Page 154 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

O
As the years slowly passed and Hammurabi’s veterans grew
older, they stated more and more positively that the cold war

could not go on forever, that the status quo was untenable, that
the uneasy balance was bound, sooner or later, to topple over into
war. They were still protesting as their generation passed away.

They were not to know that the uneasy peace in Mesopotamia
was not to be broken for a hundred and twenty years.

The events of the reign of Hammurabi and his successors are

exceptionally well documented by large numbers of contempo­
rary tablets and inscriptions from Babylon, Ur, Mari, and Uga-
rit. There is little disagreement between them, and the events of

this chapter can to that degree be regarded as history. (The sug­
gested secret alliance between Hammurabi and the Kassites, de­
signed to keep Elam engaged while he dealt with Larsa in 1785,
is, however, only a suggestion.)
The big question, though, is—or has until recently been—

the precise date of Hammurabi's reign. It is a question of very
considerable importance to the historiography of the whole of the
Near East, as Hammurabi is not only important in himself but

is also the peg on which some three hundred years of earlier and
later history can be hung. Until some ten years ago he was nor­
mally considered to have lived about 2000 b.c. (or even 2300
b.c.), but recent research and discoveries, particularly the Mari

tablets, have made the date 1792-50 very probable—some would
say certain. The main argument for this date is contained in Sid­
ney Smith's Alalakh and Chronology, while a full discussion of

the various views is given in S. A. Fallis's Antiquity of Iraq, which
also gives a very full account of life in Mesopotamia at the time
of Hammurabi, and many details of his code of laws.