The first years of the reign

To find out about the king's deeds, the historian of the Palaeo-Babylonian period naturally turns to the names of the years, which commemorate the sovereign's deeds. Often, these year-names can be linked to commemorative inscriptions that develop the same theme : this is not the case for Samsu-iluna's first seven years, and the harvest is rather disappointing. The sequence covers three themes in turn : justice, canal digging and offerings to deities in their temples. In this last category, the name of the year 5 is interesting : " Year in which Samsu-iluna, the king, had a throne made as an offering to Nanna, his personal deity, and installed in the Ekišnugal, his pure temple ". Two tablets from the archives of General Abisum, found in Ur in his vast house in the AH quarter during the spring excavations 2017, record an expenditure of fish for the " meal of king " at the beginning of the year 5 of Samsu-iluna's reign. This shows that the Babylonian ruler had come as far as Ur by then, and confirms that the Ekišnugal referred to in the name of the year 5 is indeed that of Ur and not the capital's homonymous temple. We don't know the details of this journey, nor all its stages. But we can see that Samsu-iluna's year name emphasizes Ur, not Larsa, where we can assume he also stayed : as if he wanted to give greater importance to the southern religious metropolis than to the ancient capital of Rim-Sin.

The first seven years of his reign seem to have been marked by a severe economic crisis. As early as the third year following the proclamation of the mîšarum, arrears accumulated, a clear sign of difficulties. This clearly shows the weakness of the  system: at the time of a mîšarum, the king's remission of arrears was tantamount to resetting the counters to zero, but the rules of the game were not changed. And so the same causes produced the same effects : the kings had no idea that a one-off remission was not enough and that what we call structural reforms were needed. The existence of a mîšarum in the year 8 of Samsu-iluna was first made known by the publication in 1965 of a fragment of the text of the edict from Scheil's excavations at Sippar in 1894, and dated to the month III of the year 8. Thirty years later, a second fragment of a Samsu-iluna mîšarum edict, preserved at Yale, was published. That this edict was enforced is proven by the traces it left in the archives of numerous creditors. The same phenomenon can be observed as for the mîšarum of Samsu-iluna's advent, in an even clearer way : many archive batches include claims dating from the months preceding the proclamation of the mîšarum and thus cancelled by the king. We also found a letter alluding to the application of the measure and another quoting a passage from the edict(ṣimdatum). Samsu-iluna, aware of the effects of the economic crisis, tried to mitigate its impact on the population of his kingdom by proclaiming a second mîšarum, just 8 years after the first. However, this measure failed to produce the expected results : Babylonia was immediately beset by both internal revolts and external invasion.

[1] BDHP 28, reprinted in D. Charpin, " Dons ou ventes de terres par les rois à l'époque paléo-babylonienne ", in G. Neumann, S. Paulus & K. Kleber (eds.), Grenzüberschreitungen. Studien zur Kulturgeschichte des Alten Orients. Festschrift für Hans Neumann anlässlich seines 65. Geburtstages am 9. Mai 2018, Dubsar 5, Münster, 2018, p. 99-142 (p. 115).