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The Amorites II

The Ill fated first Babylonian Empire

The Amorites were a rural group originating from the region north of Sumer. 

They were comprised of contentious tribal (and sub-tribal) groups lead by ambitious chieftains.  

While they absorbed the Akkadian language and culture, they did not have the deep cultural beliefs in social order and in the veneration of cities and infrastructure that had kept Sumer peaceful and prosperous for so long. 

They saw no problem with fighting amongst themselves and forming unstable alliances.

After the fall of UR III, the Amorite dynasty of Isin was strong enough to keep peace in southern and northern Sumer for a hundred years. 

But, this ended in 1926
or 1923 BC (middle chronology) when Larsa, under Gungunum, rebelled  and captured Ur, plunging southern Sumer
into civil war.

There was not only war in the south, northern Sumer was left open to the sorts of conflicts already occurring across the rest of Amorite Mesopotamia. 

The (Amorite
ruled) city of Kazullu (in northern Sumer) was one of the early losers in this period,
finding itself attacked by several neighbours. 

It lost land, and ultimately fell, to Sumu-(Amorite for chieftain) Abum. He established his capital
at Kisurra but more importantly,  the land he conquered (1897 BC Middle Chronology) included Babylon. 

Babylon was at the time a small
town, the cult centre for Marduk (at the time a minor deity but destined to
become the head deity of the Mesopotamian religious pantheon, as Babylon gained
in prominence).

Little
is known about the next three ‘Babylonian’ chieftains who were busy defending their territory and expanding it (modestly) at the expense of their
neighbours. 

The greatest danger for them was attacks from the south (from Larsa and on one occasion from a briefly resurgent Isin).

Hammurabi’s
father, Sin-Muballit, was more successful. He decisively repelled Larsa then steadily strengthening his kingdom into a
significant (if somewhat modest) local power. 

He transferred his capital to
Babylon and was the first of his Babylonian dynasty to take on the Amorite title ‘Sin’
(meaning king).

He
retired due to ill health with his son, Hammurabi (Amorite:
ʿAmmu-rāpiʾ  meaning my grandfather, or
paternal uncle,
was great, or a healer), ascending to the throne at eighteen ( 1792 BC, MC). 

At
that time the geopolitical situation was complex and in a state of flux.

To the south, Larsa and Isin continued to struggle for dominance while several cities maintained
their independence.

To the East was Eshnunna. Eshnunna had more usually been a client
state (most often of Elam)  but a strong and clever native dynasty had more recently taken control. 

They had managed to expand their territory and even
forced the Amorite king Šamši-Adad I to flee his home in Ekallatum (in what
would later become the Assyrian region) for Babylon.

Šamši-Adad
I had subsequently returned and had proven triumphant. 

He conquered the nearby towns that had been weakened by Eshnunnites (but not held by them). 

He then used treachery, war and assassination to put his own son on the throne of Mari and make Eshnunna subservient to him.

He established what was a very large kingdom, (‘The Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia’). He controlled the important
East-West overland trade routes and even ‘inherited’ the ancient Assyrian trading colonies in Anatolia.

To the
Northwest (of Babylon) was the large and powerful Yamhad Amorite tribe centred on Halab
(modern day Aleppo) and its smaller rival Qatna.

Of the
warring fractions it was (later) said that.

“No
king is truly powerful just on his own: ten to fifteen kings follow Hammurabi of
Babylon, as many follow Rim-Sin of Larsa, as many follow Ibal-pi-El of
Eshnunna, and as many follow Amut-pi-El of Qatna (North-west Amorite
territory); but twenty kings follow Yarim-Lim of Yamhad (Aleppo).” 

Hammurabi
is more famous for his Code of laws which
he claimed to
have received from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. He had it inscribed on human-sized stone pillars and placed them in
the towns of his realm. 

Much could be said about this, but it isn’t the focus here. 

Only scanty and contradictory
records remain of his military exploits. Many of the dates, sequences and
circumstances are vague. 

At
first his ambitions were stymied by the balance of power.

His first real opportunity came five years later. He had already joined an unsuccessful alliance against Larsa and then (1787 BC) took advantage
of the weakness of Isin to turn against former allies to conquer Uruk and raid Isin. 

Unfortunately,
his raid on Isin brought him into direct conflict with Larsa (Rim-Sin) who took possession of Isin and some of its former allies.  Hammurabi was driven back and lost the dynasty’s original capital,
Kisurra, which later became independent.

The events eventually leading to his great breakthrough didn’t come till many years later beginning with the death of Šamši-Adad I (1776 BC, MC) of the KoUM. 

After that the chickens came home to roost for the man’s successors.

One of
his two sons soon lost Mari (1775 B.C) to its exiled prince Zimri-Lim (with help
from Yamhad).  Zimri-Lim remained beholden to Yamhad and called  its then king ‘father’.

