An unpublished chronicle in the British Museum gives us further details
of Hammurabi's victory over the Elamites, and at the same time makes it
clear that the defeat and overthrow of Rim-Sin was not so crushing
as has hitherto been supposed. This chronicle relates that Hammurabi
attacked Rim-Sin, and, after capturing the cities of Ur and Larsam,
carried their spoil to Babylon. Up to the present it has been supposed
that Hammurabi's victory marked the end of Elamite influence in
Babylonia, and that thenceforward the supremacy of Babylon was
established throughout the whole of the country. But from the
new chronicle we gather that Hammurabi did not succeed in finally
suppressing the attempts of Elam to regain her former position. It is
true that the cities of Ur and Larsam were finally incorporated in the
Babylonian empire, and the letters of Hammurabi to Sin-idinnam, the
governor whom he placed in authority over Larsam, afford abundant
evidence of the stringency of the administrative control which he
established over Southern Babylonia. But Rim-Sin was only crippled for
the time, and, on being driven from Ur and Larsam, he retired beyond
the Elamite frontier and devoted his energies to the recuperation of his
forces against the time when he should feel himself strong enough again
to make a bid for victory in his struggle against the growing power of
Babylon.
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