As more texts from Mari have been published it has become quite clear that in
the Age of Hammurabi there were no pitched battles between kingdoms. Stephanie
Dalley, after quoting Ishme-Dagan’s boasts about his successful sieges, concluded
that “[t]he siege was perhaps the main means of victory for one ruler over another.
We have no detailed accounts of pitched battles, but numerous references to sieges
or to negotiated surrender.”^44 More broadly, Aaron Burke concludes that “among
textual sources from the Levant, Egypt, and Mesopotamia there are no clear
references to large-scale open battles prior to the Battle of Megiddo in the Late
Bronze Age.”^45 Iconographic evidence too, Burke observed, portrays sieges but
not battles on a battlefield: in Egypt the pharaohs of the New Kingdom were
regularly portrayed as heroes on the battlefield, but Middle Kingdom pharaohs
had themselves portrayed as capturing one or another fortified place.^46
What Mesopotamian warfare actually was in the Age of Hammurabi can best
be understood through a close look at what has been called “the Battle of Hiritum,”
which is seen as one of the more decisive encounters of the period because it ended
an Elamite “invasion” of central Mesopotamia.^47 Our information comes from a
series of letters sent to King Zimri-Lim of Mari by one of his commanders, Zimri-
Addu. At this time (probably 1764 BC) Zimri-Lim and Hammurabi were allies,
and forces from Babylon and Mari were therefore collaborating against the designs
of the Elamite king and his vassal in the city of Eshnuna. Thousands of Elamite
and Eshnunakean “troops” were laying siege to the city of Hiritum, on the Irnina
river and not far from its entry into the Tigris, and the forces led by Zimri-Addu
and his Babylonian counterpart had evidently been ordered to do what they could
to prevent Hiritum from falling to the enemy. To that end, it appears, the
Babylonians and Mariotes set up a camp near Hiritum and Zimri-Addu’s men
succeeded in setting fire to one of the Elamites’ siege towers. This feat Zimri-
Addu reported at least twice to his king, as Heimpel’s translation of letter 27 141
shows:
To my lord speak! Your servant Zimri-Addu (says): The troops of my lord
are well. Some time ago I wrote my lord that [we set] fire to the tower
(standing) [on] the lower fringe and (that) the enemy [ ] for obtaining a(nother)
tower. Now, that method.... one tower. [One] remained standing.^48In the same letter Zimri-Addu goes on to say, with some satisfaction, that the
Babylonian troops made an incursion into the land of Eshnuna, burned grain
fields, and carried off sheep, cattle and prisoners. At another time, however, 2000
Mariotes and 3000 Babylonians stationed at Ša-bas ̣im went out on campaign
under the command of Ibal-Pi-El, but the enemy got word about them “and the
troops returned empty-handed.” The servants of Hammurabi were angry and said,
“How can 5000 troops go out campaigning and return to camp empty-handed?
Let them stay one day or two at Ša-bas ̣im and then let them return to
campaigning!” Zimri-Addu reasoned that Ibal-Pi-El must have gone out on
campaign without having obtained favorable auspices from the gods and scolded
him for his negligence: “I said to you, ‘(Only) go out from Ša-bas ̣im upon sound
68 Warfare in Western Eurasia