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THE FLOODING OF EŠNUNNA, THE FALL OF MARI: HAMMURABI’S DEEDS IN

BABYLONIAN LITERATURE AND HISTORY

Matthew Rutz (Brown University) and Piotr Michalowski (University of Michigan)

Abstract

This article provides a preliminary edition of a hitherto unpublished Akkadian-language literary text that narrates historical events from the reign of King Hammurabi of Babylon. Discovered in Nippur towards the end of the nine-teenth century, the multicolumn tablet N 1498+ was probably copied during the Middle Babylonian period, but the text may have been composed centuries earlier during the reign of either Hammurabi or Samsu-iluna. It is possible that the text described many incidents, but the sole preserved column on the reverse is concerned with pivotal events in the last years of Hammurabi’s reign: his seizure of Mari and his takeover of Ešnunna, possibly by means of, or as the result of the flooding of that city. The tablet narrates events in an order that is different from what is known from other historical sources, and it contains what is so far the only Babylonian reference to King Zimri-Lim of Mari, Hammurabi’s one-time ally, rival, and antagonist.

Introduction

Among the few ancient Mesopotamian kings whose names might be familiar to moderns, Hammurabi surely maintains a preeminent status.1 Popularly cited as the putative author of the world’s first laws, he is the only such monarch to have been deemed worthy of three book-length biographies (Klengel 1999; Van De Mieroop 2005; Charpin 2012) and countless academic studies. While the sources for his reign are abundant, they are limited to a small set of textual types skewed by the dearth of data from his capital city of Babylon and by the restricted nature of the information from Mari, which otherwise provides some of the richest evidence for contemporary events. As is well known, the early second-millennium levels in Babylon are inaccessible to archaeologists due to the height of the modern water table, save for a small area, the domestic “Merkes” section, which provided little informa-tion on Hammurabi’s reign (Pedersén 2011: 52–56). The monarch’s own officials deprived us of much data from

We are grateful to Steve Tinney and Grant Frame, curators of the Babylonian Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, for allowing us to publish tablets from that collection. We also wish to express our thanks to Jeremiah Peterson, who identi-fied the fragment N 1498 + N 7050 and joined it to N 1749, and to Matt Stolper, Eckart Frahm, Jean-Marie Durand and to anonymous readers who provided valuable comments. Nathan Wasserman and Elyze Zomer kindly shared preprints of works that are in press.

1. Because contentious debate continues over absolute chronology in the early second millennium (e.g., Cole 2014), we eschew reproduc-ing the conventional Middle Chronology dates for Hammurabi’s reign, even with the usual caveats.

JCS 68 (2016)

This journal was published by the American Schools of Oriental Research and is available on JSTOR at http://www.jstor.org/journal/jcunestud. You may receive the journal through an ASOR membership or subscription. See http://www.asor.org/membership/individual.html for more information.

16 MATTHEW RUTZ AND PIOTR MICHALOWSKI

Mari when, upon taking over the city, they took away from the royal archives all the international correspondence exchanged among the major powers (Durand 1997: 28). As a result, only a handful of letters from the Babylonian ruler were found in the Mari palace (ARM 28: 1–14).

Hammurabi of Babylon’s forays into the regional power games of the early second millennium must figure prominently in any modern account of Mesopotamia’s political history in that period. However, intentional wit-nesses to that history are essentially limited to royal inscriptions (Frayne 1990: 332–71, E.4.3.6; Van De Mieroop 2011) and year names (Ungnad 1938; Horsnell 1999, 2003, 2004; Charpin and Ziegler 2013), each of which is limited by constraints of text type, function, and ideological stance (Pecha 2010; Seminara 2005). The first hints of Hammurabi’s military program were already evident in the text of his stele found in Susa at the start of the twen-tieth century, and since then a massive influx of new material, especially but not exclusively from Mari, has un-dergirded various attempts to reconstruct synthetic historical narratives for the period in question (e.g., Charpin 1999; Charpin and Ziegler 2003; Heimpel 2003; Charpin 2004b; Van De Mieroop 2005; Podany 2010; Charpin 2012). Although there are still many uncertainties and details subject to debate, the basic sequence of events is agreed upon by all.

Hammurabi began his forty-three-year reign as a local ruler in control of a middling polity that remained in the shadow of more powerful local and regional players, particularly the kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia, Ešnunna, Larsa, and Elam, but by the end of his reign, the political landscape of greater Mesopotamia had been completely transformed. Hammurabi’s year-names offer glimpses of the rapid geopolitical changes that took place during the latter part of his tenure on the throne. He led a coalition to push back Elam and end its regional hegemony (year-name 30), defeated and annexed Larsa (year-name 31), won a small war with Ešnunna (year-name 32), and then took over Mari and Malgium (perhaps by military force) and appropriated their realms (year-name 33). For reasons that remain elusive, he then destroyed the walls of both cities two years later (year-name 35). Among the cultic activities and otherwise hardly documented military encounters from the last years of Hammurabi’s reign, his year-name 38 refers to the destructive flooding of Babylon’s old rival Ešnunna.

The two-fold purpose of this article is to publish a previously unknown literary historical composition that nar-rates episodes in Hammurabi of Babylon’s political career and to reflect on this text’s significance for understand-ing both history and history-writing in ancient Babylonia. In what follows we describe the sole extant manuscript and situate its contents within the context of Mesopotamian historiography. We then discuss the other historical witnesses to the events described in the new text and speculate about that text’s possible purpose and date of com-position, followed by the text edition, translation, and commentary.

The Text

The text, which we have named Hammurabi’s Deeds, is known from a single tablet, N 1498 + N 1749 + N 70502 that was found during the University of Pennsylvania’s early excavations in Nippur in the last years of the nine-teenth century. The obverse is essentially illegible and some twenty-eight lines are preserved on the reverse. Unlike the CBS and UM collections, there is no reason to suppose that any of the N-collection tablets came from any-where other than Nippur, but nothing more about the findspot of N 1498+ will ever be known.

It is difficult to gauge the tablet’s original dimensions, but the readable parts of the text preserve a small section of what must have been a sizable composition describing, in some detail, a number of historical events of Ham-murabi’s reign: perhaps the defeat of Larsa, the flooding of Ešnunna, and the conquest and perhaps the destruction of the city of Mari and the overthrow of its king Zimri-Lim. The section concerning Mari, albeit fragmentary, is of particular interest because the conquest has until now been known only from laconic statements in Babylonian

2. The fragments were joined by Jeremiah Peterson.


HAMMURABI’S DEEDS IN BABYLONIAN LITERATURE AND HISTORY 17

monumental inscriptions and year-names, and, even more striking, Zimri-Lim appears here for the first time in the early second-millennium Babylonian textual record.

The Literary and Historiographic Context of Hammurabi’s Deeds

The impression one gets from the educational detritus of Old Babylonian Nippur, Ur, Uruk, and elsewhere is that literature concerning royals was very much focused on the legacy of Ur III monarchial self-representation, on hymns concerning Šulgi and his family, and on Isin Dynasty poems written in the same modes. But there are also glimpses of innovative literary developments that built on and perhaps even rejected many of the elements of this tradition. The first inklings of new directions can be traced to the very beginning of the house of Isin, when poets extolling Išbi-Erra, the founder of the dynasty, experimented with writing Sumerian hymns that dealt directly with specific historical events, openly mentioning the names of enemies and explicitly describing battlefield encounters in a manner much more precise and direct than those narrated in some of the Šulgi hymns (Michalowski 2005). Išbi-Erra A (Sjöberg 1993) and B (van Dijk 1978; Vanstiphout 1989–90) provide specific references to military events, naming enemy polities and rulers in a manner that has few precedents in Sumerian poetry. While some Šulgi hymns mention enemy lands, such poems never refer to any specific individuals who fought with Ur. The only preserved piece of literature that provides a model of sorts for Išbi-Erra’s scribes is known from a fragmentary Ur III clay cylinder found in Nippur that relates events from the reign of Ur-Namma and includes a mention of the king’s conflicts with Gutium and with a leader by the name of Gutarla (Civil 1985: 27–32). This text is usually classified as a royal inscription, but it is probably a school copy, and even if it was inscribed on a monument of some kind, it is clearly poetic in diction. As far as one can ascertain, this new style was a dead end and was not developed under Išbi-Erra’s followers on the throne of Isin, whose self-representational strategies focused more on the emulation and development of Ur III poetic antecedents.

In contrast, innovation seems to have thrived in the rival Larsa kingdom, where scribes developed a new Sume-rian poetics focused on royal hymns and letter-prayers (Brisch 2007). More pertinent to our text, Larsa may have been the place where scribes also explored entirely new forms for praising royals in the Akkadian language. The first example of such literary developments dates to the reign of the Larsa ruler Gungunum in the early nineteenth century (TIM 9: 41; see Guichard 2014: 76; Wasserman, in press). Only the first thirty-five lines of this poem remain, and not one of them is complete, but in a manner resembling the works from the time of Išbi-Erra, this hymn mentions a war with Tidnumites (di-id-ni, ll. 3, 4, 9, 20) and a rebel by the name of Šarrum-hummur (ll. 18, 27). A century later a poet composed an Akkadian-language hymn to the god Amurrum with a short final exhorta-tion of a later Larsa ruler, Rim-Sin (OECT 11: 1), whose reign overlapped with Hammurabi’s time on the throne. Further north, in Mari, another contemporary of the Babylonian ruler, Zimri-Lim, was portrayed in literary form, in a bilingual letter of petition (Charpin 1992; Guichard 1997; Durand 1997: 103–10; Foster 2005: 221–23) and in a unique poetic “epic” (Guichard 2014), providing evidence for the widespread character of literary experimenta-tion of the time.

Most important, there are remnants of innovative royal literature from the reign of Hammurabi himself. A frag-ment of a stone monument, currently in the British Museum, but most probably from Sippar (BM 90842, LIH II, 172–76 = CT 21: 40–42, see Wasserman 1992), preserves parts of a bilingual hymnic text addressed directly to the king himself. A tablet copy from a similar object was discovered in the Persian–period library of the Šamaš temple in Sippar (Fadhil and Pettinato 1995), strongly suggesting that multiple versions of this inscription were available in the city long after the fall of the Old Babylonian kingdom.

Literary works in Akkadian and Sumerian mentioning Hammurabi have also been found in other cities. A piece of a diorite stele from Ur was inscribed with a bilingual hymnic text that was put into the mouth of the king himself (UET 1: 146); pieces of a similar object with the same text, of unknown provenance, made their way into the Yale Babylonian Collection (YOS 9: 39–61), and an unprovenienced tablet copy with a twenty-nine-line



excerpt of the Sumerian text, with a few glosses, also exists (TLB 2: 3).3 A Neo-Babylonian or perhaps even Middle Babylonian school tablet from Nippur contains a bilingual lexical excerpt from the series Nabnītu on the obverse (MSL 16: 315) and a passage from a bilingual Hammurabi inscription on the reverse (Sjöberg 1974/75: 161).

The best-known monumental composition from the reign of Hammurabi is, uncontestably, the text of his law collection or “code,” inscribed on steles that were placed in major cities of his kingdom (LH, Roth 1997: 71–142; Borger 2006: 2–50). The innovative qualities of that text are obvious: whoever composed the text would have had at their disposal the earlier Laws of Ur-Namma and Laws of Lipit-Ištar in versions found on steles and/or tablets, but, as with the author of the Laws of Ešnunna, the author of LH consciously chose to redact Hammurabi’s text in Akkadian rather than in Sumerian and to significantly expand the size of the composition while maintaining the traditional structure of this kind of royal inscription.

