About B. C. 2250 Hammurabi sat upon the throne of Babylon, the name of
which now first appears in cuneiform records, although it may have been
founded centuries before. This great monarch, Hammurabi, has left
records of his enlightened efforts for the agricultural development of
the land, and a great law code, cut in the enduring rock, which carries
our knowledge of the history of law back a thousand years before the age
of Moses. As yet no inscription has been discovered giving the details
of his wars; but it is evident that he destroyed the Elamite power in
Babylonia, and his assumption of the ancient titles “King of Sumer and
Accad,” “King of the Four Quarters of the World,” seems to indicate that
his power extended far. In Larsa and Sippar he erected temples to the
sun-god, and at Babylon and Borsippa he enlarged those already standing.
His great canal running down through the heart of Babylonia made the
bordering territory fertile; and the granary built at Babylon stored the
increased crops of grain. It may be that Lugalzaggisi and Sargon I.
exceeded Hammurabi in the extent of their sway, but Hammurabi made
Babylon the center of culture for southwestern Asia during millenniums.
After him we know little of the history until Burnaburiash, a Hassite
king who was on the throne about 1400 B. C., exchanged letters with
Amenhotep III. of Egypt as recorded in the Tel-el-Amarna Letters.
About 1250 B. C. Babylonia was conquered by Assyria, and, though it soon
regained its independence and was again ruled by native kings, it
remained a politically subordinate power, and was repeatedly conquered
by its more powerful neighbor, until the fall of Nineveh, consequently
we must now consider Assyria, as the successor of the _first_ Babylonian
Empire, and go back a little into its history up to the time of Tiglath
Pileser I., the conqueror of old Babylon.
[Illustration: =THE TOWER OF BABEL RESTORED=
This model of the famous “tower that reached to Heaven” was constructed
by Sir Henry Rawlinson after years of study and exploration. The
drawing, by O. Schulz, is now in the United States National Museum at
Washington, D. C.]