ABSTRACT

Soon aer Hammurabi’s death, the Old Babylonian kingdom began to contract. is was due to a number of factors, including rebellions within the subject territories, further invasions by the Elamites, and the occupation of Babylonia, as far north as Nippur, by a new dynasty called the ‘Sealand’ from the marshlands of southern Mesopotamia. But the kingdom lingered on until it was abruptly terminated, c. 1595, by the Hittite king Mursili I, who sacked and destroyed Babylon, ending the reign of the last Amorite king Samsu-ditana. Mursili’s victory paved the way for the rise of a Kassite dynasty in Babylonia. First attested in texts from Hammurabi’s reign, the Kassites were immigrants to Babylonia, perhaps from an original homeland in the Zagros Mountains. ey settled peacefully in their new land, aer some initial hostilities with its existing inhabitants, and by the time of the Hittite conquest, a group of them were becoming a major political force within Babylonia. Following their conquest of the ‘Sealanders’, they established a ruling dynasty, under which the Babylonian kingdom once again became a major international power. Its administrative seat was shied from Babylon to a new site Dur-Kurigalzu (modern Aqar Quf). But the Kassites took care to preserve and nurture the cultural traditions of Hammurabi’s Babylon, and the former capital remained Babylonia’s cultural and religious centre. Indeed under Kassite patronage, the arts and sciences ourished in Babylonia as never before. Akkadian in its Babylonian dialect became the international language of diplomacy, used widely throughout the Near East. Kassite rulers belonged to the elite group of Great Kings of the Near East, a status they shared with the pharaohs of Egypt, and the rulers of Hatti and Assyria. But disputes and conicts with their northern neighbour Assyria led to at least two Assyrian invasions of their kingdom and eventually subjection to Assyrian rule by Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1244-1208). Fieen years aer Tukulti-Ninurta’s death, the Kassites regained their independence – but for a few decades only. eir kingdom fell nally to the Elamites c. 1155.