Abstract
Samsu-iluna has often been portrayed as the successor unable to preserve the great kingdom formed by Hammu-rabi. Thus, his reign was defined by Gadd in Cambridge Ancient History in 1973 as " not much shorter, but less remarkable than that of his father [1] ". It is true that by the end of his reign, the extent of the Babylonian kingdom had diminished considerably. However, it was during Samsu-iluna's reign that very important transformations took place, particularly from a cultural point of view.
The sources available for studying this period of almost four decades are first and foremost commemorative texts, foremost among which are the " names of years " used to date documents. For Samsu-iluna, there's no problem : the sequence of its 38 year names is known. The same general problem of interpretation applies to them as to most reigns: mentions of politico-military events are in the minority, and the question is how to interpret year names that mention religious offerings. Should they be seen as signs of weakening ? We also have 9 commemorative inscriptions from Samsu-iluna. Unlike Hammu-rabi, depicted at the top of his Code stele, there is no representation of his son : all we know is that he had a stone statue of himself made, weighing 2.5 tons and therefore clearly larger than life. The existence of a fragment of a stone statue was reported as early as 1994 : only the lower part of the statue has been preserved, not the bust or the head ; what remains would weigh 160 kilos. The inscription is engraved on the part of the tunic between the belt and the knees ; unfortunately, it has not yet been published [2].
