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Updated: June 23, 2025
Cf. Letters of Hammurabi, Vol. III, pp. xxxvi ff.; it was the duty of every village or town upon the banks of the main canals in Babylonia to keep its own section clear of silt, and of course it was also responsible for its own smaller irrigation-channels.
We can call Justinian from his grave, and traverse the desert with Mohammed; but can bold no converse with Manu or Hammurabi; because these two dwell well this side of the time-horizon, but the epochs of those are far beyond it.
The limits thus assigned are, to be sure, broad, but from what has above been said as to the intellectual activity reigning in the days of Hammurabi, we need not descend far below the death of the great conqueror to find the starting-point for the remodelling of the texts in question. Not all of them, of course, were so reshaped.
Passing by such sanctuaries as E-shid-lam, sacred to Nergal at Cuthah, and coming to E-Sagila and E-Zida, the two great temples of Babylon and Borsippa, respectively, it is of course evident from the close connection between political development and religious supremacy, that Marduk's seat of worship occupies a unique position from the days of Hammurabi to the downfall of Babylonia.
Dibbarra, Nergal and his consort Laz, and Zamama are also included in the pantheon of Nebuchadnezzar. In regard to none of these deities do we find any conceptions different from those developed in the period of Hammurabi, any more than in the conceptions of those gods who occupy a more prominent place in the pantheon.
A later chiefly theoretical amalgamation of Nabu with a god Nusku will be discussed in a subsequent chapter. Hammurabi and his immediate successors, it is noteworthy, do not make mention of Nabu. A sufficient number of inscriptions of this period exists to make it probable that this omission is not accidental. This dynasty was chiefly concerned in firmly establishing the position of Marduk.
It is not uncommon to find colonies more conservative in matters of religious thought and custom than the motherland, and there is nothing improbable in the interesting conclusion thus reached that Ashur, the head of an empire, so much later in point of time than Babylonia, should turn out to be an older deity than the chief personage in the Babylonian pantheon after the days of Hammurabi.
"Anu and Baal called me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, worshipper of the gods".... so begins the oldest legal code which has come down to us, from 2250 B. C.; and the coronation service of the English church is made whole out of the same thesis.
Akkad, it will be recalled, is a name for Babylonia. The triumph of Babylon is foretold in these lines. The Akkadian is, therefore, none other than Hammurabi, who succeeds in obtaining the supremacy over the entire Euphrates Valley, and whose successors for many centuries claimed control of the four quarters of the world.
The dynasty of which Hammurabi is the chief representative comes to an end c. 2100, and is followed by another known as Shish-Kha, whose rulers likewise appear to be foreigners; and when this dynasty finally disappears after a rule of almost four centuries, Babylonia is once more conquered by a people coming from the northern parts of Elam and who are known as the Cassites.
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