Once the center of a Great Power
History is full of momentous events, shocking events, that can’t be fully understand because so little of the record has survived. What does survive is mysteries. Here’s one of them.
Sometime around 1595 B.C. the king of the Hittites, Mursili I, marched his army all the way down Mesopotamia from what is now Turkey, all the way to Babylon, then the greatest city in the world. The Hittite ruler sacked the great city, putting an end to the dynasty made famous by Hammurabi, radically disrupting the international political system of the Ancient Near East.
But he didn’t stay long. Babylon was much too far from the Hittite center of power, for any Hittite government to be established there. Mursili looted the place and then marched home. He wasn’t back for very long before he was assassinated.
We don’t know why he attacked Babylon. It was about as far as you could go from Hittite lands and still find any cities at all. There were no roads. Bringing an army all the way down there must have been a colossal undertaking.
In Babylon they must have known the Hittites were coming; but a) their own country was undergoing civil strife, and not in a good position to defend itself; and b) “The Hittites? Did you say Hittites? Don’t they live somewhere way the hell up there in the mountains? What do you mean, ‘The Hittites are coming’?” It would have been very hard news to believe.
History is the collective memory of mankind. With it we can hope to understand our own time. We can at least try. Livy and King Solomon would agree: what has been done before is what is being done now; there is no new thing under the sun.
Inquire of the Lord for wisdom, and for understanding.
Those were in short supply, in Babylon.