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

by L. W. King

The only reason which we have as yet examined for equating the first twenty-two years of Babylon's suzerainty over Larsa with the latter part of Rîm-Sin's reign has been the necessity of reducing the duration of that monarch's life within the bounds of probability. If this had been the only ground for the assumption, it might perhaps have been regarded as more or less problematical. But the Nippur contract-tablets and legal documents, to which reference has already been made,[32] furnish us with a number of separate and independent pieces of evidence in its support. The tablets contain references to officials and private people who were living at Nippur in the reigns of Damik-ilishu, the last king of Nîsin, and of Rîm-Sin of Larsa, and also under Hammurabi and Samsu-iluna of Babylon. Most of the tablets of Rîm-Sin's period are dated by the Nîsin era, and, since the dates of those drawn up in the reigns of Hammurabi and Samsu-iluna can be definitely ascertained by means of their date-formulæ, it is possible to estimate the intervals of time separating references to the same man or to a man and his son. It is remarkable that in some cases the interval of time appears excessive if the whole of Rîm-Sin's reign of sixty-one years be placed before Hammurabi's capture of Larsa. If, on the other hand, we regard Rîm-Sin as Babylon's vassal for the last twenty-two years of his rule in Larsa, the intervals of time are reduced to normal proportions. As the point is of some importance for the chronology, it may be as well to cite one or two examples of this class of evidence, in order that the reader may judge of its value for himself.

The first example we will examine will be that furnished by Ibkushu, the anointing-priest of Ninlil, to whom we have already referred as having lived at Nippur under Damik-ilishu and also under Hammurabi in the latter's thirty-first year[33]; both references, it may be noted, describe him as holding his priestly office, at Nippur. Now, if we accept the face value of the figures in the Larsa List we obtain an interval between these two references of at least forty-four years and probably more.[34] By the suggested interpretation of the figures in the List the interval would be reduced by twenty-two years. A very similar case is that of the scribe Ur-kingala, who is mentioned in a document dated in the eleventh year of the Nîsin era, and again in one of Samsu-iluna's fourth year.[35] In the one case we obtain an interval of fifty years between the two references, while in the other it is reduced to twenty-eight years. Very similar results follow if we examine references on the tablets to fathers and their sons. A certain Adad-rabi, for example, was living at Nippur under Damik-ilishu, while his two sons Mâr-irsitim and Mutum-ilu are mentioned there in the eleventh year of Samsu-iluna's reign.[36] In the one case we must infer an interval of at least sixty-seven years, and probably more, between father and sons; in the other an interval of forty-five years or more is obtained. It will be unnecessary to examine further examples, as those already cited may suffice to illustrate the point. It will be noted that the unabridged interval can in no single instance be pronounced impossible. But the cumulative effect produced is striking. The independent testimony of these private documents and contracts thus converges to the same point as the data with regard to the length of Rîm-Sin's life. Several of the figures so obtained suggest that, taken at their face value, the regnal years in the Larsa List yield a total that is about one generation too long. They are thus strongly in favour of the suggested method of interpreting Rîm-Sin's reign in the Larsa succession.

We may thus provisionally place the sixty-first year of Rîm-Sin's rule at Larsa in the tenth year of Samsu-iluna's reign, when we may assume that he revolted and took the field against his suzerain. It was in that year that Tell Sifr changed hands for a time. But it is probably a significant fact that not a single document of Samsu-iluna's reign has been found in that district dated after his twelfth year. In fact we shall see reason to believe that the whole of Southern Babylonia soon passed from the control of Babylon, though Samsu-iluna succeeded in retaining his hold on Nippur for some years longer. Meanwhile it will suffice to note that the suggested sequence of events fits in very well with other references in the date-lists. The two defeats of Nîsin by Hammurabi and his father Sin-muballit, which have formed for so long a subject of controversy, now cease to be a stumbling-block. We see that both took place before Rîm-Sin's capture of Nîsin,[37] and were merely temporary successes which had no effect upon the continuance of the Nîsin dynasty. That was brought to an end by Rîm-Sin's victory in his seventeenth year, when the Nîsin era of dating was instituted. That, in cities where it had been long employed, the continued use of the era alongside his own formulæ should have been permitted by Hammurabi for some eight years after his capture of Larsa, is sufficiently explained by our assumption that Rîm-Sin was not deposed, but was retained in his own capital as the vassal of Babylon. There would have been a natural reluctance to abandon an established era, especially if Babylon's authority was not rigidly enforced during the first few years of her suzerainty, as with earlier vassal states.[38]

The overlapping of the Dynasty of Nîsin with that of Babylon for a period of one hundred and eleven years, which follows from the new information afforded by the Yale tablets, merely carries the process still further that was noted some years ago with regard to the first three Dynasties of the Babylonian List of Kings. At the time of the earlier discovery considerable difference of opinion existed as to the number of years, if any, during which the Second Dynasty of the List held independent sway in Babylonia. The archæological evidence at that time available seemed to suggest that the kings of the Sea-Country never ruled in Babylonia, and that the Third, or Kassite, Dynasty followed the First Dynasty without any considerable break.[39] Other writers, in their endeavours to use and reconcile the chronological references to earlier rulers which occur in later texts, assumed a period of independence for the Second Dynasty which varied, according to their differing hypotheses, from one hundred and sixty-eight to eighty years.[40] Since the period of the First Dynasty was not fixed independently, the complete absence of contemporary evidence with regard to the Second Dynasty led to a considerable divergence of opinion upon the point.

