The invading Semites brought with them fresh blood and unexhausted energy, and, finding many of their own race in scattered cities and settlements throughout the country, they succeeded in establishing a purely Semitic dynasty, with its capital at Babylon, and set about the task of freeing the country from any vestiges of foreign control. Many centuries earlier Semitic kings had ruled in Babylonian cities, and Semitic empires had been formed there. Sargon and Narâm-Sin, having their capital at Agade, had established their control over a considerable area of Western Asia and had held Elam as a province. But so far as Elam was concerned Kutir-Nakhkhunte had reversed the balance and had raised Elam to the position of the predominant power.
Of the struggles and campaigns of the earlier kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon we know little, for, although we possess a considerable number of legal and commercial documents of the period, we have recovered no strictly historical inscriptions. Our main source of information is the dates upon these documents, which are not dated by the years of the reigning king, but on a system adopted by the early Babylonian kings from their Sumerian predecessors. In the later periods of Babylonian history tablets were dated in the year of the king who was reigning at the time the document was drawn up, but this simple system had not been adopted at this early period. In place of this we find that each year was cited by the event of greatest importance which occurred in that year. This event might be the cutting of a canal, when the year in which this took place might be referred to as “the year in which the canal named Ai-khegallu was cut;” or it might be the building of a temple, as in the date-formula, “the year in which the great temple of the Moon-god was built;” or it might be “the conquest of a city, such as the year in which the city of Kish was destroyed.” Now it will be obvious that this system of dating had many disadvantages. An event might be of great importance for one city, while it might never have been heard of in another district; thus it sometimes happened that the same event was not adopted throughout the whole country for designating a particular year, and the result was that different systems of dating were employed in different parts of Babylonia. Moreover, when a particular system had been in use for a considerable time, it required a very good memory to retain the order and period of the various events referred to in the date-formulae, so as to fix in a moment the date of a document by its mention of one of them. In order to assist themselves in their task of fixing dates in this manner, the scribes of the First Dynasty of Babylon drew up lists of the titles of the years, arranged in chronological order under the reigns of the kings to which they referred. Some of these lists have been recovered, and they are of the greatest assistance in fixing the chronology, while at the same time they furnish us with considerable information concerning the history of the period of which we should otherwise have been in ignorance.
From these lists of date-formulæ, and from the dates themselves which are found upon the legal and commercial tablets of the period, we learn that Kish, Ka-sallu, and Isin all gave trouble to the earlier kings of the First Dynasty, and had in turn to be subdued. Elam did not watch the diminution of her influence in Babylonia without a struggle to retain it. Under Kudur-mabug, who was prince or governor of the districts lying along the frontier of Elam, the Elamites struggled hard to maintain their position in Babylonia, making the city of Ur the centre from which they sought to check the growing power of Babylon. From bricks that have been recovered from Mukayyer, the site of the city of Ur, we learn that Kudur-mabug rebuilt the temple in that city dedicated to the Moon-god, which is an indication of the firm hold he had obtained upon the city. It was obvious to the new Semitic dynasty in Babylon that, until Ur and the neighbouring city of Larsam had been captured, they could entertain no hope of removing the Elamite yoke from Southern Babylonia. It is probable that the earlier kings of the dynasty made many attempts to capture them, with varying success. An echo of one of their struggles in which they claimed the victory may be seen in the date-formula for the fourteenth year of the reign of Sin-muballit, Hammurabi’s father and predecessor on the throne of Babylon. This year was referred to in the documents of the period as “the year in which the people of Ur were slain with the sword.” It will be noted that the capture of the city is not commemorated, so that we may infer that the slaughter of the Elamites which is recorded did not materially reduce their influence, as they were left in possession of their principal stronghold. In fact, Elam was not signally defeated in the reign of Kudur-mabug, but in that of his son Rim-Sin. From the date-formulæ of Hammurabi’s reign we learn that the struggle between Elam and Babylon was brought to a climax in the thirtieth year of his reign, when it is recorded in the formulas that he defeated the Elamite army and overthrew Rim-Sin, while in the following year we gather that he added the land of E’mutbal, that is, the western district of Elam, to his dominions.
An unpublished chronicle in the British Museum gives us further details of Hammurabi’s victory over the Elamites, and at the same time makes it clear that the defeat and overthrow of Rim-Sin was not so crushing as has hitherto been supposed. This chronicle relates that Hammurabi attacked Rim-Sin, and, after capturing the cities of Ur and Larsam, carried their spoil to Babylon. Up to the present it has been supposed that Hammurabi’s victory marked the end of Elamite influence in Babylonia, and that thenceforward the supremacy of Babylon was established throughout the whole of the country. But from the new chronicle we gather that Hammurabi did not succeed in finally suppressing the attempts of Elam to regain her former position. It is true that the cities of Ur and Larsam were finally incorporated in the Babylonian empire, and the letters of Hammurabi to Sin-idinnam, the governor whom he placed in authority over Larsam, afford abundant evidence of the stringency of the administrative control which he established over Southern Babylonia. But Rîm-Sin was only crippled for the time, and, on being driven from Ur and Larsam, he retired beyond the Elamite frontier and devoted his energies to the recuperation of his forces against the time when he should feel himself strong enough again to make a bid for victory in his struggle against the growing power of Babylon. It is probable that he made no further attempt to renew the contest during the life of Hammurabi, but after Samsu-iluna, the son of Hammurabi, had succeeded to the Babylonian throne, he appeared in Babylonia at the head of the forces he had collected, and attempted to regain the cities and territory he had lost.
Inscribed in the reign of Hammurabi with a deed recording the division of property. The actual tablet is on the right; that which appears to be another and larger tablet on the left is the hollow clay case in which the tablet on the right was originally enclosed. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
The portion of the text of the chronicle relating to the war between Rîm-Sin and Samsu-iluna is broken so that it is not possible to follow the campaign in detail, but it appears that Samsu-iluna defeated Rim-Sin, and possibly captured him or burnt him alive in a palace in which he had taken refuge.
With the final defeat of Rîm-Sin by Samsu-iluna it is probable that Elam ceased to be a thorn in the side of the kings of Babylon and that she made no further attempts to extend her authority beyond her own frontiers. But no sooner had Samsu-iluna freed his country from all danger from this quarter than he found himself faced by a new foe, before whom the dynasty eventually succumbed. This fact we learn from the unpublished chronicle to which reference has already been made, and the name of this new foe, as supplied by the chronicle, will render it necessary to revise all current schemes of Babylonian chronology. Samsu-iluna’s new foe was no other than Iluma-ilu, the first king of the Second Dynasty, and, so far from having been regarded as Samsu-iluna’s contemporary, hitherto it has been imagined that he ascended the throne of Babylon one hundred and eighteen years after Samsu-iluna’s death. The new information supplied by the chronicle thus proves two important facts: first, that the Second Dynasty, instead of immediately succeeding the First Dynasty, was partly contemporary with it; second, that during the period in which the two dynasties were contemporary they were at war with one another, the Second Dynasty gradually encroaching on the territory of the First Dynasty, until it eventually succeeded in capturing Babylon and in getting the whole of the country under its control. We also learn from the new chronicle that this Second Dynasty at first established itself in “the Country of the Sea,” that is to say, the districts in the extreme south of Babylonia bordering on the Persian Gulf, and afterwards extended its borders northward until it gradually absorbed the whole of Babylonia. Before discussing the other facts supplied by the new chronicle, with regard to the rise and growth of the Country of the Sea, whose kings formed the so-called “Second Dynasty,” it will be well to refer briefly to the sources from which the information on the period to be found in the current histories is derived.