View source for Samsu-iluna

{{Infobox royalty
| name         = Samsu-iluna<br>{{Cuneiform|𒊓𒄠𒋢𒄿𒇻𒈾}}
| image        = Record of the sale of land in the reign of Samsu-Iluna.jpg
| caption      = Record of the sale of land in the reign of Samsu-Iluna
| birth_name   = 
| birth_date   = 1793 BC
| birth_place  = 
| death_date   = 1712 BC [[middle chronology]]
| death_place  = 
| title        = [[King of Babylon]] <br> [[Larsa|King of Larsa]]
| reign        = 38 yrs <br>1749–1712 BC (MC) <br>1686-1648 BC (SC)
| predecessor  = [[Hammurabi]]
| successor    = [[Abi-Eshuh|Abī-ešuḫ]]
| religion     = [[Ancient Mesopotamian religion]]
| spouse       = 
| issue        = 
}}

'''Samsu-iluna''' ([[Amorite]]: ''Samsu-iluna''<ref>Douglas Frayne, ''The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early Periods'', vol. 4: ''Old Babylonian Period (2003–1595 BC)'' Toronto, 1990: 372.</ref> or ''Samsu-ilūna'',<ref>Jean-Jacques Glassner, ''Mesopotamian Chronicles'', Atlanta, 2004: 131.</ref> "[[Shamash|The Sun]] (is) our god") ({{Circa|1749}}–1712 BC) was the seventh king of the founding [[Amorite]] dynasty of [[Babylon]]. His reign is estimated from 1749 BC to 1712 BC ([[middle chronology]]), or from 1686 to 1648 BC ([[short chronology]]). He was the son and successor of [[Hammurabi]] (r. 1792-1750 BC) by an unknown mother. His reign was marked by the violent uprisings of areas conquered by his father and the abandonment of several important cities primarily in [[Sumer]].<ref name="JNP">{{Cite book
| author = J. N. Postgate
| title = Early Mesopotamia: society and economy at the dawn of history, reprint edition
| publisher = Routlidge Publishing
| year = 1994
| url = https://archive.org/details/earlymesopotamia00post/page/49
| isbn = 0-415-11032-7
| pages = [https://archive.org/details/earlymesopotamia00post/page/49 49–50, 75, 219]
| url-access = registration
}}</ref>
A number of letters sent by Samsu-iluna have been found of which 20 have been published. One is addressed to
Abban the king of [[Aleppo]]. No received letters have been found due to the modern high water table at Babylon.<ref>Khwshnaw A., Mohammed K., "An Unpublished Letter of Samsu-iluna King of Babylon", Iraq, 83, pp. 57-65, 2021</ref>

==Circumstances of Samsu-iluna's reign==
When Hammurabi rose to power in the city of Babylon, he controlled a small region directly around that city, and was surrounded by vastly more powerful opponents on all sides.  By the time he died, he had conquered [[Sumer]], [[Eshnunna]], [[Assyria]] and [[Mari, Syria|Mari]] making himself master of [[Mesopotamia]]. He had also significantly weakened and humiliated [[Elam]] and the {{Nowrap|1=[[Gutians]].<ref name="JNP"/>{{Rp|49–50}}<ref name="GR">{{Cite book
| last = Roux
| first = Georges
| title = Ancient Iraq, Third Edition
| publisher = Penguin Books
| year = 1992
| location = London
| url = https://archive.org/details/ancientiraq00roux/page/195
| isbn = 0-14-012523-X
| pages = [https://archive.org/details/ancientiraq00roux/page/195 195–201, 242–243]
}}</ref>{{Rp|195–201}}}}

While defeated, however, these states were not destroyed; if Hammurabi had a plan for welding them to Babylon he did not live long enough to see it through. Within a few years after his death, [[Elam]] and [[Assyria]] had left from Babylon's orbit and revolutions had started in all the conquered territories. The task of dealing with these troubles—and others—fell to Samsu-iluna. Though he campaigned tirelessly and seems to have won frequently, the king proved unable to stop the empire's unwinding. Through it all, however, he did manage to keep the core of his kingdom intact, and this allowed the city of Babylon to cement its position in history.

