The dates of this dynasty are not fixed with entire certainty. The first of them, Sumuabîm, has left us some contracts bearing the dates of one or other of the fifteen years of his reign, and documents of public or private interest abound in proportion as we follow down the line of his successors. Sumulaîlu, who reigned after him, was only distantly related to his predecessor; but from Sumulaîlu to Sam-shusatana the kingly power was transmitted from father to son without a break for nine generations, if we may credit the testimony of the official lists.*
* Simulaîlu, also written Samu-la-ilu, whom Mr. Pinches has
found in a contract tablet associated with Pungunila as
king, was not the son of Sumuabîm, since the lists do not
mention him as such; he must, however, have been connected
with some sort of relationship, or by marriage, with his
predecessor, since both are placed in the same dynasty. A
few contracts of Sumulaîlu are given by Meissner. Samsuiluna
calls him “my forefather (d-gula-mu), the fifth king before
me.”
Hommel believes that the order of the dynasties has been
reversed, and that the first upon the lists we possess was
historically the second; he thus places the Babylonian
dynasty between 2035 and 1731 B.C. His opinion has not been
generally adopted, but every Assyriologist dealing with this
period proposes a different date for the reigns in this
dynasty; to take only one characteristic example, Khammurabi
is placed by Oppert in the year 2394-2339, by Delitzsch-
Murdter in 2287-2232, by Winckler in 2264-2210, and by
Peiser in 2139-2084, and by Carl Niebuhr in 2081-2026.
Contemporary records, however, prove that the course of affairs did not always run so smoothly. They betray the existence of at least one usurper—Immêru—who, even if he did not assume the royal titles, enjoyed the supreme power for several years between the reigns of Zabu and Abilsin. The lives of these rulers closely resembled those of their contemporaries of Southern Chaldæa. They dredged the ancient canals, or constructed new ones; they restored the walls of their fortresses, or built fresh strongholds on the frontier;* they religiously kept the festivals of the divinities belonging to their terrestrial domain, to whom they annually rendered solemn homage.
* Sumulaîlu had built six such large strongholds of brick,
which were repaired by Samsuiluna five generations later. A
contract of Sinmuballit is dated the year in which he built
the great wall of a strong place, the name of which is
unfortunately illegible on the fragment which we possess.
They repaired the temples as a matter of course, and enriched them according to their means; we even know that Zabu, the third in order of the line of sovereigns, occupied himself in building the sanctuary Eulbar of Anunit, in Sippara. There is evidence that they possessed the small neighbouring kingdoms of Kishu, Sippara, and Kuta, and that they had consolidated them into a single state, of which Babylon was the capital. To the south their possessions touched upon those of the kings of Uru, but the frontier was constantly shifting, so that at one time an important city such as Nippur belonged to them, while at another it fell under the dominion of the southern provinces. Perpetual war was waged in the narrow borderland which separated the two rival states, resulting apparently in the balance of power being kept tolerably equal between them under the immediate successors of Sumuabîm* —the obscure Sumulaîlu, Zabum, the usurper Immeru, Abîlsin and Sinmuballit—until the reign of Khammurabi (the son of Sinmuballit), who finally made it incline to his side.** The struggle in which he was engaged, and which, after many vicissitudes, he brought to a successful issue, was the more decisive, since he had to contend against a skilful and energetic adversary who had considerable forces at his disposal. Birnsin*** was, in reality, of Elamite race, and as he held the province of Yamutbal in appanage, he was enabled to muster, in addition to his Chaldæan battalions, the army of foreigners who had conquered the maritime regions at the mouth of the Tigris and the Euphrates.
* None of these facts are as yet historically proved: we
may, however, conjecture with some probability what was the
general state of things, when we remember that the first
kings of Babylon were contemporaries of the last independent
sovereigns of Southern Chaldæa.
