5.2 The near east: 3000 to 1500 b.c.  (Page 3/5)

But Ur was not to last much longer. Although there is still some disagreement about dating, we shall assume that Hammurabi started his rule in Babylon in 1,783 B.C. and then in the 12th year of the reign of his son, Samsi-iluna, the Babylonians destroyed the walls of Ur with a terrible thoroughness and laid waste to the city. Up until that time, all the tablets and texts of Ur (and there were thousands of them) were written in the Sumerian language (Caucasian?), but after that destruction the tablets were in the Babylonian language. The invaders took over the cuneiform writing, but the Sumerian language itself became a dead literary and religious tongue. This fall of Sumeria may have been prepared in part by internal disintegration and class wars within the city-state (Ref. 238 , 28 )

The conquering Babylonians were actually Amorites and the new combination of Amorite-Akkadian-and non-Semitic Sumerian civilization became known as the Babylonian

NOTE: Insert Map taken from Reference 97.

Agriculture thrived as great new irrigation canals were developed. The Babylonians, of the same basic stock as Abraham and the later Hebrews, or Jews, had the beginnings of astronomy and the ability to predict eclipses. They had a calendar and could handle cubic equations with two unknowns. The Babylonian society demonstrated the development of an imperial political theory, an improved administrative technique, especially through the use of written communication, the development of a bureaucracy and professional army, and finally better methods of inter-city and inter-regional trade, along with the promotion of an independent merchant class. A code of laws, based on Sumerian prototypes, has become famous as the Code of Hammurabi, put into effect about 1,750 B.C. This code covered most ordinary life activities, even condemning ale houses for under-strength, over-priced beer. Forty percent of the grain in some cities went to the manufacture of beer. The code also regulated many medical fees for such things as treating severe wounds, tumors, and broken bones. The fees were high - for example, that for successfully treating a freeman's broken bone was five shekels of silver, a value equal to the yearly rent for a middle-class dwelling. But the punishments for poor medical treatment were equally elevated. (Ref. 68 , 220 , 211 , 125 )

Sometime about 1,600 B.C. or perhaps slightly earlier, Babylonia was conquered by a combined force of Aryan (McEvedy, [Ref. 136 ], says Caucasian) Kassites1 from the east and Hittites from near Asia Minor. The Hittites quickly withdrew, taking the Sumerian script with them, leaving the Kassites to rule Babylonia for about six centuries. Some believe that they brought the horse with them from the Samartian flatlands. On the other hand, Lewinsohn (Ref. 122 ) says that riding horses were first mentioned in historical records at the time of Hammurabi, about 2,000 B.C., although chariots had been used earlier by Sumerian kings. As mentioned earlier, Mesopotamia was the home of the spectacular, brick-built temple monuments called "ziggurats", many having been built between 3,000 and 500 B.C. Among the first of these was one called the "White Temple", probably dedicated to Amu, god of the sky, at ancient Uruk (Erech of the Bible), capital of several Sumerian dynasties. It was built about 3,000 B.C. on a platform forty feet high. Even the Kassites built ziggurats - the remains of a spectacular one still some two hundred feet high, remains at Aquarquf, the Kassite capital just west of Baghdad. (Ref. 136 , 122 , 176 )