ten years between them, failed to maintain his level of achievement, and that Sin-magir recovered the hegemony for Nîsin.75 But Ur, no doubt, remained under Larsa’s administration, and it was no mean nor inferior city that Kudur-Mabuk seized and occupied.

The Elamite had seen his opportunity in the continual conflicts which were taking place between the two rival cities of Sumer. In their contest for the hegemony Larsa had proved herself successful for a time, but she was still the weaker city and doubtless more exposed to attack from across the Tigris. Hence her selection by Kudur-Mabuk as a basis for his attempt on the country as a whole. He himself retained his position in Elam as the Adda of Emutbal; but he installed his two sons, Warad-Sin and Rîm-Sin, successively upon the throne of Larsa, and encouraged them to attack Nîsin and to lay claim to the rule of Sumer and Akkad. But the success which attended their efforts soon brought Babylon upon the scene, and we have the curious spectacle of a three-cornered contest, in which Nîsin is at war with Elam, while Babylon is at war in turn with both. That Sin-muballit, the son of Apil-Sin, did not combine with Nîsin to expel the invader from Babylonian soil, may have played at first into the hands of the Elamites. But it is not to be forgotten that the Western Semites of Babylon were still a conquering aristocracy, and their sympathies were far from being involved in the fate of any part of Sumer. Both Elam and Babylon must have foreseen that the capture of Nîsin would prove a decisive advantage to the victor, and each was content to see her weakened in the hope of ultimate success. When Rîm-Sin actually proved the victor in the long struggle, and Larsa under his regis inherited the traditions as well as the material resources of the Nîsin Dynasty, the three-cornered contest was reduced to a duel between Babylon and a more powerful Larsa. Then for a generation there ensued a fierce struggle between the two invading races, Elam and the Western Semites, for the possession of the country; and the fact that Hammurabi, Sin-muballit’s son, should have emerged victorious, was a justification in full of his father’s policy of avoiding any alliance with the south. The Western Semites proved themselves in the end strong enough to overcome the conqueror of Nîsin, and thereby they were left in undisputed possession of the whole of Babylonia.

It is possible, with the help of the date-formulæ and votive inscriptions of the period, to follow in outline the main features of this remarkable struggle. At first Kudur-Mabuk’s footing in Sumer was confined to the city of Larsa, though even then he laid claim to the title Adda of Amurru, a reference to be explained perhaps by the suggested Amorite origin of the Larsa and Nîsin dynasties, and reflecting a claim to the suzerainty of the land from which his northern foes at any rate boasted their origin.76 Warad-Sin, on ascending the throne, assumed merely the title King of Larsa, but we soon find him becoming the patron of Ur, and building a great fortification-wall in that city.77 He then extended his authority to the south and east, Eridu, Lagash, and Girsu all falling before his arms or submitting to his suzerainty.78 During this period Babylon remained aloof in the north, and Sin-muballit is occupied with cutting canals and fortifying cities, some of which he perhaps occupied for the first time.79 It was only in his fourteenth year, after Warad-Sin had been succeeded at Larsa by his brother Rîm-Sin, that we have evidence of Babylon taking an active part in opposing Elamite pretensions.

In that year Sin-muballit records that he slew the army of Ur with the sword, and, since we know that Ur was at this time a vassal-city of Larsa, it is clear that the army referred to was one of those under Rîm-Sin’s command. Three years later he transferred his attention from Larsa to Nîsin, then under the control of Damiḳ-ilishu, the son and successor of Sin-magir. On that occasion Sin-muballit commemorates his conquest of Nîsin, but it must have been little more than a victory in the field, for Damiḳ-ilishu lost neither his city nor his independence. In the last year of his reign we find Sin-muballit fighting on the other front, and claiming to have slain the army of Larsa with the sword. It is clear that in these last seven years of his reign Babylon proved herself capable of cheeking any encroachments to the north on the part of Larsa and the Elamites, and, by a continuance of the policy of fortifying her vassal-cities,80 she paved the way for a more vigorous offensive on the part of Hammurabi, Sin-muballit’s son and successor. Meanwhile the unfortunate city of Nîsin was between two fires, though for a few years longer Damiḳ-ilishu succeeded in beating off both his opponents.

The military successes of Hammurabi fall within two clearly defined periods, the first during the five years which followed his sixth year of rule at Babylon, and a second period, of ten years’ duration, beginning with the thirteenth of his reign. On his accession he appears to have inaugurated the reforms in the internal administration of the country, which culminated towards the close of his life in the promulgation of his famous Code of Laws; for he commemorated his second year as that in which he established righteousness in the land. The following years were uneventful, the most important royal acts being the installation of the chief-priest in Kashbaran,81 the building of a wall for the Gagûm, or great Cloister of Sippar, and of a temple to Nannar in Babylon. But with his seventh year we find his first reference to a military campaign in a claim to the capture of Erech and Nîsin. This temporary success against Damik-ilishu of Nîsin was doubtless a menace to the plans of Rîm-Sin at Larsa, and it would appear that Kudur-Mabuk came to the assistance of his son by threatening Babylon’s eastern border. At any rate Hammurabi records a conflict with the land of Emutbal in his eighth year, and, though the attack appears to have been successfully repulsed with a gain of territory to Babylon,82 the diversion was successful. Rîm-Sin took advantage of the respite thus secured to renew his attack with increased vigour upon Nîsin, and in the following year, the seventeenth of his own reign, the famous city fell, and Larsa under her Elamite ruler secured the hegemony in the whole of Central and Southern Babylonia.

