With such a country as a base of operations, protected in no small degree by its marshes, it is not surprising that the Sea-Country kings should have met with considerable success in their efforts at extending the area of territory under their control.
After his second conflict with Iluma-ilum, Samsu-iluna appears to have reconciled himself to the loss of his southern province, and to have made no further effort at reconquest. He could still boast of successes in other districts, for he destroyed the walls of Shakhnâ and Zarkhanum, doubtless after the suppression of a revolt, and he strengthened the fortifications of Kish. He also retained the control of the Euphrates route to Syria, and he doubtless encouraged the commercial enterprise of Babylon in that direction as a set-off to his losses in the south. We possess an interesting illustration of the close relations he maintained with the west in the date-formula for the twenty-sixth year of his reign, which tells us that he procured a monolith from the great mountain of the land of Amurru. This must have been quarried in the Lebanon, and transported overland to the Euphrates, and thence conveyed by _kelek_ to the capital. From the details he gives us of its size, it appears to have measured some thirty-six feet in length, and it was no small achievement to have brought it so far to Babylon.
THE ZEBU OR HUMPED OXEN OF THE SEA-COUNTRY.
They are here represented as being driven off from the Soa-Country, along with other booty, under a convoy of Assyrian soldiers.
(After a bas-relief from Nineveh in the British Museum.)]
During this period of comparative tranquillity Samsu-iluna devoted himself once more to rebuilding and beautifying E-sagila and the temples of Kish and Sippar; but in his twenty-eighth year Babylon suffered a fresh shock, which appears to have resulted in still further loss of territory. In that year he claims to have slain Iadi-khabum and Muti-khurshana, two leaders of an invasion, or a revolt, of which we have no details. But it is clear that the victory, if such it was, resulted in further trouble, for in the following two years no fresh date-formulæ were promulgated, and it is probable that the king himself was absent from the capital. It is significant that no document has been recovered at Nippur which is dated after Samsu-iluna's twenty-ninth year, although in the preceding period, from the thirty-first year of Hammurabi onward, when the city first passed into Babylon's possession, nearly every year is well represented in the dated series.[9] It is difficult not to conclude that Samsu-iluna now lost the control of that city, and, since one of the documents from Nippur is dated in Iluma-ilum's reign, it can only have passed into the latter's possession. Further evidence of the diminishing territory of Babylon may be seen in the fact that Samsu-iluna should have rebuilt the old line of fortresses, founded by his ancestor Suma-la-ilum at a time when the kingdom was in its infancy.[10] This work was doubtless undertaken when he foresaw the necessity of defending the Akkadian border, and he must have lost one at least of the fortresses, Dûr-Zakar, when Nippur was taken. His activities during his closing years were confined to the north and west, and to the task of keeping open the Euphrates route. For he cut a canal beside Kâr-Sippar, recovered possession of Saggaratum, and probably destroyed the cities of Arkum and Amal. His defeat of an Amorite force some two years before his death is of interest as proving that the Western Semites of Akkad, nearly two centuries after their settlement in the country, were experiencing the same treatment from their own stock that they themselves had caused to the land of their adoption.