The Old Babylonian Empire

The Old Babylonian Empire, ruled by the First Dynasty of Babylon, rose from a minor Amorite city-state on the Euphrates to dominate Mesopotamia under its sixth king, Hammurabi, who through military campaigns and shifting alliances defeated the rival powers of Larsa, Mari, Eshnunna and Elam and unified southern and much of central Mesopotamia under Babylonian rule by the end of his reign. Hammurabi is best remembered for the law code promulgated in his name, one of the earliest and most complete surviving collections of laws, inscribed on a stele that presented the king as an agent of divine justice appointed by the gods Anu and Enlil. The empire's unity did not long survive Hammurabi's death in 1750 BCE; his successors lost territory to Kassite and other incursions over the following century and a half, and the dynasty ended when the Hittite king Mursili I sacked Babylon around 1595 BCE, opening the way for the Kassites to establish their own long-lasting dynasty over the city. Despite its relatively brief political dominance, Old Babylonian culture, including its version of the Sumerian literary tradition, its mathematics and astronomy, and Akkadian as a written and diplomatic language, shaped Mesopotamian civilization for more than a thousand years afterward.