BABLON AND ELAM 8

An unpublished chronicle in the British Museum gives us further details
of Hammurabi's victory over the Elamites, and at the same time makes it
clear that the defeat and overthrow of Rim-Sin was not so crushing
as has hitherto been supposed. This chronicle relates that Hammurabi
attacked Rim-Sin, and, after capturing the cities of Ur and Larsam,
carried their spoil to Babylon. Up to the present it has been supposed
that Hammurabi's victory marked the end of Elamite influence in
Babylonia, and that thenceforward the supremacy of Babylon was
established throughout the whole of the country. But from the
new chronicle we gather that Hammurabi did not succeed in finally
suppressing the attempts of Elam to regain her former position. It is
true that the cities of Ur and Larsam were finally incorporated in the
Babylonian empire, and the letters of Hammurabi to Sin-idinnam, the
governor whom he placed in authority over Larsam, afford abundant
evidence of the stringency of the administrative control which he
established over Southern Babylonia. But R?m-Sin was only crippled for
the time, and, on being driven from Ur and Larsam, he retired beyond
the Elamite frontier and devoted his energies to the recuperation of his
forces against the time when he should feel himself strong enough again
to make a bid for victory in his struggle against the growing power of
Babylon. It is probable that he made no further attempt to renew the
contest during the life of Hammurabi, but after Samsu-iluna, the son
of Hammurabi, had succeeded to the Babylonian throne, he appeared in
Babylonia at the head of the forces he had collected, and attempted to
regain the cities and territory he had lost.
Inscribed in the reign of Hammurabi with a deed recording
the division of property. The actual tablet is on the right; that which appears to be another and larger tablet on theleft is the hollow clay case in which the tablet on the
right was originally enclosed. Photograph by Messrs. Mansell& Co.
The portion of the text of the chronicle relating to the war between
R?m-Sin and Samsu-iluna is broken so that it is not possible to follow
the campaign in detail, but it appears that Samsu-iluna defeated
Rim-Sin, and possibly captured him or burnt him alive in a palace in
which he had taken refuge.

With the final defeat of R?m-Sin by Samsu-iluna it is probable that Elam
ceased to be a thorn in the side of the kings of Babylon and that
she made no further attempts to extend her authority beyond her own
frontiers. But no sooner had Samsu-iluna freed his country from all
danger from this quarter than he found himself faced by a new foe,
before whom the dynasty eventually succumbed. This fact we learn from
the unpublished chronicle to which reference has already been made, and
the name of this new foe, as supplied by the chronicle, will render
it necessary to revise all current schemes of Babylonian chronology.
Samsu-iluna's new foe was no other than Iluma-ilu, the first king of the
Second Dynasty, and, so far from having been regarded as Samsu-iluna's
contemporary, hitherto it has been imagined that he ascended the throne
of Babylon one hundred and eighteen years after Samsu-iluna's death.
The new information supplied by the chronicle thus proves two important
facts: first, that the Second Dynasty, instead of immediately succeeding
the First Dynasty, was partly contemporary with it; second, that during
the period in which the two dynasties were contemporary they were at
war with one another, the Second Dynasty gradually encroaching on
the territory of the First Dynasty, until it eventually succeeded in
capturing Babylon and in getting the whole of the country under its
control. We also learn from the new chronicle that this Second Dynasty
at first established itself in "the Country of the Sea," that is to say,
the districts in the extreme south of Babylonia bordering on the Persian
Gulf, and afterwards extended its borders northward until it gradually
absorbed the whole of Babylonia. Before discussing the other facts
supplied by the new chronicle, with regard to the rise and growth of the
Country of the Sea, whose kings formed the so-called "Second Dynasty,"
it will be well to refer briefly to the sources from which the
information on the period to be found in the current histories is
derived.
All the schemes of Babylonian chronology that have been suggested during
the last twenty years have been based mainly on the great list of kings
which is preserved in the British Museum. This document was drawn up in
the Neo-Babylonian or Persian period, and when complete it gave a list
of the names of all the Babylonian kings from the First Dynasty of
Babylon down to the time in which it was written. The names of the kings
are arranged in dynasties, and details are given as to the length of
their reigns and the total number of years each dynasty lasted. The
beginning of the list which gave the names of the First Dynasty is
wanting, but the missing portion has been restored from a smaller
document which gives a list of the kings of the First and Second
Dynasties only. In the great list of kings the dynasties are arranged
one after the other, and it was obvious that its compiler imagined that
they succeeded one another in the order in which he arranged them.
But when the total number of years the dynasties lasted is learned, we
obtain dates for the first dynasties in the list which are too early to
agree with other chronological information supplied by the historical
inscriptions. The majority of writers have accepted the figures of the
list of kings and have been content to ignore the discrepancies; others
have sought to reconcile the available data by ingenious emendations of
the figures given by the list and the historical inscriptions, or have
omitted the Second Dynasty entirely from their calculations. The new
chronicle, by showing that the First and Second Dynasties were partly
contemporaneous, explains the discrepancies that have hitherto proved so
puzzling.

It would be out of place here to enter into a detailed discussion of
Babylonian chronology, and therefore we will confine ourselves to a
brief description of the sequence of events as revealed by the new
chronicle. According to the list of kings, Iluma-ilu's reign was a long
one, lasting for sixty years, and the new chronicle gives no indication
as to the period of his reign at which active hostilities with Babylon
broke out. If the war occurred in the latter portion of his reign, it
would follow that he had been for many years organizing the forces of
the new state he had founded in the south of Babylonia before making
serious encroachments in the north; and in that case the incessant
campaigns carried on by Babylon against Blam in the reigns of Hammurabi
and Samsu-iluna would have afforded him the opportunity of establishing
a firm foothold in the Country of the Sea without the risk of Babylonian
interference. If, on the other hand, it was in the earlier part of his
reign that hostilities with Babylon broke out, we may suppose that,
while Samsu-iluna was devoting all his energies to crush Bim-Sin, the
Country of the Sea declared her independence of Babylonian control. In
this case we may imagine Samsu-iluna hurrying south, on the conclusion
of his Elamite campaign, to crush the newly formed state before it had
had time to organize its forces for prolonged resistance.