A History of Babylon, from the Foundation of the Monarchy to the Persian Conquest

by L. W. King

A complete list of the Larsa kings has now been recovered by Professor A. T. Clay of Yale University, who is engaged in preparing the text for publication. The dynasty is seen to have consisted of sixteen kings, and against the name of each ruler is stated the number of years he occupied the throne. The surface of the tablet is damaged in places and the figures against three of the names are wanting. But this is of no great consequence, since the scribe has added up the total number of years enumerated in the list, and states it at the close as two hundred and eighty-nine.[8] A most important point about the list is that the last two kings of the dynasty are stated to have been Hammurabi and Samsu-iluna, who, as we know, were the sixth and seventh rulers of the First Dynasty of Babylon. It is true that Hammurabi is one of the three kings against whose names the figures are wanting. But we already know that he conquered Larsa in his thirty-first year,[9] so that we may confidently regard him as king of that city for the last twelve years of his reign. The two remaining kings of the dynasty whose years are missing, Sin-idinnam and Sin-iḳisham, have thirteen years to divide between them, and since they are only separated from each other by the short two-years' reign of Sin-iribam, the absence of the figures is practically immaterial. We are thus furnished with the means for establishing in detail the relationship of the earliest kings of Babylon to those of Larsa.

VII. Brick of Sin-idinnam, King of Larsa, recording the cutting of a canal and the restoration of the Temple of the Moon-god in the city of Ur

But like most new discoveries, this one has brought a fresh problem in its train. We already suspected that Rîm-Sin was a long-lived monarch, and we here find him credited with a reign of sixty-one years. But that fact would be difficult to reconcile with his survival into Samsu-iluna's tenth year, which, according to the figures of the new list, would have fallen eighty-three years after his accession to the throne. That Rîm-Sin did survive into the reign of Samsu-iluna seems practically certain, since the broken passage in the late chronicle, from which the fact was at first inferred, is supported by two date-formulæ which can be satisfactorily explained only on that hypothesis.[10] Thus, if he ascended the throne of Larsa when merely a boy of fifteen, we should have to infer from the new figures that he was leading a revolt against Samsu-iluna in his ninety-eighth year—a combination of circumstances which is just within the bounds of possibility, but is hardly probable or convincing. We shall see presently that there is a comparatively simple, and not improbable, solution of the puzzle, to which another line of evidence seems to converge.

It will be noted that the new list of the kings of Larsa, important as it undoubtedly is for the history of its own period, does not in itself supply the long-desired link between the earlier and the later chronology of Babylonia. The relationship of the First Dynasty of Babylon with that of Nîsin[11] is, so far as the new list is concerned, left in the same state of uncertainty as before. The possibility has long been foreseen that the Dynasty of Nîsin and the First Dynasty of Babylon overlapped each other,[12] as was proved to have been the case with the first dynasties in the Babylonian List of Kings, and as was confidently assumed with regard to the dynasties of Larsa and Babylon. That no long interval separated the two dynasties from one another had been inferred from the character of the contract-tablets, dating from the period of the Nîsin Dynasty, which had been found at Nippur; for these were seen to bear a elose resemblance to those of the First Babylonian Dynasty in form, material, writing, and terminology.[13] There were obvious advantages to be obtained, if grounds could be produced for believing that the two dynasties were not only closely consecutive but were partly contemporaneous. For, in such a case, it would follow that not only the earlier kings of Babylon, but also the kings of Larsa, would have been reigning at the same time as the later kings of Nîsin. In fact, we should picture Babylonia as still divided into a number of smaller principalities, each vying with the other in a contest for the hegemony and maintaining a comparatively independent rule within its own borders. It was fully recognized that such a condition of affairs would amply account for the confusion in the later succession at Nîsin, and our scanty knowledge of that period could then be combined with the fuller sources of information on the First Dynasty of Babylon.[14]

