The Rise of Babylon

After the fall of Ur, Mesopotamia splinters again, and power in the cities is taken by chiefs of the Amorites — herdsmen come in from the west. One of them establishes himself in Babylon, a place until then of no note. Within a century his descendants make the town the capital of a kingdom, and its god Marduk rises from local patron to head of the pantheon. Here takes shape what is called the Old Babylonian age: contracts on clay, interest on loans, school exercises with quadratic problems. The sixth king of this dynasty will be Hammurabi.