Rîm-Sin’s victory must have been a severe blow to Babylon, and it would seem that she made no attempt at first to recover her position in the south, since Hammurabi occupied himself with a raid on Malgûm 83 in the west and with the capture of the cities of Rabikum and Shalibi. But these were the last successes during his first military period, and for nineteen years afterwards Babylon achieved nothing of a similar nature to commemorate in her date-formulæ. For the most part the years are named after the dedication of statues and the building and enrichment of temples. One canal was cut,84 and the process of fortification went on, Sippar especially being put in a thorough state of defence.85 But the negative evidence supplied by the formulæ for this period suggests that it was one in which Babylon completely failed in any attempt she may have made to hinder the growth of Larsa’s power in the south.

In addition to his capital, Rîm-Sin had inherited from his brother the control of the southern group of cities, Ur, Erech, Girsu and Lagash, all of which lay to the east of Larsa and nearer to the coast; and it was probably before his conquest of Nîsin that he took Erech from Damiḳ-ilishu, who had been attacked there by Hammurabi two years before. For in more than one of his inscriptions Rîm-Sin refers to the time when Anu, Enlil and Enki, the great gods, had given the fair city of Erech into his hands.86 We also know that he took Kisurra, rebuilt the wall of Zabilum, and extended his authority over Kesh, whose goddess Ninmakh, he relates, gave him the kingship over the whole country.87 The most notable result of his conquest of Nîsin was the possession of Nippur, which now passed to him and regularized his earlier claim to the rule of Sumer and Akkad. Thereafter he describes himself as the exalted Prince of Nippur, or as the shepherd of the whole land of Nippur; and we possess an interesting confirmation of his recognition there in a clay cone inscribed with a dedication for the prolongation of his life by a private citizen, a certain Ninib-gamil.88

That Rîm-Sin’s rule in Sumer was attended by great prosperity throughout the country as a whole, is attested by the numerous commercial documents which have been recovered both at Nippur and Larsa and are dated in the era of his capture of Nîsin. There is also evidence that he devoted himself to improving the system of irrigation and of transport by water. He canalized a section in the lower course of the Euphrates, and dug the Tigris to the sea, no doubt removing from its main channel an accumulation of silt, which not only hindered traffic but increased the danger of flood and the growth of the swamp-area. He also cut the Mashtabba Canal, and others at Nippur and on the Khabilu river.89 It would seem that, in spite of his Elamite extraction and the intimate relations he continued to maintain with his father Kudur-Mabuk, he completely identified himself with the country of his adoption; for in the course of his long life he married twice, and both his wives, to judge from their fathers’ names, were of Semitic descent.90

It was not until nearly a generation had passed, after Rîm-Sin’s capture of Nîsin, that Hammurabi made any headway against the Elamite domination, which for so long had arrested any increase in the power of Babylon.91 But his success, when it came, was complete and enduring. In his thirtieth year he records that he defeated the army of Elam, and in the next campaign he followed up this victory by invading the land of Emutbal, inflicting a final defeat on the Elamites, and capturing and annexing Larsa. Rîm-Sin himself appears to have survived for many years, and to have given further trouble to Babylon in the reign of Hammurabi’s son, Samsu-iluna.—And the evidence seems to show that for a few years at least he was accorded the position of vassal ruler at Larsa.92 On this supposition Hammurabi, after his conquest of Sumer, would have treated the old capital in the same way that Sumu-abum treated Kish.93 But it would seem that after a time Larsa must have been deprived of many of its privileges, including that of continuing its own era of time-reckoning; and Hammurabi’s letters to Sin-idinnam, his local representative, give no hint of any divided rule. We may perhaps assume that Rîm-Sin’s subsequent revolt was due to resentment at this treatment, and that in Samsu-iluna’s reign he seized a favourable opportunity to make one more bid for independent rule in Babylonia.

The defeat of Rîm-Sin, and the annexation of Sumer to Babylon, freed Hammurabi for the task of extending his empire on its other three sides. During these later years he twice made successful raids in the Elamite country of Tupliash or Ashnunnak, and on the west he destroyed the walls of Mari and Malgûm, defeated the armies of Turukkum, Kagmum and Subartu, and in his thirty-ninth year he records that he destroyed all his enemies that dwelt beside Subartu. It is probable that he includes Assyria under the geographical term Subartu, for both Ashur and Nineveh were subject to his rule; and one of his letters proves that his occupation of Assyria was of a permanent character, and that his authority was maintained by garrisons of Babylonian troops. Hammurabi tells us too, in the Prologue to his Code of Laws, that he subjugated “the settlements on the Euphrates,” implying the conquest of such local West-Semitic kingdoms as that of Khana.94 On the west we may therefore regard the area of his military activities as extending to the borders of Syria. Up to the close of his reign he continued to improve the defences of his country, for he devoted his last two years to rebuilding the great fortification of Kâr-Shamash on the Tigris and the wall of Rabikum on the Euphrates, and he once again strengthened the city-wall of Sippar. His building-inscriptions also bear witness to his increased activity in the reconstruction of temples during his closing years.95

