not overlords of the Hittites about 1800
B.C., the two peoples may have been military allies of the Kassites.
Some writers suggest, indeed, that the Kassites came from Mitanni.
Another view is that the Mitannians were the Aryan allies of the
Kassites who entered Babylon from the Elamite highlands, and that they
afterwards conquered Mesopotamia and part of Cappadocia prior to the
Hyksos conquest of Egypt. A third solution of the problem is that the
Aryan rulers of the Mitannian Hittites were the overlords of northern
Babylonia, which they included in their Mesopotamian empire for a
century before the Kassites achieved political supremacy in the
Tigro-Euphrates valley, and that they were also the leaders of the
Hyksos invasion of Egypt, which they accomplished with the assistance
of their Hittite and Amoritic allies.

The first Kassite king of Babylonia of whom we have knowledge was
Gandash. He adopted the old Akkadian title, "king of the four
quarters", as well as the title "king of Sumer and Akkad", first used
by the rulers of the Dynasty of Ur. Nippur appears to have been
selected by Gandash as his capital, which suggests that his war and
storm god, Shuqamuna, was identified with Bel Enlil, who as a "world
giant" has much in common with the northern hammer gods. After
reigning for sixteen years, Gandash was succeeded by his son, Agum the
Great, who sat on the throne for twenty-two years. The great-grandson
of Agum the Great was Agum II, and not until his reign were the
statues of Merodach and his consort Zerpanitu^m brought back to the
city of Babylon. This monarch recorded that, in response to the oracle
of Shamash, the sun god, he sent to the distant land of Khani
(Mitanni) for the great deity and his consort. Babylon would therefore
appear to have been deprived of Merodach for about two centuries. The
Hittite-Mitanni raid is dated about 1800 B.C., and the rise of
Gandash, the Kassite, about 1700 B.C. At least a century elapsed
between the reigns of Gandash and Agum II. These calculations do not
coincide, it will be noted, with the statement in a Babylonian hymn,
that Merodach remained in the land of the Hatti for twenty-four years,
which, however, may be either a priestly fiction or a reference to a
later conquest. The period which followed the fall of the Hammurabi
Dynasty of Babylonia is as obscure as the Hyksos Age of Egypt.

Agum II, the Kassite king, does not state whether or not he waged war
against Mitanni