a while, economic reality found ways around some of these rulings, but their influence
on the common types of legal texts was permanent.
In the course of the Old Babylonian period, the control of the ruling class of
Babylon over the provincial resources and wealth increased markedly at the expense
of the traditional local elites. The class of palace officials expanded and their titles
multiplied, while the development of epistolary forms reveals how class-consciousness
heightened. The rich evidence from Sippar shows how local families were recruited
as acting managers for hereditary lineages of court officials, and occasionally were
tied by matrimonial bonds. The patrimonial character of the state administration
meant that the elite’s increasing economic power was inextricable from that of the
palace, and high officials profited from the much-studied palace transactions. At a
local level, this effected that erstwhile forms of autonomy waned and government
appointees came to dominate the administration, visible, in Sippar for example, in
the decline of the traditional institutions of ka ̄ rumand gagûm.
CONCLUSIONGiven that the fortune of Aleppo and Babylon had been much like two sides of the
same coin, it does not surprise that the Hittite conquest of Aleppo finally led to an
attack on Babylon, perhaps in an offbeat attempt to control the profitable Euphrates
route. That Babylon suffered from this event is clear from the fact that the excavated
parts of the city show signs of a hiatus in occupation, but the city remained the
capital of the land, and the new Kassite rulers began to date their years by an era
starting with the year ‘when (the country of) Babylon was resettled’. The dynastic
change had brought the leaders of the former mercenary forces to power, and the
limited evidence that is presently available suggests, as may be expected from analogous
cases, that at first no major social and economic changes occurred. A few decades
later, the new rulers began to extend the limited territories of Babylon, first subjugating
their rival in Eshnunna and then pushing south until, in the beginning of fifteenth
century BC, the Sealand was conquered and their authority was recognized as far as
Dilmun (Sassmannshausen 2004 b). Lower Mesopotamia had once more been united
and another distinct historical era – that of the Kassite kingdom of Karduniash –
begins.
NOTES1 This chapter is based on research undertaken with funding of the Jubiläumsfonds der Österreichischen
Nationalbank. The size limit of this chapter precludes giving full evidence in support of the
arguments that are brought forward, but the recent manuals of Charpin 2004 and Stol 2004
contain all relevant facts. The article follows the customary Middle Chronology, with the Fall
of Babylon in 1595 BC; this is certainly wrong, but the real date of the event (sometime in
the second half of the sixteenth century BC) cannot yet be determined.
2 A cessation of textual evidence for an unknown period of time.
3 Unpublished tablet BM 16469 (Hammurabi 42 ).
4 The so-called ‘Agum-kakrime Inscription’ I 31 – 32.
5 OECT 15 78.
6 George 1992 : 15 – 19 ; this date for the creation of the (predecessor of the later) Imgur-Enlil
wall is suggested by the fact that in Old Babylonian sources the Ishtar (Szlechter TJA UMM
G 18 ) and Urash (Stol 1982 no. 28 ) gates constitute the northern and southern city borders.
— Society and economy in the later Old Babylonian period —