Isin”; no “king of Larsa” until Gungunum (fifth dynast); no “king of Babylon” until
Hammurabi (sixth dynast).^68 The twin ideologies reflected urban and non-urban power
bases, pointed up by the continued use of both old, established titles such as “king
of the land of Sumer and Akkad,” but also epithets addressing new, national audiences:
“true supreme authority/god of his nation” and “lord who extended the land.”^69
Only in the southernmost Babylonian kingdom of Larsa did local borders remain
an important topic in royal rhetoric – and here only prior to 1800 BC, and limited
to those areas of the old Lagasˇ^70 and Ur states. Warad-Sîn paid some deference to
Nanna’s ki.sur.ra at Ur, and Nu ̄ r-Adad also to Utu’s at Larsa (both probably concessions
following their usurpations); Sîn-iddinam connected the Tigris River to “the [eastern]
border, the boundary of my choice(ki.sur.ra in.dub.pà.mu.sˇè).”^71 Much more pronounced
across all four centuries of the period were claims to have resettled “scattered people”
(un ság.du 11 .ga). Sˇu-ilisˇu of Isin (fl. 1980 BC) boasted of regathering people of Ur
from as far as the border of Ansˇan and “the upper and lower lands” in the land around
Isin (GN ma.da.sig.nim); Nu ̄ r-Adad settled possibly “captive people” (un dab 5 .dab 5 )
around Larsa and Ur (latterly, within “Nanna’s boundary”); Rı ̄m-Sîn gathered Jamutbal
people at Kesˇ; Hammurabi gathered the scattered of Sumer and Akkad (in his thirty-
third year-name) and of Isin (in his law code); Samsuiluna, those of Idamaras., Esˇnunna,
and Warûm.^72 Towards the latter half of the OB, the former “scatteredness” of people
was de-emphasized in favor of their “settledness” in pastoral quietude, perhaps reflecting
some demographic change.^73 The extent and nature of these “resettlements” is unlikely
ever to become clear (in part, the claim is antiphonic to poetic motifs of “scattered”
people in city-laments), but what is certainly new in the OB is the expression of
royal responsibility for the residence of non-urban people in official rhetoric.
The management of non-urban populations by OB kings went hand-in-hand with
the progressive ruralization of Babylonia.^74 There was a fundamental shift not only
in the socio-economic makeup of the state, but also in the ideological content of “the
land” in royal titulary. Individual royal titles were never synecdochic to some super-
category of kingship; when Abi-sare, for instance, is described as “King of Ur, King
of Larsa,” these were not attributes of some overall kingliness, they were two distinct
and separate titles. Accordingly, two observations about the countryside: first, kingship
over the “land” (of “the l. of Sumer and Akkad,” of “his l.,” of “all the Amorite l.,”
etc.) was parallel, not paramount, to these segementary kingships;^75 second, the
deferential epithets of stewardship often used to politely indicate city rule (e.g.,
“provider/protector for GN”^76 ) were rarely used for the ma ̄ tum. There was a newfound
concern for popular politics, that the royal works (“the wonder of the nation”) and
person (“resplendent to remote places”) would be seen by publics near and far. “I let
the nation,” Warad-Sîn wrote, “see the greatness of my kingship” (he even inquired
of Nanna howto “make the people know [it]”). His construction of the Nergal temple
at Ur was to evoke the “wonder of numerous people like a distant mountain,” explicitly
targeting non-urbanites as the audiences for monumental architecture.^77 Royal rhetoric
was now specifically concerned with the happiness of the land, part of a new political
discourse binding up space, distance, and nationhood.^78
Politicization of the countryside was a double-edged sword for the state. On the
one hand, the countryside was a source of power. OB kings appealed directly to rural
constituencies by regulating market prices (even if notionally),^79 and declarations of
— Seth Richardson —