Page 144 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

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sheepskins around the bivouac fires, and military service is by

no means unpopular among the young men. To bear arms is
moreover a visible sign of rank, of belonging to the property-
owning class, which alone is officially entitled to call itself “men.”
The menial work of the army, the carrying of supplies, the cook­

ing, and the pitching of tents is done by the unarmed “poor,”
who do not own land, while the slaves, of course, are not allowed
to leave their work for any service at all.
The young men never knew why Hammurabi waited twenty
years before he launched his carefully trained infantry. And

they never realized the change which had taken place in Bab­
ylonia during these years. For they had grown up with the
changes. But their fathers, the men of Hammurabi’s own genera­

tion, realized what had happened, and why Hammurabi had
bided his time. He had used the years to create a nation—and a
civil service.
They could remember, as their children bom after Ham­
murabi’s accession could not, that Babylon had been the head

of a confederacy. Each of the small towns owing allegiance to
Babylon had had its own king and its own particular god. The
“men” and the “poor” of each city worshipped that city’s god

and served that city’s king. And it was not yet quite forgotten that
generations ago the city and all within it and the land around
had been owned and administered by the city god and his
priesthood. Some of the cities, like Kish and Nippur and Sippar
and Isin, were of very much older standing than Babylon, and

Kish and Isin, in particular, had themselves been the rulers of
large confederacies before ever Babylon was thought of.
There had been a time when a subject could write to King

Zimri-lim of Mari (and the letter is extant to this day): “There
is no king who of himself is the strongest. Ten or fifteen kings
follow Hammurabi of Babylon, the same number follow Rim-
Sin of Larsa, the same number follow Ibal-pi-El of Eshnunna,

the same number follow Amut-pi-il of Qatana, twenty kings fol­
low Yarim-lim of Yamkhad.”
Hammurabi had changed all that. He had seen the danger
of vassal kings, who could change their allegiance, and he was

determined to be “of himself the strongest.” The vassal kings were