Page 141 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

But the garrison he left in Isin was weak, and two years later
Sin-muballit was able to designate the year 1795 officially as
“the year of the capture of Isin.” Though Sin-muballit made no
attempt to hold the town, there seemed little doubt that in the

s^lugg^e f°1' prestige Babylon had won two successive tricks.
But now Sin-muballit was dead, and his son, an unknown
quantity, sat on his throne.
Hammurabi, looking out from his yellow brick palace across

the yellow waters of the Euphrates to the palm-fringed farther
bank, was well aware that the Larsa-Elam alliance to the east
and south was only one of the dangers facing his kingdom. To
the north and west lay another great and aggressive power, As­

syria, and only resolute and well-co-ordinated action could save
Babylon from being ground to fragments between the upper
and the nether millstones.

When a hundred years ago Abraham had traveled northwest
from Ur to Harran, and southwest from Harran to Palestine, he
had been moving all the way among his own people, the Amo-
rites. In the generation before Abraham the Amorites had spread
outwards from the deserts of north Arabia into the fertile lands

to east, north, and west, and occupied a great half-circle of terri­
tory bounded by the Mediterranean coast, the mountains of
south Turkey, and the mountains of west Persia. Only the might

of Elam had held them on their eastern flank, and the power of
Egypt on their western.
Since the time of Abraham this closely knit confederation of
small nomad tribes had crystallized into a ring of Amorite king­

doms, centered around the capitals of ambitious and jealous
monarchs. Since the Amorite kingdom of Larsa had fallen to
Elam, Babylon had been for forty-five years the easternmost of

these states. To its north lay Eshnunna, and north of that again
lay Assyria, holding the headwaters of the Tigris. From there the
kingdoms ran westward. The center of the line was occupied by
Mari, on the upper Euphrates, and beyond it lay Idamaraz, with

its capital at Carchemish, and Yamkhad, ruled from Aleppo. To
the south of Yamkhad, along the Mediterranean coast, lay the
kingdoms of Ugarit and Qatana, and finally the tribes of Canaan