HAMMURAPI

HAMMURAPI (the spelling of the name with a "p" rather than a "b" seems assured by the writing ʿmrpʾ in Ugaritic apparently "the [divine] kinsman is a healer," but interpreted by post-Kassite Babylonian tradition as kimta rapaštu, "widespread kinfolk"), the sixth king (1792–50 b.c.e.) of the first dynasty of Babylon, one of several Amorite kingdoms which rose in southern Babylonia in the aftermath of the fall of the third dynasty of Ur. Amorites spoke a West Semitic language with similarities to Aramaic and Hebrew. Because the cuneiform system lacks ayin, ḪA served as its approximation, the ḫammu-, corresponding to Hebrew ʿam, "people," "kin." As such the king's name is of the same type as Am-ram; Ammi-el etc. Sources for the reign of Hammurapi are his own inscriptions, including the lengthy prologue to the code which bears his name; year names in date formulas which, in keeping with established tradition, list an outstanding military, political, or domestic event by which the year is known; letters, both from Hammurapi's own chancellery, and from other centers, especially the large political archive from *Mari in the upper Euphrates valley; business documents; and legal texts. Since Hammurapi's Babylon has not been excavated, his own diplomatic archive has not been uncovered.

When Hammurapi assumed the throne, Babylon was a small city-state, his predecessors having limited themselves to maintaining their local rule against the ambitions of similar states in the vicinity and against the incursions of nomads. As seen from a document written in the generation before Hammurapi, and from the contemporaneous Mari letters, the situation in southern Babylonia during the early Old Babylonian period was such that each ruler managed to govern within the limited confines of his city-state, while the open interurban spaces were given over to the control of nomadic and seminomadic tribes who roamed the area. It was Hammurapi's accomplishment to weld these several city-states into a cohesive base from which to embark on the wider conquest of the rest of Mesopotamia.

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