An estimate of the extent of Hammurabi’s empire may be formed from the very exhaustive record of his activities which he himself drew up as the Prologue to his Code. He there enumerates the great cities of his kingdom and the benefits he has conferred upon each one of them. The list of cities is not drawn up with any administrative object, but from a purely religious standpoint, a recital of his treatment of each city being followed by a reference to what he has done for its temple and its city-god. Hence the majority of the cities are not arranged on a geographical basis, but in accordance with their relative rank as centres of religious cult. Nippur naturally heads the list, and its possession at this time by Babylon had, as we shall see,96 far-reaching effects upon the development of the mythology and religious system of the country. Next in order comes Eridu, in virtue of the great age and sanctity of its local oracle. Babylon, as the capital, comes third, and then the great centres of Moon-and Sun-worship, followed by the other great cities and shrines of Sumer and Akkad, the king characterizing the benefits he has bestowed on each. The list includes some of his western conquests and ends with Ashur and Nineveh.97 It is significant of the racial character of his dynasty that Hammurabi should here ascribe his victories on the middle Euphrates to “the strength of Dagan, his creator,” proving that, like his ancestors before him, he continued to be proud of his West-Semitic descent.

In view of the closer relations which had now been established between Babylonia and the West, it may be interesting to recall that an echo from these troubled times found its way into the early traditions of the Hebrews, and has been preserved in the Book of Genesis. It is there related 98 that Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim or the “nations,” acting as members of a confederation, invaded Eastern Palestine to subdue the revolted tribes of that district. Chedorlaomer is represented as the head of the confederation, and though we know of no Elamite ruler of that name, we have seen that Elam at about this period had exercised control over a great part of Southern and Central Babylonia, and that its Babylonian capital was the city of Larsa, with which the Ellasar of the Hebrew tradition is certainly to be identified.99 Moreover, Kudur-Mabuk, the historical founder of the Elamite domination in Babylonia, did lay claim to the title of Adda or ruler of the Amorites.100 Amraphel of Shinar may well be Hammurabi of Babylon himself, though, so far from acknowledging the suzerainty of the Elamites, he was their principal antagonist and brought their domination to an end. Tidal is a purely Hittite name,101 and it is significant that the close of Hammurabi’s powerful dynasty was, as we shall see presently, hastened by an invasion of Hittite tribes. Thus all the great nations which are mentioned in this passage in Genesis were actually on the stage of history at this time, and, though we have as yet found no trace in secular sources of such a confederation under the leadership of Elam, the Hebrew record represents a state of affairs in Western Asia which was not impossible during the earlier half of Hammurabi’s reign.102

While Sumu-la-ilum may have laid the foundations of Babylon’s military power, Hammurabi was the real founder of her greatness. To his military achievements he added a genius for administrative detail, and his letters and despatches, which have been recovered, reveal him as in active control of even subordinate officials stationed in distant cities of his empire. That he should have superintended matters of public importance is what might be naturally expected; but we also see him investigating quite trivial complaints and disputes among the humbler classes of his subjects, and often sending back a case for retrial or for further report. In fact, Hammurabi’s fame will always rest on his achievements as a law-giver, and on the great legal code which he drew up for use throughout his empire. It is true that this elaborate system of laws, which deal in detail with every class of the population from the noble to the slave, was not the creative work of Hammurabi himself. Like all other ancient legal codes it was governed strictly by precedent, and where it did not incorporate earlier collections of laws, it was based on careful consideration of established custom. Hammurabi’s great achievement was the codification of this mass of legal enactments and the rigid enforcement of the provisions of the resulting code throughout the whole territory of Babylonia. Its provisions reflect the king’s own enthusiasm, of which his letters give independent proof, in the cause of the humbler and the more oppressed classes of his subjects. Numerous legal and commercial documents also attest the manner in which its provisions were carried out, and we have evidence that the legislative system so established remained in practical force during subsequent periods. It may be well, then, to pause at the age of Hammurabi, in order to ascertain the main features of early Babylonian civilization, and to estimate its influence on the country’s later development.

Notes

1 Cf. Hogarth, “The Penetration of Arabia,” pp. 206 ff.

2 Cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” pp. 352 ff.

3 An interesting confirmation of this view has been made by General P.J. Maitland. He points out that the great tanks at Aden, which were hewn out of the solid rock in early Himyarite if not in Sabajan times, are at the present day absolutely dry for four years out of five, and that the heaviest rainfalls since they were discovered and cleared out have not filled them to an eighth part of their capacity; cf. his preface to G. W. Bury’s “Land of Uz,” p. xii. f.

4 It has been established that these pulsations of climatic change apply to all the great inland steppes upon the earth’s surface, periods of maximum moisture being followed by long intervals of comparative aridity; see especially, Huntington, “The Pulse of Asia” (1907).

5 On this subject, see especially Myres, “The Dawn of History,” pp. 16 ff., 104 ff.

6 This view seems to be more probable than the assumption that the Semitic inhabitants of Canaan learnt the use of metal after their first period of settlement.

