Hammurabi

Mesopotamian king (r. c. 1792-1750 b.c.e.)

• Born: c. 1810 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Babylon (now in Iraq)
• Died: 1750 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Babylon (now in Iraq)

The Babylonian king Hammurabi stretched his control over the entire length of the Euphrates and Tigris river valleys, ultimately controlling all of Mesopotamia. The literary creativity of the age brought into being the Old Babylonian dialect, most fully exemplified in the codification of law remembered under Hammurabi’s name.

Early Life

The founder of Babylon and the creator of the first Babylonian Dynasty was a nineteenth century b.c.e. Amorite chieftain named Sumu-abum. His ancestral predecessors are known by name back into the twenty-first century b.c.e., when Shulgi, king of the Third Dynasty of Ur in southern Sumer, first began to encounter the movements of Amorite-speaking Semitic peoples down the Euphrates River. A famine began to devastate the economy of the Sumerian city-states, weakening their defenses so that old centers such as Larsa and Isin passed directly into the newcomers’ hands.

Another family within the same tribal grouping as Sumu-abum replaced his control, and with that shift came into being the dynasty that Hammurabi (ham-uh-RAHB-ee) recalled in his inscriptions. He was son of Sin-muballit, grandson of Apil Sin, great-grandson of Sabium, and great-great-grandson of the dynastic founder, Sumu-la-el. The rapidity of succession brought Hammurabi to the throne as quite a young man.

The initial years of Hammurabi’s life were lived in the shadow of greater or longer-established chieftains of comparable ancestry. The region to the east along the Diyala River was centered on Ibal-pi-El II at Eshnunna. The region to the south was centered on Rim-Sin at Larsa. Rim-Sin’s reign was long, but there are only a few inscriptions, mainly concerned with that piety of building for the gods that was one of the principal ways of proving one’s greatness as a ruler in those times. Rim-Sin’s thirtieth year, during which he captured Isin, was the year Hammurabi assumed the throne at Babylon.

During Hammurabi’s father’s reign, Babylon was in the shadow of Shamshi-Adad I, who had gained control of the capital of Assyria and had spread his influence not only up the Tigris River but also across the steppes and tributaries to the Euphrates River, placing his own son on the throne at the great trading center of Mari. Much of what is known about this earlier period comes from the vast archival records found in excavations at Mari beginning in 1929.

Life’s Work

Hammurabi, on ascending the throne in 1792, found himself hemmed in on all sides by formidable powers. The political situation is well described in a letter from a Mari diplomat or spy to his king: “No one king is strong by himself. Ten to fifteen go after Hammurapi man of Babylon, similarly after Rim-Sin man of Larsa, similarly after Ibal-pi-el man of Eshnunna, similarly after Amut-pi-el man of Qatanum. Twenty go after Yarim-Lim man of Yamhad.”

Thus, the whole country was split among petty chiefs joined together in leagues with some stronger figure nominally as head. Rather than being a clear-cut struggle between well-defined, uniformly large states, it was a situation requiring a constant shuffling of alliances among aggregations of minor rulers under some stronger chief as head. These combinations changed often. Economic issues played a major role in the formation of alliances.

From the variety of year-names of the various chiefs, it is possible to reconstruct an overall picture of the way Hammurabi was hemmed in at the time of his accession. The kingdom of Larsa, by conquering Isin in the south, covered almost all the territory that had once been Sumer.

At Mari, the situation had undergone change. In the middle of the nineteenth century, in the days of Sabium, great-grandfather of Hammurabi, Mari had been ruled by Iaggid-Lim. When Iaggid-Lim broke a treaty made with Ila-kabkabu, father of Shamshi-Adad I of Ashur, there was retaliation. The occasion was used effectively by Shamshi-Adad to take over rule in Mari, where he placed his son, Iasmah-Adad, on the throne. Mari was retained as long as Shamshi-Adad was alive, but in the days of his successor at Ashur, Ishme-Dagan, the old line at Mari was reinstated under Zimri-Lim. These latter two, neither as strong as his predecessor, were the ones with whom Hammurabi had to deal. From the time of Zimri-Lim, the district of Terqa, just to the north of Mari, was entirely denuded of trees, so that the lucrative timber trade came to an end, and the area received an ecological blow from which it never recovered.