The monumental texts are but an element in a robust compositional effort to exploit literature in an elaborate self-representational strategy of power and control, celebrating Hammurabi in both Sumerian and Akkadian (Sjö-berg 1972: 59). A recently published fragment of a school exercise tablet of unknown provenience contains parts of an eighty-two-line bilingual hymn to the monarch that was modeled on traditional Sumerian-language royal hymnographic patterns with sections marked as k irugu and kišu (Cavigneaux 2012: 82–83). Miguel Civil’s un-published directory of OB Sumerian literature lists six hymnic texts, cataloged as Hammurabi A–F, the first such poems dedicated to any ruler of the First Dynasty of Babylon.4 There are only a few manuscripts of these texts, but given the fact that the majority of Old Babylonian school texts derive from the first decade of the reign of Hammu-rabi’s son and successor Samsu-iluna, coupled with the conservative nature of the best-attested school curricula of the time, their very existence is significant and suggests that more works of this nature may have been composed. There are no immediate parallels between the Akkadian fragment published here and the Sumerian Hammurabi literature, but one may call attention to specific geographical references in Ham A, preserved on two or three frag-ments, most likely from Sippar.5 The tablets are incomplete and require collation, but from the copy one can read in l. 8: […] gu-tu-um ki? …; in l. 11′ b[ad 2

? ga l ? z]imbir ki KU […] / [t ]in-t ir ki-bi-da-ke₄ ha-ma-d[a-…] and possible mentions of the Tigris river and the Irnina watercourse, in the vicinity of Sippar, in ll. 12′ and 13′, respectively. A shorter poem, Ham B (TCL 16: 61, van Dijk 1966–67: 64–66) is a short, thirteen-line hymn to the god Enki that ends with the words [(d)]luga l-ĝu₁₀, “O my king Hammurabi!” As observed by Brisch (2007: 47), hymns with such an ending are characteristic of poems for Larsa and Babylon I rulers but are not attested in texts extolling the kings of Ur or Isin.

The complex, if incomplete, nature of literary activity during the time of Hammurabi, or perhaps of those in-vestigating his legacy, is demonstrated by another tablet that may also have come from Sippar (Sjöberg 1991). This was most likely a school practice exercise that originally contained a Sumerian version of the epilog section of the Laws of Hammurabi. Like many “Sippar” literary pieces from the Khabaza collections in University Museum and from the British Museum, this one also has a few Akkadian glosses.

A tablet found in Old Babylonian context in a jar in Sippar together with economic documents dated to Samsu-iluna 7 and 8 is an Akkadian-language hymn to Marduk (al-Rawi 1992; Oshima 2011: 191–97), and while it does not have any royal name in the legible sixteen lines, it does mention the tribal/geographical designation Yamutbal (l. 15 Mu-ti-a-ba-al). Oshima (2011: 191, 196) associated this with Samsu-iluna’s war against the rebellion of Rim-Sin II, but one may also consider ascribing the original date of composition of this text to the time of Ham-murabi and suggest that it alludes to the well-known treachery of people of Mutiabal living in Kazallu, who sided with Elam against Babylon and paid a heavy price for their alliance (ARM 26/2, 365–6; see Heimpel 2003: 61–63; Charpin 2012: 45–46). These events were remembered as late as a millennium later when the exorcist Banuni

3. See Sjöberg 1961; Van De Mieroop 2011: 314–16. Add also the Middle Babylonian school exercise VS 24, 41 from Babylon (Pedersén 2005: 89–90, M6: 68).

4. The designations were originally those of Miguel Civil; see now ETCSL c.2.8.2.1–6 (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/).5. A=VAT 6506 + VAT 6585 (VS 10, 209) and possibly also B=VAT 6494 (VS 10, 210); ETCSL 2.8.2.1.



copied the seventh tablet of the serialized scholarly divinatory prayers (tāmīt ikribi) in Neo-Assyrian Kalhu. The first section preserves an extispicy recitation whose rubric states that it is a tāmīt alāk harrāni ana sabāt Kazalluh hi ša H ammurapi, “A tāmītu for going on campaign in order to seize Kazalluhhu; concerning Hammurabi” (CTN 4: 63 i 1–25; Lambert 2007: 24, 143, no. 1, pl. 1). As Hurowitz (2005: 531) suggested, “If the event described in this text [= CTN 4, 63] is not fictitious, it indicates that there is literature concerning Hammurabi’s reign in general and his military activities in particular that has yet to be discovered.” In our view, Hammurabi’s Deeds represents an example of precisely the kind of royal literature anticipated by Hurowitz.

Looking back on all of this, it is apparent that the poets who created the literary works celebrating kings of the First Dynasty of Babylon, beginning with Hammurabi, were working within the innovative poetic parameters developed under the Larsa kings, going back as far as Gungunum, if not earlier. It is possible that these aesthetic and formal qualities also influenced the composers of the Mari literature addressed to Zimri-Lim (Michalowski 1998: 90). In this respect, the Hammurabi literature was not unique: his poet-scribes worked within the fashions of their times, and even when they composed in the long-dead Sumerian language, their sensibilities were distinctly modern, eschewing imitation of Ur III-derived styles.

The complete lack of literary texts from any of Hammurabi’s predecessors on the throne of Babylon may be due to the chances of discovery, but it is also possible that it is a reflection of changes in royal self-representational strategies that were initiated after the conquest of Larsa and the takeover of all of southern Babylonia. If so, then the appropriation of Larsa-style poetics and the proclamation of its mastery over older Mesopotamian intellectual traditions in Akkadian as well as in Sumerian may have been an important factor in the efforts to unify the newly enlarged polity. Such ideological use of writing was then manifest in public monuments with inscriptions in both Sumerian and Akkadian, some of which are known to us only in tablet copies. Indeed, it is conceivable that the text of Hammurabi’s Deeds, whatever the circumstances of its composition, was likewise inscribed on stone monu-ments for public display.

After the end of the First Dynasty of Babylon, Hammurabi joined the company of (in)famous ancient kings like Sargon, Naram-Sin, Šulgi, Ibbi-Sin, and others in the Mesopotamian historical imagination, and indeed a number of first-millennium compositions explicitly refer back to Hammurabi’s reign, from late copies of the LH to purportedly time-honored medical treatments ascribed to the era of the famous king (Braun-Holzinger and Frahm 1999; Hurowitz 2005; see Charpin 2011a).6 There has long been speculation that apodoses taken from the so-called historical omens were among the sources used to compose the first sections of the so-called “Chronicle of Early/Ancient Kings,” but the source material used by the Babylonian chroniclers to recount the deeds of early second-millennium kings is far from well defined (Grayson 1975a: 45–47; Liverani 2011: 45). While the two extant manuscripts of the chronicle itself probably both came from Borsippa, their texts are related but distinct, that is to say, they are not strictly speaking a series (BM 26472; BM 96152, see Grayson 1975a: 152–56, nos. 20A and 20B, Glassner 2004: no. 40; see Waerzeggers 2012: 292–93). These Late Babylonian texts contain brief notices pertinent to political history, with a particular focus on military exploits, explicitly labeled in one manuscript (20A) as GIGAM.DIDLI , “various battles/conflicts/struggles.” The only entry for Hammurabi mentions, in abbreviated and aggrandizing manner, his defeat of Rim-Sin I of Larsa (Grayson 1975a: 155, ll. 8–12):

Hammurabi, king of Babylon, mustered his troops and went against Rim-Sin, king of Ur. He conquered Ur and Larsa, took away their possessions to Babylon, [and] brought [Rim-S]in(?) to Babylon in ki-is-KAP-pu.

6. Several late copies of the LH are now known as well (Maul 2012; Jiménez 2014). Beyond BAM 2: 159 iv 22′ and SpTU 2: 50, 12, the eye treatments referenced by Hurowitz (2005: 528), note also BAM 4: 382 rev 3 (NB script) and BM 41293+ (Geller 2010: 16). Another therapy known from Assur (BAM 4: 322, 1–28 // BAM 4: 321) was meant to reconcile a man with various gods in the Babylonian pantheon, and one manuscript bears the rubric GABA.RI E2.GAL Iha-am-m[u-r]a-pi2 LUGAL ŠAR2, “copy from the palace of Hammurabi, king of the world” (BAM 4: 322, 29); curiously the second section of that tablet was reportedly copied from an original from the palace of Esarhaddon.



The remainder of the section is concerned with Samsu-iluna’s defeat of the rebellion led by Rim-Sin II (largely broken), followed by short notices about Abiši (= Abi-ešuh) and Samsu-ditana, whose reign is mentioned only as the backdrop for the ignominious fall of Babylon to the Hittites; Ammi-ditana and Ammi-saduqa are notice-ably omitted. Waerzeggers (2012: 292) suggested that some of the events recounted in these “Chronicles of the First Dynasty of Babylon” (i.e., BM 96152) were taken from a knowledge of OB year-names, that is, what she calls “authentic historical data,” though the precise mechanics of such a history-writing process are not self-evident. Significantly less informative is a LB chronicle of market prices, probably from Babylon (Waerzeggers 2012: 297), that preserves a fragmentary notice ana tar-�si am-mu-ra�-p[i2 …], “In the time of Hammurab[i …],” followed immediately by the Kassite king Kurigalzu (Grayson 1975a: no. 23, BM 48498 obv. 7; Glassner 2004: no. 50). Of the two, the narrative chronicle (BM 96152) is more akin to Hammurabi’s Deeds, though they certainly differ in language, scope, and, as we will argue, period of composition.

In diachronic perspective, Hammurabi’s Deeds fits well into this literary and historiographic fabric. Unlike the Old Babylonian monumental texts mentioned above, it was written in third person rather than addressing the king or expressing his own words in first person. No other composition provides any strict parallels, but the historical allusions in other texts indicate that such subject matter was not alien to the scribes who composed them. As we have already indicated, if one needs to find more concrete analogs to the kind of event-centered details depicted in Hammurabi’s Deeds, then the best candidates for such precise descriptions in literary context are the aforemen-tioned Sumerian hymns of Išbi-Erra, founder of the First Dynasty of Isin, that describe in similar detail and from an equally tendentious point of view some of the wars that led to the fall of the Ur III polity (Michalowski 2005). These hymns are known to us only from a few Old Babylonian copies that probably date from a decade or so after Hammurabi’s death, and therefore it is possible that such texts may have been known to some of the king’s scribes, providing inspiration for the composition of Hammurabi’s Deeds.

Other than the hymns of Išbi-Erra, the only analogs to Hammurabi’s Deeds can be found among the later Babylonian chronicles, which all date to the first millennium (Grayson 1975a; Brinkman 1990; Waerzeggers 2012). With due caution and some reluctance we place Hammurabi’s Deeds among texts that some have labeled as his-torical epics (Grayson 1975b: 41–46; see Zomer 2015, in press), a second-order generic classification sometimes ascribed to works that narrated the reigns of Zimri-Lim (Guichard 2014), Adad-nerari I (Weidner 1963; Wilcke 1977: 187–88), Tukulti-Ninurta I (Lambert 1957–58; Machinist 1978; Arnaud 2007: 120–23, no. 36), Tiglathpileser I (Hurowitz and Westenholz 1990), as well as various Kassite and Neo-Babylonian kings (Grayson 1975b: 47–97). Regardless of what etic generic label is ascribed, these tendentious historical accounts invite comparison with other ancient witnesses to the events they describe precisely because of their narrative structure and focus. The preserved section of Hammurabi’s Deeds recounts the defeat of Mari and Ešnunna, so we turn now to a consider-ation of the other Babylonian witnesses that commemorate these encounters.

