by H A CULLEY
‘Uktannu, I want you to carry a message from me to the King of Hiritum. You will have to travel at night and avoid any other boats as they are likely to be Eshnunnan. Tie up at the wharf by the Water Gate and ask to be admitted. Explain that you have an important message from me to the king. If you are in danger of capture, drop it over the side; it is weighted with a stone so it’ll sink. These three are used to handling boats. Take ten of the boys that helped crew the escape boat the night that your brother burnt their fleet. That should be enough to man the boat.’
The boat crept quietly into the wharf and Uktannu and the two spearmen, as escort, disembarked. A small postern gate by the main water gate opened and an officer and three soldiers stepped out.
‘Who are you and what do you want. You could have been killed.’
‘I have a message for your king from Arishaka, the commander of the Babylonian army.’
‘You don’t sound like a Babylonian, boy, more like an Elamite.’ The officer was getting suspicious.
‘That’s because he’s the son of the late Kudu-Zulush and now the acting commander of the slingers in our army,’ one of the spearmen broke in. The officer considered what he had been told for a while before making his mind up.
‘Our king is dead. He was hit by an arrow some weeks ago. The commander of our army is now in charge. Come, I’ll take you to him.’
Uktannu was appalled by the state of the city. The people looked half-starved and seemed to have lost all hope. Debris lay everywhere, including several dead bodies. The officer saw him looking at them.
‘They’ll be collected tonight and thrown over the walls. There’s nowhere left to bury them properly. The population is approaching half what it was at the start of the siege. You won’t find an animal left; they’ve all been eaten – even the rats. To be honest, some of us think it will be a good thing when the ramp is high enough for them to storm the town. At least it will be over, but we’ll take as many of the bastards with us as we can.’
‘I wouldn’t give up hope just yet. That’s why I’m here.’
‘Why? What do you know?’ The man grabbed Uktannu’s arm.
‘I can’t tell you. I’ve probably said too much already. You’ll find out soon enough.’
He was shown into a small room in the royal palace where a gaunt old man sat in conference with five others. Uktannu explained who he was and handed the commander the message.
‘And they’ll attack in two night’s time? The gods be praised. We wondered what was happening. The supplies you sent us the night that their fleet burned didn’t last long and we thought that we were on our own again.’
‘If we can damage the ramp sufficiently to delay their attack until the armies of Mari and Yamhad get here, can you hold out until then?’
‘If we know that the end of our suffering is in sight, we’ll hold out. You have given us new hope.’ The commander paused and scrutinised Uktannu carefully. ‘It seems that your commander puts great faith in his boys. I wonder what the men must be like.’
‘I think it’s because he became the army’s hero at the siege of Mari when he was ten that he sees something of himself in us.’
The Babylonians trudged through the chill of the night by the feeble light of the new moon. All the army were on the move except for half of Uktannu’s slingers and the wounded, who had been left to guard the camp. Abi-Maras and his engineers were protected by two companies of slingers and one of archers. He also had five hundred spearmen with him but they were there to work, not fight. Uktannu had elected to come with his old master and command the protection party.
The rest were led by Arishaka to a position four hundred yards upwind of the centre of the enemy camp. Travelling by night was dangerous. Soldiers couldn’t see where they were going properly and several sprained their ankles on rocks, but the greatest problem was that the various groups would get separated and those at the rear would get lost. The solution was to travel very close together but this often resulted in men falling over those in front when the column halted. Arishaka was thankful that his men had arrived intact, apart from a few sprains and bruises.
He had noticed that there was a large area of dried scrub near the camp. If he had been the Elamite commander he would have cleared it away long ago, but the Elamites and the Eshnunnans found the bushes convenient to squat behind in the mornings instead of digging proper latrines further away from the camp. They were about to pay the penalty for their sloth.
Protected by the archers, three hundred spearmen crept forward and waited. When they heard the signal, they lit their torches and ran forward to set fire to the dry scrub. Within minutes it was blazing merrily and thick smoke started to blow towards the enemy camp. At the same time the horsemen rode into the paddock where the onagers for the Elamite chariots were kept, killed the sentries and ran the herd off.
The Babylonian chariots and the camel archers rode into the camp just ahead of the billowing smoke and killed as many of the enemy as they could before retreating back through the smoke to safety. Chaos reigned in the main part of the camp but the smoke didn’t reach the besiegers camped before the north wall of the city. It was here that Arishaka had placed his foot archers, three companies of slingers and fifteen hundred spearmen. They faced five thousand Eshnunnans but they were disorganised, confused and, as a result, on the verge of panic. As a conquered people, they hated the Elamites and were not inclined to die for them. They fought half-heartedly and, after a while, started to surrender or run off.
As soon as the diversionary attack started, Uktannu’s slinger and archers took out the sentries at the dyke between the Tigris and the dry ditch around the city. Over two hundred guards were present but most were asleep. The five hundred spearmen waded into the sleeping men and within minutes they were all dead.
The river water was kept out of the ditch by an earth bank that stood three or four feet above the water level. The bank was kept in place by several wooden panels pinned to the river side of the dyke. Abi-Maras soon put the men to work with wooden spades and poles to loosen the earth and then remove it on the ditch side, just leaving a foot in place to support the wooden panels. He knew that, if the dyke collapsed suddenly, the men working there would be swept away. The panels would prevent that happening, if used correctly.
Once he judged that the dyke was at the point of collapse, he called his men back onto safe ground. Ropes had been attached to the panels and, with several hundred men heaving on the ropes, the panels were pulled clear and the river water flowing past the remains of the bank started to wash the soil and small stones away. Five minutes later the dyke collapsed and river water flowed into the ditch. As more and more water flooded in, the lower part of the dyke disappeared as well.
