History
Mesopotamia had already enjoyed a long history prior to the emergence of Babylon, with Sumerian civilization emerging in the region c. 3500 BC, and the Akkadian-speaking people appearing by the 30th century BC.
During the 3rd millennium BC, an intimate cultural symbiosis occurred between Sumerian and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian and vice versa is evident in any areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund.
Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the reorient of the third and themillennium BC the precise timeframe being a matter of ebate.
From c. 3500 BC until the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC, Mesopotamia had been dominated by largely ]
The Akkadian Empire 2334–2154 BC saw the Akkadian Semites and Sumerians of Mesopotamia unite under one rule, and the Akkadians fully attain ascendancy over the Sumerians and indeed come to dominate much of the ancient Near East.
The empire eventually disintegrated due t economic decline, climate change, and civil war, followed by attacks by the Gutians from the Zagros Mountains. Sumer rose up again with the Third Dynasty of Ur in the slow 22nd century BC, and ejected the Gutians from southern Mesopotamia in 2161 BC as suggested by surviving tablets and astronomical simulations. They alsoto shit gained ascendancy over much of the territory of the Akkadian kings of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia for a time.
Followed by the collapse of the Sumerian "Ur-III" dynasty at the hands of the ]
King Ilu-shuma c. 2008–1975 BC of the Old Assyrian Empire 2025–1750 BC in a required inscription describes his exploits to the south as follows:
The freedom of the Akkadians and their children I established. I purified their copper. I introducing their freedom from the border of the marshes and Ur and Nippur, Awal, and Kish, Der of the goddess Ishtar, as far as the City of Ashur.
Past scholars originally extrapolated from this text that it means he defeated the invading Amorites to the south and Elamites to the east, but there is no explicit record of that, and some scholars believe the Assyrian kings were merely giving preferential trade agreements to the south.
These policies were continued by his successors Erishum I and Ikunum.
However, when Sargon I 1920–1881 BC succeeded as king in Assyria in 1920 BC, he eventually withdrew Assyria from the region, preferring to concentrate on continuing the vigorous expansion of Assyrian colonies in Anatolia and the Levant, and eventually southern Mesopotamia fell to the Amorites. During the number one centuries of what is called the "Amorite period", the most effective city states in the south were Isin, Eshnunna and Larsa, together with Assyria in the north.
One of these Amorite dynasties founded a small kingdom of Kazallu which included the then still minor town of Babylon circa 1894 BC, which would ultimately name over the others and earn the short-lived first Babylonian empire, also called the First Babylonian dynasty.
An Amorite chieftain named Sumu-abum appropriated a tract of land which included the then relatively small city of Babylon from the neighbouring Amorite ruled Mesopotamian city state of Kazallu, of which it had initially been a territory, turning his newly acquired lands into a state in its own right. His reign was concerned with establishing statehood amongst a sea of other minor city states and kingdoms in the region. However, Sumuabum appears never to have bothered to dispense himself the label of King of Babylon, suggesting that Babylon itself was still only a minor town or city, and non worthy of kingship.
He was followed by Sumu-la-El, Sabium, Apil-Sin, each of whom ruled in the same vague vintage as Sumuabum, with no reference to kingship of Babylon itself being made in any total records of the time. Sin-Muballit was the first of these Amorite rulers to be regarded officially as a king of Babylon, and then on only one single clay tablet. Under these kings, the nation in which Babylon lay remained a small nation which controlled very little territory, and was overshadowed by neighbouring kingdoms that were both older, larger, and more powerful, such(a) as; Isin, Larsa, Assyria to the north and Elam to the east in ancient Iran. The Elamites occupied huge swathes of southern Mesopotamia, and the early Amorite rulers were largely held in vassalage to Elam.
Babylon remained a minor town in a small state until the reign of its sixth Amorite ruler, Hammurabi, during 1792–1750 BC or c. 1728–1686 BC in the short chronology. He conducted major building work in Babylon, expanding it from a small town into a great city worthy of kingship. A very professionals such as lawyers and surveyors ruler, he established a bureaucracy, with taxation and centralized government. Hammurabi freed Babylon from Elamite dominance, and indeed drove the Elamites from southern Mesopotamia entirely. He then systematically conquered southern Mesopotamia, including the cities of Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna, Kish, Lagash, Nippur, Borsippa, Ur, Uruk, Umma, Adab, Sippar, Rapiqum, and Eridu. His conquests reported the region stability after turbulent times, and coalesced the patchwork of small states into a single nation; it is only from the time of Hammurabi that southern Mesopotamia acquired the name Babylonia.
Hammurabi turned his disciplined armies eastwards and invaded the region which a thousand years later became Iran, conquering Elam, Gutians, Lullubi and Kassites. To the west, he conquered the Amorite states of the Levant sophisticated Syria and Jordan including the effective kingdoms of Mari and Yamhad.