“O Babylon, what do you keep doing?”7

In a relatively short period of time, the relationship between Babylon and Mari went from being one of amity, or at least nonaggression, in which they were rhetorically “one house and one finger” (ARM 26/2: 449, 15), to being the subject of anxiety in the royal household of Zimri-Lim: “Will he (= Hammurabi of Babylon) engage in hostile ag-gression against us? Will he come up and besiege us?” (ARM 26/1: 185–bis rev. 21–22), although some time would pass before the final showdown. Like all moments of Mesopotamian political disintegration and realignment, the end of Zimri-Lim’s polity is difficult to trace in the sources from the site itself (Heimpel 2003: 161–63; Margueron

7. ARM 26/1: 209, 8–9.



2004: 518–20; Marti 2009: 284–85). As it stands, other than Hammurabi’s Deeds, the circumstances of the fall of Mari are known only from laconic statements in Hammurabi’s royal inscriptions and year-names.

Hammurabi’s Conquest of Mari in the Royal Inscriptions

Two of Hammurabi’s royal inscriptions allude to his conquest of Mari, and each adopts a slightly different rhetori-cal stance. The more famous of the two is the Prologue to the Laws of Hammurabi (hereafter LH Prologue). In the pertinent passage, which is preserved on the stele (col. iv 23–31) and in a handful of duplicates, the Babylonian king is extolled in the following way (Borger 2006: 6):

ašarēd šarrī mukanniš dadmī Purattim ittum Dagān bānīšu šu igmilu nišī Mera u Tuttul

(Hammurabi is) preeminent among kings, subjugator of the settlements on the Euphrates in accordance with an oracular sign8 from Dagan, his creator, he who spared the people of Mari9 and Tuttul.

Although the text of the LH Prologue has been known for more than a century, our translation requires some discussion in light of a recent reworking of the conventional interpretation.

In a brief note Durand (2004a) proposed that the verb iG-mi-lu here should be interpreted as a form of kamālum, “to be(come) angry,” not gamālum, “to spare, save” (likewise Charpin and Ziegler 2003: 243–44). Both verbs are i-class, and even though they are diametrically opposed, at first glance either interpretation seems to be plausible in context. Examples of the verb kamālu(m) in the dictionaries show that it most often occurs with the preposition itti, meaning “to be(come) angry with someone” (AHw, 430a; CAD K, 109). In contrast the verb gamālu(m) occurs simply with an accusative direct object, as in the present example (CAD G, 22–23; AHw, 275–76). The sugges-tion of reading ikmilu instead of igmilu is also problematic in light of the observations by Hurowitz (1994: 76) on the literary structure of the LH Prologue, which highlight the parallel constructions gāmil Larsam, “the one who spares Larsa” (col. ii 32–33) and our passage šu igmilu nišī Mera u Tuttul (col. iv 29–31). Hammurabi’s statement that he spared the population of Mari and Tuttul was hardly unique. Sin-muballit brought attention to the fact that his brother, the Larsa ruler Rim-Sin, had spared the armies and population of Elam, Uruk, and Isin, which corresponds to claims made in Rim-Sin’s year formulae for his years 21 (Isin) and 30 (Uruk) (George 2009: 119).

Moreover, while there is little doubt that the passage in question refers obliquely to Hammurabi’s overthrow of Mari, the ideological flavor of LH veils the exercise of violence in a language of benevolence and protection, prominently expressed by Hammurabi’s epithets such as the already mentioned gāmil Larsam (col. ii 32–33), as well as mupah hir nišī saph ātim ša Isin, “gatherer of the scattered people of Isin” (col. ii 49–51), šu iqīšu napšatam ana Maškan-šāpir, “he who granted life to Maškan-šapir” (col. iv 1–3), and mušpazzir nišī Malgium ina karašîm, “the one who shelters the people of Malgium during disaster” (col. iv 11–13). The complicated case of Ešnunna is certainly related to this pattern, and we return to it below.

Beyond the issue of reading gamālum versus kamālum, Durand’s (2004a: 53) assertion that māt ah Purattim is the referent of the pronoun suffixed to bānīšu, “his/its creator,” is tantalizing, but likewise open to question. The Yahdun-Lim inscription that refers to the fact that “the god” created (ib-nu-u2) Mari is admittedly significant for understanding the local expression of royal ideology (Frayne 1990: 605, E4.6.8.2: 35), but the text of the LH Prologue was a Babylonian product that would have had no need to reflect the political and ideological claims

8. The notion of an “oracular sign,” ittum, from the god is also attested in the locution ĝ išk im sa 6-ga , “good/favorable sign,” found in Sumerian royal inscriptions of the period, e.g., ĝ išk im sa 6-ga dnanna-ta (Rim-Sin I, Frayne 1990: 285, E4.2.14.10: 27) and, in reference to Inana, ĝ išk im sa 6-ga-ni (Hammurabi, Frayne 1990: 354, E4.3.6.16: 22; Samsu-iluna, Frayne 1990: 389, E4.3.7.8: 13).

9. This writing of the name of Mari in the Louvre stele is unusual (me-raki), but variants include ma2-ri2 and me-ri2ki (Borger 2006: 6, 10).



of others. The grammar and literary structure of the LH Prologue present more formidable problems here. First, in the LH Prologue the head noun of the phrase dadmī Purattim is plural, which would require not bānīšu but bānīšun(u), “their creator.” Second and more significantly, the rest of the so-called “Piety Register” is concerned with Hammurabi’s relationship with each deity and the care and patronage of his or her temple (Hurowitz 1994: 72–89). Thus, casting Hammurabi as receiving oracular approval from Dagan, “his (= Hammurabi’s) creator” (CAD B, 94b sub bānû A), is consistent with the structure of the rest of the composition as a whole.

The second royal inscription that alludes to Hammurabi’s conquest of Mari is considerably less well known, and unlike the LH Prologue’s patina of beneficence, it makes unapologetic claims about the conquest of Mari and de-struction of its walls. The tablet BM 96952 (Sollberger and Walker 1985: 257–63), of unknown provenance, bears a Sumerian dedicatory inscription to Nergal/Meslamtaea (written as dLugal-gu 2-du₈-a) in his Emeslam temple in Kutha, work on which was commemorated in Hammurabi’s 40th year-name (Horsnell 1999, 2:160–62). The tablet’s brief colophon states that the extant manuscript was written by one Balātu during the reign of Hammurabi’s son and successor Samsu-iluna (viii/24/Si 14). Following the address and Hammurabi’s titulature, the text asserts the following (Frayne 1990: 346, E4.3.6.11: 27–30):

u₄ ma2-ri2ki u3 a2-dam-bi

in-dab₅-be2bad3-�bi� mu-un-gul-la�kalam-ma� d[u6 ka-a]r2-me-<še3> i-ni-in-ku₄-re

When he captured Mari and its (surrounding) settlements, having destroyed its walls, he then turned the whole ter-ritory into ru[bble heaps (and) ru]ins …

Hammurabi, we are told, then donated musical instruments (ba laĝ l i - l i - is 3 zabar) and a standard (šu-nir) to the temple. Frayne’s proposed reconstruction of line 30 (col. ii 8) finds parallels in a royal inscription of Samsu-iluna that is attested in both Sumerian and Akkadian versions (Frayne 1990: 377, E4.3.7.3: 36=48–49):

du6 ka-ar2-me-še3 ḫe2-ni-ku₄a-na DU6.DU6 u3 kar-mi lu u2-te-er

I turned (my enemies’ cities) into rubble heaps and ruins.

Another possible parallel comes from a royal inscription that may be attributed to Hammurabi. BM 54705 rev. 13′ (CT 58: 24, Frayne 1990: 358, E4.3.6.1001; Alster and Jeyes 1990: 3–7) is a fragmentary clay tablet that was prob-ably found in Sippar. The relevant passage reads (Alster and Jeyes 1990: 5, l. 13′):

an lugal diĝir-e-ne-ke4 bala-ni zag mu-ni-ta[g-ga (…)]uru-ni diš du6

10 ka !?(SAG)-ar2-še3? du3

!(NI)-a nam-ha-lam ma-da-�ni� ĝar-[ra …]

When An, the king of the gods, has overthrown his reign, [(…)] when he has turned his cities, every one of them, into ruins(?) and mounds(?), when destruction has been effectuated in his country […].

The extensive Akkadian glosses, so characteristic of certain manuscripts from Old Babylonian Sippar, are barely legible, but a-na kar-mi is at least clear (Alster and Jeyes 1990: 5).

These royal inscriptions focus on specific aspects of narrated historical episodes, such as Hammurabi’s benevo-lence to the people of Mari but his lack of interest in sustaining Mari as a significant cult center (LH Prologue), or

10. Read possibly uru.k i :ni ! at the beginning of the line.



the commemoration of a total military victory in the context of royal patronage of a particular Babylonian cult site (BM 96952). Historical interest in these inscriptions is oblique rather than narrative: unlike the annalistic narrative accounts known later in Assyria, allusions to specific historical events anchor the royal commemorative project, namely, promoting the king’s successful fulfillment of royal obligations.

In the end, we have very little direct information concerning the events that led up to the takeover of Mari by Hammurabi’s troops and administrators, or about the fate of its king (Charpin and Ziegler 2003: 242–45) and the role of Malgium in all of this remains unknown. While Van De Mieroop (2005: 74–75) focused on the military aspects of Mari’s end, placing Hammurabi’s decisions that led to the final attack within the broader military and political situation of the time, Durand (2004b: 146) suggested that the movement of Sim’alite groups down the Tigris into Babylon’s sphere of influence and control, presumably facilitated by the new king of Eshnunna in con-sort with Zimri-Lim, may have also factored in Hammurabi’s decision to put an end to the independence of both powers. Sasson (1998: 460–62, 2015: 2 n. 2) has proposed a very different historical perspective, speculating that Zimri-Lim may have died of natural causes and that Hammurabi was invited to protect Mari, choosing to move the population and then destroy the city. The text published here, although incomplete and difficult to interpret, might not support such an interpretation, but neither might it provide evidence that could be used to definitively falsify Sasson’s hypothesis.

The Army and City Wall of Mari in Hammurabi’s Year-Names

Hammurabi’s year-names (nīb šattim) provide a complementary perspective on the events recounted in the royal inscriptions, and it is hardly surprising that relationships between these two kinds of commemorative projects have been detected before (e.g., Wasserman 1992; Hurowitz 1994: 104–8). However, as historical evidence the year-names are at least in part functionally chronographic, that is, their practical use in ancient time-keeping means that they have the added benefit of constituting a framework for the period’s relative chronology. Due to the existence of several date-lists for the First Dynasty of Babylon, the sequence of Hammurabi’s years-names rests on reasonably secure footing (Ungnad 1938: 178–82; Horsnell 1999, 2:105–74). Hammurabi’s conflict with and eventual overthrow of Mari is mentioned in his year-names 33 and 35, which by the conventional reckoning of the year-name practice would put the events themselves in Ha 32 and Ha 34.

