A Short Introduction to the Kassite Conquest (Illustrated)

HAMMURABI was succeeded by his son Samsu-iluna in 2080, and the politics of Babylonia entered on a new phase. A second dynasty, overlapping the first, arose, the so-called Dynasty of the Sea-Country, which was to challenge the ruling power and presently survive it. Contemporary with these a new foe threatened the eastern boundary, the Kassites, a powerful tribe, inhabiting the fringe of the Persian mountains, whose first foray was made in Samsu-iluna's reign.
The caravans of the merchants plying up the mountain roads eastwards into the Zagros, the stray wanderers whose business or pleasure took them into the hills, and even perhaps the luckless prisoners who had been captured by Elamites in their many forays into Babylonia, all told the same tales, in the rugged lime­stone fastnesses, of the wealth of golden grain in the Mesopotamian valleys below, and how men might enrich themselves in these lands. Such tales early reached the nearest mountain people, the Kashshi, whom classical writers called Kossaioi (and probably also the Kissioi), a wild tribe of freebooting barbarians, inhabiting the slopes north or north-west of Elam, and numbering, according to Strabo, 13,000 bows. Their name possibly survives in the modern Khuzistan. They were as little to hold or bind as the modern Lurs; in later times Alexander conquered them, but after his death they regained their independence. Strabo says that they fought alongside the Elamites against the Susians and Babylonians; the Persian kings never subdued them, but purchased peace by paying them tribute. Sennacherib describes them as equally unsubmissive to his fathers: 'Through the high mountain forests, a rough country, I rode on horseback, and hauled my chariot up with ropes. The steepest places I climbed on foot like a wild ox.' They had begun to stray down into the harvest fields of Babylonia as early as the time of Hammurabi…