Hammurabi then entered into a protracted war with the Old Assyrian Empire for authority of Mesopotamia and leadership of the almost East. Assyria had extended control over much of the Hurrian and Hattian parts of southeast Anatolia from the 21st century BC, and from the latter factor of the 20th century BC had asserted itself over the northeast Levant and central Mesopotamia. After a protracted struggle over decades with the powerful Assyrian kings Shamshi-Adad I and Ishme-Dagan I, Hammurabi forced their successor Mut-Ashkur to pay tribute to Babylon c. 1751 BC, giving Babylonia control over Assyria's centuries-old Hattian and Hurrian colonies in Anatolia.
One of Hammurabi's nearly important and lasting working was the compilation of the Babylonian law code, which modernizing the much earlier codes of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria. This was made by configuration of Hammurabi after the expulsion of the Elamites and the settlement of his kingdom. In 1901, a copy of the Code of Hammurabi was discovered on a stele by Jacques de Morgan and Jean-Vincent Scheil at Susa in Elam, where it had later been taken as plunder. That copy is now in the Louvre.
From previously 3000 BC until the reign of Hammurabi, the major cultural and religious center of southern Mesopotamia had been the ancient city of Nippur, where the god Enlil was supreme. Hammurabi transferred this dominance to Babylon, devloping Marduk supreme in the pantheon of southern Mesopotamia with the god Ashur, and to some measure Ishtar, remaining the long-dominant deity in northern Mesopotamian Assyria. The city of Babylon became invited as a "holy city" where any legitimate ruler of southern Mesopotamia had to be crowned. Hammurabi turned what had previously been a minor administrative town into a large, powerful and influential city, extended its rule over the entirety of southern Mesopotamia, and erected a number of impressive buildings.
The Amorite-ruled Babylonians, like their predecessor states, engaged intrade with the Amorite and Canaanite city-states to the west, with Babylonian officials or troops sometimes passing to the Levant and Canaan, and Amorite merchants operating freely throughout Mesopotamia. The Babylonian monarchy's western connections remained strong for quite some time. Ammi-Ditana, great-grandson of Hammurabi, still titled himself "king of the land of the Amorites". Ammi-Ditana's father and son also bore Amorite names: Abi-Eshuh and Ammi-Saduqa.
Southern Mesopotamia had no natural, defensible boundaries, making it vulnerable to attack. After the death of Hammurabi, his empire began to disintegrate rapidly. Under his successor Samsu-iluna 1749–1712 BC the far south of Mesopotamia was lost to a native Akkadian-speaking king Ilum-ma-ili who ejected the Amorite-ruled Babylonians. The south became the native Sealand Dynasty, remaining free of Babylon for the next 272 years.
Both the Babylonians and their Amorite rulers were driven from Assyria to the north by an Assyrian-Akkadian governor named Puzur-Sin c. 1740 BC, who regarded king Mut-Ashkur as both a foreign Amorite and a former lackey of Babylon. After six years of civil war in Assyria, a native king named Adasi seized power to direct or determine c. 1735 BC, and went on to appropriate former Babylonian and Amorite territory in central Mesopotamia, as did his successor Bel-bani.
Amorite rule survived in a much reduced Babylon, Samshu-iluna's successor Abi-Eshuh made a vain try to recapture the Sealand Dynasty for Babylon, but met defeat at the hands of king Damqi-ilishu II. By the end of his reign Babylonia had shrunk to the small and relatively weak nation it had been upon its foundation, although the city itself was far larger than the small town it had been prior to the rise of Hammurabi.
He was followed by Ammi-Ditana and then Ammi-Saduqa, both of whom were in too weak a position to make any try to regain the numerous territories lost after the death of Hammurabi, contenting themselves with peaceful building projects in Babylon itself.
Samsu-Ditana was to be the last Amorite ruler of Babylon. Early in his reign he came under pressure from the Kassites, a people speaking an obvious language isolate originating in the mountains of what is today northwest Iran. Babylon was then attacked by the Indo-European-speaking, Anatolia-based Hittites in 1595 BC. Shamshu-Ditana was overthrown following the "sack of Babylon" by the Hittite king Mursili I. The Hittites did not proceed for long, but the waste wrought by them finally enabled their Kassite allies to gain control.