Leaving aside the issue of the existence of a possible major variant in year-name 33, which is found in only a handful of dated documents (Horsnell 1999, 2:148–49), most of the extant date-lists refer only to Hammurabi’s hydro-engineering project, namely, mu id2ha-am-mu-ra-pi2-nu-hu-uš-ni-ši, “Year: (the canal called) ‘Hammurabi-is-abundance-for-the-people’” (Horsnell 1999, 2:147–48; see George 2009: 139–41; Charpin 2015: 147–49). How-ever, one unprovenanced date-list appears to be more annalistic than chronographic in character and preserves longer versions of several of Hammurabi’s year-names, including year-name 33 (OECT 2: pl. 5 ii 7–21; Horsnell 1999, 1:200–203, 275–57, DL-O; see Stol 1976: 38):

7. mu ha-am-mu-ra-pi2 lugal-e8. id2ha-am-mu-ra-pi2-nu-hu-uš-ni-ši9. ša3-ge tum2-am3 an den-lil2 / mu-un-ba-al10. a da-ri2 he2-ĝal2-ka11. nibruki eriduki uri2

ki �larsa�ki-ma12. unuki-ga i3-si-in-naki

13. mu-un-ĝar-ra-am314. ki-en-gi ki-uri bir-bir-r[e-a]15. ki-bi-še3 bi2-in-gi₄-[a]16. ugnim ma-ri2

ki u3 ma-[al-giki]17. me3-ta bi2-ib2-šub-be2



18. ma-ri2ki u3 �a2-dam-bi� [(vacat)]

19. u3 uru-didliki su-bir4ki

20. dug4-ga-ni ku-li-bi21. bi2-in-�tuš x x� [(x x)] / �x x� [(x x x)]

The year that King Hammurabi, favorite of An (and) Enlil, dug the canal (called) “Hammurabi-is-abundance-for-the people,”11 established the everlasting waters of abundance for Nippur, Eridu, Ur, Larsa, Uruk, (and) Isin, restored scattered Sumer and Akkad, felled in battle the army of Mari and Ma[lgium], and made live Mari and its settlements and the various towns of Subartum under his authority in friendship (and?) … […]

A possible variant is found on MHET II/5: 564, which contains the year-name: mu ma-da uru ki ma-r i ki in-dab 5-ba , “The year that the territory of the city of Mari was seized” (Horsnell 1999, 2:146 n. 95). However, the language of the royal inscription BM 96952 (see above) may suggest an association between this unusual formula-tion and year-name 35.

In the surviving date-lists Hammurabi’s year-name 35 is usually abbreviated mu bad 3 ma 2-r i 2ki (var.: ma-

r i ki), “Year of the wall(s) of Mari,” or, in at least one instance, mu bad 3 ma-r i u 3 ma 3-a l-g i , “Year of the wall(s) of Mari and Malgium” (Horsnell 1999, 2:151–52). Thus far no lengthy date-list entry or promulgation document for year-name 35 is known, so the fullest form can only be gleaned from various dated documents (e.g., TCL 11: 151 rev. 39–40; OECT 15: 123 rev. 13–16; YOS 15: 80, 39–41, with variants):

mu ha-am-mu-ra-pi2 lugal-edug4 an den-lil2-la2-tabad3 ma2-ri2

ki u3 �ma3-al�-gi₄-aki / mu-un-gul-la2

The year that King Hammurabi, at the command of An (and) Enlil destroyed the city wall(s)12 of Mari and Malgium.

Year-name 34 commemorates cultic renovations (Horsnell 1999, 2:149–51), and as is well known no official Babylonian narrative accounts for the lag between the military successes claimed in year-name 33 and the con-quest of the city of Mari described in year-name 35. Although Malgium is not mentioned in what is preserved of N 1498+, we suggest that Hammurabi’s Deeds narrates the events that culminated in Hammurabi’s sack of Mari as described in his royal inscriptions as well as in his year-name 35. However, when we turn to the infamous flooding of Ešnunna, the correspondence between the sequence of events in Hammurabi’s Deeds and in Hammurabi’s other official commemorative texts is much less tidy.

“Ṣilli-Sin keeps answering with refusals. He would not swear an oath to Hammurabi.”13

Silli-Sin, the neophyte king of Ešnunna (ARM 26/2: 377; Sasson 2015: 296) eventually negotiated a treaty with Hammurabi (see ARM 26/2: 372; Sasson 2015: 95–97), and one of his year-names commemorates his marriage to a daughter of the Babylonian monarch (Saporetti 2002: 354; Pappi 2011; Saporetti 2013: 635–36, III4B).14 Sometime thereafter Babylon and Ešnunna fell out with each other, but at present we still know very little about the end of

11. Contra Horsnell, a royal inscription of Hammurabi (Frayne 1990: 340–42, E.4.3.6.7) as well as the later lexical tradition (Emar 6/4, 559/1: 101′–102′; Emar 6/4: 559/2, 70′; MSL 11: 27) confirm that this alone ought to be the name of the canal; note Hammurabi’s epithet in the LH Prologue: muballit Uruk šākin mê nuhšim ana nišīšu, “he who keeps Uruk alive, he who establishes abundant waters for its people” (col. ii 37–41, see Borger 2006: 6; Roth 1997: 77–78).

12. VS 18: 12 refers to the bad 3 ga l ma 2-r i 2ki, “great wall(s) of Mari,” etc.

13. ARM 26/2: 373, 45–46; for ukkušātim, “refusals,” see ARM 26/2: 370, 19′.14. A minority opinion holds that the Hammurabi mentioned in Silli-Sin’s year name (2?) is not Hammurabi of Babylon but rather Ham-

murabi of Kurda (Wu 1998: 580; Sasson 2015: 24 n. 8).



Silli-Sin’s reign, which coincided with the end of Ešnunna as a regional political player (Saporetti 2002: 372–80; Van De Mieroop 2005: 49–53; see Richardson 2005). The archaeological investigation of the early second-millen-nium levels at Tell Asmar has not been terribly informative, but in this period the lower Diyala region as a whole did witness a “substantial disruption in settled life” that may have been in part a byproduct of interventions by Hammurabi and perhaps Samsu-iluna (Adams 1965: 50–53). Suffice it to say that early excavations at Tell Asmar showed no archaeological evidence for the flooding of the town (Frankfort 1932: 38).

So far none of Hammurabi’s royal inscriptions refer to the flooding of Ešnunna, but the LH Prologue refers obliquely to a period of pušqum, “distress, difficulty,” for its people (col. iv 32–44, Borger 2006: 6–7; Roth 1997: 80):

rubûm naʾdum munawwir pānī Tišpak šākin mākālī ellūtim ana Ninazu šātip nišīšu in pušqim mukinnu išdīšin qerbum Bābilim šulmāniš

(Hammurabi is) the pious prince, the one who brightens Tišpak’s face, the one who sets pure food offerings for Ninazu, savior of his people during distress, the one who peacefully secures their foundations inside Babylon.

Although curiously not mentioned by name, this section certainly refers to Ešnunna, and some scholars have even proposed emending the text to include <in(a) Ešnunna> after ana Ninazu (Kraus 1948/52; Hurowitz 1994: 73). Once again, the LH Prologue alludes to a political maneuver using a language that highlights the fulfillment of local cultic obligations and a display of beneficence to a population in crisis. It is unclear whether Hammu-rabi’s assistance here came in the aftermath of an internal problem (e.g., a natural disaster) or is an oblique refer-ence to a forced resettlement program carried out after his own destructive military intervention. Note that in an Akkadian literary letter Rim-Sin’s brother Sin-muballit rhetorically observes that Larsa had not flooded the fields of Malgium, implying that this was a standard military tactic of the time (George 2009: 114–15, ll. 11–12; see CAD U/W, 32): u2-ga-ri-i-šu me-e u2-ul u2-ša-bi-il, “he did not arrange for water to carry off its meadows.”

Additional references to Hammurabi’s engagement with Ešnunna are sparse in the royal inscriptions. Two fragmentary clay tablets published as VS 24, 77 and 79 contain accounts in Sumerian and Akkadian, respectively, that mention Silli-Sin, king of Ešnunna (Frayne 1990: 339–40, E4.3.6.5–6).15 VS 24, 77 appears to commemorate Hammurabi’s defeat of Larsa, known from his year-name 31, while VS 24, 79 may refer to Hammurabi’s defeat of Ešnunna on the battlefield, mentioned in his year-name 32.

While Ešnunna played a role in Hammurabi’s year-names 30 and 32 (see above), all abbreviated versions of Hammurabi’s year-name 38 mention either just Ešnunna (SLB 1/3: 101; MAH 7485, DL-L: mu eš 3-nun ki), its destruction (SLB 1/3, 102), or, most commonly, that great waters destroyed Ešnunna (Horsnell 1999, 2:157–59).16 Year-name 38 is known in its fullest form from a small promulgation document found in Nippur (CBS 15122; PBS 5, 95, see fig 4;17 Horsnell 1999, 1:159, PD-N):

1. �mu ha�-mu-ra-pi2 lugal2. dug4-ga an den-lil2-bi-ta3. nam-ku3-zu dmarduk-ke₄ �mu�-un-na-/an-ma:šum2-a4. [e]š3-nun-naki a gal-gal-la mu-un-gul-l[a]5. �x (x) x� ki ib2-ta-g[i?]/-z[i? (x)]

15. Although both sources reportedly came from Koldewey’s excavations in Babylon, to our knowledge neither appears in the published catalogue of tablets found at the site (Pedersén 2005).

16. Horsnell (1999, 2: 159) tentatively placed the fragmentary contract UM 55-21-235 = 3N-T 78 (Stone 1987: 219, no. 56, pl. 69) among the attestations of Hammurabi’s year name 38, but our collation demonstrates that it is properly identified as a source for his year name 37 (see Horsnell 1999, 2: 155–56).

17. Full photographic documentation is available via CDLI (http://cdli.ucla.edu/P269678); rev. uninscribed.



The year that King Hammurabi, by the command of An (and) Enlil, through the wisdom given to him by Marduk, destroyed Ešnunna with great water (and) …(?).18

Ungnad (1938: 181) assumed that Hammurabi destroyed the wall of Ešnunna with a mass of water “und verwan-delte (?) es in [eine Wüstenei (?)],” and his view came to be the conventional one (e.g., Saporetti 2002: 376; Van De Mieroop 2005: 52; Charpin 2011a: 81). However, Charpin (2002: 558, 2004b: 333 n. 1735) took note of the dam-aged nature of the year-name and tentatively suggested a revised understanding, translating: “Hammu-rabi [sauva] Ešnunna qui avait été détruite par une grande inondation.” This interpretation might appear to account more prop-erly for the relativizer/nominalizer -a on the Sumerian verb gul , “to destroy.” However, these Sumerian verbal forms in -a reflect the Akkadian construction šattum (once: ina šattim) ša …-u, “The year that …,” which is the translation found consistently in the bilingual promulgation documents from the First Dynasty of Babylon (Horsnell 1999, 1:152–59).19 For an example of the use of subordinated forms of the verb gul that clearly indicate that the first subject was the agent see, for example, the year formula for Samu-iluna’s eleventh year (Horsnell 1999, 2:195).

18. Not included by Horsnell (1999, 2:157 n. 124) are the following two sources, which are difficult to interpret at present: mu eš 3-nun-na ki / �x NI? NI/GAG?� l a 2

? �e2?� (MHET II/2: 269; BM 67282 u. edge); mu eš 3-nun-na ki / la 2

? e 2-ga l-kam ? �bu ? še ? d iš ?� (MHET II/2: 270; BM 81093 u. edge). Perhaps an altogether different year name is meant, though there are no obvious candidates and prosopographic consid-erations point to the time of Hammurabi: Erišti-Aya, daughter of Nabi-ilišu (MHET II/2: 270, 3–4), is known from other documents dated to his reign (Stol 1976: 36), as are the nadītum-women Šat-Aya and Geme-Aya (not Amat-Aya; note the writings ge-me-da-a, MHET II/2: 269, 3, and gememe-da-a, van Lerberghe 1994: 8, no. 2: 3), who are known business associates in various records from Sippar (van Lerberghe 1994).

