He was the first that we know of who attempted to organize and reduce to a single system the complicated network of ditches and channels which intersected the territory belonging to the great cities between Babylon and the sea. Already, more than half a century previously, Siniddinam had enlarged the canal on which Larsa was situated, while Bimsin had provided an outlet for the “River of the Gods” into the Persian Gulf:* by the junction of the two a navigable channel was formed between the Euphrates and the marshes, and an outlet was thus made for the surplus waters of the inundation. Khammurabi informs us how Anu and Bel, having confided to him the government of Sumer and Accad, and having placed in his hands the reins of power, he dug the Nâr-Khammurabi, the source of wealth to the people, which brings abundance of water to the country of Sumir and Accad. “I turned both its banks into cultivated ground, I heaped up mounds of grain and I furnished perpetual water for the people of Sumir and Accad. The country of Sumer and Accad, I gathered together its nations who were scattered, I gave them pasture and drink, I ruled over them in riches and abundance, I caused them to inhabit a peaceful dwelling-place. Then it was that Khammurabi, the powerful king, the favourite of the great gods, I myself, according to the prodigious strength with which Merodach had endued me, I constructed a high fortress, upon mounds of earth; its summit rises to the height of the mountains, at the head of the Nâr-Khammurabi, the source of wealth to the people. This fortress I called Dur-Sinmuballit-abim-uâlidiya, the Fortress of Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, so that the name of Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, may endure in the habitations of the world.”
* Contract dated “the year the Tigris, river of the gods,
was canalized down to the sea”; i.e. as far as the point to
which the sea then penetrated in the environs of Kornah.
This canal of Khammurabi ran from a little south of Babylon, joining those of Siniddinam and Rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain in its entire length.* It drained the stagnant marshes on either side along its course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its banks were enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously had been useless for purposes of cultivation. A ditch of minor importance pierced the isthmus which separates the Tigris and the Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Sippar.** Khammurabi did not rest contented with these; a system of secondary canals doubtless completed the whole scheme of irrigation which he had planned after the achievement of his conquest, and his successors had merely to keep up his work in order to ensure an unrivalled prosperity to the empire.
* Delattre is of opinion that the canal dug by Khammurabi is
the Arakhtu of later epochs which began at Babylon and
extended as far as the Larsa canal. It must therefore be
approximately identified with the Shatt-en-Nil of the
present day, which joins Shatt-el-Kaher, the canal of
Siniddinam.
** The canal which Khammurabi caused to be dug or dredged
may be the Nâr-Malkâ, or “royal canal,” which ran from the
Tigris to the Euphrates, passing Sippar on the way. The
digging of this canal is mentioned in a contract.
Their efforts in this direction were not unsuccessful. Samsuîluna, the son of Khammurabi, added to the existing system two or three fresh canals, one at least of which still bore his name nearly fifteen centuries later; it is mentioned in the documents of the second Assyrian empire in the time of Assurbanipal, and it is possible that traces of it may still be found at the present day. Abiêshukh,* Ammisatana,** Ammizadugga,*** and Samsusatana,**** all either continued to elaborate the network planned by their ancestors, or applied themselves to the better distribution of the overflow in those districts where cultivation was still open to improvement.
* Abîshukh (the Hebrew Abishua) is the form of the name
which we find in contemporary contracts. The official lists
contain the variant Ebishu, Ebîshum.
** Ammiditana is only a possible reading: others prefer
Ammisatana. The Nâr-Ammisatana is mentioned in a Sippar
contract. Another contract is dated “the year in which
Ammisatana, the king, repaired the canal of Samsuîluna.”
*** This was, at first, read Ammididugga. Ammizadugga is
mentioned in the date of a contract as having executed
certain works—of what nature it is not easy to say—on the
banks of the Tigris; another contract is dated “the year in
which Ammizadugga, the king, by supreme command of Sha-mash,
his master, [dug] the Ndr-Ammizadugga-nulchus-nishi (canal
of Ammizadugga), prosperity of men.” In the Minæan
inscriptions of Southern Arabia the name is found under the
form of Ammi-Zaduq.
**** Sometimes erroneously read Samdiusatana; but, as a
matter of fact, we have contracts of that time, in which a
royal name is plainly written as Samsusatana.