==Fragmentation of the Empire==
[[Image:Hammurabi's Babylonia 1.svg|thumb|300px|Map showing the Babylonian territory upon Hammurabi's ascension in {{Circa|1792 BC}} and upon his death in {{Circa|1750 BC}}]]
In the 9th year of Samsu-iluna's reign a man calling himself [[Rim-sin II|Rim-sin]] (known in the literature as Rim-sin II, and thought to perhaps be a nephew of the [[Rim-Sin I|Rim-sin]] who opposed {{Nowrap|1=Hammurabi)<ref name="CJG">{{Cite book
| author= Cyril John Gadd
| author-link= Cyril John Gadd
| title = Hammurabi and the end of his Dynasty, Volume 2
| publisher = Cambridge University Press
| year = 1965
| asin = B000XA193E
| pages = 48–49
}}</ref>{{Rp|48–49}}}} raised a rebellion against Babylonian authority in [[Larsa]] which spread to include some 26 cities, among them [[Uruk]], [[Ur]], [[Isin]] and [[Kisurra]] in the south, and {{Nowrap|1=Eshnunna.<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}<ref name="CJG"/>{{Rp|48–49}}<ref name="MVM">{{Cite book
| last = Van de Mieroop
| first = Marc
| title = A History of the Ancient Near East ca. 3000-323 BC, 2nd Edition
| publisher = Wiley-Blackwell
| year = 2006
| location = Malden, MA
| isbn = 1-4051-4911-6
| pages = 115, 117
}}</ref>{{Rp|115}}}} in the north. There is a statue inscription of Samsu-iluna which describes some of this conflict.<ref>[https://www.cairn-int.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=E_ASSY_114_0015&download=1] Lambert, Wilfred G., and Mark Weeden, "A statue inscription of Samsuiluna from the papers of WG Lambert", Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale 114.1, pp. 15-62, 2020</ref>

Samsu-iluna seems to have had the upper-hand militarily. Within a year he dealt the coalition a shattering blow which took the northern cities out of the fight.<ref group="Note">An inscription commemorates the defeat of “26 usurping kings”.</ref> In the aftermath the king of Eshnunna, [[Iluni]], was dragged to Babylon and executed by {{Nowrap|1=strangulation.<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}}} Over the course of the next 4 years, Samsu-iluna's armies tangled with Rim-sin's forces up and down the borderlands between Babylon, Sumer and Elam. Eventually Samsu-iluna attacked Ur, pulled down its walls and put the city to the sack, he then did the same to Uruk, and Isin as {{Nowrap|1=well.<ref name="CJG"/>{{Rp|48–49}}<ref group="Note">This was in year 15 of his reign, possibly too late to have resulted from Rim-sin's rebellion.</ref>}} Finally Larsa itself was defeated and Rim-sin II was killed, thus ending the {{Nowrap|1=struggle.<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}}}

A few years later, a pretender calling himself [[Ilum-ma-ili]], and claiming descent from the last king of Isin, raised another pan-Sumerian revolt. Samsu-iluna marched an army to Sumer, and the two met in a battle which proved indecisive; a second battle sometime later went [[Ilum-ma-ili]]'s way, and in its aftermath, he founded the {{Nowrap|1=[[List of Kings of Babylon#Sealand Dynasty .28Dynasty II of Babylon.29|First Dynasty of Sea-Land]],<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}<ref group="Note">The actual dates are very uncertain, but they oscillate between the 18th and 29th year of Samsu-iluna's reign.</ref>}} which would remain in control of Sumer for the next 300 years. Samsu-iluna seems to have taken a defensive approach after this; in the 18th year of his reign, he saw to the rebuilding of 6 fortresses in the vicinity of {{Nowrap|1=[[Nippur]]<ref name="DF">{{Cite book
  | last = Frayne
  | first = Douglas
  | title = Old Babylonian period (2003-1595 BC)
  | publisher = University of Toronto Press
  | year = 1990
  | url =https://archive.org/details/oldbabylonianper00fray
  | url-access = limited
  | isbn = 0-8020-5873-6
  | pages = [https://archive.org/details/oldbabylonianper00fray/page/n406 374]–377, 380–385
}}</ref>{{Rp|380–382}}}} which might have been intended to keep that city under Babylonian control. Ultimately, this proved fruitless; by the time of Samsu-iluna's death, Nippur recognized [[Ilum-ma-ili]] as {{Nowrap|1=king.<ref name="CJG"/>{{Rp|48–49}}}}

Apparently, Eshnunna had not reconciled itself to Babylonian control either, because in Samsu-iluna's 20th year it rebelled {{Nowrap|1=again.<ref name="CJG"/>{{Rp|48–49}}}} Samsu-iluna marched his army through the region and, presumably after some bloodshed, constructed the fortress of [[Dur-samsuiluna]] to keep them  in line. This seems to have done the trick, as later documents see Samsu-iluna take a more conciliatory stance repairing infrastructure and restoring {{Nowrap|1=waterways.<ref name="CJG"/>{{Rp|48–49}}}}