19. Other year-names written directly in Akkadian followed the grammatically related pattern šanat (typically MU) …-u (e.g., Zimri-Lim,

CBS 15122, obverse



Abbreviations and variant usages of the year-name complicate the proper understanding of the agency behind the events it commemorated, but these were scribal shortcuts and their writers were not necessarily concerned with the precise meanings of the phrases they inscribed to date a tablet. There are standard abbreviated forms that use the prefix ba- whenever the agent is deleted as in mu eš 3-nun-na ki a ga l-ga l- la ba-an-gul (Stol 1982: 161 no. 13, 13, Larsa, same but with �ba-gul � in van Lerberghe 1994: 11, 4) or mu eš 3-nun- �na � / �a �-a gu-la ba-gul (TCL 11: 167A, 11–12, Larsa), which only inform us that this was the year “Ešnunna was destroyed by mighty waters.” However, there are also similar versions that use the prefix mu-, which should not occur with a deleted agent with forms such as mu-un-gul (Stol 1982: 158 no. 7, 9), mu-un-gul- la (Boyer, Contribution 135: 22, Larsa; CT 48: 64, 36; Jean, Šumer et Akkad CCIX: 186, 11; Suurmeijer 2010: 33, 10′, all[?] from Sippar20), mu-un-gul- la 2 (Stol 1982: 166, no. 21, 171, no. 15; 30, 10, both from Larsa), or even mu-un-gul-gul (Birot 1969: 47 no. 13, 15, Larsa region; TCL 11: 162A, 29, Larsa).

Such varieties of the year-name do not allow us to ascribe the flooding of Ešnunna to any agent, be it nature, the gods, or a Babylonian king. Other than the promulgation document discussed above, the most explicit version that credits the deed to Hammurabi is TIM 4: 37, 21–23 (probably from Nippur no less, see Leemans 1991: 315):

mu dha-am-mu-ra-�pi2� [lugal?-e?]a gal-gal-la eš3-nun-naki

mu-un-gul-e

The year that [King] Hammurabi destroyed(/es) Ešnunna by means of mighty waters.

Therefore, it seems that the traditional interpretation, according to which Hammurabi was the subject of the first verb in the formula, should be retained, and the broken passage at the end of year-name 38 appears to reference the resettlement project alluded to in the section of the LH Prologue discussed above.21

As for the rest of the promulgation document from Nippur, one option would be to read the broken line �x x uĝ 3

?� k i ib 2-ta-g[i ?], “he resettled(?) … (its) people(?).” For comparison, Rim-Sin’s year-name 28 refers to that king’s treatment of the population of Zarbilum: uĝ 3 daĝa l- la-bi k i-bi-še 3 bi 2- in-g i₄-a , “he resettled its vast population” (Sigrist 1990: 57–58; see also Hammurabi’s year-name 33 discussed above). However, for the comparison to hold we would need to assume a semantic equivalence between the common expression k i-bi-še 3…gi 4 (var. g i ), Akkadian ana ašrīšu turrum, and ki…gi, which is otherwise uncommon. A possible parallel is found in the different attested statements of Apil-Sin’s year-name 12, assuming that k i !(ŠU) bi 2- in-g i !(ZI) in a dated document (CT 45: 101, BM 82412) corresponds to the familiar phrase k i-bi-še 3 bi 2- in-g i₄-a found in a date-list from Sippar (IM 85922 + IM 85934 rev. 16′; see Al-Rawi 1993: 24, 28; Horsnell 1999, 1:26–29, 2:83–85). Hammurabi’s year-name 38 could also be read as �t in ?-t i r ?�ki ib 2- ta-g[i ?], “(and) he brought (Ešnunna/its people to) Babylon.” While the writing ka 2-diĝ ir-ra ki is generally more common in earlier periods, t in-t ir ki is found in a few other Old Babylonian year-names.22 By either revised reading of Hammurabi’s year-name 38, it would appear to be related to the episode mentioned in the LH Prologue.

However, it is possible that neither interpretation is correct and that the verb is to be read ib 2- ta-z[i ? (x)], in which case the beginning of the line remains a mystery. Putting aside the intractable problem of the full year-name, one serious chronological issue remains: the basic sequence of events in Hammurabi’s royal inscriptions and

see Charpin and Ziegler 2003: 257–60), a tradition that goes back to the very first year-names produced in the local vernacular during the reign of Naram-Sin (in 1 MU …-u, see Frayne 1993: 85–87).

20. See also the examples from Tel Sifr and Uruk cited by Horsnell 1999, 2:157.21. The proposal by Horsnell (1999, 2:157–58) to read �UD?.KIB?.NUN?�ki at the beginning of CBS 15122 obv. 6 is without basis on epi-

graphic grounds: note in particular the form of NUN in line 5 of the same tablet.22. See George 1992: 248, add also Ham A: 11′, see p. 18 above.



year-names seems to be at odds with the narrative laid out in Hammurabi’s Deeds, which places the flooding of Ešnunna before the destruction of Mari.

Chronological Displacement?

What is to be done about the apparently incommensurable narratives laid out in Hammurabi’s year-names and the text of Hammurabi’s Deeds? We suggest considering at least four possible scenarios:

1. Present interpretation of the sequence of events is inaccurate (year-name 38), ancient knowledge of the se-quence of events was complete, and all sources refer to a common chapter in which Ešnunna was flooded before the overthrow of Mari (Hammurabi’s Deeds).

2. Present knowledge of the sequence of events is incomplete, ancient knowledge of the sequence of events was complete, and the sources refer to distinct episodes in which Ešnunna was flooded, at least once before the over-throw of Mari (Hammurabi’s Deeds) and perhaps at least once years later (year-name 38).

3. Present knowledge of the basic sequence is complete, but ancient knowledge was incomplete or garbled, and the authors of Hammurabi’s Deeds combined events to the best of their knowledge for the narrative. For example, the author may have conflated Ešnunna’s defeat in battle (year-name 32), which occurred before the overthrow of Mari, with the flooding of the town (year-name 38).

4. Present knowledge of the basic sequence is complete, and ancient knowledge of the sequence of events was complete, but the author of Hammurabi’s Deeds was indifferent to historical veridicality and combined events in the narrative along different lines, for example, the flooding of Ešnunna was displaced in the narrative so as to be prior to the overthrow of Mari.

The first three scenarios either seem unlikely or are difficult to probe. Although we take Charpin’s (2002: 558, 2004b: 333 n. 1735) suggestion seriously, neither of our revised readings of Hammurabi’s year-name 38 accord with the idea that Hammurabi used it only or primarily to commemorate his benevolent act toward Ešnunna or its people. Furthermore, if Hammurabi loosed a destructive flood on Ešnunna years earlier (in Ha 34 or earlier, that is, before the conquest of Mari), his actions at that time left behind no other trace in the historical record. In typical fashion there is no indication of how the author of Hammurabi’s Deeds used sources, but if the text was composed during the First Dynasty of Babylon (see below), it would be surprising if its author was ignorant of the basic sequence of events. However, the fourth scenario has analogs in other ancient Near Eastern literature.

Chronological displacement is a compositional technique in which an author intentionally reorders a known sequence of historical events for some narrative, ideological, or explanatory purpose (Glatt 1993).23 The purpose of the alleged chronological displacement in Hammurabi’s Deeds is difficult to discern because the text is incomplete and the context in which it first circulated is unknown. However, it is possible to point to a parallel example of an early non-chronological narrative of Hammurabi’s reign: the unusual date-list that we have already mentioned in connection with Hammurabi’s year-name 33.

The annalistic date-list OECT 2, pl. 5–6 (Horsnell 1999, 1:200–203, 275–57, DL-O) is a four-column tablet that concludes col. iv with the summary [(…)] 18 mu ha-am-mu-ra-pi2 luga l-e , “[(…)] Eighteen year-(names) of King Hammurabi.” This text reads like a compilation of promulgation documents: it contains some of the longest attested year-names, and its layout and contents stand out in comparison with other date-lists, which usually abbreviate entries in a list format. Only the upper portion of the tablet remains, and remnants of at least nine of Hammurabi’s year-names are preserved: 30, 31, ? […] (lacuna of uncertain length) (col. i); 32, 33, ? […] (lacuna of

23. Novotny (2015) illustrates the rich ideological and practical layers behind the dating of Esarhaddon’s Babylon inscriptions (see Glatt 1993: 16–19). An additional Mesopotamian example not found in Glatt’s study is the construction of Kar-Tukulti-Ninurta, which several of Tukulti-Ninurta I’s royal inscriptions (e.g., KAH 2: 61, see Grayson 1987: 274–76, A.0.78.24) displace to after his defeat of Kaštiliaš IV of Baby-lon (Gilibert 2008).



uncertain length) (col. ii); (lacuna of uncertain length) […] ?, 36, 37, 39 (col. iii); (lacuna of uncertain length) […] 43 (col. iv). A strict chronological presentation of year-names 30–43 would have resulted in at most fourteen en-tries, as opposed to the eighteen noted in the rubric. Perhaps more significantly, the lacuna at the bottom of col. i is too large to contain only the beginning of year-name 32, so it seems likely that additional material may have been inserted there. In addition, year-name 38 was tantalizingly omitted in the preserved section of col. iii. If not simply omitted but also placed somewhere in the tablet’s lacunae, the flooding of Ešnunna would have been intentionally inserted out of historical sequence. Unfortunately, the overthrow of Mari (year-name 35) is likewise missing, so we will probably never know whether OECT 2, pl. 5–6 placed these two campaigns together and rearranged their sequence. Regardless, it is conceivable that a date-list compilation such as this one, or a common source, provided source material for the author(s) of Hammurabi’s Deeds.

Date of Composition

The precise date of composition of Hammurabi’s Deeds and of the manuscript under consideration remains some-what uncertain. Thus, we turn now to a few speculative remarks aimed at provoking discussion of the issue. Dating is a concern in its own right, but its primary significance lies in the connection between the text’s date of composi-tion and the likely contexts for history-writing of this kind in ancient Mesopotamia.

If our second-millennium dating of the present manuscript is accepted (see below), then there are three pos-sible periods that seem likely to have produced the composition. First, the text of Hammurabi’s Deeds may have originated in the court of Hammurabi himself, that is, shortly after the latest event narrated in the text. If it was produced as contemporary court literature in the vernacular, Hammurabi’s Deeds would constitute an important contribution to the study of that king’s self-representation (see Van De Mieroop 2011). A composition like Ham-murabi’s Deeds would presumably have aggrandized the monarch’s accomplishments late in his reign, perhaps as a royal apologia for Hammurabi’s Realpolitik. Although we may never know why there was a lag between the defeat (Ha 32) and conquest (Ha 34) of Mari, Hammurabi’s Deeds may have provided a (post facto) divinely ordained rationale for the final campaign that resulted in the conquest of the city.

