The end of the first Babylonian dynasty

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The last session was scheduled for March 16, 2020, but could not take place due to confinement and was recorded without an audience on May 18, 2020. This session picked up the thread of politico-military history where weleft off at the end of the second lecture, studying the reigns of the last two kings of the first Babylonian dynasty : Ammi-ṣaduqa, then Samsu-ditana. In a second stage, we analyzed the event that brings the sequence to a close, namely the fall of Babylon in 1595.

The reigns of the last two rulers of the ^1stdynasty cover half a century: according to the testimony of the royal lists, the throne was first occupied by Ammi-ṣaduqa for 21 years, from 1646 to 1626, then by Samsu-ditana for 31 years, from 1625 to 1595. Neither the names of Ammi-ṣaduqa's years, nor his single commemorative inscription reveal that his reign was anything but tranquil: it's the archival documents as well as the archaeological data that show this. A file of letters that Ammi-ṣaduqa addressed to the Sippar authorities in the course of his fifteenth year indicates just how dangerous the situation around Sippar-Yahrurum was in 1632 : the city was then threatened by Kassites belonging to the Samharu and Bimatu. In A.D. 18, the site of Sippar-Amnanum was destroyed and abandoned,as was that of Harradum.

The study of Samsu-ditana's reign is obviously hampered by the fact that we know it ended badly : but we must study it for its own sake, without teleological aims. We began by refuting S. Richardson's proposal that Samsu-ditana was a rebel chieftain : he was in fact the son of Ammi-ṣaduqa and we have no reason to imagine that he did not accede to the throne according to the usual rules of succession. We have no Samsu-ditana inscriptions and only abbreviated versions of his names of years. Fortunately, the archives are fairly abundant: there are signs of serious economic difficulties, but they show no signs of an immediate downfall. The connection of letter fragments AbB 6 24+186 has enabled F. van Koppen to show that in Samsu-ditana 19, the kingdom of Aleppo had not yet been conquered by the Hittite king Mursili ^I: exchanges of ambassadors and gifts between Aleppo and Babylon were still taking place. At that time, Agum was a Kassite chief living somewhere on the Middle Euphrates, who still recognized the supremacy of the Babylonian king.

The second part of the lecture was devoted to the fall of Babylon. Since there are few clues to be found in the kingdom's texts contemporary with the event, it is necessary to look outside, as well as in later texts that echo it, before returning to the interpretation of data from the period: the dossier has been greatly enriched in recent years,thanks in particularto a kudurru published in 2014 by S. Paulus and theEpic of the King of the Land of the Sea Gulkišar edited by E. Zomer. The Hittite raid to which the fall of Babylon has long been attributed is still only known from a late chronicle: however, there is no reason to deny its existence. Samsu-ditana may have sent troops to help the king of Aleppo, who was under attack from the Hittites. After conquering Aleppo, Mursili would have pursued these troops in their retreat and thus reached Babylon ; Samsu-ditana would have died in the fighting. All this remains to be verified.

Whatever the case, it's clear that the Hittites simply dealt the final blow to the Babylonian kingdom, which had already had to face attacks from the south, under the king of the Sea Country Gulkišar. No doubt there were also internal causes for this collapse: but we must not, as was long the case under the influence of a certain historiographical fashion, refuse to take external interventions into account as having largely contributed to the fall of the ^1stBabylonian dynasty.

The parallel with the fall of Ur in 2000 seems very strong to me: Ibbi-Sin had fallen to the Elamites, who had seized the statue of the god Nanna. Similarly, it seems that the Hittites were responsible for the fall of Samsu-ditana and the exile of the statue of Marduk. But the Hittites didn't stay any longer than the Elamites. By 2000, political power had passed to the Amorrites, already present in Sumer ; by 1600, the Kassites seem to have enjoyed a similar opportunity. Indeed, the Babylonian throne did not remain vacant for long : it was occupied by Agum, a king of Kassite origin whose ancestors had long sojourned in Babylonian lands. So, by 1600, there was no Kassite invasion : it was a Kassite ruler who took advantage of the Babylonian throne's vacancy to settle there.