Babylonia had been seriously handicapped by losing control of its western caravan road.  Prior to the Kassite period its influence was supreme in Mesopotamia and middle Syria; from the days of Sargon of Akkad and of Naram-Sin until the close of the Hammurabi Age its merchants had naught to fear from bandits or petty kings between the banks of the Euphrates and the Mediterranean coast.  The city of Babylon had grown rich and powerful as the commercial metropolis of Western Asia.

Separated from the Delta frontier by the broad and perilous wastes of the Arabian desert, Babylonia traded with Egypt by an indirect route.  Its caravan road ran northward along the west bank of the Euphrates towards Haran, and then southward through Palestine.  This was a long detour, but it was the only possible way.

During the early Kassite Age the caravans from Babylon had to pass through the area controlled by Mitanni, which was therefore able to impose heavy duties and fill its coffers with Babylonian gold.  Nor did the situation improve when the influence of Mitanni suffered decline in southern Mesopotamia.  Indeed the difficulties under which traders operated were then still further increased, for the caravan roads were infested by plundering bands of “Suti”, to whom references are made in the Tell-el-Amarna letters.  These bandits defied all the great powers, and became so powerful that even the messengers sent from one king to another were liable to be robbed and murdered without discrimination.  When war broke out between powerful States they harried live stock and sacked towns in those areas which were left unprotected.

The “Suti” were Arabians of Aramaean stock.  What is known as the “Third Semitic Migration” was in progress during this period.  The nomads gave trouble to Babylonia and Assyria, and, penetrating Mesopotamia and Syria, sapped the power of Mitanni, until it was unable to resist the onslaughts of the Assyrians and the Hittites.

The Aramaean tribes are referred to, at various periods and by various peoples, not only as the “Suti”, but also as the “Achlame”, the “Arimi”, and the “Khabiri”.  Ultimately they were designated simply as “Syrians”, and under that name became the hereditary enemies of the Hebrews, although Jacob was regarded as being of their stock:  “A Syrian ready to perish”, runs a Biblical reference, “was my father (ancestor), and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous".[408]

An heroic attempt was made by one of the Kassite kings of Babylonia to afford protection to traders by stamping out brigandage between Arabia and Mesopotamia, and opening up a new and direct caravan road to Egypt across the Arabian desert.  The monarch in question was Kadashman-Kharbe, the grandson of Ashur-uballit of Assyria.  As we have seen, he combined forces with his distinguished and powerful kinsman, and laid a heavy hand on the “Suti”.  Then he dug wells and erected a chain of fortifications, like “block-houses”, so that caravans might come and go without interruption, and merchants be freed from the imposts of petty kings whose territory they had to penetrate when travelling by the Haran route.