7 For the more important monographs on the subject, see Macalister, “The Excavation of Gezer” (1912), and Bliss and Macalister, “Excavations in Palestine during the years 1898-1900” (1902), both issued by the Palestine Exploration Fund; Sellin, “Tell Ta’annek,” published by the Vienna Academy in its “Denkschriften,” Phil.-Hist. Kl., Bd. 60, No. 4 (1904), and “Eine Nachlese auf dem Tell Ta’annek in Palästina,” ibid., Bd. 52, No. 3 (1906); Schumacher, “Tell el-Mutesellim,” published by the “Deutscher Palästina Verein” in 1908; and Sellin and Watzinger, “Jericho,” a volume issued by the “Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft” in its “Wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen,” Hft. 22 (1913). For further references and a useful summary of the archæological results, see Driver, “Modern Research as illustrating the Bible” (Schweich Lectures, 1908), pp. 40 ff.; for later summaries, see especially Sayce, “Patriarchal Palestine,” new ed. (1912), pp. 233 ff., and Handcock, “Latest Light on Bible Lands,” 1913; and for an estimate of artistic achievement, cf. Hall, “Ancient History of the Near East” (1913), pp. 440 ff. On the racial character of the earliest inhabitants of Canaan, see especially Sergi, “The Mediterranean Race” (1901).

8 There are few data for estimating the period at which these centres of population were first fortified. There is no doubt that the city-walls are long anterior to the Egyptian conquest, and from the accumulation of débris in the lower strata they have been provisionally placed at an early period in the third millennium b.c.; in any case they preceded the age of the First Babylonian Dynasty.

9 The evidence has been recovered in connexion with the excavations at Carchemish, conducted by Mr. Hogarth for the British Museum. For discussions of the problems presented by the main excavation, see his volume on “Carchemish” (1914), and “Hittite Problems and the excavation of Carchemish,” in the “Proceedings of the British Academy,” Vol. V. The results of recent native digging in neighbouring mounds have been recovered on the spot by his assistants Messrs. Woolley and Lawrence, and Mr. Woolley has published an account of them in a paper ou “Hittite Burial Customs,” in the Liverpool “Annals of Archæology,” VI., No. 4 (1914), pp. 87 ff.

10 In view of the haphazard nature of the native diggings, the absence of cylinder-seals on some neighbouring sites is not to be taken as necessarily dis-proving Babylonian influence there. At Amarna, for example, some eight miles to the south of Jerablus, no seals nor cylinders are reported to have been found, but at Kara Kuzal, on the Mesopotamian side of the Euphrates opposite Hammam, where the pottery is of the Amarna type, two cylinder-seals of a later period and probably of local manufacture were recovered; they are engraved in the style classified by Mr. Woolley as “the Syrian Geometric” (op. cit., p. 92). The find is also of interest as proving the assimilation of the cylindrical form of seal, which had then ceased to be merely a foreign import.

11 Cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” p. 233 f.

12 One of these large vessels is mentioned in an inventory among the belongings of a votary of the Sun-god, of which we possess two copies dating from the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon; see “Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.,” II., pl. 1, Obv., 1. 8, and pl. 6, 1. 11; and cf. Hogarth, “Carchemish,” p. 17. The vessel was of large size, as it is stated to have been of two-thirds of a gur, the greatest Babylonian measure of capacity; it may have been used for grain.

13 Cf. Woolley, op. cit., pp. 88 f., 92 ff.

14 See below, pp. 137 ff.

15 Cf. Condamin, “Zeits. für Assyr.,” XXI. (1908), pp. 247 ff. The votive inscription was drawn up by Shamshi-Adad IV.

16 See Thureau-Dangin, “Rev. d’Assyr.,” IV. (1898), p. 85 f., and pl. xxxii., No. 85, and Schorr, “Urkunden des altbabylonischen Zivil-und Prozessrechts,” p. 302 f. Both Thureau-Dangin and Ungnad (“Beitr. z. Assyr.,” VI., No. 5, p. 26) had regarded it as a deed of sale, but the ten manehs mentioned in the text is not a sale-price but a fine to be imposed for any infringement of the deed.

17 See Ungnad, “Vorderasiat. Schriftdenkmäler,” VII., No. 204, and “Beitr. z. Assyr.,” VI., No. 5 (1909), pp. 26 ff. The tablet was purchased by Prof. Sarre at Dêr ez-Zôr, and is said to have been found at Rahaba some hours to the south-east of the mouth of the Khâbûr.

18 See below, pp. 157, 159; Hammurabi also bore the title “King of Amurru” (cf. “Letters,” III., p. 195).

19 See below, p. 190 f.

20 The city of Zakku-Isharlim may have derived the second part of its name from the king referred to in the first deed of gift; in that case Igitlim may perhaps have been the name of another king of Khana. The canal evidently supplied one of the cities with water from the Khâbûr. The last element in its name is suggestive of Kassite influence, and the script of this document points to a period rather later than that of Hammurabi; for its publication, see Johns, “Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch.,” XXIX. (1907), pp. 177 ff.

21 They are the months Teritum, Kinunu, and Birizzarru. For other West-Semitic month-names, cf. “Letters of Hammurabi,” p. xxxvi. f., n.; the majority of the “seltenere Monatsnamen,” referred to by Schorr, “Urkunden,” p. 577, are to be included in this category.

22 The votive inscription of Shamshi-Adad IV. (see above, p. 129, n. 1) records its restoration.

23 We find at Khana such personal names as Amursha-Dagan, Iazi-Dagan, Turi-Dagan, Bitti-Dagan and Iashma(?)-Dagan, in addition to the city-name Ia’mu-Dagan; cf. Unguad, op. cit., p. 27 f.

