the governor of Eshnunna, Shu-ilija, declared himself independent and founded a
local dynasty.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century BC, written documentation suddenly
appears in several northern Babylonian towns, each referring to its own Amorite petty
ruler (Charpin’s ( 2003 ) ‘second Amorite wave’). After only about two decades, the
northern Babylonian petty kingdoms were incorporated in the expansive kingdom of
Sumu-la-el of Babylon (ca. 1880 – 1845 ), who introduced concepts and institutions
that were to shape the economy of the following centuries, such as the royal edicts,
the ilkumduties, and the engagement of entrepreneurs to manage royal assets.
During the rest of the nineteenth century, Babylonia was one of the political major
powers of Syro-Mesopotamia, entertaining diplomatic relations with, and switch-
ing alliances between, its neighbours, Larsa, Eshnunna, Mari, Elam and Upper-
Mesopotamia. International correspondence from this period between the rulers and
their high officials illustrates how the borders of the kingdoms fluctuated and how
coalitions were forged and broken (see Warburton in this volume).
During the latter half of Hammurabi’s reign (ca. 1792 – 1750 ), after the disappearance
of the Upper-Mesopotamian empire, he eliminated his rivals, Larsa, Eshnunna and
Mari (all of whom, at a certain point, had been his allies) one after the other. In
Hammurabi’s thirty-second regnal year, the Babylonian empire stretched from the
Persian Gulf to Mari in the West, Assur in the North and Eshnunna in the East.
However, in his eighth regnal year, Hammurabi’s son Samsuiluna had already lost
control over the most southern towns of the empire. After Samsuiluna 11 , all written
and archaeological documentation disappears from southern Babylonia for several
centuries. Apparently, a large part of the population fled to northern Babylonian
towns, where the cults from Uruk and Lagash were reinstalled in Kish, those from
Larsa and Nippur in Babylon, and the one from Isin in Sippar. The cause of this
collapse must at least partly be sought in environmental factors.
In the course of his reign, Samsuiluna’s territory further shrank with the loss of
northern Sumer (the region of Nippur and Isin) in his thirtieth year and the varying
attachment of Eshnunna to the Babylonian kingdom, which was lost definitively in
his thirty-fifth year. The political and territorial history of the ‘late Old Babylonian’
rulers during the subsequent century is not well known. Their year-names refer to
votive donations rather than to military achievements and the royal correspondence
concerns internal and mainly economic affairs. However, the economic texts pertaining
to the royal assets hardly ever refer to assets or income from outside northern Babylonia.
Therefore, the Old Babylonian kingdom seems to have shrunk back to its old borders,
which had been more or less stable for about a century already between the reigns
of Sumu-la-el and Hammurabi.
The final collapse of the Old Babylonian kingdom must be attributed to a Hittite
invasion. However, an increasing social and economic weakness can be observed during
the thirty-year-long reign of Samsuditana, the last king of the first dynasty of Babylon.
First, there was a drastic decline in the number of texts under his reign. More precisely,
only very few archives continue after the accession of Samsuditana. In a study of the
collapse of the Old Babylonian kingdom (Richardson 2002 ), the decline has been
situated in the newly founded garrison towns. Many of the inhabitants of these towns
were of foreign origin, mainly Kassites, who had invaded northern Babylonia in several
— The Old Babylonian economy —