f power, he dug the Nar-Khammurabi, the source of
wealth to the people, which brings abundance of water to the country
of Sumir and Accad. "I turned both its banks into cultivated ground, I
heaped up mounds of grain and I furnished perpetual water for the people
of Sumir and Accad. The country of Sumer and Accad, I gathered together
its nations who were scattered, I gave them pasture and drink, I ruled
over them in riches and abundance, I caused them to inhabit a peaceful
dwelling-place. Then it was that Khammurabi, the powerful king, the
favourite of the great gods, I myself, according to the prodigious
strength with which Merodach had endued me, I constructed a high
fortress, upon mounds of earth; its summit rises to the height of the
mountains, at the head of the Nar-Khammurabi, the source of wealth to
the people. This fortress I called Dur-Sinmuballit-abim-ualidiya, the
Fortress of Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, so that the name of
Sinmuballit, the father who begat me, may endure in the habitations of
the world."

* Contract dated "the year the Tigris, river of the gods,
was canalized down to the sea"; i.e. as far as the point to
which the sea then penetrated in the environs of Kornah.

This canal of Khammurabi ran from a little south of Babylon, joining
those of Siniddinam and Rimsin, and probably cutting the alluvial plain
in its entire length.* It drained the stagnant marshes on either side
along its course, and by its fertilising effects, the dwellers on its
banks were enabled to reap full harvests from the lands which previously
had been useless for purposes of cultivation. A ditch of minor
importance pierced the isthmus which separates the Tigris and the
Euphrates in the neighbourhood of Sippar.** Khammurabi did not rest
contented with these; a system of secondary canals doubtless completed
the whole scheme of irrigation which he had planned after the
achievement of his conquest, and his successors had merely to keep up
his work in order to ensure an unrivalled prosperity to the empire.

* Delattre is of opinion that the canal dug by Khammurabi is
the Arakhtu of later epochs which began at Babylon and
extended as far as the Larsa canal. It must therefore be
approximately identified with the Shatt-en-Nil of the
present day, which joins Shatt-el-Kaher, the canal of
Siniddinam.

** The canal which Khammurabi caused to be dug or dredged
may be the