'This victory signalled the annexation of all the old urban centers, such as Ur, Uruk, Isin and Larsa,' Leick writes.

After a series of campaigns, he defeated Rim-Sin, the ruler of Larsa, a man who had ruled a large kingdom for nearly 60 years. With the death of the king of Ashur, and the power vacuum resulting from it, Hammurabi was able to expand. 'At home he concentrated on improving the economic basis of his kingdom by building canals and strengthening fortifications,' she writes. Located between two larger kingdoms at Larsa and Ashur, he was cautious. Leick notes that Hammurabi had to be patient before he could expand. He was the ruler who would go on to turn this once small kingdom into a great empire. Babylon would remain this way until, six kings later, a man named Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.) ascended the throne. He proceeded to turn Babylon into a petty kingdom made up of the city and a small amount of nearby territory. He was an Amorite, a Semitic-speaking people from the area around modern-day Syria. She notes that in 1894 B.C., after the Ur-based empire had collapsed, the city was conquered by a man named Samu-abum. 'Babylon had not been an independent city,' writes researcher Gwendolyn Leick in her book 'The Babylonians' (Routledge, 2003). Ancient records suggest that more than 4,000 years ago, at a time when the city of Ur was the center of an empire, Babylon appears to have been a provincial administration center. (Image credit: The Schøyen Collection MS 2063, Oslo and Londo)Īrchaeologically, little is known about the early history of Babylon. This inscription, made in the name of Tiglath-pileser I, a king of Assyria, records the conquest of Babylon.

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