[Illustration: HAMMURABI RECEIVING HIS LAWS FROM THE SUN GOD. After Délég. en Perse, Mém. IV, pl. 3]
That Kish was accorded the position of a vassal state is certain, for, among contract-tablets recovered from the city, several were drawn up in the reign of Mananâ, who was Sumu-abum's vassal. In these documents the oath is taken in Mananâ's name, but they are dated by the formula for Sumu-abum's thirteenth year, commemorating his capture of Kazallu. The importance of the latter event may be held to explain the use of the suzerain's own formula, for other documents in Mananâ's reign are dated by local events, proving that at Kish, as at Sippar, a vassal city of Babylon was allowed the privilege of retaining its own system of time-reckoning. If we are right in regarding Ashduni-erim as Sumu-abum's contemporary, it is clear that he must have been succeeded by Mananâ within three years of his capitulation to Babylon. During the next few years the throne of Kish was occupied by at least three rulers in quick succession, Sumu-ditana, Iawium, and Khalium,[56] for we know that by the thirteenth year of Sumu-la-ilum, who succeeded Sumu-abum on the throne of Babylon, the city of Kish had revolted and had been finally annexed.
The conquest of Kazallu, winch Sumu-abum carried out in the last year but one of his reign, was the most important of Babylon's early victories, for it marked an extension of her influence beyond the limits of Akkad. The city appears to have lain to the east of the Tigris, and the two most powerful empires in the past history of Babylonia had each come into active conflict with it during the early years of their existence. Its conquest by Akkad was regarded in Babylonian tradition as the most notable achievement of Sargon's reign; and at a later period Dungi of Ur, after capturing the Elamite border city of Dêr, had extended his empire to the north or east by including Kazallu within its borders.[57] Sumu-abum's conquest was probably little more than a successful raid, for in the reign of Sumu-la-ilum Kazallu in its turn attacked Babylon, and, by fully occupying her energies, delayed her southward expansion for some years.
In the earlier part of his reign Sumu-la-ilum appears to have devoted himself to consolidating the position his predecessor had secured and to improving the internal resources of his kingdom. The Shamash-khegallum Canal, which he cut immediately on his accession, lay probably in the neighbourhood of Sippar; and later on he further improved the country's system of irrigation by a second canal to which he gave his own name.[58] The policy he thus inaugurated was energetically maintained by his successors, and much of Babylon's wealth and prosperity under her early kings may be traced to the care they lavished on increasing the area of land under cultivation. Sumu-la-ilum also rebuilt the great fortification-wall of his capital, but during his first twelve years he records only one military expedition.[59] It was in his thirteenth year that the revolt and reconquest of Kish put an end to this period of peaceful development.
