Mursili I

Mursili I ruled the Hittites around 1620 to 1590 BC and sacked Babylon, ending the dynasty of Hammurabi. He was the grandson and adopted son of Hattusili I, who had designated him heir after disinheriting his own children — a decision recorded in a surviving testament in which the old king denounces his family in unusually personal terms. He completed his grandfather's unfinished business by destroying Aleppo, the capital of the kingdom of Yamhad, which had blocked Hittite expansion into Syria for decades. He then undertook a campaign of extraordinary reach. From central Anatolia he marched more than a thousand kilometres down the Euphrates and attacked Babylon, probably in about 1595 BC. He took and plundered the city, carried off the statues of Marduk and Sarpanit, and withdrew immediately. He made no attempt to hold it, and the reasons are not recorded; the distance from his base made occupation impractical, and he may have needed to return to secure his own throne. The raid nonetheless destroyed the First Dynasty of Babylon, and the Kassites, who had been raiding the region for a century, moved into the vacuum and ruled Babylonia for over four hundred years. The campaign is one of the striking examples of an ancient state projecting force far beyond its capacity to administer. He was assassinated on his return by his brother-in-law Hantili, with the help of Hantili's son-in-law Zidanta. The murder began a long period of dynastic killing and instability that weakened the Hittite kingdom until Telipinu's edict attempted to fix the succession rules a century later.

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