24 Cf. Poebel, “Historical Texts,” p. 137.

25 Cf. Breasted, “History of Egypt,” pp. 215 ff.

26 Cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” p. 304.

27 The tradition to this effect, which was incorporated in the later augural literature (cf. Boissier, “Choix de textes,” II., p. 64; and Meissner, “Orient. Lit.-Zeit.,” 1907, col. 114, n. 1) may be accepted as historically accurate; cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” p. 304.

28 Cf. Huber, “Die Personennamen... aus der Zeit der Könige von Ur und Nîsin” (1907), passim. It was this fact that at one time seemed to suggest the probability that the kings of Nîsin, like the bulk of their subjects, may have been Sumerians (cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” p. 303); but we may preferably regard them as representing the first wave of the movement which was soon to flood Northern Babylonia.

29 Cf. Hilprecht, “Math., Met., and Chron. Tablets,” p. 46 f., pl. 30, No. 47.

30 See Scheil, “Rec. de trav.,” XVI., pp. 187 ff.

31 Cf. “Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.,” XXI., pl. 20 f.

32 In the dynastic Kings’ List published by Hilprecht, “Math., Met., and Chron. Tablets,” pl. 30, No. 47, Libit-Ishtar is stated to have been Ishme-Dagan’s son; but on another, recently published by Poebel, he is stated to have been Idin-Dagan’s son, and so the brother of Ishme-Dagan (cf. “Historical Texts,” pp. 94, 137).

33 Cf. “Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.,” XXI., pl. 22.

34 Cf. Poebel, “Historical Texts,” p. 138; he also notes the fact that Ur-Ninib successfully raided the country of Zabshali on the east of Babylonia.

35 See “Cun. Texts,” IV., pl. 22, No. 78, 395: and Ranke, “Orient. Lit.-Zeit.,” 1907, col. 109 ff.

36 Cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” p. 315 f.

37 Cf. “Chronicles concerning Early Babylonian Kings,” II., p. 14. The Ilu-shûma, the father of Irishum or Erishu, who is referred to in building-inscriptions of Shalmaneser I. and Esarhaddon (op. cit., I., pp. 118 ff.), is probably to be regarded as a later ruler than Sumu-abum’s contemporary.

38 Since the year 1903 the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft has been conducting excavations at Shergât, the site of Ashur, the old capital of Assyria on the middle Tigris. Monographs on some of the temples of the city and its system of fortification have already been published, and during the summer of 1913 the excavations were drawing to a close. The greater part of the palace and temple-area had been uncovered, and detailed plans had been made of all existing buildings; it only remained to trench still deeper to the virgin rock, in order to complete the digging. This process bad naturally been left till last, as it involved considerable destruction to the buildings already uncovered. It was in the course of the deeper trenching that the discoveries referred to in the text were made; for brief reports of them by Andrae, see the “Mitteilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft,” No. 54 (June, 1914).

39 See Fig. 34.

40 See Figs. 35 and 36.

41 See p. 140, Figs. 37-39.

42 The tradition has survived in the building-inscriptions of Shalmaneser I. and Esarhaddon, found at Shergât; cf. “Chronicles,” I., pp. 120 ff.

43 He is referred to on a small cone or cylinder, found at Shergât in 1904, and inscribed with a text of Ashir-rîm-nishêshu; op. cit., p. 140 f.

44 Their names have been compared with such Mitannian forms as Pindiya, Zuliya, etc.; cf. Ungnad, “Beitr. z. Assyr.,” VI., No. 5, pp. 11 ff.

45 The first witness to a loan, dated in the third year of Ammi-zaduga, bears the name Teshshub-‘ari, corresponding to the later Mitannian name Ari-Teshub, meaning “Teshub has given”; cf. Ungnad, “Vorderas. Schriftdenkmäler,” VII., No. 72, 1. 10.

46 A “man of Subartu” (awîl Subarti) is mentioned on a document of the Hammurabi period (cf. Scheil, “Rec. de tray.,” XX., p. 64); and a private letter of the time gives directions for the sale into slavery of certain “Shubareans” (Shubarî,) who had probably been captured in battle (cf. Meissner, “Beitr. z. Assyr.,” II., p. 561 f., and Delitzsch, op. cit. IV., p. 95). On another text “a slave-girl of Shubartu” (amtum Shubaritum) is referred to (cf. “Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.,” VIII., pl. 46. Bu. 91-5-9, 2179, Obv., 1. 20), and “a Shubarean” (Shubarâ) is mentioned in an account-tablet among recipients of daily rations (cf. Ungnad, “Vorderas. Schriftdenk.,” VII., p. 68, No. 184, Col. III., 1. 3, and “Beitr. z. Assyr.,” VI., No. 5, p. 19, n. 2).

47 For the purpose of interpreting lunar observations, for example, and particularly for eclipses, the face of the moon was divided into four quarters, that on the right referring to Akkad, that on the left to Elam, the upper quarter to Amurru and the lower to Subartu; and one Assyrian astrologer, when reporting to his master an observation which related to Subartu, explains that “We are Subartu”; cf. Thompson, “Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers,” II., pp. xviii., lxxxv.

48 Dilbat is now marked by the mound of Dêlem, which lies about seventeen miles to the south of the Ḳaṣr, the old citadel and centre of Babylon, and less than ten miles to the south-east of Birs Nimrûd. Many years ago Rassam procured a few tablets there by excavation (cf. “Asshur and the Land of Nimrod,” p. 265), and in recent years large numbers have been obtained there, as the result of native digging, and sold in Europe; they all date from the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon.

