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

by L. W. King

FIG. 37. — FIG. 38. — FIG. 39.

EXAMPLES OF ARCHAIC SCULPTURE FROM ASHUR AND TELLO, EXHIBITING THE SAME CONVENTION IN THE TREATMENT OF WOOLLEN GARMENTS.

The seated statuette (Fig. 37) is from Ashur, and the treatment of the garment is precisely similar to that in early Tello work (Figs. 38 and 39). After M.D.O.G., No. 54, p. 18, and Déc. pl. 2 (bis,) No. 1, and pl. 21 (ter,) No. 3.)

In the astrological and omen texts, which incorporate very early traditions, the references to Shubartu are interpreted as applying to Assyria,[47] but the term evidently had an earlier connotation before the rise of Assyria to power. It may well have included the North-Mesopotamian region known afterwards as the land of Mitanni, whose rulers are found in temporary occupation of Nineveh, as their predecessors may have established themselves at Ashur. But, however that may be, it is clear that the historic city of Ashur was not in its origin either a Sumerian or a Semitic foundation. Its later racial character must date from the period of the Western Semites, whose amalgamation with an alien and probably Anatolian strain, which they found there, may account in part for the warlike and brutal character of the Assyrians of history, so striking a contrast to that of the milder and more commercial Semites who settled in the lower Euphrates valley. As in Babylonia, the language and to a great extent the features of the Semite eventually predominated; and the other element in the composition of the race survived only in an increased ferocity of temperament.

This was the people of whose attack on Sumu-abum, the founder of Babylon's greatness, later ages preserved the tradition. No conflict with Assyria is commemorated in Sumu-abum's date-formulæ, and it is possible that it took place before he secured his throne in Babylon, and built the great fortification-wall of the city with which he inaugurated his reign. When once he was settled there and had placed the town in a state of defence, he began to extend his influence over neighbouring cities in Akkad. Kibalbarru, which he fortified with a city-wall in his third year, was probably in the immediate neighbourhood of Babylon, and we know that Dilbat, the fortification of which was completed in his ninth year, lay only about seventeen miles south of the capital.[48] The five years which separated these two efforts at expansion were uneventful from the point of view of political achievement, for the only noteworthy episodes recorded were the building of a temple to the goddess Nin-Sinna and another to Nannar, the Moon-god, in which he afterwards set up a great cedar door. It may be that the conflict with Assyria should be set in this interval; but we should then have expected some sort of reference to the successful repulse of the enemy, and it is preferable to place it before his first year of rule.

His success in the encounter with Assyria may well have afforded this West-Semitic chieftain the opportunity of fortifying one of the great towns of Akkad, and of establishing himself there as its protector against the danger of aggression from the north; and there is no doubt that Babylon had long had some sort of local governor, the traditions of whose office he inherited. Since we have references to E-sagila in the time of the Dynasties of Akkad and of Ur,[49] the former rulers of Babylon were probably no more than the chief priests of Marduk's sanctuary. That Sumu-abum should have changed the office to that of king, and that his successor should have succeeded in establishing a dynasty that endured for nearly three centuries, is evidence of the unabated energy of the new settlers. Even the later members of the dynasty retained their original West-Semitic character,[50] and this fact, coupled with the speedy control of other cities than Babylon, suggests that the Western Semites had now arrived in far greater numbers than during their earlier migration farther down the Euphrates.

It is possible to trace the gradual growth of Babylon's influence in Akkad under her new rulers, and the stages by which she threw out her control over an increasing area of territory. At Dilbat, for example, she had no difficulties from the very first, and during almost the whole period of the First Dynasty the government of the city was scarcely distinguishable from that of Babylon. The god Urash and the goddess Lagamal were the patron deities of Dilbat, around whose cult the life of the city centred; and there was a local secular administration. But the latter was completely subordinate to the capital, and no effort was made, nor apparently was one required, to retain a semblance of local independence. The treatment of Sippar, on the other hand, was rather different. Here Sumu-abum appears to have recognized the local ruler as his vassal; and, as a further concession to its semi-independent state, he allowed the town the privilege of continuing to use its own date-formulæ, derived from local events.[51] Oaths, it is true, had to be taken in the king of Babylon's name and in that of the great Sun-god of Sippar; but the city could arrange and use its own system of time-reckoning without reference to the capital's affairs. Perhaps the most interesting example of Babylon's early system of provincial government is that presented by the city of Kish, for we can there trace the gradual extension of her control from a limited suzerainty to complete annexation.

Kish lay far nearer to Babylon than Dilbat,[52] but it had a more illustrious past to inspire it than the other city. It had played a great part in the earlier history of Sumer and Akkad, and at the time of the West-Semitic occupation of Babylon it was still governed by independent kings. We have recovered an inscription of one such ruler, Ashduni-erim, who may well have been Sumu-abum's contemporary, for the record reflects a state of affairs such as would have been caused by a hostile invasion and gradual conquest of the country.[53] Although Ashduni-erim lays claim only to the kingdom of Kish, he speaks in grandiloquent terms of the invasion, relating how the four quarters of the world revolted against him. For eight years he fought against the enemy, so that in the eighth year his army was reduced to three hundred men. But the city-god Zamama and Ishtar, his consort, then came to his succour and brought him supplies of food. With this encouragement he marched out for a whole day, and then for forty days he placed the enemy's land under contribution; and he closes his inscription rather abruptly by recording that he rebuilt the wall of Kish. The clay cone was probably a foundation-record, which he buried within the structure of the city-wall.

Ashduni-erim does not refer to his enemy by name, but it is to be noted that the hostile territory lay within a day's march of Kish, a description that surely points to Babylon. The eight years of conflict fit in admirably with the suggestion, for we know that it was in Sumu-abum's tenth year, exactly eight years after his occupation of Kibalbarru, that his suzerainty was acknowledged in Kish. Sumu-abum named that year of his reign after his dedication of a crown to the god Anu of Kish,[54] and we may conjecture that Ashduni-erim, weakened by the long conflict which he describes, came to terms with his stronger neighbour and accepted the position of a vassal. Having given guarantees for his fidelity, he would have received Sumu-abum in Kish, where the latter as the suzerain of the city performed the dedication he commemorated in his date-formula for that year. This would fully explain the guarded terms in which Ashduni-erim refers to the enemy in his inscription, the rebuilding of the city-wall having, on this supposition, been undertaken with Babylon's consent.[55]