king of nations”, has not been identified.  The suggestion that he was “King of the Gutium” remains in the realm of suggestion.  Two late tablets have fragmentary inscriptions which read like legends with some historical basis.  One mentions Kudur-lahmal (?Chedor-laomer) and the other gives the form “Kudur-lahgumal”, and calls him “King of the land of Elam”.  Eri-Eaku (?Eri-aku) and Tudhula (?Tidal) are also mentioned.  Attacks had been delivered on Babylon, and the city and its great temple E-sagila were flooded.  It is asserted that the Elamites “exercised sovereignty in Babylon” for a period.  These interesting tablets have been published by Professor Pinches.

The fact that the four leaders of the expedition to Canaan are all referred to as “kings” in the Biblical narrative need not present any difficulty.  Princes and other subject rulers who governed under an overlord might be and, as a matter of fact, were referred to as kings.  “I am a king, son of a king”, an unidentified monarch recorded on one of the two tablets just referred to.  Kudur-Mabug, King of Elam, during his lifetime called his son Warad-Sin (Eri-Aku = Arioch) “King of Larsa”.  It is of interest to note, too, in connection with the Biblical narrative regarding the invasion of Syria and Palestine, that he styled himself “overseer of the Amurru (Amorites)”.

No traces have yet been found in Palestine of its conquest by the Elamites, nor have the excavators been able to substantiate the claim of Lugal-zaggizi of a previous age to have extended his empire to the shores of the Mediterranean.  Any relics which these and other eastern conquerors may have left were possibly destroyed by the Egyptians and Hittites.

When Hammurabi came to the throne he had apparently to recognize the overlordship of the Elamite king or his royal son at Larsa.  Although Sin-muballit had captured Isin, it was retaken, probably after the death of the Babylonian war-lord, by Rim-Sin, who succeeded his brother Warad-Sin, and for a time held sway in Lagash, Nippur, and Erech, as well as Larsa.

It was not until the thirty-first year of his reign that Hammurabi achieved ascendancy over his powerful rival.  Having repulsed an Elamite raid, which was probably intended to destroy the growing power of Babylon, he “smote down Rim-Sin”, whose power he reduced almost to vanishing point.  For about twenty years afterwards that subdued monarch lived in comparative obscurity; then he led a force of allies against Hammurabi’s son and successor, Samsu-iluna, who defeated him and put him to death, capturing, in the course of his campaign, the revolting cities of Emutbalum, Erech, and Isin.  So was the last smouldering ember of Elamite power stamped out in Babylonia.