Shulgi (2272–2226 b.c.), began that policy of expansion which brought under the control of Ur many of the states just enumerated.[1] In his seventh year Shulgi restored the god Sataran[2] to the temple at Der, and in his eighth he returned Numushda to the shrine in Kazallu. The reason is obvious: the dominance of Ur was so universally recognized by the cities within Babylonia proper that local deities could be established in their own dwellings without danger of revolt by the separate districts.
Now began a determined effort to explore the east and the north. From Der it was an easy march to Marhashi, to whose ishakku Shulgi married his own daughter in the fourteenth year. The ravaging of Ganhar in the twenty-second year initiated a series of raids against the Lullubi. Shimurrum on the Lower Zab was attacked in the twenty-third and twenty-fourth years, and Harshe in the twenty-fifth.
By this time Shulgi felt capable of bringing the states which lay beyond the Zagros boundary range under his control; in his twenty-eighth year he married a daughter to the ishakku of Anshan, perhaps
- ↑ Shulgi date formulas best in Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Vol. II, s.o. "Datenlisten"; cf. also Myhrman, Sumerian Administrative Documents (BE, Ser. A, Vol. III, Part 1), pp. 34–39, and SAK, pp. 229 ff. List of Ur III ishakku's conveniently gathered by C. E. Keiser, Patesis of the Ur Dynasty ("Yale Oriental Series," Researches, Vol. IV, Part 2).
- ↑ For the reading dka.di = dSataran see Weidner in AOF, IX (1933–34), 99; for earlier readings see Poebel in MVAG, XXVI, Heft 1 (1921), 2, n. 3; R. Scholtz in ZA, XLI (1933), 304; cf., however, the name Awtl-Qadi in Mém., Vol. XVIII, No. 159, l. 4.