Second, an indirect case could be made for dating Hammurabi’s Deeds to the reign of Samsu-iluna, his son and immediate successor. BM 96952 (Frayne 1990: 345–47, E4.3.6.11; see above) shows beyond doubt that there was active interest during Samsu-iluna’s reign in copying royal inscriptions of Hammurabi. However, without some prosopographic tether between the copyist Balātu and Samsu-iluna’s wider state apparatus, we must concede that it is difficult to connect that one manuscript (even one that describes the overthrow of Mari) with a project of history-writing in the royal court.24 Most intriguing are the parallels between episodes in Hammurabi’s political career and Samsu-iluna’s numerous military adventures up the Diyala and Syrian Euphrates, which are spread out over more than two decades and are mainly known from laconic statements in his year-names 10, 20, 23, 28, 32, and 37 (Horsnell 1999, 2:193–95, 207–30; Charpin 2004b: 340–42, 347–64; see Charpin 2011b). Furthermore, echoes between the royal titulature in Hammurabi’s year-name 32 (luga l ur-saĝ) and Samsu-iluna’s year-name 20 (luga l saĝ-ka l) underscore the perceived significance of each king’s victory over Ešnunna (Charpin 2014). In Samsu-iluna’s time a literary historical composition like Hammurabi’s Deeds would have laid out a series of di-vinely sanctioned precedents among his father’s military exploits and thus provide for the later king “the outlines for a science of the exercise of power” (Glassner 2004: 22).

Be that as it may, a third possibility remains: a vague Late Old Babylonian or Kassite date of composition for Hammurabi’s Deeds cannot be ruled out, and in such a case the political and ideological flavor of the text might

24. Although not dated, the annalistic date-list OECT 2, pl. 5–6 was written in Ha 43 at the earliest, and it may well have been produced during the reign of Samsu-iluna or some later Babylon I king.



N 1

498

+ N

174

9 +

N 7

050

reve

rse

obve

rse

right

edg

e

obve

rse



reflect later concerns. However, beyond an antiquarian interest in earlier Babylonian kings, no specific later sec-ond-millennium political context seems particularly promising as a stimulus for the composition of a text of this kind. On this count a comparison of Hammurabi’s Deeds with a definitively Middle Babylonian historical text may be instructive. While published only in part (N 4026, see Ellis 1979: 227–28, no. 8), the text HS 1885+ reportedly narrates a conflict between Gulkišar, of the poorly known First Sealand Dynasty, and Samsu-ditana, the last king of the First Dynasty of Babylon (Zomer, in press). Unlike Hammurabi’s Deeds, which lionizes the dynasty, HS 1885+ is evidently written from the perspective of the Sealand Dynasty, with Babylon playing the role of antagonist. This post-Old Babylonian narrative would thus assume the dynasty’s demise and was presumably of interest because of the perspective it offered on the nature of political change in southern Mesopotamia. The texts and their contexts of composition would seem to be starkly different, though a proper comparison must await the complete publica-tion of HS 1885+. In any case, the date of Hammurabi’s Deeds is likely to remain uncertain for some time.

Text Edition

N 1498 + N 1749 + N 705025 (approximately 11 cm × 6 cm × 3 cm)The curvature of the fragmentary tablet suggests that it had at least two if not more columns per side. The

obverse is very worn: one can make out scattered fragments of signs and an occasional complete one, but for all practical purposes it is illegible. Fewer than thirty lines are legible on the first column of the reverse; it is possible that only one or at the most two signs are missing at the beginning of most lines, and a few may have nothing lost at the outset.

Transliteration

Reverse 1′. […] x x […]2′. […]-x-�ra??-pi2

?� ID? […] 3′. [… ha(?)-am(?)-mu(?)-r]a-pi2 ��ŠID? DI?� […] 4′. […] x �IM?? u3

? HUB?? BA??/NA??� KI LU2 �x� [ ] �x� [ ] �DI? x� […]5′. […] x UN ZA AR? [ S]AĜ?.DU? x [(x x)]6′. [(…) U]D?.UNUGki-am lu2sa-ab x […] ID? EL?[…] (7′. […] x uš-mit ir-ni-ti �dAMAR�.U[TU (u?) i(z)?/ta?-(az?)-z]i?-im-ta-šu ik-šu-�ud?�8′. [(…)] iš-tu aš2-nun-naki a-�x� x [(x x x)] x A.GI6 iš-ku-�nu� / KALAM-su �u2�-na-wu-u2 9′. [(…)](-)�in� du-un-ni-šu LU2 ELAMki a-�na� x-Vh-ti ik-mi-su/su14

10′. [(…)] �iš-tu� ša-di-i ra-bu-ti ki-ma ĝišSI.ĜAR-�im e?-li?-šu2??� KI? RI I[M? (x x)]

11′. [(…)] iš-tu in šul-mi še-ep dUTU u3 dAMAR.UTU iš-ši-qu [(vacat?)]

12′. [(…)] �i3-nu AN den�-lil2 <a?-na?> ma2-ri2ki šu-ul-�pu2�-ti pa-la-šu šu-�pe-li� / i-iq-bu-u

13′. [… z]i-�im�-ri-�li-im� LUGAL �ma2�-r[i2ki (vacat?)]

14′. […] �x x ha-am�-mu-�ra-pi2 ERIN2�-num LI x x […]15′. […]-�a-ti� K[A? ]16′. […] x ha-am-mu-ra-pi2 x […]17′. […] �ki?�-na-a-�ti ša dUTU u d�[AMAR(?)].�UTU?� x[…]18′. [… ma2-r]i2

ki x […]

25. Full photographic documentation is available via CDLI (http://cdli.ucla.edu/P276870).



19′. […] ri-it-ta-šu da-mi qar-r[a??-di(?) …]20′. [… i]n? šu-ul-mi I[D? …]21′. […] �x qar-ra-du der3�-ra ša K[I? …]22′. [(…) a?-ah? (id2)UD.K]IB.NUN.NAki is-bat-ma?? ma2-�ri2�[

ki …] 23′. […] (vacat) […]24′. […] uš-ta-[al?-pi?-it ?…] 25′. […] �x� […]26′. […]�x DI?� DA �A x� […]rest of column broken

Translation

1′–5′. too fragmentary to translate6′. [… L]arsa(?), troops (of) […] … […]7′. […] … he put to death(?). He (= Hammurabi) obtained Marduk’s desire [(and)] his (= Hammurabi’s?) [w]

ish(?).8′. [(…)] After he set flood waters (against) Ešnunna (in order) to […] (and) he made (…) its/his land into

ruins,9′. [(…)] With/as a result of(?) his (= Hammurabi’s) strength the man of Elam bowed down(?) (in order) to/for

…,10′. [(…)] After he(?) … the great mountains like a bolt upon/over him …, [(…)]11′. [(…)] After upon his safe return he kissed the feet of Šamaš and Marduk, [(…)]12′. [(…)] When An and Enlil had ordered the destruction of Mari and the replacement of its/his reign,13′. [… Z]imri-Lim, king of Mar[i, (vacat?)]14′. […] … Hammurabi, the army … […]15′. […] … […]16′. […] … Hammurabi … […]17′. […] truth/justice of/which Šamaš and [Mardu]k … […]18′. [… Mar]i … […]19′. […] his hand(s) (with) the blood of warr[iors …]20′. [… i]n safety … […]21′. […] … warrior Erra, who … […]22′. [(…) the banks of the Eu]phrates [River] he seized and […] Mari […]23′. […] […]24′. […] it [was destroyed(?) …]25′–26′. too fragmentary to translate, rest of column broken.

Commentary

Date of the Manuscript

The dating of N 1498+ must rely on internal criteria: the tablet’s contents, orthography, paleography, and grammar. The terminus post quem of the date of composition is obviously set by the events it narrates, but little else of the incomplete text is useful for the dating of this particular manuscript.

Almost half a century ago Miguel Civil (1969: 138) wrote that “cuneiform paleography, it is sad to say, has hardly made any progress in the last forty years,” and with some notable exceptions, much of that that assessment



still holds true today. The matter is particularly acute when it comes to distinguishing between Old Babylonian and Middle Babylonian writing features as reiterated recently by Veldhuis (2000: 70), who also noted that many later Kassite period tablets used Late-OB sign forms (see also Peterson in press). As a result the dating of early and mid-second-millennium literary and school texts from Nippur must rely as much on intuition as on exact criteria. Most archaeologically datable Old Babylonian school tablets from the city were discovered in levels that were sealed during or in the aftermath of the Rim-Sin II rebellion, probably in the ninth or tenth year of the reign of Hammurabi’s son Samsu-iluna, and the writing of commercial and administrative texts in Nippur ceases with the end of the reign of the latter king (Stol 2001: 539). Such epigraphic information, combined with evidence from archaeology, suggested that the city was abandoned soon after, in concert with other southern Babylonian cities, and remained unoccupied for a few hundred years (Gibson 1992: 42–44; Gibson et al. 2001: 558–59; George 2009: 136). Recently published information from the town of Dur-Abi-ešuh, in the vicinity of Nippur, has provided evidence that while much of the city may have been depopulated, the central cults of Nippur, focused around the worship of the god Enlil, were maintained into the reign of Ammi-saduqa (George 2009: 137–38). However, in this context Dur-Abi-ešuh may have functioned as a “virtual Nippur” for the exiled temple elite, and it seems likely that they were transferred to Dur-Abi-ešuh some time earlier (Charpin 2015: 153–54).

If there were people living in the vicinity of the Ekur, if not in other pockets in Nippur, at least into the time of Ammi-ditana or Ammisaduqa, one could expect that some form of scribal training may have continued into this period. However, there is general consensus that dated Old Babylonian tablets from Nippur cease after the time of Samsu-iluna and a few years of the Sealand kings. School texts from Nippur very rarely mention the name of a student26 and never carried year formulae so that their dating is purely subjective.

An example of two dated school exercises from Sippar or its environs demonstrates just how inaccurate such judgments may be. There is a manuscript of the Nungal Hymn, one of the standard educational items of the so-called Decad, that is dated to the time of the local king Manana, roughly at the time of the beginning of the First Dynasty of Babylon, and this tablet is the oldest currently known dated Old Babylonian literary exercise (BM 108866; CT 58: 27; see Michalowski 1995: 50). A few years ago Löhnert (2011) published BM 79966, a version of another such exercise, from the Lament over the Destruction of Ur, which was written by Ipiq-Aya, the same pupil who wrote the Atrah asis tablets dated to the eleventh and twelfth years of King Ammisaduqa (Lambert and Mil-lard 1969: 31–32). Approximately 250 years separate the work of these two Sippar students, and yet a comparison of their work reveals just how little the school hand had changed over the centuries. If these tablets did not carry date formulae, no one would suspect that they came from such different times, and this example must be kept in mind when we make subjective judgments about the dating of Old Babylonian school texts from Nippur or, for that matter, from any other site (Michalowski 2011b). In view of this, it is impossible to exclude the possibility that some of the tablets from Nippur that are in our museums may have originated in late Old Babylonian times.

The orthography of N 1498+ is largely phonetic, but a handful of logograms are present: A.GI6 (rev. 8′), KALAM (8′), LU2 (10′), ĝišSI.ĜAR (10′), LUGAL (13′), perhaps SAĜ.DU (5′), as well as the toponyms ELAMki (9′), [(id2)UD. K]IB.NUN.NAki (22′), and perhaps [U]D?.UNUGki (6′). Conventional post-OB sign values include the following: the CVC signs ŠUL /šul/ (11′) and perhaps BAD /mit/ (7′); both U3 (11′) and perhaps post-OB U (17′) are used to write the conjunction u; ŠU (7′, 9′, 12′, 20′) and perhaps post-OB ŠU2 (10′) are used for /šu/; and post-OB TUL2 appears for /pu/ (12′). Prepositions and subordinating conjunctions are written phonetically: iš-tu (8′, 10′, 11′), a-na (8′, 9′), ki-ma (10′), perhaps e-li (10′), and perhaps the apocopated form in (9′, 11′, 20′). A text as short as this one provides very few examples of diagnostic signs that could be used for dating, but no sign form points obviously to a first-millennium copy. That said, the sign AH (9′) appears to be from the latter half of the second millenni-

26. See, for example, Ni. 2759, a copy of The Message of Ludiĝira to His Mother, written by den- l i l 2-ma-an-šum 2 (Çiğ and Kramer 1976: 418, edge).



um.27 Mimation is largely absent with the exception of ĝišSI.ĜAR-im (10′) and EREN2-num (14′). The orthography i-iq-bu-u is typical of OB but occurs sporadically in later periods as well (see the note on l. 12′). Finally, the form u2-na-wu-u2 (8′) preserves intervocalic /w/ and thus does not evidence the diagnostic post-OB shift /w/ > /m/. In sum, the tablet’s datable features are mixed, but nothing obviously points to a first-millennium date; orthography and paleography point to the later second millennium, all of which suggests the reasonable inference of a MB date for the present manuscript. However, a Late-OB date cannot be ruled out entirely, particularly given the possibility of the existence of a functioning temple complex in Nippur into the reign of Ammi-saduqa.