So far as the archæological evidence is concerned, we are still without any great body of documents dated in their reigns, which should definitely prove the rule of the Sea-Country kings in Babylonia. But two tablets have now been discovered in the Nippur Collections which are dated in the second year of Iluma-ilum, the founder of the Second Dynasty.[41] And this fact is important, since it proves that for two years at any rate he exercised control over a great part of Babylonia. Now among the numerous documents dated in the reigns of Hammurabi and Samsu-iluna, which have been found at Nippur, none are later than Samsu-iluna's twenty-ninth year, although the succession of dated documents up to that time is almost unbroken. It would thus appear that after Samsu-iluna's twenty-ninth year Babylon lost her hold upon Nippur. It is difficult to resist the conclusion that the power which drove her northwards was the kingdom of the Sea-Country, whose founder Iluma-ilum waged successful campaigns against both Samsu-iluna and his son Abi-eshu', as we learn from the late Babylonian chronicle.[42] Another fact that is probably of equal significance is that, of the tablets from Larsa and its neighbourhood, none have been found dated after Samsu-iluna's twelfth year, although we have numerous examples drawn up during the earlier years of his reign. We may therefore assume that soon after his twelve years of rule at Larsa, which are assigned to him on the new Kings' List,[43] that city was lost to Babylon. And again it is difficult to resist the conclusion that the Sea-Country was the aggressor. From Samsu-iluna's own date-formulæ we know that in his twelfth year "all the lands revolted" against him.[44] We may therefore with considerable probability place Iluma-ilum's revolt in that year, followed immediately by his establishment of an independent kingdom in the south.[45] He probably soon gained control over Larsa and gradually pushed northwards until he occupied Nippur in Samsu-iluna's twenty-ninth or thirtieth year.

IX. BRICK OF WARAD-SIN, KING OF LARSA, RECORDING BUILDING OPERATIONS IN THE CITY OF UR

Such appears to be the most probable course of events, so far as it may be determined in accordance with our new evidence. And since it definitely proves that the founder of the Second Dynasty of the Kings' List established, at any rate for a time, an effective control over southern and central Babylonia, we are the more inclined to credit the kings of the Sea-Country with having later on extended their authority farther to the north. The fact that the compiler of the Babylonian List of Kings should have included the rulers of the Sea-Country in that document has always formed a weighty argument for regarding some of them as having ruled in Babylonia; and it was only possible to eliminate the dynasty entirely from the chronological scheme by a very drastic reduction of his figures for some of their reigns. The founder of the dynasty, for example, is credited with a reign of sixty years, two other rulers with reigns of fifty-five years, and a fourth with fifty years. But the average duration of the reigns in the dynasty is only six years in excess of that for the First Dynasty, which also consisted of eleven kings. And, in view of the sixty-one years credited to Rîm-Sin in the newly recovered Larsa List, which is a contemporaneous document and not a later compilation, we may regard the traditional length of the dynasty as perhaps approximately correct.[46] Moreover, in all other parts of the Kings' List that can be controlled by contemporaneous documents, the general accuracy of the figures has been amply vindicated. The balance of evidence appears, therefore, to be in favour of regarding the compiler's estimate for the duration of his Second Dynasty as also resting on reliable tradition.

In working out the chronological scheme it only remains therefore to fix accurately the period of the First Dynasty, in order to arrive at a detailed chronology for both the earlier and the later periods. Hitherto, in default of any other method, it has been necessary to rely on the traditions which have come down to us from the history of Berossus or on chronological references to early rulers which occur in the later historical texts. A new method of arriving at the date of the First Dynasty, in complete independence of such sources of information, was hit upon three years ago by Dr. Kugler, the Dutch astronomer, in the course of his work on published texts that had any bearing on the history and achievements of Babylonian astronomy.[47] Two such tablets had been found by Sir Henry Layard at Nineveh and were preserved in the Kouyunjik Collection of the British Museum. Of these one had long been published and its contents correctly classified as a series of astronomical omens derived from observations of the planet Venus.[48] It was certain that this Assyrian text was a copy of an earlier Babylonian one, since that was definitely stated in its colophon. The second of the two inscriptions proved to be in part a duplicate,[49] and by using them in combination Dr. Kugler was able to restore the original text with a considerable degree of certainty.[50] But a more important discovery was that he succeeded in identifying precisely the period at which the text was originally drawn up, and the astronomical observations recorded. For he noted that in the eighth section of his restored text there was a chronological note, dating that section by the old Babylonian date-formula for the eighth year of Ammi-zaduga, the tenth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty. As his text contained twenty-one sections, he drew the legitimate inference that it gave him a series of observations of the planet Venus for each of the twenty-one years of Ammi-zaduga's reign.[51]