As soon as he regained Mari, Zimri-Lim had to fight factions within his own tribe, after which he concentrated on modestly extending his kingdom to the North turning it into a strong and wealthy kingdom.

The
other son of Šamši-Adad I, Ishme-Dagan I, was in charge of the region which would
later become Assyria. 

He was a highly competent ruler and general but found himself pressed when Eshnunna rebelled 3-4 years later (1771 BC) and began to regain territory it had originally lost to the father.

 Hammurabi had already expanded his kingdom East and a little north which gave him a contested border with Eshnunna, and he joined in support of Ishme-Dagan I. 

Over the next 5 or 6 years, Ibal pi’el II of Eshnunna found himself fighting on two fronts.

He then made an alliance with the Gutians and his old allies the Elamites. This gave him the command of a truly immense army: 12,000 of his own troops, 10,000
Gutians and a large expeditionary force of Elamites. 

More likely though, the Elamites (under the command of their great general Kunnam) had greater control over the combined force and Ibal pi’el II found himself increasingly a hostage to his Elamite allies. 

The Elamites began by betraying the Gutian princess, Nawaritum, who really wanted to
attack Larsa. They took her army off her, probably with promises of rich plunder, and headed north.

While they had a huge army,  they still had a second front against the Babylonians  and Ishme-Dagan I proved to be a clever general. 

He made several local alliances and Assyria had regions that were difficult terrain for chariots and armies of that time to conquer. In the north are mountains and well watered plains. Going further south there are marshes,  before giving way to the more familiar arid regions of
Mesopotamia. 

As their ‘Assyrian’
campaign slowed, the Eshnunnites (or more likely Kunnam) betrayed their ally Mari by raiding their settlements, opening a third front for them. 

Yamhad hurried troops to the aide of  Mari. 

The Babylonians, (Amnanum  tribesmen) were allied with Ishme-Dagan I ( a more nomadic tribe) against Eshnunna and the Elamites. The Amorites from Mari were Banu-Simaal tribesmen with Yamhad tribes-men helping them.  Ishme-Dagan I was now nominally on the same side as Zimri-Lim of Mari and those two definitely didn’t get on. 

There was likely to be other ethnic groups and factional interests to further complicate things but Hammurabi still managed to take control of the alliance and mold it too his will. He was senior in age, he was an experienced and  capable general, he had a forceful personality and initially he was the only king in the combined force. 

Still it must have been an interesting planning group with so many fractions, especially when Hammurabi invited Ishme-Dagan I to join them in the command tent!

But things were going to became even more complicated.  

The Elamites, clearly unhappy with what they and achieved in terms of plunder and territorial gains turned on Eshnunna (a former client state which had been independent or semi-independent for some time). 

This meant that the diminished Eshnunnites were now battling the Elamites. They couldn’t stop them seizing Eshnunna and killing their king in 1765 BC.

Hammurabi
continued to manage what must have been an unruly alliance by the use of persuasion,
threats and bullying. He even got his old enemy , Rim-Sin of Larsa, to send him
troops to evict the Elamites and incorporated some surviving Eshnunnites into his  Grand Army. 

He finally evicted the
Elamites from Eshnunna and Mesopotamia in 1764 BC but he
didn’t get all he wanted. 

He wanted to take control of Eshnunna himself or put
his own client king on the throne but the army chose Ṣillī-Sîn.

We don’t know a lot about Ṣillī-Sîn. He may have been an Eshnunnite. He was described as a ‘modest section leader in
the army’ which might be a nod to the old Sumerian penchant for understatement.

What we
do know is that he was very wary of  Hammurabi
and/or whatever alliance he was offered but he eventually accepted it and
married one of  Hammurabi’s daughters.

It was
then that Hammurabi showed his true colours.

On the
flimsiest of pretexts, he took whatever of his ‘grand army’ that would follow
him against  Rim-Sin of Larsa, claiming
he hadn’t sent enough troops to help fight the Elamites.

During
a six month campaign, he formed an alliance with Nippur and Lagash to help capture Isin
and Uruk but then turned on his two new allies and captured their cities.  

This became a pattern for Hammurabi. Driven by power and greed
he would make alliances and then break them as soon as they no
longer suited him.

He
conquered Larsa in 1763 BC after a siege of several months, capturing and murdering Rim-Sin, which left no one and no force in the south that
could oppose him.

In 1762
BC he returned to the north to attack his new ally Ṣillī-Sîn, capturing Eshnunna
in 1761 BC after an epic battle that involved 12,000 men on each side and presumably killing the new king.

In
Autumn of the same year, he treacherously moved on to attack and murder his long term ally
Zimrî-Lîm of Mari.