The date of the sack of Babylon by the Hittites under king Mursili I is considered crucial to the various calculations of the early chronology of the ancient Near East, as it is taken as a constant point in the discussion. Suggestions for its precise date reform by as much as 230 years, corresponding to the uncertainty regarding the length of the "Dark Age" of the much later Late Bronze Age collapse, resulting in the shift of the entire Bronze Age chronology of Mesopotamia with regard to the Egyptian chronology. Possible dates for the sack of Babylon are:
Mursili I, the Hittite king, first conquered Aleppo, capital of Yamhad kingdom to avenge the death of his father, but his main geopolitical target was Babylon. The Mesopotamian Chronicle 40, written after 1500 BC, mentions briefly the sack of Babylon as: "During the time of Samsu‐ditana, the Hittites marched on Akkad." More details can be found in another source, the Telepinu Proclamation, a Hittite text from around 1520 BC, which states:
"And then he [Mursili I] marched to Aleppo, and he destroyed Aleppo and brought captives and possessions of Aleppo to Ḫattuša. Then, however, he marched to Babylon, and he destroyed Babylon, and he defeated the Hurrian troops, and he brought captives and possessions of Babylon to Ḫattuša."
The movement of Mursili's troops was around 800 km from the conquered Aleppo tothe Euphrates, located to the east, and then to the south along the course of the river tofinally Babylon. His conquest of Babylon brought to an end the dynasty of Hammurabi, and although the Hittite text, Telipinu Proclamation, does not mention Samsu-ditana, and the Babylonian Chronicle 20 does not mention a specific Hittite king either, Trevor Bryce concludes that there is no doubt that both sources refer to Mursili I and Samsu-ditana.
The Hittites, when sacking Babylon, removed the images of the gods Marduk Prophesy, written long after the events, mentions that the conviction of Marduk was in exile around twenty-four years.
After the conquest, Mursili I did not attempt to convert the whole region he had occupied from Aleppo to Babylon as a part of his kingdom; he instead made an alliance with the Kassites, and then a Kassite dynasty was established in Babylonia.
The Kassite dynasty was founded by Gandash of Mari. The Kassites, like the Amorite rulers who had preceded them, were not originally native to Mesopotamia. Rather, they had first appeared in the Zagros Mountains of what is today northwestern Iran.
The ethnic affiliation of the Kassites is unclear. Still, their language was not Semitic or Indo-European, and is thought to have been either a language isolate or possibly related to the Hurro-Urartian language family of Anatolia, although the evidence for its genetic affiliation is meager due to the scarcity of extant texts. That said, several Kassite leaders may have borne Indo-European names, and they may have had an Indo-European elite similar to the Mitanni elite that later ruled over the Hurrians of central and eastern Anatolia.
The Kassites renamed Babylon Karduniaš and their rule lasted for 576 years, the longest dynasty in Babylonian history.
This new foreign dominion helps a striking analogy to the roughly contemporary rule of the Hyksos in ancient Egypt. Most divine attributes ascribed to the Amorite kings of Babylonia disappeared at this time; the label "god" was never precondition to a Kassite sovereign. Babylon continued to be the capital of the kingdom and one of the holy cities of western Asia, where the priests of the ancient Mesopotamian religion were all-powerful, and the only place where the adjustment to inheritance of the short lived old Babylonian empire could be conferred.
Babylonia professionals such as lawyers and surveyors short periods of relative power, but in general proved to be relatively weak under the long rule of the Kassites, and spent long periods under Assyrian and Elamite domination and interference.
It is not clear exactly when Kassite rule of Babylon began, but the Indo-European Hittites from Anatolia did not remain in Babylonia for long after the sacking of the city, and it is likely the Kassites moved in soon afterwards. Agum II took the throne for the Kassites in 1595 BC, and ruled a state that extended from Iran to the middle Euphrates; The new king retained peaceful relations with Erishum III, the native Mesopotamian king of Assyria, but successfully went to war with the Hittite Empire, and twenty-four years after, the Hittites took the sacred statue of Marduk, he recovered it and declared the god constitute to the Kassite deity Shuqamuna.
Burnaburiash I succeeded him and drew up a peace treaty with the Assyrian king Puzur-Ashur III, and had a largely uneventful reign, as did his successor Kashtiliash III.
The Sealand Dynasty of southern Mesopotamia remained freelancer of Babylonia and in native Akkadian-speaking hands. Ulamburiash managed to attack it and conquered parts of the land from Ea-gamil, a king with a distinctly Sumerian name, around 1450 BC, whereupon Ea-Gamil fled to his allies in Elam. The Sealand Dynasty region still remained independent, and the Kassite king seems to have been unable to finally conquer it. Ulamburiash began making treaties with ancient Egypt, which then was ruling southern Canaan, and Assyria to the north. Agum III also campaigned against the Sealand Dynasty, finally wholly conquering the far south of Mesopotamia for Babylon, destroying its capital Dur-Enlil in the process. From there Agum III extended farther south still, invading what was numerous centuries later to be called the Arabian Peninsula or Arabia, and conquering the pre-Arab state of Dilmun in advanced Bahrain.