United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Up to that time Egypt and Babylon, the two chief centres of ancient civilization, had no doubt indirectly influenced one another, but they had not come into actual contact. During the period of the Kassite kings both Babylon and Assyria established direct relations with Egypt, and from that time forward the influence they exerted upon one another was continuous and unbroken.
Bricks still plano-convex; stamped inscriptions begin. Stone maceheads of same type as earlier. Not many mounds of this period have been dug. Characteristics. Very high development. Bitumen still used for mortar. With the bodies are found large numbers of agate and cornelian beads, unpolished. IV. LATER BRONZE AGE: Kassite, Middle Babylonian, and Early Assyrian periods; c. 1800- 1000 B.C.
Thus the Second Dynasty fell in its turn before the onslaught of the Kassite tribes who descended from the mountainous districts in the west of Elam, and, having overrun the whole of Mesopotamia, established a new dynasty at Babylon, and adopted Babylonian civilization. With the advent of the Kassite kings a new chapter opens in the history of Western Asia.
For seven years the Assyrian domination lasted. Then Tiglath-Ninip was driven back to Assyria, where he was imprisoned and murdered by his son, and the old line of Kassite princes was restored in the person of Rimmon-sum-uzur. But it continued only four reigns longer. A new dynasty from the town of Isin seized the throne, and ruled for 132 years and six months.
A revolt on the part of the Kassite troops gave the Assyrians an excuse for interfering in the affairs of Babylonia, and from this time forward their eyes were turned covetously towards the kingdom of the south. As Assyria grew stronger, Babylonia became weaker.
War and commerce were their two trades. The Kassite conquerors of Babylonia soon submitted to the influences of Babylonian civilisation. Like the Hyksos in Egypt, they adopted the manners and customs, the writing and language, of the conquered people, sometimes even their names.
The army, however, continued to be mainly composed of Kassite troops, and the native Babylonians began to forget the art of fighting.
So thought and acted the kings of Mitanni across Euphrates, the kings of Hatti beyond Taurus, and the distant Iranians of the Kassite dynasty in Babylonia. Until the latter years of Thothmes' third successor, Amenhetep III, who ruled in the end of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the fourteenth, the Egyptian peace was observed and Pharaoh's claim to Syria was respected.
One of the kudurrus found by M. de Morgan records the grant of a number of estates near Babylon by Nazimaruttash, a king of the Third or Kassite Dynasty, to the god Marduk, that is to say they were assigned by the king to the service of E-sagila, the great temple of Marduk at Babylon.
But this difficulty is removed by supposing that the two names were transposed by some copyist. The different names assigned to the founder of the Kassite dynasty may be due to the existence of variant traditions, or Ulam-Buriash may have assumed another name on his conquest of Babylonia, a practice which was usual with the later kings of Assyria when they occupied the Babylonian throne.
Word Of The Day