u, Ninni, and Nana, the
suzerains of Kish; and also Ezikalamma, the house of the goddess Ninna,
in the village of Zarilab. In the southern provinces, but recently added
to the crown,--at Larsa, Uruk, and Uru,--he displayed similar activity.

[Illustration: 059.jpg Page Image]

He had, doubtless, a political as well as a religious motive in all he
did; for if he succeeded in winning the allegiance of the priests by
the prodigality of his pious gifts, he could count on their gratitude in
securing for him the people's obedience, and thus prevent the outbreak
of a revolt. He had, indeed, before him a difficult task in attempting
to allay the ills which had been growing during centuries of civil
discord and foreign conquest. The irrigation of the country demanded
constant attention, and from earliest times its sovereigns had directed
the work with real solicitude; but owing to the breaking up of the
country into small states, their respective resources could not be
combined in such general operations as were needed for controlling the
inundations and effectually remedying the excess or the scarcity of
water. Khammurabi witnessed the damage done to the whole province of
Umliyash by one of those terrible floods which still sometimes ravage
the regions of the Lower Tigris,* and possibly it may have been to
prevent the recurrence of such a disaster that he undertook the work of
canalization.

* Contracts dated the year of an inundation which laid waste
Umliyash; cf. in our own time, the inundation of April 10,
1831, which in a single night destroyed half the city of
Bagdad, and in which fifteen thousand persons lost their
lives either by drowning or by the collapse of their houses.

He was the first that we know of who attempted to organize and reduce
to a single system the complicated network of ditches and channels which
intersected the territory belonging to the great cities between Babylon
and the sea. Already, more than half a century previously, Siniddinam
had enlarged the canal on which Larsa was situated, while Bimsin had
provided an outlet for the "River of the Gods" into the Persian Gulf:*
by the junction of the two a navigable channel was formed between the
Euphrates and the marshes, and an outlet was thus made for the surplus
waters of the inundation. Khammurabi informs us how Anu and Bel, having
confided to him the government of Sumer and Accad, and having placed in
his hands the reins o