Despite their external origin, the Kassite kings did not change Babylon's ancestral traditions and, on the contrary, brought order to the country after the turbulence that marked the end of the first dynasty.

During the term of the dynasty, Babylon's power was definitively established over all the ancient states of Sumer and Akkad, forming the country called "Karduniash" (Karduniaš).

[1][2] Further afield, at the site of Terca in the Middle Euphrates, and on the islands of Failaka (in what is now Kuwait) and Bahrain in the Persian Gulf, there are also some traces of Kassite rule.

According to the same source, Agum II would have been the tenth sovereign of the dynasty of the Kassite kings (founded by a certain Gandas), who would have reigned who knows where during the second half of the 18th century BC.

This dynasty had as its rival that of the Sea Country, located south of Babylon around the cities of Uruk, Ur and Larsa, which was defeated in the early 15th century BC by the Kassite sovereigns Ulamburiash and Agum III.

[note 5] This system, attested mainly by the Amarna letters[29][30] in Egypt and of Hatusa (the Hittite capital),[31] was ensured by emissaries called mār šipri, involved important exchanges of luxury goods, which included much gold and other precious metals, in a scheme of gifts and contradons, more or less respected by some sovereigns, which sometimes took place with some minor tensions.

[36] These practices were intended to strengthen the ties between the different royal houses, which in the last two cases were direct neighbors, in order to avoid political tensions.

And for your part, whatever you want for your country, write to me so that it can be sent to you.Babylon became involved in a series of conflicts with Assyria when Assyrian ruler Ashur-uballit I broke free from Mithani rule in 1365 BC, which marked the beginning of a multi-secular confrontation between northern and southern Mesopotamia.

The latter kept his allegiance to his grandfather until he died, but provoked the next Assyrian king Enlil-nirari, which led to a series of conflicts that lasted for over a century and culminated in the confrontation between Kashtiliash IV (r. 1232-1225 BC) of Babylon and Tukulti-Ninurta I (r. ca.

[41] Shortly after the end of these conflicts, the Elamite armies entered Mesopotamia, commanded by their king Shutruk-Nakhunte (r. 1185-1160 BC), at a time when Babylon and Assyria were weakened by recent warfare.

The royal dynasty placed itself under the protection of a pair of Kassite deities, Sucamuna and Sumalia, who had a temple in the city of Babylon at which kings were crowned.

All subjects were obliged to pay taxes to the royal power, which in some cases could be paid with works: sometimes it happened that the administration requisitioned certain goods from private individuals.

This view has recently been challenged, and it has been proposed that these "houses" of family property inherited from an ancestor were a form of province that complemented the administrative grid described above, in which chiefs were appointed by the king.

In the archives of Dur-Kurigalzu there is a record of deliveries of raw materials such as metal and stone to craftsmen working for a temple,[6] a common situation in the organization of crafts in ancient Mesopotamia.

[64] Babylon exported to its western neighbors (Egypt, Syria, and Anatolia) lapis lazuli, which was imported from Afghanistan, and also horses whose breeding seems to have been a specialty of the Kassites, well attested in the Nippur texts, although these animals came from the mountainous regions of eastern and northeastern Mesopotamia.

On the upper part are symbols of the deities that traditionally dominated the Mesopotamian pantheon: Enlil, who remained the king of the gods, Anu, Sin, Shamash, Ishtar and Enki.

However, it is mainly one of two kings named Kurigalzu (probably the first, who reigned in the early 14th century BC) who is known, among other works, for building or rebuilding several temples in the main cities of Babylon, namely in the major religious centers (Babylon, Nippur, Akkadia, Kish, Sippar, Ur and Uruk), in addition to the city he founded, Dur-Kurigalzu, where a ziggurat dedicated to the god Enlil was built.

Resuming the traditional role of Babylonian kings as protectors and funders of the cult of the gods, the Kassite kings played a crucial role in restoring the normal functioning of many of these shrines that had ceased to function following the abandonment of several major sites in southern Babylon at the end of the Paleobylonian Period, such as Nippur, Ur, Uruk and Eridu.

[69][70] However, a major change took place: texts in Akkadian were included in the school curricula, which kept pace with the evolution of Mesopotamian literature, which increasingly became written in that language, although Sumerian continued to be used.

This is found in several major works of Mesopotamian sapiential literature, a genre that had existed for a millennium, but which then reached its full maturity and proposed deeper reflections.

[68] The small shrine built under the Caraindas of the Eanna complex at Uruk has a facade decorated with molded baked bricks representing deities protecting the waters, a type of ornamentation that is an innovation of the Kassite period.

[49] Some of the rooms were decorated with paintings, fragments of which have been found, including scenes of processions of male characters, who are identified as dignitaries of the Kassite tribes.

[82] The stone sculpture of the Kassite period is represented mainly by the low reliefs decorating the kudurrus already mentioned several times, whose iconography is particularly interesting.

A kudurru from Meli-Shipak represents this king holding hands with his daughter, to whom he made the donation of property recorded in the stela text, and presenting her to the goddess Nanaia, guarantor of the act, who is seated on a throne.

Above are depicted the symbols of the astral deities Sin (Crescent Moon), Shamash (solar disk) and Ishtar (morning star, Venus).

[66] The use of vitreous materials developed greatly during the second half of the second millennium BC, with the enamelled glass technique in various colors (blue, yellow, orange and brown), which was used to produce glaze-covered clay vases and architectural elements, of which the tiles and bricks found at Acar Cufe are a good example.

[84][85][86] The glyptic themes experienced various evolutions during the second half of the second millennium BC, which experts divide into three or four types but whose chronology and geographical distribution are still poorly determined.

The type of seal that predominated at the beginning took up the tradition of the preceding period; it associates a seated and a praying deity, with the text accompanying the image, very developed, consisting of a votive prayer; the engraved material is generally a hard stone.

The next type of the kassite period is more original; a central character is depicted, often a kind of kthonic figure, a god on a mountain or emerging from the waters, or a hero, a demon, or trees surrounded by genies.

The later style (also called "pseudo-Kassite"), developed at the end of the Kassite period or shortly thereafter, was engraved on soft stones and the images were dominated by animals associated with trees and framed with friezes of triangles.