Bablon and Elam 6

The invading Semites brought with them fresh blood and unexhausted
energy, and, finding many of their own race in scattered cities and
settlements throughout the country, they succeeded in establishing a
purely Semitic dynasty, with its capital at Babylon, and set about the
task of freeing the country from any vestiges of foreign control. Many
centuries earlier Semitic kings had ruled in Babylonian cities, and
Semitic empires had been formed there. Sargon and Nar?m-Sin,
having their capital at Agade, had established their control over a
considerable area of Western Asia and had held Elam as a province. But
so far as Elam was concerned Kutir-Nakhkhunte had reversed the balance
and had raised Elam to the position of the predominant power.

Of the struggles and campaigns of the earlier kings of the First Dynasty
of Babylon we know little, for, although we possess a considerable
number of legal and commercial documents of the period, we have
recovered no strictly historical inscriptions. Our main source of
information is the dates upon these documents, which are not dated by
the years of the reigning king, but on a system adopted by the early
Babylonian kings from their Sumerian predecessors. In the later periods
of Babylonian history tablets were dated in the year of the king who was
reigning at the time the document was drawn up, but this simple system
had not been adopted at this early period. In place of this we find that
each year was cited by the event of greatest importance which occurred
in that year. This event might be the cutting of a canal, when the year
in which this took place might be referred to as "the year in which
the canal named Ai-khegallu was cut;" or it might be the building of a
temple, as in the date-formula, "the year in which the great temple of
the Moon-god was built;" or it might be "the conquest of a city, such
as the year in which the city of Kish was destroyed." Now it will be
obvious that this system of dating had many disadvantages. An event
might be of great importance for one city, while it might never have
been heard of in another district; thus it sometimes happened that the
same event was not adopted throughout the whole country for designating
a particular year, and the result was that different systems of
dating were employed in different parts of Babylonia. Moreover, when a
particular system had been in use for a considerable time, it required
a very good memory to retain the order and period of the various events
referred to in the date-formulae, so as to fix in a moment the date of a
document by its mention of one of them. In order to assist themselves
in their task of fixing dates in this manner, the scribes of the First
Dynasty of Babylon drew up lists of the titles of the years, arranged
in chronological order under the reigns of the kings to which they
referred. Some of these lists have been recovered, and they are of the
greatest assistance in fixing the chronology, while at the same time
they furnish us with considerable information concerning the history of
the period of which we should otherwise have been in ignorance.

From these lists of date-formul?, and from the dates themselves which
are found upon the legal and commercial tablets of the period, we learn
that Kish, Ka-sallu, and Isin all gave trouble to the earlier kings of
the First Dynasty, and had in turn to be subdued. Elam did not watch the
diminution of her influence in Babylonia without a struggle to retain
it. Under Kudur-mabug, who was prince or governor of the districts lying
along the frontier of Elam, the Elamites struggled hard to maintain
their position in Babylonia, making the city of Ur the centre from which
they sought to check the growing power of Babylon. From bricks that have
been recovered from Mukayyer, the site of the city of Ur, we learn that
Kudur-mabug rebuilt the temple in that city dedicated to the Moon-god,
which is an indication of the firm hold he had obtained upon the city.
It was obvious to the new Semitic dynasty in Babylon that, until Ur and
the neighbouring city of Larsam had been captured, they could entertain
no hope of removing the Elamite yoke from Southern Babylonia. It is
probable that the earlier kings of the dynasty made many attempts to
capture them, with varying success. An echo of one of their struggles in
which they claimed the victory may be seen in the date-formula for the
fourteenth year of the reign of Sin-muballit, Hammurabi's father and
predecessor on the throne of Babylon. This year was referred to in the
documents of the period as "the year in which the people of Ur were
slain with the sword." It will be noted that the capture of the city
is not commemorated, so that we may infer that the slaughter of the
Elamites which is recorded did not materially reduce their influence,
as they were left in possession of their principal stronghold. In fact,
Elam was not signally defeated in the reign of Kudur-mabug, but in that
of his son Rim-Sin. From the date-formul? of Hammurabi's reign we learn
that the struggle between Elam and Babylon was brought to a climax in
the thirtieth year of his reign, when it is recorded in the formulas
that he defeated the Elamite army and overthrew Rim-Sin, while in the
following year we gather that he added the land of E'mutbal, that is,
the western district of Elam, to his dominions.