** The name of this prince has been read in several ways—
Hammurabi, Khammurabi, by the earlier Assyriologists,
subsequently Hammuragash, Khammuragash, as being of Elamite
or Cossoan extraction: the reading Khammurabi is at present
the prevailing one. The bilingual list published by Pinches
makes Khammurabi an equivalent of the Semitic names Kimta-
rapashtum. Hence Halévy concluded that Khammurabi was a
series of ideograms, and that Kimtarapashtum was the true
reading of the name; his proposal, partially admitted by
Hommel, furnishes us with a mixed reading of Khammurapaltu,
Amraphel. [Hommel is now convinced of the identity of the
Amraphel of Gen. xiv. I with Khammurabi.—Te.] Sayce,
moreover, adopts the reading Khammurabi, and assigns to him
an Arabian origin. The part played by this prince was
pointed out at an early date by Menant. Recent discoveries
have shown the important share which he had in developing
the Chaldæan empire, and have, increased his reputation with
Assyriologists.
*** The name of this king has been the theme of heated
discussions: it was at first pronounced Aradsin, Ardusin, or
Zikarsin; it is now read in several different ways—Rimsin,
or Eriaku, Riaku, Rimagu. Others have made a distinction
between the two forms, and have made out of them the names
of two different kings. They are all variants of the same
name. I have adopted the form Rimsin, which is preferred by
a few Assyriologists. [The tablets recently discovered by
Mr. Pinches, referring to Kudur-lagamar and Tudkhula, which
he has published in a Paper road before the Victoria
Institute, Jan. 20, 1896, have shown that the true reading
is Eri-Aku. The Elamite name Eri-Aku, “servant of the moon-
god,” was changed by some of his subjects into the
Babylonian Rim-Sin, “Have mercy, O Moon-god!” just as
Abêsukh, the Hebrew Absihu’a (“the father of welfare”) was
transformed into the Babylonian Ebisum (“the actor”).—Ed.]
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin,
from a bas-relief of
Sargon II. in the Louvre.
It was not the first time that Elam had audaciously interfered in the affairs of her neighbours. In fabulous times, one of her mythical kings—Khumbaba the Ferocious—had oppressed. Uruk, and Gilgames with all his valour was barely able to deliver the town. Sargon the Elder is credited with having subdued Elam; the kings and vicegerents of Lagash, as well as those of Uru and. Larsam, had measured forces with Anshan, but with no decisive issue. From time to time they obtained an advantage, and we find recorded in the annals victories gained by Gudea, Inê-sin, or Bursin, but to be followed only by fresh reverses; at the close of such campaigns, and in order to seal the ensuing peace, à princess of Susa would be sent as a bride to one of the Chaldæan cities, or a Chaldæan lady of royal birth would enter the harem of a king of Anshân. Elam was protected along the course of the Tigris and on the shores of the Nâr-Marratum by a wide marshy region, impassable except at a few fixed and easily defended places. The alluvial plain extending behind the marshes was as rich and fertile as that of Chaldæa. Wheat and barley ordinarily yielded an hundred and at times two hundredfold; the towns were surrounded by a shadeless belt of palms; the almond, fig, acacia, poplar, and willow extended in narrow belts along the rivers’ edge. The climate closely resembles that of Chaldaja: if the midday heat in summer is more pitiless, it is at least tempered by more frequent east winds. The ground, however, soon begins to rise, ascending gradually towards the north-east. The distant and uniform line of mountain-peaks grows loftier on the approach of the traveller, and the hills begin to appear one behind another, clothed halfway up with thick forests, but bare on their summits, or scantily covered with meagre vegetation. They comprise, in fact, six or seven parallel ranges, resembling natural ramparts piled up between the country of the Tigris and the table-land of Iran. The intervening valleys were formerly lakes, having had for the most part no communication with each other and no outlet into the sea. In the course of centuries they had dried up, leaving a thick deposit of mud in the hollows of their ancient beds, from which sprang luxurious and abundant harvests. The rivers—the Uknu,* the Ididi,** and the Ulaî***—which water this region are, on reaching more level ground, connected by canals, and are constantly shifting their beds in the light soil of the Susian plain: they soon attain a width equal to that of the Euphrates, but after a short time lose half their volume in swamps, and empty themselves at the present day into the Shatt-el-Arab. They flowed formerly into that part of the Persian Gulf which extended as far as Kornah, and the sea thus formed the southern frontier of the kingdom.