When Hammurabi took over, Babylon was a small principality. In his second year, Hammurabi established “righteousness in the land.” He remitted debts and other obligations, allowing land to revert to original owners. In undertaking such measures, he was following the tradition of his royal ancestors. In 1787 Hammurabi captured Uruk and Isin, indicating that he and his allies were strong enough to challenge Rim-Sin in the latter’s territory. It would appear, however, that the success was ephemeral: The cities were taken back. In 1783 Hammurabi destroyed Malgum on the Tigris, south of the Diyala. In 1782 he took Rapiqum on the Euphrates; it was close to a major caravan crossing and thus provided for him access to the west.

Mention of this achievement is the last reference to military accomplishments during this period in Hammurabi’s official inscriptions, which thereafter focus on pious deeds of rebuilding walls and refurbishing temples. Their index illustrates, if not the extent of Babylonia, at least the increasing strength of its economic base. From Mari, letters give account of Hammurabi’s diplomatic relations; messengers went back and forth between Mari and Hammurabi’s court.

In the inscriptions for 1763, the chronicle of Hammurabi’s military conquests is taken up once more, beginning with his defeat of Elamite troops at the boundaries of Mahashi, Subartu, Eshnunna, Gutium, and Malgum—all to his east. He successfully opposed a concerted attack of northern and eastern principalities surrounding him, though there is no reference to his annexation of territory. Hammurabi was intent on restoring the foundations of old “Sumer and Akkad.”

These victories allowed Hammurabi to turn undivided attention to the south. In 1762 he fought successfully against the very old Rim-Sin of Larsa, who was brought alive in a cage to Babylon. With this termination of the independent dynasty of Larsa, all of southern Mesopotamia passed into Hammurabi’s hands.

In 1761 a core of the old coalition of enemies was against Hammurabi again. He defeated the armies of Subartu, Eshnunna, and Gutium and conquered all the territory along the Tigris as far north as the border of Assyria. In 1760 he fought with Mari on the Euphrates and Malgum, south of Eshnunna. In 1758 he destroyed the walls of both Mari and Malgum. A change in relations with Mari occurred once more. Hammurabi had previously sent troops to assist Zimri-Lim, and the latter had been instrumental in his taking over Eshnunna. Now native rule at Mari ended. In 1755 the “great waters destroyed” Eshnunna; it is not clear whether the reference is to a natural disaster or to Hammurabi’s damming up and diverting a river. In any case, the inscriptions make no further mention of Eshnunna until the time of Hammurabi’s son.

In 1754 Hammurabi conquered all of his enemies as far as the land of Subartu, east beyond the Tigris. With this success, he was established as the dominant figure in all Mesopotamia. No further references to warfare are made in the chronicle of his reign. To this final period belongs the monumental edition of his law code, on which he is portrayed standing humbly before Shamash, the sun god and overseer of justice. Its prologue identifies his control over twenty-six cities, from each of whose deities, whose temples he adorned, he received powers to make justice in the land.

By intensive restructuring of the whole geographical area under his control, Hammurabi had inadvertently set in motion the forces that, during the next century and a half, were to terminate the dynasty and its Amorite leadership—a decline culminating in the Hittites’ sacking of Babylon in 1595. The prosperity of Babylon depended on remuneration from its conquered territories for massive construction of buildings and waterworks organized by Hammurabi with the help of appointed officials. Once a system of governors and palace dependents was created, however, this bureaucracy established itself in hereditary positions, so that the territories fed local rather than royal interests.

Already before Hammurabi’s death, his son Samsuiluna reported in a letter to an official, Etil-pi-Marduk, that his father was ill and that he had to assume charge of what had become a real kingdom. Hammurabi was succeeded by Samsuiluna and his grandson Abi-eshu. There remained three further generations, Ammi-ditana, Ammi-zaduga, and Samsu-ditana, before Hammurabi’s achievement was terminated by Kassite invaders, dividing the realm again into petty kingdom warring on relatively equal terms.