49 Cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” pp. 226, 282.

50 This is particularly apparent in the royal names, the foreign character of which was first pointed out by Pognon, “Journal Asiatique,” 8me sér., Vol. XI., pp. 544 ff., who on this evidence alone suggested that the dynasty might be Arab or Aramean; see further, “Letters of Hammurabi,” III., p. lxv., and Meyer, “Geschichte des Altertums,” I., ii., p. 545.

51 From a local date-formula on one of the tablets from Abû Habba we have recovered the name of Narâm-Sin, a governor or vassal-ruler of Sippar in Sumu-abum’s reign; cf. Ungnad, “Vorderas. Schriftdenkmäler,” VIII., No. 3. Another vassal-ruler of Sippar, Bunutakhtun-ila, occupied the throne in Sumu-la-ilum’s reign, and to the same period are to be assigned Iluma-ila and Immerum, of whom the latter cut the Ashukhi Canal; for references, see Schorr, “Urkunden des altbabylonischen Zivil-und Processrechts,” p. 611.

52 Kish is now marked by the mounds of El-Ohêmir, or Aḥimer, which lie to the east of Babylon; cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” p. 88 f.

53 The text is inscribed upon a clay cone from Aḥimer, and has been published by Thureau-Dangin, “Rev. d’Assyr.,” VIII. (1911), pp. 65 ff.

54 That Sumu-abum performed the dedication in his character of suzerain is proved by a contract-tablet from Kish, which is dated by the formula for his tenth year.

55 It is also possible that the eight years of conflict may date from Sumu-abum’s accession, in which case the text would commemorate a strengthening of the wall of Kish two years before the capture of the city by Babylon; but the evidence of the date-formulæ is in favour of the tenth year.

56 On one of the tablets from Kish Iawium is associated with Mananâ in the oath-formula, and from another we know that he survived Sumu-ditana, whom he probably succeeded on the throne; Khalium may probably be placed after the other three vassal-rulers whose names have been recovered. There appears to have been a local custom at Kish for each ruler to choose a different god with whom to be associated in the oath-formulæ; thus, while Zamama, the city-god of Kish, appears in those of Iawium’s reign, his place is taken by Nannar and Sin under Mananâ and Khalium respectively. For the tablets and their dates, see Thureau-Dangin, “Rev. d’Assyr.,” VIII., pp. 68 ff.; Johns, “Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch.,” XXXII. (1910), p. 279 f.; and Langdon, op. cit., XXXIII. (1911), pp. 185 ff.

57 Cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” pp. 227, 285 f.

58 The Sumu-la-ilum Canal was first constructed in his twelfth year, and it was recut or extended twenty years afterwards.

59 The third year of his reign was named as that in which he slew the Khalambû with the sword.

60 That in the interval Babylon had no marked success to commemorate is suggested by the naming of years after the construction of a throne for Marduk in his temple at Babylon, and of a statue for his consort, Sarpanitum.

61 That the two are to be identified is certain from Samsu-iluna’s reference to Dûr-Zakar of Nippur as among the six fortresses built by Snmu-la-ilum and rebuilt by himself; see below, pp. 148, 204.

62 Since Gungunum’s death is recorded in a local date-formula (cf. Scheil, “Rec. de tray.,” XXI., p. 125) we may infer that his end was violent; Abi-sarê’s accession may thus mark a break in the direct succession at Larsa.

63 See Thureau-Dangin, “Rev. d’Assyr.,” VI., p. 69 f.

64 Ura-imitti was not the son of Itêr-pîsha, and since a date-formula of his reign refers to his restoration of the city of Nippur, we may regard its previous destruction or capture as further evidence of political trouble at Nîsin; cf. Poebel. “Historical Texts,” p. 138 f.

65 Cf. “Sumer and Akkad,” p. 312.

66 The name was conjecturally restored by Poebel, from a date-formula in the Pennsylvania Museum, as Sin-ikisha (cf. “Orient. Lit.-Zeit.,” 1907, col. 461 ff.). But from Prof. Clay’s new king-list we now know that that ruler is to be identified with Sin-iḳîsham, the eleventh king of the Dynasty of Larsa; there is no evidence to connect him with Nîsin. On the other hand, the six months’ rule of the unknown king at Nîsin falls in the twentieth year of Sumu-ilum’s reign at Larsa, who at least for a time was recognized in Ur, the former vassal-city of Nîsin.

67 According to our scheme of chronology, Sumu-la-ilum’s capture of Dûr-Zakar at Nippur corresponds to the year of Ura-imitti’s death and to the subsequent struggle for the throne of Nîsin.

68 In addition to Dûr-Zakar of Nippur, these were Dûr-Padda, Dûr-Lagaba, Dûr-Iabugani, Dûr-Cula-dûru, and Dûr-uṣi-ana-Ura. On their reconstruction Samsu-iluna dedicated the first four to Ninmakh, Adad, Sin and Lugal-diri-tugab, and the last two to Nergal; cf. “Letters of Hammurabi,” pp. 199 ff.

69 To this he gave the name Tâmtum-khegallum, “the Ocean (gives) abundance.” He also rebuilt E-ibianu, E-sagila, and E-babbar in Sippar, installing in the last-named temple a bronze image of himself, possibly with the idea of claiming divine honours.

