PROVINCIAL ADMINISTRATION IN

BABYLONIA UNDER THE SECOND

DYNASTY OF ISIN1)

BY

J. A. BRINKMAN (Toronto)

Babylonia shortly after the year 1160 B.C. was the scene of political upheaval. The non-Semitic Kassite dynasty after a reign of five hundred years was meeting its end at the hands of Elamite invaders from the east. When the weakened regime of the Kassites had finally collapsed, the hegemony of the land was taken over by a native Babylonian, Marduk-kabit-ahhesu, who founded the Second Dynasty of Isin. This royal line, comprising eleven kings in all, then controlled the country for a century and a quarter down to 1025 B.C. 2). We are afforded glimpses into the local administration of Babylonia during this time by means of occasional passages scattered throughout the kudurrus, contemporary legal documents dealing chiefly with land rights. Fortunately, during the reign of the Second Dynasty of Isin, we have enough such passages to enable us to attempt a preliminary reconstruction of the system of provincial government under the king. The seventeen kudurrus of the dynasty can be effectively supplemented where necessary both by the late Kassite kudurrus, which show the same administrative organization 3), and by isolated references in other contemporary texts. 234

Babylonia at this time was divided into administrative districts called pihatu (NAM), a word which we translate as "province." Such pro- vinces were small, mutually independent units with their governments functioning directly or indirectly under the king. They took their names either from a previously existing country (e.g., mat T'dmtim), from a local tribe (e.g., l3it-Sin-magir), or from the principal city of the region (e.g., Isin). We have twelve provinces attested thus far under the Second Dynasty of Isin:

Babylon Halman Bit-Ada Hudada Bit-Piri'-Amurru Isin Bit-Sin-magir Namar Bit-Sin-seme Nippur Dur-Kurigalzu Sealand

These stretch all the way from the southern coastland of Babylonia (Sealand) to the lands between the Diyala and the Lower Zab (e.g., Namar). The heavy concentration of provinces north of the parallel of Nippur might imply that at this time the southern sections of Baby- lonia were already thinly populated swamp-a geographical condition well attested in later Assyrian annals 2). A similar concentration of provinces in the north appears in Kassite kudurrus; and these docu-