2166–2606 AM · ≈ 1595 BCE — 1155 BCE · world history
The Kassites in Babylon
After a Hittite raid, Babylon is ruled for four centuries by a dynasty of newcomers from the mountains.
A Hittite army marches down the Euphrates, takes Babylon and departs with the spoils, leaving the kingdom without a ruler. Power is picked up by the Kassites—a mountain people from the east who had served in Babylonian armies as mercenaries. They change neither language, nor gods, nor laws: they write in Akkadian, honour Marduk, restore the temples. Their four centuries are the calmest stretch in Babylonia's history, when its kings correspond as equals with the pharaohs of Egypt. It is under the Kassites that the corpus of Babylonian learning takes shape which will be copied for ages after.
Sources
Documents of the period
- cuneiform chronicles and king lists — the Kassite dynasty in the Babylonian king lists; the correspondence with the pharaohs
Scholarship
- archaeology of Mesopotamia — four centuries of Kassite rule — the age in which Babylonian learning was gathered
Basis: documents and evidence.