for many beneficiaries. The collection of revenues in kind due to palace and temple,
and its conversion into silver, had traditionally been the job of entrepreneurs and
continued to be so under Babylonian rule, but an unusual arrangement is now in
place: the palace farmed out its tax income for one-third of its nominal value in silver,
and occasionally for even less (Stol 1982 ). This arrangement, which parallels land
leases in regard to the division of labour and profit, is only attested in this period
and may have been a Babylonian adaptation of the local system, but we lack comparable
texts of earlier date to confirm this impression. As regards its economic motive, the
sharp discount may indicate that the expected volume of revenue could no longer be
realized, so that extra incentive for the entrepreneurs was required to ensure a steady,
though less than maximum, supply of silver to the capital; after all, the palace of
Babylon was solely interested in receiving silver and barley from its new territories.
It is against this backdrop of low prosperity, failing agriculture and high taxation
that the southern revolts against Samsuiluna must be understood. The king of Babylon
reacted brutally, and the sudden abandonment of cities is the well-known outcome
of the war. Urban life in the south had been faltering before, as is revealed by the
concentration of governmental and cultic offices in the capital city of Larsa during
the reign of Rim-Sin I, but the breakdown accelerated rapidly at this time, possibly
as a consequence of intentional diverting of water at an upstream position, with the
result that some cities were not rebuilt after warfare damage, while others were evacu-
ated without overt signs of violence (Gasche 1989 ); the ensuing northward migration
of elites and cults is well documented (Charpin 1992 ). Without the urban basis, the
southern countryside permanently escaped Babylonian control, but somewhere in the
marshlands the Sealand must be sought, whose king is first attested in the ninth year
of Samsuiluna^5 and played a decisive role in the warlike events of his later years. The
First Sealand Dynasty lasted into the Middle Babylonian period, but almost no textual
sources shed light on their state, and its part in a vibrant trade network at the head
of the Persian Gulf is only known from archaeological evidence (Højlund 1989 ).
Unlike the southern alluvium, the de-urbanization in the east-Tigris lands around
the time of Hammurabi is not illuminated by contemporary textual evidence, but is
suggested by research in the Diyala and Hamrin regions, where almost all larger sites
disappear around that time; here, social factors are the likely cause, as it would seem
that the demographical instability discussed above negatively affected permanent
settlement. Some urban centres, nevertheless, survived as political focal points, such
as Eshnunna, a site where the upper occupation levels are lost to erosion, but which
is known from textual evidence to persist as an administrative centre until the end
of the Old Babylonian period.
The environmental factor that lies at the root of the urban crisis of the South did
not leave the Babylonian heartland unaffected. Barley–silver equivalences indicate
that agricultural productivity had peaked at the turn of the second millennium BC.
The price of barley then moved upwards, but this process may have been quite gradual,
if one disregards episodic shortages that are bound to occur in a traditional agricultural
regime. Even by the time of Hammurabi, when the traditional equivalence 1 shekel
of silver = 300 litres of barley has lost its validity (Powell 1990 : 92 ), real barley
prices were only slightly higher, until they rose sharply under Samsuiluna, and hence-
forth seem to stay at a high level. Much around the same time, the price of arable
land dropped – at least at Sippar, which has produced most evidence. That these sudden
— Frans van Koppen —