70 The Sumu-dâri and Apil-Sin-khegallum Canals were both cut in his reign.

71 The costly throne for Shamash and Shunirda, or the goddess Aia, which he dedicated in his third year, was probably for E-babbar in Sippar. Apil-Sin devoted special attention to Cuthah, the most recently acquired of Babylon’s greater possessions, rebuilding on two occasions E-meslam, the temple of Nergal, the city-god. He also enriched Babylon on the material side, erecting a great city-gate in its eastern wall, and building within the city the temple E-kiku for the goddess Ishtar and another shrine for the Sun-god.

72 For the reading of the weather-god’s name as Adad, cf. Budge and King, “Annals of the Kings of Assyria,” p. lxxiv. f. The name was probably of West Semitic origin, though the form Rammânu, “the thunderer,” has been noted by Prof. Sayce on a cylinder-seal beside the goddess Ashratum (cf. “Zeits. f. Assyr.,” VI., p. 161), and she elsewhere appears as the spouse of the god Amurru (cf. Meyer, “Geschichte,” I., ii., p. 406). The Sumerian equivalent of Adad is still uncertain; Hrozný suggests the reading Ishkur (cf. “Zeits. f. Assyr.,” XX., pp. 424 ff.), while Thureau-Dangin, Clay and others prefer Immer, suggested in “Königsinschriften,” p. 208. Meanwhile it is preferable to employ the reading Adad, for periods at any rate after the West-Semitic invasion.

73 That Sin-idinnam’s assumption of the title was justified by the actual possession of Nippur is proved by a date-formula on a contract in the British Museum, in which he records the dedication of a statue of himself as an ornament for Nippur; cf. Rawlinson, “Cun. Inscr. West. Asia,” IV., pl. 36, No. 2, and Chiera, “Legal and Administrative Documents,” p. 72.

74 Cf. Rawlinson, op. cit., I., pl. 5, No. xx. In addition to his military prowess, he reconstructed E-babbar at Larsa, built the great fortress of Dûr-gurgurri, and by canalizing the Tigris improved his country’s water-supply (cf. “Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.,” XXL, pl. 30, No. 30215; Delitzsch, “Beitr. zur Assyr.,” I., pp. 301 ff.; and Thureau-Dangin, “Königsinschriften,” p. 208 f.). He also built the city-gate of Mashkan-shabri; cf. Chiera, op. cit., p. 72 f.

75 On a broken clay cone from Babylon (cf. Weissbach, “Babylonische Miscellen,” p. 1, pl. 1) Sin-magir bears the title of King of Sumer and Akkad.

76 If we may identify Khallabu with Aleppo, we should find a still firmer basis for Kudur-Mabuk’s title. For we know that, while Warad-Sin was still King of Larsa, he dedicated a chamber in Ishtar’s temple at Khallabu (cf. “Cun. Texts in the Brit. Mus.,” XXI., pl. 31, No. 91144; and Thureau-Dangin, “Königsinschriften,” p. 214 f.). We should then have to assume that, before completing his conquest of Sumer, he had already pushed up and across the Euphrates and had captured large districts of Amurru. It is possible that this was so, but it should be noted that both Khallabu and Bît-Karkara are mentioned in the Prologue to Hammurabi’s Code of Laws, not with “the settlements on the Euphrates,” but immediately after Lagash and Girsu, suggesting a Babylonian origin (see below, p. 159).

77 Cf. Rawlinson, “Cun. Inscr. West. Asia,” I., pl. 5, No. xvi.; the erection of the wall is also commemorated in a date-formula of his reign (cf. Chiera. “Documents,” p. 74).

78 On a clay cone from Mukayyar, recording his building of a temple to Nannar at Ur, Warad-Sin describes himself as “he who carries out the decrees and decisions of Eridu (i.e. of its oracle), who increased the offerings of E-ninnû (the temple of Ningirsu at Lagash), who restored Lavish mid Girsu, and renewed the city and the land”; cf. Rawlinson, op. cit. IV., pl. 35, No. 6.

79 During the first thirteen years of his reign Sin-muballit cut three canals, the first named after himself, the Sin-muballit Canal, and two others which he termed the Aia-khegallum and the Tutu-khegallum. He also built the walls of Rubatum, Zakar-dada, Dûr-Sin-muballit, Bît-Karkara, and Marad. It is possible, of course, that conflicts with the south took place at this time, but, if so, the absence of any reference to them in the records is to be explained by the want of success of Babylonian arms.

80 In this period the city walls of Nanga and Baṣu were rebuilt.

81 From two recently published date-lists of Hammurabi’s reign we know that this event took place in his fifth year, while the following year appears to have been dated by a similar priestly installation of the shepherd of the goddess Ninaz; cf. Boissier, “Rev. d’Assyr.,” XI., No. iv. (1914), pp. 161 ff.

82 The territory gained on the bank of the Shu-numum-dar Canal (cf. Boissier, op. cit.) may have lain in Emutbal. The canal was possibly a portion of the famous Nâr-sharri, which in the Achæmenian period was regarded as lying “in Elam.”

83 The town lay in the neighbourhood of Sukhi on the middle Euphrates, below the mouth of the Khâbûr and probably to the south of Khana.

84 The Tishit-Enlil Canal, which we now know was cut in Hammurabi’s twenty-fourth year (cf. Boissier, op. cit.); the Hammurabi-khegallum Canal had been cut in his ninth year, at the time of Rîm-Sin’s capture of Nîsin.

