A king who neglected the temples was inviting the wrath of heaven and the fury of his people. However, the basis of a Mesopotamian king’s legitimacy was the perceived closeness of his relationship with the gods. Less obvious to modern eyes, perhaps, is the benefit Sumu-Abum, his successors, and his rivals derived from their continual construction and reconstruction of temples, an activity that absorbed enormous manpower and a large share of government revenue. As Sumu-Abum himself understood, one of the most effective ways of waging war against a enemy downstream was to simply divert the river. No king or city in Mesopotamia could survive without active, centralized management of their water resources through canals, levees, and dams. Strong city walls were an obvious need in a land crowded with rival states, but the other projects were critical to royal power as well. Construction of defensive walls, irrigation canals, and temples was a major preoccupation. His administration probably resembled those in nearby cities such as Kish and Kazallu. Their union with the more established residents of northern Babylonia, an area known as Akkad, led to the establishment of a new dynasty in Babylon itself. Among those who stayed, abandoning nomadism for a more settled life of farming and trade, were the Amorites. Because the land between the Tigris and Euphrates was a fertile and well-watered enclave in a barren landscape, it proved extremely attractive to a variety of nomadic peoples. Urban civilizations had existed in Mesopotamia for more than a thousand years when Babylon first rose to prominence. Strictly speaking, however, the term Babylonian Empire refers only to the first incarnation, which began in about 1894 BC and ended three hundred years later. Second, many of the most familiar features of Babylon did not exist until the second empire, often called the Chaldean or neo-Babylonian Empire, arose more than a thousand years after the first. Indeed, it was the conquest of those neighboring states that created the empires. For much of its history, the city of Babylon was only one of a number of independent states in the region called Babylonia. First, it is important to note that Babylon and Babylonia are not identical. Backgroundīecause the term Babylonian Empire can be misleading, a few clarifications are necessary. An ever-expanding bureaucracy, a more powerful priesthood, and greater interaction with distant powers distinguished the second empire from its predecessor. The first was marked by the king’s personal involvement in even the most trivial affairs of state. Located on the banks of the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), the city-state of Babylon was the capital of two empires over the course of its long history.
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