Page 150 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

Xsicn of the new order, apart from the presence of the sol-
diers of the garrison, was the spate of new building, religious and

secular, in the name of the new king. And the setting-up in the
market’ places of the black obelisks, bearing in long rows of

close-set wedge writing the clauses of the new law, the Code of

Hammurabi.
The Code contained little that was new, and the inhabitants

of the conquered cities would have no leason to guess that Ham
murabi’s claim to fame in a far-distant future would rest largely

upon it. In its detail it bears witness to the competence of the
king’s civil servants and legal advisers, but its significance lay in

the fact that from now on one law ran throughout Mesopotamia,
that Hammurabi was, as he put it, “the king pre-eminent among

kings; may my justice prevail in the land.”
As on earth so in Heaven. Just as Hammurabi claimed in the

introduction to his code that the old gods of Sumeria, Anu, Enlil,
and Ea, had entrusted him with a kingdom “the foundations of

which are as firm as heaven and earth,” so the great creation epic,
recited at the principal temple festivals and particularly at the

akitu festival of Marduk at Babylon, now the chief religious cere­
mony of the year, was at this time “edited” to show Marduk as

the god who rightfully enforces the commands of Anu, Enlil, and
Ea. The gods of Sumer had abdicated their powers to Marduk,

god of Babylon, just as the kings of Sumer had abdicated in fa­
vor of the king of Babylon.

By 1757 B-c- Hammurabi felt secure enough to turn his back

on Sumer, and he led his now veteran army to the conquest of
his former ally, Mari. And two years later, after deposing King

Isme-Dagan of Assyria, he records victories in the north of As­
syria, on the borders of the Hurrian country.

For the first time since the legendary days of the great kings
o Ur, four hundred years ago (as far back as the Conquista-

ores from us), the whole of Mesopotamia, from the mountains
to the sea, was united under a single ruler. And yet it was too

a e. or the traditional next step, the campaign along the upper
UP ates and the southern edge of the Turkish mountains to the