The lords of Babylon had, ordinarily, a twofold function, religious and military, the priest at first taking precedence of the soldier, but gradually yielding to the latter as the town increased in power. They were merely the priestly representatives or administrators of Babel--_shakannaku Babili_--and their authority was not considered legitimate until officially confirmed by the god. Each ruler was obliged to go in state to the temple of Bel Merodach within a year of his accession: there he had to take the hands of the divine statue, just as a vassal would do homage to his liege, and those only of the native sovereigns or the foreign conquerors could legally call themselves Kings of Babylon--_sharru Babili_--who had not only performed this rite, but renewed it annually.*
* The meaning of the ceremony in which the kings of Babylon took the hands of Bel has been given by Winckler; Tiele compares it very aptly with the rite performed by the Egyptian kings--at Heliopolis, for example, when they entered alone the sanctuary of Râ, and there contemplated the god face to face. The rite was probably repeated annually, at the time of the Zakmuku, that is, the New Year festival.
Sargon the Elder had lived in Babylon, and had built himself a palace there: hence the tradition of later times attributed to this city the glory of having been the capital of the great empire founded by the Akkadian dynasties. The actual sway of Babylon, though arrested to the south by the petty states of Lower Chaldæa, had not encountered to the north or north-west any enemy to menace seriously its progress in that semi-fabulous period of its history. The vast plain extending between the Euphrates and the Tigris is as it were a continuation of the Arabian desert, and is composed of a grey, or in parts a whitish, soil impregnated with selenite and common salt, and irregularly superimposed upon a bed of gypsum, from which asphalt oozes up here and there, forming slimy pits. Frost is of rare occurrence in winter, and rain is infrequent at any season; the sun soon burns up the scanty herbage which the spring showers have encouraged, but fleshy plants successfully resist its heat, such as the common salsola, the salsola soda, the pallasia, a small mimosa, and a species of very fragrant wormwood, forming together a vari-coloured vegetation which gives shelter to the ostrich and the wild ass, and affords the flocks of the nomads a grateful pasturage when the autumn has set in. The Euphrates bounds these solitudes, but without watering them. The river flows, as far as the eye can see, between two ranges of rock or bare hills, at the foot of which a narrow strip of alluvial soil supports rows of date-palms intermingled here and there with poplars, sumachs, and willows. Wherever there is a break in the two cliffs, or where they recede from the river, a series of shadufs takes possession of the bank, and every inch of the soil is brought under cultivation. The aspect of the country remains unchanged as far as the embouchure of the Khabur; but there a black alluvial soil replaces the saliferous clay, and if only the water were to remain on the land in sufficient quantity, the country would be unrivalled in the world for the abundance and variety of its crops.