The War Dam

When Samsu-son iluna's Abiesh assumed the throne, the situation had significantly improved, but he still had to deal with his own rebellions. In one instance, he came up with a solution that seemed millennia ahead of its time. After routing the Elamite rebel troops in the 19th year of his rule, Abiesh was driven to seize a rival monarch who was rumored to be from "Sealand." Abiesh chose engineering as a backup plan to an army. He had the Tigris River dammed so that flooding would obstruct the enemy's escape route.

Surprisingly, despite the fact that the Babylonians were successful in changing the direction of one of the two main rivers that contributed to Mesopotamia becoming the Fertile Crescent, history shows that they were unsuccessful in capturing the king they were hunting. As far as official records go, that is an astoundingly disgusting amount of honesty.

The surviving records of Abiesh suggest that he was more concerned with supply chains and goods, such as grain shipments and pack animals for cities in need, and his success in those fields goes to show that his failure to capture an enemy king by no means indicated his reign was a failure overall. This is contrary to what his very materialistic and indirect solution to a military challenge implied.