Akkadian and Sumerian inhabitants were settled, cultivated and home
keeping folk, while the establishment of Babylonian empire had been the
work of more vigorous intruders. These, however, had to fear not only
the imperfect sympathy of their own aboriginal subjects, who again and
again gathered their sullen forces in the "Sea Land" at the head of the
Persian Gulf and attacked the dominant Semites in the rear, but also
incursions of fresh strangers; for Babylonia is singularly open on all
sides. Accordingly, revolts of the "Sea Land" folk, inrushing hordes
from Arabia, descents of mountain warriors from the border hills of Elam
on the south-eastern edge of the twin river basin, pressure from the
peoples of more invigorating lands on the higher Euphrates and
Tigris--one, or more than one such danger ever waited on imperial
Babylon and brought her low again and again. A great descent of Hatti
raiders from the north about 1800 B.C. seems to have ended the imperial
dominion of the First Dynasty. On their retirement Babylonia, falling
into weak native hands, was a prey to a succession of inroads from the
Kassite mountains beyond Elam, from Elam itself, from the growing
Semitic power of Asshur, Babylon's former vassal, from the Hittite
Empire founded in Cappadocia about 1500 B.C., from the fresh wave of
Arabian overflow which is distinguished as the Aramaean, and from yet
another following it, which is usually called Chaldaean; and it was not
till almost the close of the twelfth century that one of these intruding
elements attained sufficient independence and security of tenure to
begin to exalt Babylonia again into a mistress of foreign empire. At
that date the first Nebuchadnezzar, a part of whose own annals has been
recovered, seems to have established overlordship in some part of
Mediterranean Asia--_Martu_, the West Land; but this empire perished
again with its author. By 1000 B.C. Babylon was once more a small state
divided against itself and threatened by rivals in the east and the
north.