Part X

It was no easy task for even so great a ruler such as Hammurapi was to hold a vast empire together. The only hope lay in bringing about an assimilation of the population to the extent at least of creating a feeling of national pride as the basis for the maintenance of the political integrity of the realm. Such a policy, however, had its distinct limitations. Sumer and Akkad could be brought together in this way.

Assyria in the north was still too weak to offer serious resistance, but these conditions did not apply to districts beyond Assyria to the north and northeast the land of the Guti, Lullubi and other groups of whom, in fact, we hear nothing during the period of the dynasty of Babylon, while Elam to the East, chafing under the humiliating yoke, merely waited for a favorable opportunity to again reassert herself.

The opportunity came not many years after the death of Hammurapi, in 2081 B.C. The same Rim-Sin who overthrew Isin, and who was himself obliged, after a long and desperate struggle, to yield to Hammurapi, once more became active despite his advanced years. ^[1] After his defeat by Hammurapi, he appears to have returned into the mountain regions bordering on Elam and there gathered recruits for a fresh attack. We hear in the days of Samsuiluna, the son and successor of Hammurapi, of a new group, the Cassites, who were destined to become the controlling element in Babylonia.

The origin of these Cassites is still involved in considerable doubt. ^[2] They were a people of mountaineers, semi-barbarous, but capable of rapidly absorbing the elements of the higher civilization with which they came in contact in Elam and subsequently in Babylonia.

The ninth year of Samsuiluna, that is 2071 B.C., records a conflict with the "Cassite hordes" which stands in connection with the events of the following year, in which Samsuiluna is at war with Emutbal, Ur, Uruk and Isin. In the same year we find Rim-Sin in possession of Upi (or Opis), the old border city in the extreme north of Babylonia, and assuming with the consent of the chief goddess of Upi, Ninmakh, the title of king "over the whole land". Clearly Rim-Sin had succeeded in rallying to his side the districts in the south over which he formerly ruled as well as Emutbal.

The army which he gathered must have been reinforced by the Cassite hosts, aiding him to march across the road leading from Ecbatana to Babylon, along which lay Upi as an important strategic point. The effort of Rim-Sin and his allies, however, failed, and Rim-Sin appears to have perished in the flames of his own palace. Samsuiluna took his revenge on Ur and Uruk by destroying the walls of these two ancient centres.

For all that, he could not prevent frequent uprisings in various parts of Babylonia, nor the constitution of a rival state in the marshy districts of the extreme south, spoken of in the inscriptions as the "sea land". Here we find Ilumailu establishing himself as king, c. 2070 B.C., and giving considerable trouble to Samsuiluna (2080-2043 B.C.) and to his son and successor, Abeshu (2042-2015 B.C.). The rulers of the "sea land" who maintained their independence during the remainder of the period of the firjst dynasty of Babylon were probably not Semites, despite the Semitic formation of their names. We may see in them the last faint and desperate efforts of Sumerians, driven into the waste lands of the south, difficult of access, to assert themselves.

Though for the greater part obliged to limit their jurisdiction to a small strip bordering on the Persian Gulf the portion of Babylonia that subsequently became known as Chaldsea the successors of Dumailu, of whom we know no less than ten, made incursions from time to time, in the hope of regaining at least the old capital Isin the last stronghold, as we have seen, of the opponents of the dynasty of Babylon. For a short time, indeed, Damikilishu II adopting the name of the last ruler of the Isin dynasty succeeds in this aim.

He occupies the city and rebuilds the wall, but, about 1988 B.C., we have the record that Ammiditana (c. 2014-1978 B.C.), the son of Abeshu, destroyed this wall, which naturally involved the capture of the place. The two successors of Ammiditana appear to have kept the rival kings in check, but in the year 1926 B.C., a strange occurrence brings the dynasty of Babylon to a sudden end. This was an invasion of the Hittites, with whom a new and entirely unexpected factor enters into Babylonian history.

These Hittites come from the northwest, from the Taurus range and beyond. ^[3] The name Khatti given to them appears to be one that acquired a very wide and general significance and included a variety of groups, of whom the Mitanni in northwestern Mesopotamia represent a subdivision. The centre, however, of Hittite dominion was in the interior of Asia Minor, stretching at an early time up to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Here we find a powerful kingdom established which in the fifteenth century is able to oppose an active resistance against the attempts of Egyptian rulers to bring northern Syria under their control.

The entire region from northern Syria to Boghaz-Keui, near the Black Sea, is covered with mounds containing remains of Hittite palaces and forts which, while showing the decided influence of Babylonian and Assyrian models, ^[4] have yet distinctive features which justify us in speaking of the Hittites as a unit, though it must always be borne in mind that the term is merely a convenient one for massing together a number of groups that combined to form powerful kingdoms in central and northern Asia Minor, and then, pressing southwards, established a number of independent states in northern Syria between the Euphrates and the Taurus range and probably also in the Zagros range, while offshoots proceeded still further south and, entering Palestine proper, became an element of the very mixed population of that region.

Hittite groups thus covered an enormous area and it is not surprising, therefore, to find a contingent, attracted by the culture of Babylonia, passing into this region in the hope of establishing themselves there. The Hittites swooped down upon Babylonia and, taking advantage of weakened conditions through the constant attacks from the rival kingdom in the "sea land", which had to be repulsed, actually succeeded in overthrowing Samsuditana in the year 1926 B.C.

The attack was probably undertaken as a plundering raid, to which an open country like the Euphrates Valley was frequently subject, but for the time being with the result of actually placing a Hittite chieftain on the throne of Babylon. How long the Hittites remained in control we do not know, as in general our knowledge of the closing years of the dynasty of Babylon is still very defective, while with the downfall of this dynasty a gap of a most serious character ensues which stretches over the succeeding centuries.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Assuming that he was a very young man at his conquest of Isin in 2126 B.C., he must have been almost eighty years old when he again makes the attempt to regain his lost prestige.

[2]:

See Meyer, Gcschichte des Altertums I, 2, p. 652, seq.

[3]:

See Garstang, Land of the Hittites (London, 1910), and Ed. Meyer, Reich und Kultur der Chetiter (Berlin, 1914) ; also above, p. 116.

[4]:

See Plate LIV, Pig. 1, for specimen of Hittite art, showing Assyrian influence.