ObverseA curious accretion on the upper-left-hand side seems to preserve part of an unintentional squeeze of another

tablet surface, a glimpse into the now-lost depositional processes behind the tablet’s preservation in the archaeo-logical record. A few signs are visible for some half-dozen lines toward the bottom, but so far we have been unable to make sense of any of the text.

Reverseright col. = col. iii(?)

4′. A toponym is possible toward the beginning of the preserved portion of the line, though a specific candidate does not suggest itself.

5′. This line remains unclear. Perhaps UN ZA AR could be read KALAM sa3-ar, “the land was criminal/dis-loyal,” which lacks good parallels.

6′. After the possible mention of Larsa, a military force is mentioned; as a possible chronological anchor, note that Hammurabi’s defeat of Larsa and Yamutbal (ma-da e-/ ia-mu-ut-ba- lum ki) is commemorated in his year-name 31 (Horsnell 1999, 2:141).

7′. Although the value /mit/ of the BAD sign is generally post-OB (MZL2 no. 113), no other alternative makes good sense of the signs at the beginning of the line. If read correctly, the direct object of ušmīt should be in the la-cuna, either directly preceding the verb or somewhere in the previous line. There are few good OB parallels (CAD M/1, 426–27 sub mâtu), but note ARM 2: 26 (Durand 1998: 231).

The expression irnitti Marduk kašādum finds a parallel in Hammurabi’s year-name 32 (Horsnell 1999, 2:143–46), where Hammurabi is given the epithets luga l ur-saĝ u 3-ma dmarduk-ke 4 sa 2-sa 2, “king, warrior, the one who attains victory for Marduk,” with the variant u 3-ma sa 2-sa 2 dmarduk-ke 4 (Horsnell 1999, 2:144; note also TLB 2: 3, 21, see Sjöberg 1961: 52). Sum. u 3-ma is commonly glossed with Akk. irnittu (CAD I/J, 179 sub irnittu; Sjöberg 1961: 66; Hurowitz 1994: 96; Jaques 2004: 220–25), and in a royal inscription (which has resonance with Hammurabi’s year-name 33) Hammurabi is called kāšid irnitti Marduk (Frayne 1990: 341, E4.3.6.7: 6–7). A passage from the LH Epilogue suggests that the intervening broken part of the present text may have contained an adverbial phrase akin to irnitti Marduk eliš u šapliš ikšud, “(Hammurabi) achieved victory for the god Marduk above and below (= everywhere)” (col. xlviii 28–31, see Borger 2006: 46; Roth 1997: 134), but the visible traces point toward an expression in apposition to irnitti Marduk. In bilinguals u 3-ma is less commonly glossed with nizmatu, “wish, desire” (CAD N/2, 304 sub nizmatu; note LH Prologue col. iii 1; see Jaques 2004: 223), which oc-curs alongside its cognate tazzimtu 2, “wish, desire,” in the later lexical tradition (CAD T, 302b sub tazzimtu). In only a handful of instances (all SB) does tazzimtu occur as the direct object of kašādu, and in every clear case the one obtaining his wish is human, not divine. Therefore, the referent of the possessive suffix should probably be Hammurabi, not Marduk, though the latter remains a possibility.

27. To our knowledge the earliest attestation of this form of AH dates to the Late-OB period (CBS 1534, BE 6/1: 95, 2, 8; Sippar, date: x/20/As 13; photo: http://cdli.ucla.edu/P258868), but the form is normative in Kassite times. However, there is also the possibility of a regional (as opposed to diachronic) variation between OB Nippur and Sippar.



Alternatively, if the word in question is to be reconstructed as izzimtu rather than tazzimtu, the reasoning is similar: izzimtu must also be derived from nazāmu, and so far izzimtu occurs almost exclusively as the object of the verb kašādu and always refers to a human’s desire or wish. The morphology of i(z)zimtu is debated (AHw, 411 sub izzimtu; CAD I/J, 318–19 sub izimtu): on the question of izzimtu versus izimtu, note that neither the iprist- nor the I-n pirist- > *irist nominal form is very common. The only example of a I-n pirist- > *irist noun would appear to be ikiltu, which has been interpreted as “ruse, trick, treachery,” based on a single attestation in the Epic of Tukulti-Ninurta (CAD I/J, 48b sub ikiltu A; see CAD N/2 sub nikiltu; AHw, 368a; Machinist 1978: 226).

8′. Akk. ištu can be either a preposition or a subordinating conjunction (see line 11′), which presents significant problems for the interpretation of this line. If ištu here is a preposition, then the expected construction would be ištu GN adi GN2, though ana also occurs (see CAD I/J, 286b sub ištu). On the other hand, if ištu is a conjunction, then the toponym Ešnunna would have to be a fronted direct object, and ana(?) […] ought to be an adverbial phrase, perhaps indicating the purpose or extent, such as “(in order) to [destroy/punish? (it)].”

The noun agû (A.ĜI6), “destructive flooding,” does not occur elsewhere with the verb šakānu, so it is difficult to discern whether a preposition like eli, “on, against,” would be needed to indicate what was flooded (CAD A/1, 158b; see PSD A/1, 84–87). The form iš-ku-nu could be either singular in a subordinate clause or (m.) plural in a main clause or a subordinate clause, i.e., either “(after) he/they (had) set.” Possible translations of the first part of this line are:

“after he/they had set a flood (against) Ešnunna (in order) to/for […]” “[(when/after/…)] he/they set a flood from Ešnunna to [(GN2)]”

This line must be understood in conjunction with what follows, so we have tentatively given preference to the first option. In its fullest form Hammurabi’s year-name 32 commemorates his defeat of ugnim eš 3-nun-na ki su-bir 4

ki gu-t i -um ki, “the army of Ešnunna, Subartum, (and) Gutium” (Horsnell 1999, 2:143; see Richardson 2005), but it is year-name 38 that mentions a flood destroying Ešnunna (see above). The orthography of the toponym Ešnunna is one of the typical variant forms in use from Ur III times on (Jacobsen 1934: 1–19; RGTC 3, 73–76).

It is difficult to determine whether the verb in māssu unawwû is singular in a subordinate clause or (m.) plural, i.e., either “(after) … [(and)] he (had) desolated his land” or “[(and)] they desolated his land.” Note the following temporal construction from Daduša’s victory stele: iš-tu i-ta-ti-šu u2-na-wu-ma ma-as-su2 ra-pa-aš-tam aš2-ki-šu, “after I desolated his (= the king of Qabara’s) environs and slaughtered his vast land” (IM 95200 col. viii 1–2, see Charpin 2004a: 154).

The explicit use of PI /wu/ is typically OB. 9′. The first legible sign is either -in, belonging to a word in the break, or an apocopated form of ina, common

in Babylonian literary dialects. Based on examples taken from royal inscriptions, the referent of the suffix in in dunnīšu is most likely Hammurabi (CAD D, 184a sub dunnu). The identity of the awīl Elamti(m), “man of Elam,” is not specified, but Hammurabi’s defeat of Elam is noted in his year-name 30. There are two roots k-m-s, “to gather” (CAD K, 114–17 sub kamāsu A) and “to stoop” (CAD K, 117–20 sub kamāsu B; see Gruber 1980: 171–78), both of which are i-class and have variant forms kamās u. The subject of the verb is unclear: kamāsu A is transitive, in which case Hammurabi could be the subject; kamāsu B is intransitive, making the “man of Elam” the most likely subject. If the verb is transitive (kamāsu A), then a plural or collective object is typically expected (CAD K, 115): e.g., ahhū, mātu, nawû, nišī, sablum. The one interesting exception comes from a Mari oracle from Dagan of Terqa in which the god (via an anonymous qammatum functionary) reassures Zimri-Lim that ana šētim ša ukassaru akammissu, “I will collect him (= the man of Ešnunna!) in the net that he knots/I knot” (ARM 26/1: 197, 14–15, see Nissinen 2003: 28, no. 7; Sasson 2015: 263–64).

The sequence transliterated a-na �x�-Vh-ti is difficult, and the spacing and traces leave few possibilities. The prepositional phrase ana X kamāsu typically denotes “gathering into X” (kamāsu A) or “kneeling down to X” (kamāsu B). Perhaps read a-na �ne?�-eh-ti , i.e., ana nēh ti, “for peace/security,” which occurs most commonly with



forms of (w)ašābu(m) or in cognate constructions (CAD N/2, 150–1 sub nēhtu). We should note that we have re-peatedly checked the sign AH , which may seem like IM on the photographs, but it is definitely AH. .

This line (and the following one?) may give a skewed Babylonian perspective on the eventual rapprochement that came in the aftermath of Babylon’s victory over Elam: we know that Hammurabi and the ruler of Elam eventu-ally renewed diplomatic relations, but there is no evidence that anyone other than messengers went between them (e.g., ARM 26/2: 373, 5–9, Heimpel 2003: 110–11, Sasson 2015: 159–60).

10′. The sense of šigaru, “bolt, clamp; neck stock,” is unclear as is the phrase before the break at the line’s end. For the former, note the reference to Samsu-iluna leading Iluni, king of Ešnunna, away ĝišs i -ĝar gu 2-[du 3-a-ta] | [i]n gišSI.ĜAR, “in a neck stock” (Frayne 1990: 387, E4.3.7.7: 4′′′ | 107).

Perhaps this line elaborates on events surrounding the “man of Elam” mentioned in the previous line. The metaphor of a mountain range as the bolt (saĝ-kul = sikkūru, which is semantically related to ĝišs i -ĝar = šigaru) that guards access to a land had a long history in Mesopotamian literature, and it even occurs in an Ur III account from Ur in which a group of “Amorites” was designated as saĝ-kul ma-da-ka, “(on) the bolt of the frontier” (UET 3: 1685, 4–5; see Michalowski 2011a: 117), and in Ibbi-Sin’s 9th year-name H uh nuri was described as saĝ-kul ma-da an-ša-an ki, “bolt of Anšan” (UET 3: 1383, 15–16). In the hymn Išbi-Erra B (van Dijk 1978: 193, l. 24, collated) Arawa was labelled as saĝ-kul e lam[ki-ma] (see Michalowski 2011a: 163), and later on in the SB Lipšur Litanies, Mount Ebih was the si-kur KUR.KUR (var. KUR.MEŠ), “bolt of all the (high)lands” (Reiner 1956: 134, l. 70; for KAR 22 rev. 11, see Scurlock 2006: 378; CAD S, 258 with other refs.). Note also that an OB hymn to Nergal included the line: kur niĝ 2-daĝa l-ba s i -ĝar-bi-me-en, “you are the bolt of the far-flung mountains” (BL 195, l. 18 = Ash. 1911.236, l. 9′, see van Dijk 1960: 13; similarly said of Ištar in SB bilinguals, see CAD Š/2, 409a).

