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

by L. W. King

One of these documents records a deed of gift by which Isharlim, a king of Khana, conveys to one of his subjects a house in a village within the district of Tirka.[16] On a second document is inscribed a similar deed of gift by which another king of the same district, Ammi-baïl, the son of Shunu'-rammu, bestows two plots of land on a certain Pagirum, described as "his servant," evidently in return for faithful service;[17] and, as one of the plots was in Tirka, it is probable that the deed was drawn up in that city. The third document is perhaps the most interesting of the three, since it contains a marriage-contract and is dated in the reign of a king who bears the name of Hammurabih. This last ruler has by some been confidently regarded as identical with Hammurabi of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and it has been assumed that it was drawn up at a time when Khana had been conquered and annexed by that monarch, of whose advance into that region we have independent evidence.[18] But since the tablet appears to be the latest of the three, it is clear that Khana had been subject to Babylonian influence long before Hammurabi's conquest. And, even if we regard Hammurabih as no more than a local king of Khana, the document has furnished us with a West-Semitic variant of Hammurabi's name, or one that is closely parallel to it.

The remarkable fact about all these texts is that they are drawn up in the style of legal documents of the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon. But, while the terminology is much the same, it has been adapted to local conditions. The early Babylonian method of dating by events[19] has been taken over, but the formulas are not those in use at this period in Babylonia, but are peculiar to the kingdom of Khana. Thus the first deed of gift is dated in the year when Isharlim, the king, built the great gate of the palace in the city of Kash-dakh; the second was drawn up in the year in which Ammi-baïl, the king, ascended the throne in his father's house; while the marriage-contract is dated in the year that Hammurabih, the king, opened the canal Khabur-ibal-bugash from the city of Zakku-Isharlim to the city of Zakku-Igitlim.[20] The names of the months, too, are not those of Babylon,[21] and we find evidence that local laws and customs were in force. Each of the deeds of gift, for example, provides that any infringement of the rights bestowed by the king is to be punished by a money-fine of ten manehs of silver, and in addition the delinquent is to undergo the quaint but doubtless very painful process of having his head tarred with hot tar. From the list of witnesses we gather that the community was already organized much on the lines of a provincial district of Babylonia. For, though we find a cultivator or farmer occupying an important position, we meet also a superintendent of the merchants, another of the bakers, a chief judge, a chief seer, and members of the priesthood. It is interesting, too, to note that the kings of Khana were still great landowners, to judge from the fact that the lands conveyed in the deeds of gift were surrounded on almost every side by palace-property. At the same time the chief gods of Khana are associated with the king in the oath-formulæ, since the royal property was also regarded as the property of the Ba'al, or divine "Lord" of the soil.

The two chief Baalim or "Lords" of Khana were the Sun-god and the West-Semitic deity, Dagon. The latter is constantly referred to in the documents under the Babylonian form of his name, Dagan. He stood beside Shamash on the royal seal and in the local oath-formulæ, and is associated in the latter with Iturmer, who may well have been the old local god of Tirka, deposed after the invasion of the Semites. His temple in Tirka, which we know survived until the ninth century,[22] was probably the chief shrine of the city, and the great part he played in the national life is attested by the constant occurrence of his title as a component part of personal names.[23] Later evidence proves that Dagon was peculiarly the god of Ashdod, and the princely writer of two of the letters from Tell el-Amarna, who bore the name Dagan-takala, must have ruled some district of northern or central Canaan. The Khana documents prove that already at the time of the First Dynasty his cult was established on the Euphrates, and, in view of this fact, the occurrence of two early kings of the Babylonian Dynasty of Nîsin with the names of Idin-Dagan and Ishme-Dagan is certainly significant. We know, too, that the original home of Ishbi-Ura, the founder of the Dynasty of Nîsin, was Mari, a city and district on the middle Euphrates.[24] We may conclude, then, that the Dynasties of Nîsin and Babylon, and probably that of Larsa, were products of the same great racial movement, and that, more than a century before Sumu-abum established his throne at Babylon, Western Semites had descended the Euphrates and had penetrated into the southern districts of the country.

The new-comers probably owed their speedy success in Babylonia in great part to the fact that many of the immigrant tribes had already acquired the elements of Babylonian culture. During their previous residence within the sphere of settled civilization they had adopted a way of life and a social organization which differed but little from that of the country into which they came. That they should have immigrated at all in a south-easterly direction, in preference to remaining within their own borders, was doubtless due to racial pressure to which they themselves had been subjected. Canaan was still in a ferment of unrest in consequence of the arrival of fresh nomad tribes within her settled districts, and, while many were doubtless diverted southwards towards the Egyptian border, others pressed northwards into Syria, exerting an outward pressure in their advance. That the West-Semitic invasion of Babylonia differed so essentially from that of Egypt by the Hyksos is to be explained by this fringe of civilized settlements and petty kingdoms, which formed a check upon the nomad hordes behind them and dominated such of them as succeeded in breaking through. In Egypt the damage wrought by the Semitic barbarians was remembered for generations after their expulsion,[25] whereas in Babylonia the invaders succeeded in establishing a dynasty which gave its permanent form to Babylonian civilization.

Nîsin, the city in which, as we have seen, we first obtain an indication of the presence of West-Semitic rulers, probably lay in Southern Babylonia, and we may picture the earlier immigrants as descending the course of the Euphrates until they found an opportunity of establishing themselves in the Babylonian plain. The Elamite conquest, which put an end to the dynasty of Ur, and stripped Babylonia of her eastern provinces,[26] afforded Nîsin the opportunity of claiming the hegemony. Ishbi-Ura, the founder of the new dynasty of kings, established his own family upon the throne for nearly a century, and we may probably regard his success in bringing his city to the front as due to the Semitic elements in Southern Babylonia, recently reinforced by fresh accretions from the north-west. The centralization of authority under the later kings of Ur had led to abuses in the administration, and to the revolt of the Elamite provinces; and when an invading army appeared before the capital and carried the king, whom his courtiers had deified, to captivity in Elam,[27] Sumerian prestige received a blow from which it never recovered.

