In the closing years of Hammurabi's reign Babylon had reached the climax of her early power. The proud phraseology of the Prologue to his Code conveys the impression that the empire was solidly compact, and its component cities the willing recipients of his royal clemency and favour. And there can be no doubt that he owed his success in great measure to the efficient administration he had established under his personal control. His son, Samsu-iluna, inherited his father's traditions, and in his letters that have survived we have abundant evidence that he exercised the same close supervision over the judicial and administrative officers stationed in cities distant from the capital. And it would appear that the first eight years of his reign passed under the same peaceful conditions, that had prevailed at the time of his accession to the throne. He cut two canals, and the names he gave them commemorate the wealth and abundance he hoped by their means to bestow upon the people. It was in his third and fourth years that the Samsu-iluna-nagab-nukhush-nishi and the Samsu-iluna-khegallum Canals were completed, and the royal activities were then confined to the further adornment of the great temples of Babylon and Sippar. His ninth year marks the crisis, not only in Samsu-iluna's own reign, but in the early fortunes of the kingdom. It is then that we first hear of Kassite tribes appearing in force upon Babylon's eastern frontier, and, though Samsu-iluna doubtless defeated them, as he claims to have done, it is clear that their emergence from the foothills of Western Elam, followed speedily by their penetration of Babylonian territory, was the signal for setting the empire in a blaze. They must have met with some success before their onslaught was arrested by the army sent against them,[1] and the renewal of hostilities in any form must have aroused once more the fighting instinct of the Elamite border tribes, which had been temporarily laid to rest by Hammurabi's victories. Hammurabi's old antagonist, Rîm-Sin himself, had long been living in comparative retirement, and, in spite of his advanced age, the news fired him to fresh efforts. His name was still on the lips of those who had fought under him, and since the death of his conqueror, Hammurabi, his prestige must have tended to increase. When, therefore, his native land of Emutbal, allying itself with the neighbouring Elamite district of Idamaraz, followed up the Kassite onslaught by an organized invasion, Rîm-Sin raised a revolt in Southern Babylonia, and succeeded in gaining possession of Erech and Nîsin. It would appear that the Babylonian garrison in Larsa, too, was overcome, and that the city passed once more under the independent control of its old ruler.