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Ancient Empires Before Alexander 3 of 16, lecture 2009, Empires of Bronze Age Mesopotamia 2
The Empire of Hammurabi
After the collapse of the empire of Ur III, Mesopotamia dissolved into a series of small local and regional states. Out of this confusion there arose in northern Mesopotamia the proto-Assyrian kingdom of Shamshi-Adad, which briefly restored unity. When it collapsed in turn, one of Shamshi-Adad’s vassals, Hammurabi, the ruler of the hitherto unimportant town of Babylon in central Mesopotamia, emerged to fill the void. In a brief but spectacular career of conquest, Hammurabi forged an empire that extended from southern Mesopotamia to Syria, calling himself “the king who made the four quarters of the world obedient.” A meticulous overseer, Hammurabi chose his administrators carefully and corresponded with them frequently about their duties. He undertook extensive land reclamation projects and finally, at the end of his reign, promulgated his famous code. His empire did not long survive his death, disintegrating within a generation, but Babylon remained as the center of Mesopotamian life, and Mesopotamia ever after was known as Babylonia.
Mitani and the Kassites
During much of the last half of the 2nd millennium B.C., Mesopotamia and the northern Fertile Crescent were ruled by two large empires that have been virtually lost to history: the Kassite kingdom of Babylonia and the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni, or Hanigalbat. The problem is sheer scarcity of source material, a scarcity so severe that we barely know the names of their kings—and usually almost nothing of what they did—except through the records of their neighbors. Those records make it clear that both kingdoms were mighty in their day. Mitanni fought with the Hittites for control over eastern Anatolia and with Egypt for control over southern Syria and northern Palestine. The Kassite kingdom lasted four centuries and was an important rival to the rising imperial power of Assyria. But the Hittites and Assyrians eventually laid both Mitanni and the Kassites low, and now little of them survives but their names.
Robert L. Dise Jr. has taught at the University of Northern Iowa since 1992; prior to joining its faculty, he taught at Clinch Valley College (now the University of Virginia’s College at Wise). He received his B.A. in History from the University of Virginia (at Charlottesville), concentrating on the history of the ancient world, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, specializing in the history of Rome.
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