Samsu-iluna was the seventh king of the founding Amorite dynasty of Babylon, ruling from 1750 BC to 1712 BC, or from 1686 to 1648 BC. He was the son and successor of Hammurabi by an unknown mother. His reign was marked by the violent uprisings of areas conquered by his father and the abandonment of several important cities (primarily in
When Hammurabi rose to power in the city of Babylon, he controlled a small region directly around that city, and was surrounded by vastly more powerful opponents on all sides. By the time he died, he had conquered Sumer, Eshnunna, Assyria and Mari making himself master of Mesopotamia. He had also significantly weakened and humiliated Elam and the While defeated, however, these states were not destroyed; if Hammurabi had a plan for welding them to Babylon he did not live long enough to see it through. Within a few years of his death, Elam and Assyria had withdrawn from Babylon's orbit and revolutions had started in all the conquered territories. The task of dealing with these troubles—and others—fell to Samsu-iluna. Though he campaigned tirelessly and seems to have won frequently, the king proved unable to stop the empire's unwinding. Through it all, however, he did manage to keep the core of his kingdom intact, and this allowed the city of Babylon to cement its position in history.
Fragmentation of the Empire
In the 9th year of Samsu-iluna's reign a man calling himself Rim-sin city and plundered it, among the items looted was a statue of Inanna which wouldn't be returned until the reign of Ashurbanipal 11 centuries In Assyria, a native vice regent named Puzur-Sin ejected Asinum who had been a vassal king of his fellow Amorite Hammurabi. A native king Ashur-dugul seized the throne, and a period of civil war in Assyria ensued. Samsu-Iluna seems to have been powerless to intervene, and finally a king named Adasi, restored a stable native dynasty in Assyria, removing any vestages of Amorite-Babylonian influence In the end, Samsu-iluna was left with a kingdom that was only fractionally larger than the one his father had started out with 50 years prior (but which did leave him mastery of the Euphrates up to and including the ruins of Mari and its The status of Eshnunna is difficult to determine with any accuracy, and while it may have remained in Babylonian hands the city was exhausted and its political influence at an end.
Depopulation of Sumer
Samsu-iluna's campaigns might not have been solely responsible for the havoc wreaked upon Uruk and Ur, and his loss of Sumer might have been as much a calculated retreat as defeat. Records in the cities of Ur and Uruk essentially stop after the 10th year of Samsu-iluna's reign, their priests apparently continued writing, but from more northerly Larsa's records also end about this time. Records keep going in Nippur and Isin until Samsu-iluna's 29th year, and then cease there as well. These breaks are also observed in the archeological record, where evidence points to these cities being largely or completely abandoned for hundreds of years, until well into the Reasons for this are hard to come by. Certainly the constant warfare cannot have helped matters, but Samsu-iluna appears to have campaigned just as hard in the north, and that region was thriving during the The rise of Babylon marks a definite end to Sumerian cultural dominance of Mesopotamia and a shift to Akkadian for government and popular perhaps people who claimed cultural ties to the Sumerian past retrenched around the southerly cities which Iluna-ilu controlled. Several members of his dynasty took Sumerian names, and it appears they consciously strove to return to the region's Sumerian It is also possible that economic or environmental factors were involved; it is known that both Hammurabi and Rim-sin I had instituted policies which altered the economies of the perhaps these proved unsustainable in the long-term.
Other campaigns
Slaving raids by Sutean tribes appear to have been a constant problem for Babylon during this period, and Samsu-iluna spent some time dealing with He promulgated a law barring Babylonian citizens from purchasing as slaves citizens of the cities of Idamaras and
In the 9th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna turned back an invasion by a Kassite This is the earliest known mention of the Kassites, who would go on to rule Babylonia after the collapse of the Amorite dynasty.
Around the 24th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna attacked and destroyed the city of Apum, killing its king Yakun-ashar. A year later he seems to have attacked the city of Terqa as well, possibly adding it to his
In his 28th year, Samsu-iluna defeated the armies of two otherwise unknown western kings recorded as Iadikhabum and
In the 35th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna repelled an Amorite
Domestic policy
Though troubled, Samsu-iluna's reign was not entirely focused on war. He is known to have rebuilt the walls of Kish, Nippur and Sippar for and to have propagated the Marduk cult as had his father. He also apparently restored the Ebabbar temple of Shamashziggurats at and the ziggurat of Zababa and Ishtar at Additionally, there is speculation that Samsu-iluna instituted the Standard Babylonian calendar, possibly as a means of tying his empire more closely together.
