Page 406 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

[1160-1090 B.C.] The Wolf on the Fold 343

It was not really true that the Babylonians had called Shutruk-
Nahhunte in. He had come unasked with a magnificently equip­
ped army and had besieged Babylon for three years, in the
meantime burning and plundering towns and villages through­
out the land. And when Babylon fell, he had by no means con­
tented himself with massacring the ruling house. Babylon had
been plundered with a thoroughness that called to mind the
great sack of olden days, the time four hundred thirty years ago
when Mursilis the Hittite had taken the city. The Elamites had
taken everything of value, gold and grain and slaves, ivory and
wine and cattle, arms and horses and craftsmen. They had taken
the great statue of Marduk, the guardian god of Babylon, and

they had taken the black column on which Hammurabi had
carved his laws six hundred years before.
Shutruk-Nahhunte had left his son with a garrison to rule
in Babylon, but the following year the garrison was hurriedly
recalled, and Kutur-Nahhunte, the viceroy, had thought it wise
to return to Elam with the troops. It was one of those movements
of the new peoples that had caused the Elamite to leave Babylon.
One never really knew where one was these days, with wandering
peoples moving down from the northwest and the northeast,
upsetting all the established frontiers and established diplomacy
and balances of power. It was forty years since Hattusas had
fallen to these incoming tribes, but that Moski and Phrygians
now ruled where once the Holy Hittite Empire had stretched

was still something the older generation found difficult to as­
similate. New peoples had occupied much of the coast of the
Upper Sea, and many an old trading house in Lebanon and
Canaan boasted new partners, sons-in-law with strange names
and languages, who knew little about trade (though they were
learning fast) but who knew how to sail and fight, as was more
and more necessary for a trader in these troubled times. Then
of course there were the Bedouin, who were really becoming
a menace these days.

Anyway, the Elamites had left Babylon because of a sudden
threat to their own northern and eastern frontiers. A whole
confederation of new peoples had come down into the mountains
that ringed Elam from up by the Caspian Sea. Persians, they