upon Uruk and Ur, and his loss of Sumer might have been as much a calculated retreat as defeat. Records in the cities of Ur and Uruk essentially stop after the 10th year of Samsu-iluna's reign, their priests apparently continued writing, but from more northerly Larsa's records also end about this time. Records keep going in Nippur and Isin until Samsu-iluna's 29th year, and then cease there as well. These breaks are also observed in the archeological record, where evidence points to these cities being largely or completely abandoned for hundreds of years, until well into the Reasons for this are hard to come by. Certainly the constant warfare cannot have helped matters, but Samsu-iluna appears to have campaigned just as hard in the north, and that region was thriving during the The rise of Babylon marks a definite end to Sumerian cultural dominance of Mesopotamia and a shift to Akkadian for government and popular perhaps people who claimed cultural ties to the Sumerian past retrenched around the southerly cities which Iluna-ilu controlled. Several members of his dynasty took Sumerian names, and it appears they consciously strove to return to the region's Sumerian It is also possible that economic or environmental factors were involved; it is known that both Hammurabi and Rim-sin I had instituted policies which altered the economies of the perhaps these proved unsustainable in the long-term. Other campaigns Slaving raids by Sutean tribes appear to have been a constant problem for Babylon during this period, and Samsu-iluna spent some time dealing with He promulgated a law barring Babylonian citizens from purchasing as slaves citizens of the (presumably oft-raided) cities of Idamaras and In the 9th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna turned back an invasion by a Kassite This is the earliest known mention of the Kassites, who would go on to rule Babylonia after the collapse of the Amorite dynasty. Around the 24th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna attacked and destroyed the city of Apum, killing its king Yakun-ashar. A year later he seems to have attacked the city of Terqa as well, possibly adding it to his In his 28th year, Samsu-iluna defeated the armies of two otherwise unknown western kings recorded as Iadikhabum and In the 35th year of his reign, Samsu-iluna repelled an Amorite Religious and Astronomical achievements Though troubled, Samsu-iluna's reign was not entirely focused on war. He is known to have rebuilt