85 Two years were devoted to the fortification of Sippar; and the walls of Igi-kharsagga, and probably of Baṣu, were built. In the vassal-city of Kibalbarru Hammurabi dedicated an image to Ninni, or Ishtar, while in Babylon he built E-namkhe, the temple of Adad, and a shrine also for Enlil.

86 Cf. “Déc. en Chaldée,” pl. 41; Rawlinson, “Cun. Inscr. West. Asia,” I., pl. 3, No. X.; and Thureau-Dangin, “Königsinschriften,” p. 218 f.

87 See the date-formulæ cited by Chiera, “Documents.” p. 80 f.

88 Cf. Hilprecht, “Old Babylonian Inscriptions,” Pt. II., pl. 58, No. 128.

89 Cf. Hilprecht, loc. cit., and Chiera, op. cit., p. 82 f.

90 One of his wives, Si[...]-Ninni, the daughter of Arad-Nannar, dedicated a temple, on his behalf and her own, to the goddess Nin-egal (cf. Thureau-Dangin, “Königsinschriften,” p. 218 f.). The other wife, who bore the name Rîm-Sin-Shala-bashtashu, was the daughter of a certain Sin-magir, and Rîm-Sin himself had a daughter named Lirish-gamium; cf. Poebel, “Historical Texts,” p. 140, who quotes the information from an inscription of Rîm-Sin-Shala-bashtashu, which Prof. Clay informs me is now in the Yale Collection. A sister of Rîm-Sin, who was a priestess, is mentioned on a cylinder of Nabonidus (cf. Scheil, “Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres,” 1912, p. 680 f.).

91 The period would be forty-five years, instead of twenty-three, if we place the whole sixty-one years of Rîm-Sin’s reign before Hammurabi’s conquest of Larsa; in that case the fall of Nîsin would have taken place in Sin-muballit’s seventh year. But the available evidence is strongly in favour of curtailing Rîm-Sin’s period of independent rule; see above, pp. 97 ff.

92 This seems to follow from the continuation of the Nîsin era in the south for a few years after the fall of Larsa; see above, p. 103.

93 See above, p. 144.

94 See above, pp. 129 ff.; it was probably after these conquests that he adopted the title King of Amurru.

95 Cf., e.g., “Letters and Inscriptions of Hammurabi,” pp. 180 ff. It is clear from the titles in the majority of them that they date from the latter part of his reign. It was also after his annexation of Larsa that he cut the Hammurabi-nukhush-nishi Canal, building a fortress at the head of the canal for its defence, which he named after his father Dûr-Sin-muballit-abim-walidia. The erection of the granary at Babylon (op. cit., p. 192 f.) was evidently one of his earlier works.

96 See below, p. 194 f.

97 As the list of cities is practically a gazetteer of Hammurabi’s empire during his closing years, the names will repay enumeration, together with their temples and city-gods; they are here given in the order in which they occur in the Prologue, the names of gods, when omitted in the text, being supplied within parentheses: (1) Nippur, and Ekur, the temple of Enlil; (2) Eridu, and E-apsû (the temple of Enki); (3) Babylon, and E-sagila, the temple of Marduk; (4) Ur, and E-gishshirgal (the temple of Sin); (5) Sippar, and E-babbar (the temple of Shamash); (6) Larsa, and E-babbar (the temple of Shamash); (7) Erech, and E-anna, the temple of Anu and Ninni, or Ishtar; (8) Nîsin, and the temple E-galmakh; (9) Kish, and E-mete-ursag, the temple of Zamama; (10) Cuthah, and E-meslam (the temple of Nergal); (11) Borsippa, and E-zida (the temple of Nabû); (12) Dilbat, and its god Urash; (13) the city of Kesh; (14) Lagash and Girsu, and E-ninnû (the temple of Ningirsu); (15) Khallabu, and the goddess Ninni, or Ishtar; (16) Bît-Karkara, and E-ugalgal, the temple of Adad; (17) Adab, and its temple E-makh; (18) Mashkan-shabri and the temple Meslam; (19) Malgûm; (20) the dwellings, or settlements, on the Euphrates, and the god Dagan; (21) Mera and Tutul; (22) Akkad (Agade), and E-ulmash, the temple of Ishtar; (23) Ashur, and “its favourable protecting deity”; and (24) Nineveh, and E-mishmish, the temple of Ishtar.

98 Gen. xiv.

99 For the Elamite character of Chedorlaomer’s name, cf. “Letters of Hammurabi,” I., p. iv. f.; but there are too many difficulties in the way of accepting the suggested identification of Arioch with Warad-Sin, the son of Kudur-Mabuk (op. cit., pp. xlix. ff.).

100 See above, p. 152.

101 Prof. Sayce was the first to point out that Tidal is a Hittite name, and was borne by one of the last kings of the Hittite Empire, Dudkhalia; cf. “Patriarchal Palestine,” p. 60.

102 We are not here concerned with the textual character of Gen. xiv. (on that subject, see especially Skinner, “Genesis,” pp. 256 ff.), nor with the evolution of the Abrahamic traditions (see Meyer, “Die Israeliten,” p. 248, and cp. Hall, “Anc. Hist, of the Near East,” p. 401). It will suffice to note that, in view of the recovery of Neo-Babylonian chronicles and poetical compositions, dealing with early historical events, the employment of such a document among Hebrew literary sources seems to offer a sufficient explanation of the facts. ⁂

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