This was the people of whose attack on Sumu-abum, the founder of Babylon's greatness, later ages preserved the tradition. No conflict with Assyria is commemorated in Sumu-abum's date-formulæ, and it is possible that it took place before he secured his throne in Babylon, and built the great fortification-wall of the city with which he inaugurated his reign. When once he was settled there and had placed the town in a state of defence, he began to extend his influence over neighbouring cities in Akkad. Kibalbarru, which he fortified with a city-wall in his third year, was probably in the immediate neighbourhood of Babylon, and we know that Dilbat, the fortification of which was completed in his ninth year, lay only about seventeen miles south of the capital.[48] The five years which separated these two efforts at expansion were uneventful from the point of view of political achievement, for the only noteworthy episodes recorded were the building of a temple to the goddess Nin-Sinna and another to Nannar, the Moon-god, in which he afterwards set up a great cedar door. It may be that the conflict with Assyria should be set in this interval; but we should then have expected some sort of reference to the successful repulse of the enemy, and it is preferable to place it before his first year of rule. His success in the encounter with Assyria may well have afforded this West-Semitic chieftain the opportunity of fortifying one of the great towns of Akkad, and of establishing himself there as its protector against the danger of aggression from the north; and there is no doubt that Babylon had long had some sort of local governor, the traditions of whose office he inherited. Since we have references to E-sagila in the time of the Dynasties of Akkad and of Ur,[49] the former rulers of Babylon were probably no more than the chief priests of Marduk's sanctuary. That Sumu-abum should have changed the office to that of king, and that his successor should have succeeded in establishing a dynasty that endured for nearly three centuries, is evidence of the unabated energy of the new settlers. Even the later members of the dynasty retained their original West-Semitic character,[50] and this fact, coupled with the speedy control of other cities than Babylon, suggests that the Western Semites had now arrived in far greater numbers than during their earlier migration farther down the Euphrates.