Page 142 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

ruled by Abraham’s sons and grandsons, facing Egypt across the

Sinai desert.
Twenty-two years ago, when Hammurabi was a boy—the
very year that his father had succeeded to the throne of Baby­
lon the northern frontier had gone up in flames. The king of

Assyria, Ila-kabkabu, had died, and his second son, Samsi-Adad,
had raised an army on the southern frontier, attacked Eshnunna
and captured its northern provinces, and then with his victorious
army marched upon Assur, the capital of Assyria, deposed his
brother Aminu, and himself assumed the throne. In the following

year he took Mari, and installed his younger son as regent there.
And in the years that followed he had pressed farther and far­
ther west, campaigning against Idamaraz and Yamkhad, until

his armies stood on the shores of the Mediterranean.
After reducing the rulers of the northern string of kingdoms
to vassalage, Samsi-Adad had of late been turning his attention to
the south, and the only thing that had saved Babylon from

sharing the fate of Aleppo was that the king of Eshnunna, Ibal-
pi-El, had proved an unexpectedly hard nut to crack and, though
he had lost all his northern territory to the Assyrian armies, had

stubbornly resisted all attacks on his actual capital.
It was obvious to Hammurabi, a shrewd and realistic young
man, that one or other of the veteran warriors to the north and
south, Rim-Sin of Larsa or Samsi-Adad of Assyria, would attempt

to take advantage of the death of his famous father to make an
easy conquest of the important middle Euphrates area. He deter­
mined to give them other things to think about.

A diversionary move against Samsi-Adad was easily ar­
ranged. The king of Mari, deposed twenty years before, had a
son, Zimri-lim, who had grown up in exile. Now he was encour­
aged by Yarim-lim of Yamkhad and Hammurabi of Babylon to

return and claim his inheritance, and in 1790, two years after
Hammurabi s accession, Zimri-lim expelled the Assyrian viceroy
from Mari and re-established the kingdom of the upper Euphra­

tes. To support him Hammurabi had conscripted his army and
advanced north, establishing his frontier posts a full eighty miles
up the Euphrates. They were not called on to fight. Without a