We should know nothing of these kings had not the scribes of those times been in the habit of dating the contracts of private individuals by reference to important national events. They appear to have chosen by preference incidents in the religious life of the country; as, for instance, the restoration of a temple, the annual enthronisation of one of the great divinities, such as Shamash, Merodach, Ishtar, or Nana, as the eponymous god of the current year, the celebration of a solemn festival, or the consecration of a statue; while a few scattered allusions to works of fortification show that meanwhile the defence of the country was jealously watched over.* These sovereigns appear to have enjoyed long reigns, the shortest extending over a period of five and twenty years; and when at length the death of any king occurred, he was immediately replaced by his son, the notaries’ acts and the judicial documents which have come down to us betraying no confusion or abnormal delay in the course of affairs. We may, therefore, conclude that the last century and a half of the dynasty was a period of peace and of material prosperity. Chaldæa was thus enabled to fully reap the advantage of being united under the rule of one individual. It is quite possible that those cities—Uru, Larsa, Ishin, Uruk, and Nippur—which had played so important a part in the preceding centuries, suffered from the loss of their prestige, and from the blow dealt to their traditional pretensions.
* Samsuîluna repaired the five fortresses which his ancestor
Sumulaîlu had built. Contract dated “the year in which
Ammisatana, the king, built Dur-Ammisatana, near the Sin
river,” and “the year in which Ammisatana, the king, gave
its name to Dur-Iskunsin, near the canal of
Ammisatana.” Contract dated “the year in which the King
Ammisatana repaired Dur-Iskunsin.” Contract dated “the year in
which Samsuîluna caused ‘the wall of Uru and Uruk’ to be
built.”
Up to this time they had claimed the privilege of controlling the history of their country, and they had bravely striven among themselves for the supremacy over the southern states; but the revolutions which had raised each in turn to the zenith of power, had never exalted any one of them to such an eminence as to deprive its rivals of all hope of supplanting it and of enjoying the highest place. The rise of Babylon destroyed the last chance which any of them had of ever becoming the capital; the new city was so favourably situated, and possessed so much wealth and so many soldiers, while its kings displayed such tenacious energy, that its neighbours were forced to bow before it and resign themselves to the subordinate position of leading provincial towns. They gave a loyal obedience to the officers sent them from the north, and sank gradually into obscurity, the loss of their political supremacy being somewhat compensated for by the religious respect in which they were always held. Their ancient divinities—Nana, Sin, Anu, and Ra—were adopted, if we may use the term, by the Babylonians, who claimed the protection of these gods as fully as they did that of Merodach or of Nebo, and prided themselves on amply supplying all their needs. As the inhabitants of Babylon had considerable resources at their disposal, their appeal to these deities might be regarded as productive of more substantial results than the appeal of a merely local kinglet. The increase of the national wealth and the concentration, under one head, of armies hitherto owning several chiefs, enabled the rulers, not of Babylon or Larsa alone, but of the whole of Chaldæa, to offer an invincible resistance to foreign enemies, and to establish their dominion in countries where their ancestors had enjoyed merely a precarious sovereignty. Hostilities never completely ceased between Elam and Babylon; if arrested for a time, they broke out again in some frontier disturbance, at times speedily suppressed, but at others entailing violent consequences and ending in a regular war. No document furnishes us with any detailed account of these outbreaks, but it would appear that the balance of power was maintained on the whole with tolerable regularity, both kingdoms at the close of each generation finding themselves in much the same position as they had occupied at its commencement. The two empires were separated from south to north by the sea and the Tigris, the frontier leaving the river near the present village of Amara and running in the direction of the mountains. Durîlu probably fell ordinarily under Chaldæan jurisdiction. Umliyash was included in the original domain of Kham-murabi, and there is no reason to believe that it was evacuated by his descendants. There is every probability that they possessed the plain east of the Tigris, comprising Nineveh and Arbela, and that the majority of the civilized peoples scattered over the lower slopes of the Kurdish mountains rendered them homage. They kept the Mesopotamian table-land under their suzerainty, and we may affirm, without exaggeration, that their power extended northwards as far as Mount Masios, and westwards to the middle course of the Euphrates.
At what period the Chaldæans first crossed that river is as yet unknown. Many of their rulers in their inscriptions claim the title of suzerains over Syria, and we have no evidence for denying their pretensions. Kudur-mabug proclaims himself “adda” of Martu, Lord of the countries of the West, and we are in the possession of several facts which suggest the idea of a great Blamite empire, with a dominion extending for some period over Western Asia, the existence of which was vaguely hinted at by the Greeks, who attributed its glory to the fabulous Memnon.* Contemporary records are still wanting which might show whether Kudur-mabug inherited these distant possessions from one of his predecessors—such as Kudur-nakhunta, for instance—or whether he won them himself at the point of the sword; but a fragment of an old chronicle, inserted in the Hebrew Scriptures, speaks distinctly of another Elamite, who made war in person almost up to the Egyptian frontier.** This is the Kudur-lagamar (Chedorlaomer) who helped Eimsin against Hammurabi, but was unable to prevent his overthrow.