Ancient Mesopotamia

Sumerian civilisation had flourished in the southern half of Mesopotamia (today's Iraq and the western edge of Iran) since the first Neolithic farmers of the Hassuna and Samarra cultures had learned how to use the two rivers, Euphrates and Tigris, to irrigate their crops (see 'related links' in the sidebar for more).

A mass of irrigation and supply canals subsequently were created to help the very first city states to flourish (full details are available via the sidebar for each city state).

Some of the earliest cities, such as Sippar, Borsippa, and Kish in the north, and Ur, Uruk, and Eridu in the south, formed the endpoints of what became the complex Sumerian network of cities and canals (click or tap on map to view full sized)

The region entered the Bronze Age around 3500 BC during the Uruk IV period, about the same time as the wheel was invented and governing hierarchies started being honed towards what eventually would become kingship.

During the later second millennium BC the system came under increasing strain, due in part to the climate drying out over the course of several centuries, but also due to over-irrigation and increased conflict for the reducing resources.

The cultural crash came when the Ur III empire was destroyed around 2004 BC by a massed Elamite attack, with the weakened system no longer able to handle the strain. A short dark age followed of a little over a century, although limited records do show that people and cities were surviving on reduced means and with a vastly reduced administrative system (the general lack of detailed records makes this very evident).

Babylon's rise

A new system gradually emerged, one with different cultural admixtures and a different political arrangement in place (and see 'Diyala Valley States' in the 'related links'). It was into this system that the village of Babylon registered its involvement, first as a satellite of the city of Kazallu, and then as an independent small city.

Under the rule of Hammurabi in the first half of the eighteenth century BC Babylon became a swiftly-developing city state. He vied against Mari, Larsa, and Eshnunna for dominance, and won.

Hammurabi firmly established Babylon as the leading city in Mesopotamia, and his immediate successors largely maintained that position. Modern historians and archaeologists know the period as the 'Old Babylonian' due to Hammurabi's success in setting up a new regional empire.

The same infrastructural limitations existed though. Farmers still depended upon the two rivers and the irrigation canals, and warfare still stretched and thinned those resources. When the climate cooperated then the system generally worked. The cracks were easy to ignore. When it did not, those cracks opened up into fissures.

Decline

During the later part of the Old Babylonian period, in the seventeenth century BC, Mesopotamia experienced a profound decline in its political stability, economic prosperity, and environmental security.

Babylon began life as a modest town which had been seized from Kazallu, but was quickly fortified by the building of a city wall in the nineteenth century BC

The reborn civilisation which had flourished under Hammurabi and his immediate successors gradually weakened as the climate again dried or resources became ever-thinned. Precise details about the downturn are not so readily available as they had been for the fall of about 2004 BC because the systems were no longer in place to take such an administratively-heavy approach to records-keeping.

One major factor behind the downturn was political instability. Babylon's empire following the death of Hammurabi proved difficult to maintain. His later successors lacked his authority and military skill, allowing rival states to reassert themselves.

Cities in southern Mesopotamia increasingly resisted Babylonian control, while external groups such as the Kassites and the Hittites began to press into the region.

Trade routes became insecure, local governors gained greater independence, and central authority weakened. This political fragmentation reduced the state's ability to maintain irrigation systems, collect taxes, and defend agricultural land.

Environmental pressures also contributed significantly to the decline. Mesopotamian civilisation depended heavily upon the two rivers and upon complex irrigation networks. Intensive irrigation over centuries caused the gradual salinisation of farmland, particularly in southern Mesopotamia.

Salt tended to accumulate in the soil as water evaporated, making it increasingly difficult to grow wheat and other staple crops. Farmers were forced to switch to more salt-resistant barley which, in the early days of farming, had been an intrusive weed.

Agricultural productivity still declined over time. Reduced harvests weakened the economy and increased social strain.

At the same time, evidence suggests that periods of drought and climatic instability affected the wider Near East during the second millennium BC. Lower rainfall and fluctuating river levels would have reduced agricultural output even further while placing additional pressure upon urban populations.

Cities which relied upon stable food supplies became vulnerable to famine, migration, and unrest. In a civilisation in which wealth depended upon agricultural surplus, environmental decline had serious political consequences.

Although Mesopotamian society did not completely collapse, the period marked the end of Babylon's early dominance and the beginning of a darker and more fragmented age across the region.

In or about 1595 BC the increasingly bold Hittites in the north sensed an opportunity to destroy their main regional rival. Under Mursili I they launched a daring but devastating long distance raid on Babylon, sacking the city before heading back into Anatolia to suffer from the same downturn which affected Mesopotamia.

The Hittite sack of Babylon symbolised the collapse of Old Babylonian power. The attack shattered Babylonian prestige and created a major power vacuum.

In the aftermath, it was a newly-arrived group, the Kassites, which eventually established control over Babylon. They had quietly been building up their power in the captured city of Mari, but the transition appears to have involved disruption to administration, trade, and regional influence.

A fresh dark age followed, not necessarily as intense or as long as at the start of the second millennium BC, but written records became less abundant and political authority appears to have become less centralised.

The previous system of flourishing states which were ruled by a series of closely-interconnected courts across territory between the Mediterranean coast and the Persian Gulf had been destroyed.

Urban life continued, although urbanism was at an all-time low since about 3000 BC when it was still developing from scratch.

Many of the great cities had declined in importance, and long-distance trade networks weakened. The south was especially affected, with many of its once-great cities being fully or partially abandoned. Mesopotamia survived, but the confidence and relative unity of the Old Babylonian world had disappeared.

The combined effects of environmental degradation, climate stress, political fragmentation, and foreign invasion transformed one of the world's earliest great civilisations into a region which would now struggle to recover from the crisis.

Main Sources

Gwendolyn Leick - The Babylonian World (Ed, Routledge, 2007)

A Leo Oppenheim - Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization (Revised edition edited by Erica Reiner, University of Chicago Press, 1977)

James B Pritchard - The Ancient Near East, Volume I: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures (Ed, Princeton University Press, 1958)

Marc Van De Mieroop - A History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC (Third Edition, Wiley Blackwell, 2015)

Karen Radner, Nadine Moeller, & D T Potts - The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East (Eds, Vols I-V, Oxford University Press, 2020-2022)

Steven Mithen - After the Ice: A Global Human History, 20,000-5000 BC (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003)

Eric H Cline - 1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed (Revised Edition, Princeton University Press, 2021)

Additional Sources

The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (University of Chicago)

The British Museum: Mesopotamia Collection, British Museum, London

The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Maps and text copyright © P L Kessler. An original feature for the History Files.