The Forgotten Father

While Hammurabi's successors by no means merited being disregarded in the manner in which they have mostly been by historians, his forerunners were also no slouches. One could argue that Sin-Muballit, the father of Hammurabi, who ascended to the throne of the city-state of Babylon in 1748 BC, was the first monarch of the First Dynasty because he was the first to formally declare himself King of Babylon. He had to deal with Babylon's long-time adversaries, the dynasties of Larsa and Isin.

Sin-Muballit successfully repelled an assault from the city-state of Ur in the thirteenth year of his rule. Sin-Muballit maintained the initiative and launched an attack on the city of Isin, indicating that he was no longer satisfied for his city-state to merely maintain its position. He took control of it in the seventeenth year of his rule.

He had two more years to rule and establish his authority, but it was he who started Babylon on the path of conquest that would eventually lead to the creation of an empire. Given that he ruled for only 19 years and that Babylon was not yet a superpower that could afford to record the minutiae of the king's life in clay, it is perhaps a little reasonable why his reign is so overshadowed.