In the absence of any definite synchronism, such as we already possessed for deciding the inter-relations of the early Babylonian dynasties, other means were tried in order to establish a point of contact. The capture of Nîsin by Rîm-Sin, which is recorded in date-formulæ upon tablets found at Tell Sifr and Nippur, was evidently looked upon as an event of considerable importance, since it formed an epoch for dating tablets in that district. It was thus a legitimate assumption that the capture of the city by Rîm-Sin should be regarded as having brought the Dynasty of Nîsin to an end; such an assumption certainly supplied an adequate reason for the rise of a new era in time-reckoning. Now in the date-formulæ of the First Dynasty of Babylon two captures of the city of Nîsin are commemorated, the earlier one in that for the seventeenth year of Sin-muballit, the later in the formula for Hammurabi's seventh year. Advocates have been found for deriving each of these dates from the capture of Nîsin by Rîm-Sin, and so obtaining the desired point of contact.[15] But the obvious objection to either of these views is that we should hardly expect a victory by Rîm-Sin to be commemorated in the date-formulæ of his chief rival; and certain attempts to show that Babylon was at the time the vassal of Larsa have not proved very convincing. Moreover, if we accept the earlier identification, it raises the fresh difficulty that the era of Nîsin was not disturbed by Hammurabi's conquest of that city. The rejection of both views thus leads to the same condition of uncertainty from which we started.

A fresh and sounder line of research has recently been opened up. A detailed study has been undertaken of the proper names occurring on contract-tablets from Nippur, and it was remarked that some of the proper names found in documents belonging to the Nîsin and Larsa Dynasties are identical with those appearing on other Nippur tablets belonging to the First Dynasty of Babylon.[16] That they were borne by the same individuals is in many eases quite certain from the fact that the names of their fathers are also given. Both sets of documents were not only found at Nippur but were obviously written there, since they closely resemble one another in general appearance, style and arrangement. The same witnesses, too, occur again and again on them, and some of the tablets, which were drawn up under different dynasties, are the work of the same scribe. It has even been found possible, by the study of the proper names, to follow the history of a family through three generations, during which it was living at Nippur under different rulers belonging to the dynasties of Nîsin, Larsa and Babylon; and one branch of the family can never have left the city, since its members in successive generations held the office of "pashishu," or anointing-priest, in the temple of the goddess Ninlil.[17]

Of such evidence it will suffice for the moment to cite two examples, since they have a direct bearing on the assumption that Rîm-Sin's conquest of Nîsin put an end to the dynasty in that city. From two of the documents we learn that Zîatum, the scribe, pursued his calling at Nippur not only under Damik-ilishu, the last king of Nîsin, but also under Rîm-Sin of Larsa,[18] a fact which definitely proves that Nippur passed under the control of these two rulers within the space of one generation. The other piece of evidence is still more instructive. It has long been known that Hammurabi was Rîm-Sin's contemporary, and from the new Kings' List we have gained the further information that he succeeded him upon the throne of Larsa. Now two other of the Nippur documents prove that Ibkushu, the pashishu, or "anointing-priest" of the goddess Ninlil, was living at Nippur under Damik-ilishu and also under Hammurabi in the latter's thirty-first year.[19] This fact not only confirms our former inference, but gives very good grounds for believing that the close of Damik-ilishu's reign must have fallen within that of Rîm-Sin. We may therefore regard it as certain that Rîm-Sin's conquest of Nîsin, which began a new era for time-reckoning in central and southern Babylonia, put an end to the reign of Damik-ilishu and to the Dynasty of Nîsin, of which he was the last member. In order to connect the chronology of Babylon with that of Nîsin it therefore only remains to ascertain at what period in Rîm-Sin's reign, as King of Larsa, his conquest of Nîsin took place.

It is at this point that a further discovery of Prof. Clay has furnished us with the necessary data for a decision. Among the tablets of the Yale Babylonian Collection he has come across several documents of Rîm-Sin's reign, which bear a double-date. In every case the first half of the double-date corresponds to the usual formula for the second year of the Nîsin era. On two of them the second half of the date-formula equates that year with the eighteenth of some other era, while on two others the same year is equated with the nineteenth year.[20] It is obvious that we here have scribes dating documents according to a new era, and explaining that that year corresponds to the eighteenth (or nineteenth) of one with which they had been familiar, and which the new method of time-reckoning was probably intended to displace. Now we know that, before the capture of Nîsin, the scribes in cities under Rîm-Sin's control had been in the habit of dating documents by events in his reign, according to the usual practice of early Babylonian kings.[21] But this method was given up after the capture of Nîsin, and for at least thirty-one years after that event the era of Nîsin was in vogue.[22] In the second year of the era, when the new method of dating had just been settled, it would have been natural for the scribes to add a note explaining the relationship of the new era to the old. But, as the old changing formulæ had been discontinued, the only possible way to make the equation would have been to reckon the number of years Rîm-Sin had been upon the throne. Hence we may confidently conclude that the second figure in the double-dates was intended to give the year of Rîm-Sin's reign which corresponded to the second year of the Nîsin era.