11′. Kissing the feet (lit. “foot” here) of the god(s) is a well-known gesture of obeisance (Gruber 1980: 274–78; CAD N/2, 58 sub našāqu; CAD Š/II, 297a sub šēpu), and Hammurabi is most likely the subject. For example, a stone stele fragment attributed to Šamši-Adad I narrates events following the king’s conquest of Arrapha: ana kerhīšu ērub šēpa Adad bēlīya aššiqma mātam šâti ukīn, “I entered his fortress. I kissed the foot of the god Adad, my lord, and (re)organized that land” (Grayson 1987: 64, A.0.39.1001 ii′ 1–5; see Gruber 1980: 277; Charpin 2004a: 162). For the phrase in šulmi, note the second section of a letter from Kibri-Dagan to “my lord” (= Zimri-Lim), which begins ina šulmim bēlī lillikamma šēp Dagān liššiq, “May my lord come in safety and may he kiss the foot of Dagan!” (ARM 3: 17, 14–16; also ARM 3: 8, 25–27, from Kibri-Dagan; ARM 10: 62, 13, from Dam-hurasi). Here Durand (2000: 122, no. 976) argues that the phrase ina šulmim should be understood to mean not merely “in good health,” or the like, but rather as an abbreviated form of šulum h arrānim, which is known from other contexts, that is, “au terme d’un voyage sans histoires.” Taken literally, kissing the feet of Šamaš and Marduk could refer to stops in Sippar and Babylon, which, according to the text, Hammurabi would have made on the way back from dealing with Ešnunna and “the man of Elam.” One of Hammurabi’s royal inscriptions, several copies of which were evidently found in Sippar, goes to great lengths to emphasize the king’s relationships with Šamaš and Marduk in particular (E4.3.6.12, see Frayne 1990: 347–49; for an oath on these gods see ARM 26/2: 385 [Sasson 2015: 269]). If the reference to Larsa in line 6′ is correct, then Šamaš and Marduk could refer to Larsa and Babylon, that is, the southern and northern nodes of Hammurabi’s power base, though this scenario seems less likely. In any case, the motif of kissing the gods’ feet appears to act as a literary transition that links the preceding events with the cam-paign against Mari that follows.

12′. Hammurabi is said to have received commands from An and Enlil in his year-names 35 and 38 (see above) as well as in a fragmentary royal inscription that probably dates roughly to that period (E4.3.6.10: 9, Frayne 1990: 345; see E4.3.6.4: 12-15, Frayne 1990: 338; E4.3.6.7: 10–16, Frayne 1990: 341).

Concerning the toponym Mari, a Sum.-Akk. bilingual literary letter from the site nicely juxtaposes the two most common orthographies: [m]a 2-r i 2

ki | ma-ri ki (Charpin 1992: 11, 26, l. 24). In the OB period ma-riki is the most common epistolary orthography; however, both ma-ri2

ki (BIN 9: 324 and 384) and ma2-ri2ki (CT 4: 3 rev. 20)

are found in a handful of letters as well as in Hammurabi’s year-names (35 and 38), and the curious writing me-raki is present in the LH Prologue as preserved on the Hammurabi stele (RGTC 3, 161–62). Old Babylonian versions



of Sumerian literary and lexical texts show a clear preference for the archaizing orthography ma 2-r i 2ki (e.g., Mi-

chalowski 2011a: 342, 463–74; OECT 4: 161 ii 18, see MSL 11: 141; SB Ura 21 sec. 3:9, see MSL 11: 13; Mur-gud E, KAV 183 rev.! 11, see MSL 11: 35).

The syllabic value /pu/ of the TUL2 sign in šu-ul-�pu2�-ti is not common in OB (MZL2 no. 786). Curiously, syllabic orthographies of the cognate noun šalputtu, “destruction, ruination,” commonly employ the TUL2 sign: šal-pu2-tu₄, šal-pu2-ti, šal-pu2-ti3, šal-pu2-ut-ti3, and ša-al-pu2-ut-ti3 (CAD Š/1, 261–62 sub šalputtu, all post-OB references).

The consonance of the phrase šu-ul-pu2-ti pa-la-šu šu-pe-li is striking. Although he is not named in the pre-served text until the next line, Zimri-Lim may be the referent of the possessive suffix in pa-la-šu, but in line 12′ the pronoun’s most obvious antecedent would be Mari itself (CAD P, 70–4 sub palû; for a Mari reference to i-na pa-le-e zi-im-ri-li-[im], “in the time of the reign of Zimri-Lim,” see Charpin and Ziegler 2003: 50, l. 4). Akkadian used a number of expressions and idioms to express the idea of the termination of a palû: it could to come to an end (šuqtû, qīt / taqtīt BALA; gamāru, nagmuru), be taken away (ekēmu, etēru), be changed (particularly in omen literature: enû, nakāru, šanû, šunnû), but the expression palâ(m) šupêlu(m) is not very common (refs. CAD P, 70–73; see a-še-er g i 6- ta 177–178, Black 1985: 23, 45–46; compare ba la-ni … tag in CT 58: 24 discussed above). Compare in LH Epilogue: halāq ālīšu … šarrūssu šupêlam … liqbi … šulput mātīšu halāq nišīšu … ina pī Enlil šarrim lišaškin, “May (Enlil) order … the obliteration of his city … the change/replacement of his kingship … May (Ninlil) have placed in the mouth of Enlil, the king, the destruction of his land, the obliteration of his people” (col. xlix 73–97, see Borger 2006: 47; Roth 1997: 136–37).

The orthography of i-iq-bu-u is another example of the common OB scribal convention V₁-V₁C₁C2V(C)-… (Reiner 1964: 172 with n. 10). However, other parallels with the verb qabû occur in texts from a variety of periods (CAD Q, 22a), including an Isin II kudurru (BBSt No. 8 add. col. B 4, note i-ik-nu-uk-ma in the following line) and a NA letter (SAA 5: 164 r. 7).

13′. Until now there has not been a single mention of Zimri-Lim in texts from contemporary Babylonia. Sasson (1998: 461 n. 21) is properly cautious about the alleged identification of the RN Zimri-Lim in the Hittite fragment KBo 12.3 (see Miller 2001: 97–99).

14′. Only this line and line 16′ mention Hammurabi by name, though it may occur in line 3′ as well. The signs following ummānum are difficult.

17′. In the LH Prologue, Hammurabi is described as mušēpi kīnātim, “the one who proclaims truth” (col. iv 53, see Borger 2006: 7; Roth 1997: 80), and in the LH Epilogue we find the pronouncement H ammurapi šar mīšarim ša Šamaš kīnātim išrukšum anāku, “I am Hammurabi, king of justice, to whom Šamaš has given (insight into) truth” (col. xlviii 95–98, see Borger 2006: 47; Roth 1997: 135). On the pairing of Šamaš and Marduk, see the note on line 11′.

19′. If the restoration of the end of the line is correct, the best parallel is found in the Epic of Zimri-Lim col. i 25, which reads iš-ti er-se2-tum da-me qar-ra-di, “the ground/earth drank the blood of the (enemy) warriors” (Guich-ard 2014: 13; compare Charpin and Durand 1985: 328 n. 154). Similarly, the curses from the LH Epilogue contain the phrases qarrādīšu lišamqit damīšunu ersetam lišqi, “may (Ištar) strike down his warriors, may she irrigate the earth with their blood” (col. li 8–11, see Borger 2006: 48; Roth 1997: 139). A small MA fragment from the palace of Tukulti-Ninurta I in Assur contains a similar expression: UŠ2 qu-ra-di-šu-�nu� […] / ri-ta lu u2-[malli(?)], “I [filled(?)] the meadow […] (with) the blood of their warriors” (Grayson 1987: 297–98, A.0.78.1009 col. ii′ 10′–11′), but the orthography in the MA inscription suggests that ri-ta there is rītu, “pasture land,” not rittu, “hand.”

20′. For the expression in šulmi, see the note to line 11′. Perhaps reconstruct: i[t?-te-ru-ub(?) …], “he [entered …],” i[t?-ti …], “w[ith …], or less likely q[ar?-ra-du(?) …], “the w[arrior(s) …].

21′. The god Erra appears in the LH Prologue, where he is referred to as “his (= Hammurabi’s) friend” (ru-šu, col. ii 69, see Borger 2006: 6; Roth 1997: 78) as well as in a badly broken line of the Sumerian prayer Ham D (CBS 4503+:24′, see Sjöberg 1972: 62; ETCSL c.2.8.2.4).



22′. The break at the beginning of the line makes it impossible to determine whether Sippar ([UD.K]IB.NUN.NAki) or the Euphrates ([id2UD.K]IB.NUN.NAki) is meant, since the presence of the determinative KI need not rule out the latter (RGTC 3: 206, 303–5, Woods 2005: 9–10, 24). Reading the toponym Mari at the end of the line would lend some weight to understanding the signs in question as a writing for the Euphrates. However, we are occasionally privy to information regarding the king’s whereabouts, such as the notice ha-am-mu-ra-pi2 i-na UD.KIB.N[UNki wa-ši-ib(?)], “Hammurabi (of Babylon) [(currently) resides(?)] in Sippar” (ARM 6: 27 rev. 13′), so that reading Sippar in the present line cannot be ruled out entirely. We should note that ARM 6: 27 may illuminate our text but is probably not directly connected to its contents: it is unlikely that this letter refers to Hammurabi’s location immediately preceding his campaign against Mari (Heimpel 2003: 113 with n. 164).

The verb isbat is difficult to interpret in isolation. If it is simply being used in the sense of conquering a city (CAD S, 15–16), reading Sippar would be possible but makes little sense. Alternatively, something about the banks of the Euphrates or the like may be missing in the lacuna, or perhaps, with inverted syntax, even “he (= Hammu-rabi) seized Mari.” There are instances in which sabātu denotes taking a position with respect to a geographical feature or taking to a particular region, but the examples cited in the dictionaries all date to the first millennium, e.g., the following passages gleaned from the royal inscriptions of Assurnasirpal II: šiddi H abur assabat (var.: asbat), “I made my way to the banks of the River H abur” (Grayson 1991: 199, A.0.101.1 i 77; note “I proceeded along the Habur River,” CAD S, 19b); šiddi Puratte ana elēni as(sa)bat, “I made my way to the banks of the Eu-phrates – upstream” (Grayson 1991: 219, A.0.101.1 iii 96); see ana rēš Puratte asbat (a-as-bat), “I made my way towards the Euphrates” (Grayson 1991: 214, A.0.101.1 iii 29). Finally, some idiomatic expression with sabātu is also possible (CAD S, 24–34), especially one that conveys movement or travel (e.g., girru, harrānu, pānu, urh u, or, less likely, tūdu).

23′. The preserved section of this line is uninscribed, but the rulings suggest that text may have been present in the lacunae.

24′. The two preserved signs suggest a verb in the Š-stem with a t-infix, but without more context there are too many possible candidates from which to choose (e.g., Streck 2003: 115–29). Following the use of šulputu in line 12′ above, a plausible but still speculative reconstruction might be [… dūr(?) ma2-ri2

ki(?)] uš-ta-[al-pi-it(?) …], “[…] he de[stroyed(?) (the wall of?) Mari(?)]” (see CAD L, 92b sub lapātu).

25′–26′. Too little of the text remains to hazard any interpretation.

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