Both Assyria and Elam used the general chaos to re-assert their independence. [[Kuturnahunte I]] of Elam, seizing the opportunity left by Samsu-iluna's attack on Uruk, marched into the (now wall-less) city and plundered it. Among the items looted was a statue of [[Inanna]] which would not be returned until the reign of [[Ashurbanipal]] eleven centuries {{Nowrap|1=later.<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}}} In [[Assyria]], a native vice regent named [[Puzur-Sin]] ejected [[Asinum]] who had been a vassal king of his fellow [[Amorite]] Hammurabi. A native king [[Ashur-dugul]] seized the throne, and a period of civil war in Assyria ensued. Samsu-Iluna seems to have been powerless to intervene, and finally a king named [[Adasi (Assyria)|Adasi]], restored a stable native dynasty in Assyria, removing any vestages of Amorite-Babylonian influence<ref>{{Cite book
  | author = D. D. Luckenbill
  | title = Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia
  | year = 1926
  | location = Chicago
  | url =https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.532619
}}</ref>{{Rp|1=section 576 ''apud''}}<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|1=243}}

In the end, Samsu-iluna was left with a kingdom that was only fractionally larger than the one his father had started out with 50 years prior (but which did leave him mastery of the [[Euphrates]] up to and including the ruins of Mari and its {{Nowrap|1=dependencies).<ref name="MVM"/>{{Rp|115}}{{#tag:ref|Sources seem to agree that Mari remained in Babylonian hands, although a less recent, obscure, partial inscription from the end of Samsu-ilana's reign remarking on a “host of the Westland” is a possible reference to the loss even of Mari.<ref name="CJG"/>|group="Note"}}}} The status of Eshnunna is difficult to determine with any accuracy, and while it may have remained in Babylonian hands the city was exhausted and its political influence at an end.

==Depopulation of Sumer==
[[File:Image from page 25 of "Ancient seals of the Near East" (1940).jpg|thumb|Dakiya, a high official of Samsu-iluna, and son of [[Damiq-ilishu]], the last king of the [[Isin Dynasty]].]]
Samsu-iluna's campaigns might not have been solely responsible for the havoc wreaked upon Uruk and Ur, and his loss of Sumer might have been as much a calculated retreat as defeat.

Records in the cities of Ur and Uruk essentially stop after the 10th year of Samsu-iluna's reign. Their priests apparently continued writing, but from more northerly {{Nowrap|1=cities.<ref name="MVM"/>{{Rp|115}}}} Larsa's records also end about this time. Records keep going in Nippur and Isin until Samsu-iluna's 29th year, and then cease there as well. These breaks are also observed in the archeological record, where evidence points to these cities being largely or completely abandoned for hundreds of years, until well into the {{Nowrap|1=[[Kassites#Kassite Dynasty of Babylon|Kassite period]].<ref name="JNP"/>{{Rp|49–50}}}}

Reasons for this are hard to come by. Certainly the constant warfare cannot have helped matters, but Samsu-iluna appears to have campaigned just as hard in the north, and that region was thriving during the {{Nowrap|1=period.<ref name="MVM"/>{{Rp|115}}}} The rise of Babylon marks a definite end to Sumerian cultural dominance of Mesopotamia and a shift to [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]] for government and popular {{Nowrap|1=writing;<ref name="MVM"/>{{Rp|117}}}} perhaps people who claimed cultural ties to the Sumerian past retrenched around the southerly cities which Iluna-ilu controlled. Several members of his dynasty took Sumerian names, and it appears they consciously strove to return to the region's Sumerian {{Nowrap|1=roots.<ref name="JNP"/>{{Rp|49–50}}}} It is also possible that economic or environmental factors were involved; it is known that both Hammurabi and Rim-sin I had instituted policies which altered the economies of the {{Nowrap|1=region.<ref name="MVM"/>{{Rp|115}}}} These may have proven unsustainable in the long-term.