Significance

Coming at the middle of the First Dynasty of Babylon, Hammurabi created out of a small principality not merely an imperial kingdom but a distinctive city whose name is not to be forgotten: Old “Sumer and Akkad” became thereafter Babylonia. From the many preserved Old Babylonian letters, especially those to or by Hammurabi, it is possible to understand the administrative structure of his power and that of Babylon. These letters document the lines of communication existing within the capital and out to the official governors appointed to administer annexed cities and territories. Two large collections are illustrative: those related to Sin-idinnam, Hammurabi’s governor of Larsa after the defeat of Rim-Sin, and those related to Shamash-hazir, a lesser official, also at Larsa, who managed for the king the landholdings and the landholders.

Extensive economic records from the various cities, especially Sippar, provide details of royal involvement. At Sippar, Hammurabi’s sister Iltani engaged in business transactions on behalf of the gods Lord Shamash and Lady Aja for more than fifty years, at least until 1755. She lived in that unique Old Babylonian institution the gaga (cloister), as one of the many naditu-women, among whom she ranked the highest. Naditu-women were dedicated to a god, often from youth; they were usually unmarried and were always forbidden to have children, but they frequently played significant economic roles.

The period was one of great literary creativity. Epic poetry, some of it based on Sumerian-derived sources, addressed central issues and problems of human existence. Two epics of the period, for example, took up issues of life and death in their glorification of the heroes Gilgamesh and Atra-hasis. Another remembered the ancient Etana. During this time, the chief god Marduk replaced older creator gods, just as Babylon had replaced the older Sumerian city-states.

Aside from the monumental copy of Hammurabi’s code, clay tablet examples demonstrate that its text was regularly copied in both Babylonia and Assyria until the era of the Seleucid state at Uruk (third century b.c.e.). The great stela itself was carried off as a prize to Susa by the twelfth century b.c.e. Elamite king Shutruk-nakhunte I. There it remained until January, 1902, when its rediscovery changed Hammurabi from simply another ruler among many into a world-famous lawgiver with a status comparable to that of the biblical Moses or the Byzantine Justinian I.

The last great king of Assyria, the seventh century b.c.e. Ashurbanipal, sought texts of Hammurabi’s era for his library at Nineveh. While no building attributable to Hammurabi has been excavated beneath the rubble of Babylon, it is known that its last king, Nabonidus (sixth century b.c.e.) knew of his work and remembered him.

Bibliography

Driver, G. R., and John C. Miles. The Babylonian Laws. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1956-1960. Volume 1 provides a detailed commentary on all Babylonian law, with special focus on the Code of Hammurabi. Volume 2 contains the transliterated texts with full translation, philological notes, and glossary.

Harper, Robert Francis. The Code of Hammurabi, King of Babylon. Reprint. Stockton, Calif.: University Press of the Pacific, 2002. An English translation of Hammurabi’s code, with a parallel transliteration of the original ideograms from the monument on which they were engraved. Includes facsimiles of all the original cuneiform tablets, glossary, index of subjects, lists of proper names, and tables of weights and currencies.

Leemans, W. F. The Old Babylonian Merchant: His Business and His Social Position. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1966. Beginning from provisions in Hammurabi’s code, and on the basis of texts coming from various archives, especially those of Larsa and Sippar, the nature, role, and function of the merchant class are described as independent but bound by the law of the king.

Munn-Rankin, J. M. “Diplomacy in Western Asia in the Early Second Millennium b.c.” Iraq 18 (1956): 68-110. This major essay, working from the Mari archive, puts in perspective the historical situation and the interaction among major figures during Hammurabi’s reign.

Pallis, S. A. The Antiquity of Iraq: A Handbook of Assyriology. Copenhagen, Denmark: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1956. This volume is a vast storehouse of information including a history of Babylon, a description of the city, an account of its rediscovery in the nineteenth century, and the subsequent excavations. Chapter 8 explains the chronological shift in dating Hammurabi, made possible by the discovery of the Mari archive and the correlation with Shamshi-Adad of Assyria. Chapter 10 provides a picture of Hammurabi and his age, with extensive discussion of the code.

Saggs, Henry W. F. Babylonians. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. In this college-level text, Saggs uses evidence from architecture, pottery, and metal works to provide a picture of life in ancient Babylon as well as the myths, languages, and lives of its inhabitants.

Yoffee, Norman. The Economic Role of the Crown in the Old Babylonian Period. Malibu, Calif.: Undena, 1977. This study is significant for its close analysis of economic texts from various urban archives, shedding light on the operations of Hammurabi’s palace economy and the administration of conquered realms. Extensive bibliography.