Old Babylonian Period
1763–1595 BCE
The first date marks the capture of Larsa by the Babylonian king Hammurabi, and the second the capture of Babylon by the Hittite king Mursili I. In this classroom periodisation, the period runs from Hammurabi’s full, though short-lived, control over the Mesopotamian plain and some surrounding regions until to the final fall of his dynasty.
These dates are so arbitrary that, on their own, they do not really tell us very much.
The Old Babylonian period was a time of unprecedented economic and cultural growth in the Middle Euphrates, the alluvial plain, and Southern Mesopotamia alike. Cities expanded, trade flourished and, most importantly for us, learned men made copies of famous literary works in Sumerian, a language that had by then disappeared from the streets and survived to be used for learning and ritual. As to the new literary works, they were written already in Akkadian. The first literary version of the Epic of Gilgamesh appears at this time, though not yet the version that can now be bought in bookshops all over the world.
This growth was not the result of Hammurabi’s conquests. Rather, his conquests were the result of economic development, which quite often invites war.
These dates also frame one of the most serious crises in Mesopotamian history: the deurbanization of the alluvial plain and the break in bureaucratic and literary activity in many of the famous cities. Life did continue, however, in places that were previously unknown, such as the recently discovered Tell Khaiber.
The name of the period, “Old Babylonian,” puts the emphasis not so much on the city of Babylon as on the land of Babylonia, that is, central and southern alluvial plain. If we include the Middle Euphrates and the kingdom of Mari, ruled by the Lim dynasty (the modern Tell Hariri in Syria), we arrive at an “Old Babylonian period in the broad sense": the high point of Mesopotamian societies on the threshold of the first great crisis of the Bronze Age.
To use the term in this broader chronological sense, we have to move its lower boundary back to the period of Isin and Larsa. Its upper boundary also has to be moved earlier, because by the 17th century BCE we are already well into the crisis that belongs to the next chapter of history. So, while it is intuitively clear that the Old Babylonian period refers to the great flourishing of the first third of the second millennium BCE, it is difficult to assign the same absolute dates to all the regions concerned.
To illustrate the OB, as scholars abbreviate it, we have chosen a wall painting from the royal palace at Mari (AO 19826 n° 01) and a relief from the stele bearing the Laws of Hammurabi. Both are in the Louvre collection.
