This cultural heritage was adopted by the Sumerians’ and Akkadians’ successors, the Amorites, a western Semitic tribe that had conquered all of Mesopotamia by about 1900 BCE. Under the rule of the Amorites, which lasted until about 1600 BCE, Babylon became the political and commercial centre of the Tigris-Euphrates area, and Babylonia became a great empire, encompassing all of southern Mesopotamia and part of Assyria to the north.
The ruler largely responsible for this rise to power was Hammurabi (c. 1792–1750 BCE), the sixth king of the 1st dynasty of Babylon, who forged coalitions between the separate city-states, promoted science and scholarship, and promulgated his famous code of law.
After Hammurabi’s death, the Babylonian empire declined until 1595 BCE, when the Hittite invader Mursil I unseated the Babylonian king Samsuditana, allowing the Kassites from the mountains east of Babylonia to assume power and establish a dynasty that lasted 400 years.
During the last few centuries of Kassite rule, religion and literature flourished in Babylonia, the most important literary work of the period being the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation. During this same time, however, Assyria broke away from Babylonian control and developed as an independent empire, threatening the Kassite dynasty in Babylonia and on a few occasions temporarily gaining control. Elam, too, grew powerful and ultimately conquered most of Babylonia, felling the Kassite dynasty (c. 1157 BCE).