This
left him free to attack Ishme-Dagan I but this time he faced a skilled and
determined opponent resulting in a prolonged campaign. 

Ishme-Dagan I was  eventually forced to surrender with an
unknown fraction of his kingdom remaining to him and pay tribute to Babylon. 

During this time Mari revolted (1759 BC).

Mari
had been a wealthy trading kingdom and its palace was the envy of the region.
This time Hammurabi returned to completely destroy the city so it
could never rise again. 

In just a few years, (1755 BC) , Hammurabi was the undisputed master of Mesopotamia. Only Yamhad and Qatna maintained their independence.

1.    
The people didn’t love them.

It
should have been a glorious triumph. Hammurabi should have had control of an incredibly powerful and rich Empire.

Later Babylonians deified  him, seeing him as a God and a great king. He had made Babylon and its God Marduk great (and after all, who doesn’t like a conqueror?)  

But the people he conquered saw him very differently. He was treacherous,  a liar, a bully and a despot.

His ‘clever’
administrative reforms were built upon what many others such as Rim Sin of Larsa had done and his code of laws was built on existing Sumerian laws.

More importantly, he did not manage to make his newly conquered people love him or his successor.  

As had
been demonstrated several times before, Sumer would only unite behind a Lugal they admired and respected. Try to force them and they would only revolt.

By the
time Hammurabi was finished conquering his empire, he had spent the last fourteen years of his reign almost continually fighting wars. He
was old and sick. 

Samsu-Iluna, had already
taken over the responsibilities of the throne and assumed full reign in 1749
BCE.

There
was no problem with Samsu-iluna’s military abilities but when trouble broke
out, there were just too many fires to put out.

Around
1741 BC Rim-sin II , a nephew of Rim-sin of Larsa, rebelled. A total of twenty
six cities including the once powerful Eshnunna joined him. 

It took several years to put down this revolt but it was only a few years later
when another pan-Sumerian revolt broke out, this time more successful, establishing
the somewhat enigmatic Sealand Dynasty in the far south of Sumer which was destined to outlast Amorite
Babylon. 

While Samsu-iluna’
was distracted by the first revolt, Assyria descended into
chaos and civil war which removed the Amorite rulers (clients of Babylon) in
favour of a new Akkadian (local) dynasty.

2.     Killing all the Geese that would have laid Golden Eggs for them

Mesopotamia was a very rich region. The first Babylonian Empire should have been very rich and powerful, but
it destroyed much of what it conquered.

The
records in the cities of Ur, Uruk,  Larsa, Nippur and Isin progressively ceased
during Samsu-iluna’s reign and archaeological records show these cities became
largely or completely abandoned for hundreds of years, until well into the
Kassite period. 

Great cities like Larsa and Mari never recovered and Eshnunna was devastated , it was never a great city
again.

Some archeologists have speculated that this was due to Amorite mismanagement, that the native Sumerians deserted the Amorites for the native
Sealand Dynasty in the south. Whatever the truth of this part, the main reason was just how destructive Amorite rule was for its occupied lands.

The
Babylonian’s favourite form of warfare was to construct fortified dams across a
city’s water and irrigation canals either depriving it of water or releasing
the water all at once to cause a flood. 

This was highly effective but
incredibly destructive in Sumer which only survived through its canals. The Babylonians never
returned themselves to repair the damage, leaving the locals to do that.

And, once
they had conquered the city they would loot it and tear down its defensive
walls. This left their conquered territory defenceless in the face of Elamite,
Kassite and Amorite armies and slaver raids that followed.

In the end of his reign Samsu-iluna
was only left with a kingdom that was only fractionally larger than the one his
father had started out with 50 years before. 

He did have control of the Euphrates up to and including the ruins of Mari and its
dependencies and whatever was left of a much diminished Eshnunna which suffered
a catastrophic
flood in 1755 BC.

The Fall of Babylon

After
fifty years, the (first) Babylonian Empire continued only in name. Future kings
became defensive  and inward-looking.

Mesopotamia
had a (mostly) peaceful influx of skilled farmers. 

Sumer had the Kassites (thought
to come) from the Zagros region. 

Assyria, Yamhad and Anatolia had Hurrians coming
from the Caucasus.

Yamhad
filled some of the void caused by the destruction of Mari and eventually
absorbed their rival Qatna but the last great Amorite kingdom was to become threatened by the rise of the Hittites who had begun uniting Anatolia under a
single dynasty.

Hattusili I (1650–1620
BC) campaigned extensively against Yamhad and its allies. 

He bequeathed his empire to his grandson  Mursili I who finally conquered a much weakened Halap (Aleppo) and then took his troops on an epic march all the way down south to sack Babylon (1595 BC).

 This left the site in ruins and not long after the industrious Kassite immigrants took over.