The civilization of Babylonia and Assyria
Its remains, language, history, religion, commerce, law, art, and literature
by Morris Jastrow | 1915 | 168,585 words
This work attempts to present a study of the unprecedented civilizations that flourished in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley many thousands of years ago. Spreading northward into present-day Turkey and Iran, the land known by the Greeks as Mesopotamia flourished until just before the Christian era....
Part IX
Hammurapi's reign thus closes an epoch in the history of the country and marks the beginning of a new age. The prolonged struggle between Sumerians and Akkadians ends in the definite supremacy of the latter, reinforced by the Amorites. Babylonia as a united empire with Semitic rulers on the throne arises out of the issue to become a dominant factor in the world's history. The Akkadian language replaces the Sumerian as the popular speech and becomes also the official medium, although for the present it did not drive the Sumerian entirely out of use.
A survey of the history such as we have attempted up to the days of Hammurapi makes it perfectly clear why the culture of Babylonia and therefore also that of Assyria is essentially a mixed product, due to the long-continued process of alternating conflict and assimilation between the Semitic and non-Semitic elements of the population.
If the Semites come out of this conflict as the conquerors, they nevertheless have absorbed much of the Sumerian culture; in fact, the ability to combine these foreign elements the script, the religious beliefs, the rites, the military organization and other features with their own points of view and contributions to civilization is to be accounted as an important factor in leading to their ultimate triumph. From the time of Hammurapi, we may drop all distinctions of Sumer and Akkad and speak of the Sumero-Akkadian kingdom, or more briefly Babylonia, since Babylon as the political centre now assumes a fundamental importance.
A centralizing tendency in religion also sets in, as we shall have occasion to point out in the following chapter, leading to heaping on Marduk, as the god of the city of Babylon, the powers and attributes of all the chief gods, the patrons of the old centres in the south and north. Babylon and Marduk become the dominating factors in the historical and religious fortunes of the country; and in view of the wide scope of religion in ancient civilizations, the two factors also that condition the further steps in the unfolding of the culture of both Babylonia and Assyria.