Shortly after Ishbi-Ura had established himself in Nîsin, we find another noble, who bore the Semitic name Naplanum, following his example, and founding an independent line of rulers in the neighbouring city of Larsa. But, in spite of the Semitic names borne by these two leaders and by the kings who succeeded them in their respective cities, it is clear that no great change took place in the character of the population. The commercial and administrative documents of the Nîsin period closely resemble those of the Dynasty of Ur, and evidently reflect an unbroken sequence in the course of the national life.[28] The great bulk of the southern Babylonians were still Sumerian, and we may regard the new dynasties both at Nîsin and Larsa as representing a comparatively small racial aristocracy, which by organizing the national forces in resistance to the Elamites, had succeeded in imposing their own rule upon the native population. At Nîsin the unbroken succession of five rulers is evidence of a settled state of affairs, and though Gimil-ilishu reigned for no more than ten years, his son and grandson, as well as his father, Ishbi-Ura, all had long reigns. At Larsa, too, we find Emisu and Samum, who succeeded Naplanum, the founder of the dynasty, each retaining the throne for more than a generation. It is probable that the Sumerians accepted their new rulers without question, and that the latter attempted to introduce no startling innovations into their system of administrative control.

Of the two contemporaneous dynasties in Southern Babylonia, there is no doubt that Nîsin was the more important. Not only have we the direct evidence of the Nippur Kings' List that it was to Nîsin the hegemony passed from Ur,[29] but what votive texts and building-records have been recovered prove that its rulers extended their sway over other of the great cities of Sumer and Akkad. A fragmentary text of Idin-Dagan, the son and successor of Gimil-ilishu, found at Abû Habba, proves that Sippar acknowledged his authority,[30] and inscribed bricks of his own son Ishme-Dagan have been found in the south at Ur.[31]

In all their inscriptions, too, the kings of Nîsin lay claim to the rule of Sumer and Akkad, while Ishme-Dagan and his son Libit-Ishtar[32] adopt further descriptive titles implying beneficent activities on their part in the cities of Nippur, Ur, Erech and Eridu. The recently published inscriptions of Libit-Ishtar, which were recovered during the American excavations at Nippur, prove that in his reign the central city and shrine of Babylonia were under Nîsin's active control. But he was the last king in the direct line from Ishbi-Ura, and it is probable that the break in the succession may be connected with a temporary depression in the fortunes of the city; for we shortly have evidence of an increase in the power of Larsa, in consequence of which the city of Ur acknowledged her suserainty in place of that of Nîsin. At the time of Libit-Ishtar's death Zabâia was reigning at Larsa, but after three years the latter was succeeded by Gungunum, who not only bore the titles of king of Larsa and of Ur, but laid claim to the rule of Sumer and Akkad.

At any rate, one member of the old dynastic family of Nîsin acknowledged these new claims. Enannatum, Libit-Ishtar's brother, was at this time chief priest of the Moon-temple in Ur, and on cones discovered at Mukayyar he commemorates the rebuilding of the Sun-temple at Larsa for the preservation of his own life and that of Gungunum.[33] It is possible that when Ur-Ninib secured the throne of Nîsin, the surviving members of Ishbi-Ura's family fled from the city to its rival, and that Enannatum, one of the most powerful of their number, and possibly the direct heir to his brother's throne, was installed by Gungunum in the high-priestly office at Ur. It would be tempting to connect Libit-Ishtar's fall with a fresh incursion of West-Semitic tribes, who, recking little of any racial connexion with themselves on the part of the reigning family at Nîsin may have attacked the city with some success until defeated and driven off by Ur-Ninib. We now know that Ur-Ninib conducted a successful campaign against the Su tribes on the west of Babylonia,[34] and in support of the suggestion it would be possible to cite the much discussed date-formula upon a tablet in the British Museum, which was drawn up in "the year in which the Amurru drove out Libit-Ishtar."[35] But since the Libit-Ishtar of the formula has no title, it is also possible to identify him with a provincial governor, probably of Sippar, who bore the name of Libit-Ishtar, and seems to be referred to on other documents inscribed in the reign of Apil-Sin, the grandfather of Hammurabi.[36] The date assigned to the invasion on the second alternative would correspond to another period of unrest at Nîsin, which followed the long reign of Enlil-bani, so that on either alternative we may conjecture that the city of Nîsin was affected for a time by a new incursion of Amorites.

Whether the fall of Libit-Ishtar may be traced to such a cause or not, we now know that it was during the reigns of Ur-Ninib and Gungunum, at Nîsin and at Larsa respectively, that a West-Semitic Dynasty was established at Babylon. Northern Babylonia now fell under the political control of the invaders, and it is significant of the new direction of their advance that the only conflict connected in later tradition with the name of Sumu-abum, the founder of Babylon's independent line of rulers, was not with either of the dominant cities in Sumer, but with Assyria in the far north. On a late chronicle it is recorded that Ilu-shûma, King of Assyria, marched against Su-abu, or Sumu-abum,[37] and though the result of the encounter is not related, we may assume that his motive in making the attack was to check encroachments of the invaders towards the north and drive them southward into Babylonia. Ilu-shûma's own name is purely Semitic, and since the Amorite god Dagan enters into the composition of a name borne by more than one early Assyrian ruler, we may assume that Assyria received her Semitic population at about this period as another offshoot of the Amorite migration.