Page:History of Early Iran.pdf/111

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THE KASSITE INTERLUDE
95

tect his ancestral home in the mountains as well as the newly occupied regions in the plains.

Agum-kakrime was followed by Burna-Buriash, and he by an unknown and then by Kashtiliash II (1530-1512). The latter gradually closed in on the Sealands; and his brother marched against Ea-gamil, the last king of the Sealands, who took refuge in Elam.[1] Then the brother himself, Ulam-Buriash, came to the Kassite throne, and with his accession (1511) the dynasty seems to have become thoroughly acclimated to its new home in Babylonia. The subse­quent so-called "Amarna" period does not here in­terest us.

Inscriptions of the Kassite rulers so far mentioned, though nowhere numerous, are totally lacking at Susa, and the excavators at that site appear to have run into a barren stratum for the period. Kassite occupation of Elam contemporaneous with Kassite sover­eignty of Babylonia thus seems out of the question. On the other hand, it is certain that the Elamite dy­nasty founded by Ebarti and Shilhaha disappeared shortly after the First Dynasty of Babylon faded from the scene. In the case of Elam, the land may have become the prey of peoples who were themselves originally fleeing from the Kassite hordes. At any rate, for the obscurity which covers both Babylonia and Elam at this time the Kassites should doubtless be held strictly responsible.

  1. Cf. L. W. King, Chronicles Concerning Early Babylonian Kings, II, 22-24.