The end of Samsu-iluna's reign

The second part of the lecture was devoted to a description of the kingdom of Babylon during the last years of Samsu-iluna's reign. We began with the economic life of ; data from texts already published were supplemented by those from archives in the process of being published. The archives of the creditor Gimillum, preserved at Yale, document the last years of Samsu-iluna and the beginning of the reign of Abi-ešuh. Another previously unpublished batch of archives can be found at the Musée des Antiquités de Rouen ; it was part of the collection of the Abbé de Genouillac, who bequeathed them to his native town. These twelve texts, dated between the years 30 and 34 of Samsu-iluna, relate to the operation of an establishment called nakkamtum , a place where small livestock were fattened before being offered to the deities of Sippar-Yahrurum. The name of the year 34 celebrates the construction of a royal palace by Samsu-iluna : " Year in which he built a princely palace, a dwelling suitable for the residence of his kingship ". Whatever his motives for building a new palace, this undertaking testifies to the resources Samsu-iluna had at his disposal at the end of his reign, as the work was on a massive scale. Unfortunately, no trace of this work is to be found in the documents we have on the practice. But it is true that the "   " textual coverage of the end of Samsu-iluna's reign is currently limited. The fate of the " palace of Sumu-la-El ", since abandoned, remains unknown.

The lecture ended with a discussion of Samsu-iluna's memory. If we were to attempt an assessment of his reign, the impression left by what has been seen would undoubtedly be that of a failure : indeed, Samsu-iluna proved incapable of preserving the empire that his father Hammu-rabi had built. But this was the fate of almost all such constructions before the first millennium : they did not survive their founder very long. The trace left by Samsu-iluna in later memory is not negligible, however, as if his failures had not succeeded in making him forgotten. We saw this in the field of justice with his rescript. The name of the year 34 of Ammi-ditana commemorates the making of a statue of his grandfather : " Year in which King Ammi-ditana brought into the Enamtila a heroic statue of his ancestor Samsu-iluna and into the Emeteursag his own princely statue, statue in gold ". Hammu-rabi received no such tribute. The memory of Samsu-iluna was not limited to the time of his immediate descendants. W. G. Lambert, in his work on the library of Assurbanipal, the remains of which were transported in their entirety to the British Museum in the ^19thcentury ^{, found two small fragments that mention Samsu-iluna. The condition of these fragments is rather frustrating. But it shows that the memory of Hammu-rabi's son had been passed down through the centuries and was still alive a millennium later.}