Page 151 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

120 The Chariots [1790-1720 B.C.]

Mediterranean, was barred. Across that route lay the horsemen
of the Hurrians, now firmly settled in the lowland where their
chariots had all the room they needed to maneuver; and their
cousins, the rulers of the Kassites, lay waiting in the Persian
mountains, to the rear of any westward movement from Meso­
potamia.
And Hammurabi was an elderly man by now, and the weight
of administration, to which he had always given an almost exces­
sive personal attention, was heavy on his shoulders. We do not
know exactly the date of his birth, but he must have been about
sixty when he conquered Assyria, and about sixty-five when he
died in 1750 b.c.
The men bom in Babylon in the early years of his reign, in
1790 b.c., were forty years old when he died. For twelve years
they had extended and held his empire, and now they were them­
selves middle-aged, and their children were growing up into
a changed world. Samsu-iluna, Hammurabi’s son, was himself of
approximately this conquering generation, and had marched
with the armies against Larsa and Assyria. The small standing
army was loyal to him, and the people of Babylonia, who, when
needed, formed the bulk of the army, accepted him without ques­
tion as the inheritor of the empire. For four years seedtime and
harvest, temple procession and canal maintenance, trading cara­
van and municipal brickyard carried on without interruption.
And the frontier guards, who had learnt from history to expect in­
vasion and revolt when a king died, leaned on their spears and
looked out from the brick watchtowers upon empty plain or
peacefully grazing flocks.
Then in 1746 the watchers beyond Eshnunna saw the smoke
of fires in the hills. And next day the horse chariots fanned out
from the valley mouth, and behind them came spearmen and
bowmen and creaking ox wagons. Word went back to Babylon by
relays of runners that the Kassites were raiding in force.
Gandash, the Indo-European chieftain of the Kassites, knew
better. This was no raid in search of booty. His men had come
to stay, and he knew that, a day’s march behind them and with
its own guard of charioteers, the main body of women and chil­
dren and flocks and herds and tents and furniture and household