==Other campaigns==
*Slaving raids by [[Sutean]] tribes appear to have been a constant problem for Babylon during this period, and Samsu-iluna spent some time dealing with {{Nowrap|1=them.<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}}} He promulgated a law barring Babylonian citizens from purchasing as slaves citizens of the (presumably oft-raided) cities of Idamaras and {{Nowrap|1=[[Arrapha]].<ref name="JNP"/>{{Rp|219}}}}
*In the 9th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna turned back an invasion by a [[Kassites|Kassite]] {{Nowrap|1=army.<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}}} This is the earliest known mention of the [[Kassites]], who would go on to rule Babylonia after the collapse of the [[Amorite]] dynasty.
*Around the 24th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna attacked and destroyed the city of [[Apum]], killing its king Yakun-ashar.<ref>{{Cite web
 |author=Peter Kessler
 |url=http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/MesopotamiaApum.htm
 |title=Kingdoms of Mesopotamia - Apum/Shehna
 |work=The History Files
 |date=2008-03-19
 |access-date=2008-11-01
}}</ref> A year later he seems to have attacked the city of [[Terqa]] as well,<ref>{{Cite web
 |author=Peter Kessler
 |url=http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/MesopotamiaTerqa.htm
 |title=Kingdoms of Mesopotamia - Terqa
 |work=The History Files
 |date=2008-03-19
 |access-date=2008-11-01
}}</ref> possibly adding it to his {{Nowrap|1=kingdom.<ref name="MVM"/>{{Rp|115}}}}
*In his 28th year, Samsu-iluna defeated the armies of two otherwise unknown western kings recorded as Iadikhabum and {{Nowrap|1=Muti-kurshana.<ref name="CJG"/>{{Rp|48–49}}}}
*In the 35th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna repelled an [[Amorite]] {{Nowrap|1=invasion.<ref name="GR"/>{{Rp|243}}}}

==Religious and Astronomical achievements==
Though troubled, Samsu-iluna's reign was not entirely focused on war. He is known to have rebuilt the walls of [[Kish (Sumer)|Kish]], [[Nippur]] and [[Sippar]] for {{Nowrap|1=example,<ref name="JNP"/>{{Rp|75}}<ref name="DF"/>{{Rp|374–377}}}} and to have propagated the Marduk cult as had his father. He also apparently restored the [[É (temple)|E-babbar]] temple of [[Shamash]] (Also known as [[Utu]]) in [[Larsa]], [[ziggurat]]s at {{Nowrap|1=Sippar,<ref name="DF"/>{{Rp|374–376}}}} and the ziggurat of [[Zababa]] and [[Ishtar]] at {{Nowrap|1=Kish.<ref name="DF"/>{{Rp|382–385}}}}

Additionally, there is speculation<ref name="TJS">{{Cite book
  | last = Schneider
  | first = Tammi J.
  | title = An Introduction to Ancient Mesopotamian Religion
  | publisher = William B. Eerdman's
  | year = 2011
  | location = Grand Rapids, MI
  | isbn = 978-0-8028-2959-7
  | pages = 103
}}</ref>{{Rp|103}} that Samsu-iluna instituted the [[Babylonian calendar|Standard Babylonian calendar]], possibly as a means of tying his empire more closely together.

==Family==
Samsu-iluna had at least two attested children:
* [[Abi-Eshuh|Abī-ešuḫ]], his successor
* Iltani, devotee (''nadītum'') of [[Shamash|Šamaš]], probably this king’s daughter<ref>Rients de Boer, "The Members of the Royal House of Old Babylonian Babylon," ''Isin'' (2021/2) 27–43: 29, 32, 37–38; de Boer represents Iltani as Samsu-iluna's certain daughter in his genealogical tables, but allows for the alternative possibility that she might have been Abī-ešuḫ's in the text.</ref>

==See also==
{{Commons category|Samsu-iluna}}
*[[List of Kings of Babylon]]
*[[Ancient Near East]]
*[[Art and architecture of Babylonia and Assyria]]
*[[Babylon]]
*[[Babylonia and Assyria]]
*[[Babylonian law]]
*[[Babylonian numerals]]
*[[Babylonian calendar]]
*[[Short chronology timeline]]
*[[Cuneiform script]]
*[[Geography of Babylonia and Assyria]]
*[[History of Sumer]]
*[[Iraq]]
*[[Mesopotamia]]
*[[Social life in Babylonia and Assyria]]
*[[Mashkan-shapir]]

{{S-start}}
{{Succession box
|title = [[Kings of Babylon]]
|years =
|before = [[Hammurabi]]
|after = [[Abi-Eshuh]]
}}

==Footnotes==
<references group="Note"/>

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
*[http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/MesopotamiaBabylon.htm Babylonian Empire (Old Babylonian Period) / Dynasty I]
*[http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/MesopotamiaApum.htm Timeline: Apum / Abum (City State of Shehna)]
*[http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/MesopotamiaTerqa.htm Timeline: Terqa (State of Hana / Hanna / Khana)]
*[https://cdli-gh.github.io/year-names/HTML/T12K7.htm Year-names of Samsu-Iluna]

{{S-end}}

{{Kings of Isin-Larsa}}
{{Babylonian kings}}
{{Authority control}}

[[Category:18th-century BC kings of Babylon]]
[[Category:First dynasty of Babylon]]
[[Category:Kings of Larsa]]