Abstract
After regaining control of Ešnunna and the lower Diyala valley, Samsu-iluna made less successful attempts to the north and west of Babylonia ; in the south, he eventually lost what remained of the land of Sumer.
For a long time, the name of the year 23 remained mysterious : " Year in which King Samsu-iluna, thanks to the impetuous strength Enlil gave him, destroyed Šahna, capital of the land of Apum, Zarhanum, Putra and Šuša... " The question was: where was this land of Apum, and above all, what was this city of Šahna? It was the excavations at Tell Leilan, a few kilometers east of the present-day town of Qameshliye in northeast Syria, that provided the key elements, the problem having been definitively solved thanks to the royal archives at Mari. The site of Tell Leilan has been identified with the ancient city of Šubat-Enlil, also known as Šehna/Šahna. The archives discovered in 1987 in the eastern palace of the lower city document the last three reigns of the Palaeo-Babylonian era : Mutiya, son of Halun-pi-Umu ; Till-Abnu, brother of the previous ; and Yakun-Ašar, son of Dari-epuh. Nearly 200 letters and 5 treatises were published in 2011, enabling us to reconstruct the life of this Upper Mesopotamian kingdom. The situation changed considerably in the decades following Hammu-rabi's destruction of Mari : from then on, the king of Aleppo was recognized as the dominant power in the Habur triangle. The letters found at Tell Leilan give us a very detailed picture of the diplomatic relations that the local kings maintained with their neighbors. We don't know why Samsu-iluna embarked on this campaign against the land of Apum.At the very least, we can see that he made no attempt to establish himself so far from his kingdom : it was all about destruction, not control of the region.
