HAMMURABI AND THE END OF HIS DYNASTY

Abstract

EVENTS OF HAMMURABI'S REIGN The sixth of his line, Hammurabi was the inheritor of a kingdom established by a century of peaceful succession, unimpaired by major calamities, but hardly grown beyond the pale which his ancestor Sumuabum had reserved for himself amid the tide of Amorite invaders. In the general equilibrium of weakness Babylon had lost its upstart character, but had gained little else than recognition as an abiding feature in a world of close horizons. Even the fall of Isin, to which the predecessor of Hammurabi had contributed, did not result in any apparent increase of Babylon's territory or importance, all the fruits being gathered by Rim-Sin of Larsa. The first five kings of Babylon ventured seldom abroad, and their date-formulae, which are virtually the sole authority for their reigns, show them occupied mainly in religious and defensive building, and the clearing of canals. What extent of territory was controlled by the predecessors of Hammurabi is defined only by the places where tablets dated in the reigns of these kings happen to have been found. Most prominent among these is Sippar represented under all the early kings of Babylon; then Dilbat and Kutha, sometimes Kish, which however at other times was independent. In the date-formulae occur as conquests some more distant towns such as Kazallu, Akuz, Kar-Shamash, Marad, and Isin, after its fall. It was never, before Hammurabi himself, more than a diocese of about fifty miles radius about the capital city, and even this by no means tightly compacted, but subject to invasions and erosions on all its bounds.

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