Such was the power of the water roaring along the deep ditch that it hit base of the ramp with enough force to dislodge much of the foundation. The unsupported part of the ramp toppled into the maelstrom and at first this blocked the water. Then it started to seep through the poorly constructed foundations, undermining the rest of the ramp.
Satisfied that their job was done, Abi-Maras gave the order to withdraw and sent a messenger to tell Arishaka. The man had trouble finding him and Arishaka was getting worried by this time. The initial attack had been a great success with many hundreds of the enemy killed for only a few lost on the Babylonian side, but now they were starting to recover and get organised. He was just about to order a retreat anyway when he received the message. After three blasts on a bronze horn, his men started an orderly withdrawal, covered by the chariots and camel archers.
By dawn they were well clear and Arishaka was confident that the enemy wouldn’t be able to catch him up without their onagers to pull the chariots. An hour after dawn everyone was safely back at camp.
The next morning Arishaka announced his intention of going to inspect the damage to the ramp in daylight. His senior officers were horrified.
‘The Elamites will have patrols out looking for us now,’ Dadanu
m told him. ‘They may have left us alone whilst they concentrated on the siege and building that ramp, but now they will be thirsting for revenge, especially after the attack on their camp as well.’
‘You don’t need to needlessly risk your life, Arishaka, I can assure you that it will take weeks to repair that ramp. That’s all you need to know surely?’ Abi-Maras added his voice to the opposition.
‘How are they going to patrol? Their onagers are scattered and they have no horses or camels. So they will have to do it on foot. I can easily elude them on a horse.’
‘It would be foolish to risk your life, lord. Let me go. I’ll make a full report, even bring you back a sketch.’ Uktannu volunteered.
‘So now you expect me to send a boy instead of going myself. Do you want people to say that I sent you because it was too dangerous to go myself. It’s you who is being foolish, Uktannu.’ Arishaka was getting angry now. ‘Enough. I won’t hear anymore.’
He turned to Abi-Maras. ‘Your job is to make sure that this camp is as well defended as possible and that we have plenty of water and food stored. If they do find us, we will have to hold out until the relief armies get here.’
‘If you are determined on this folly, then I and two hundred of my camel archers will come with you.’ Dadanum was as angry with Arishaka over his pig-headedness as the latter was with him for opposing his wishes.
‘No, you won’t. You’ll do as you’re told and stay here to command the camp until I get back. And I have no intention of announcing my presence by raising a great cloud of dust, which would be the case if I took a large escort.’ He looked around him. ‘Mutu-Namaha, you and two horsemen will suffice.’
The twelve year-old managed to look pleased and concerned at the same time. ‘I’ll get the horses ready and go and pick two good men to come with us, uncle.’
Abi-Maras inspected the camp to see if there was anything he could do to improve its defences. He had already checked that all the water barrels were full. There was a small stream that flowed through the camp, but it wasn’t sufficient for all the men and animals. The new camp lay in a depression at the top of a steep and narrow canyon that ran up between two steep sided mountains that even a goat would have trouble in climbing. He had built a dry stone wall across the top of the canyon that was twelve feet high and two feet thick at the top. Behind it he had created a wide firing step for the archers and slingers. There was no gate as such but the defensive wall was in two parts, slightly staggered and overlapping in the middle, so that the entrance stood at right angles to the approach up the canyon. The final approach between the two walls was twenty yards long and anyone moving along it would be vulnerable to cross fire from both sections of the wall. Abi-Maras had used what wood there was to construct a palisade on wheels taken from a heavy chariot that could close off the far end of the entrance, at least for a while. It was the best he could do.
He had also built small emplacements, called sangers, high above the defensive wall and its approaches using rocks. From there the archers and the slingers could wreak havoc on the enemy as they laboured up the canyon. The only way to access them was via narrow steps cut into the rock of the cliff faces so, once there, the men and boys manning them were cut off.
Two hours after Arishaka had left the sentries keeping watch in the furthermost sanger reported a sizeable dust cloud approaching. Dadanum was talking to Narem-Suen at the time. The lad had now recovered sufficiently to walk short distances with the aid of a crutch and was itching to get back to leading his slingers. He was loathe to admit the truth to himself, but he was a little jealous of the competent way that his brother was deputising for him.
The leader of the camel archers cursed.
‘I told Arishaka not to go chasing off on a needless reconnaissance; now he is out there somewhere and we are about to be attacked.’
‘It is strange though, isn’t it?’ The boy said, looking down the canyon. ‘If it was the Elamites we should be able to see the dust cloud from here; after all the canyon runs roughly towards Hiritum. The warning came from the sanger facing south, so presumably that is where this army is approaching from.
Both said the same thing at once: ‘Reinforcements!’ and beamed at each other in pleasure.
‘They won’t know where we are. Will they?’
‘No, we’re fairly well hidden here and the last messenger came to the old camp. I’ll send out a couple of horsemen to bring them in.’ Dadanum gripped the boys arm. ‘Good to see you back on your feet again.’ With that he was off, calling for the captain of his horsemen.
The army turned out to be the new element of the standing army, who had now completed their initial training. It was led by Hammurabi himself and he had brought three thousand more men with him, plus another two hundred boy slingers. The contrast between the dirty urchins in their tattered robes and the proud, disciplined boys in their white linen kilts couldn’t have been more marked. It was the second thing that the king noticed. The first was the absence of Arishaka. When he was told where his brother had gone, he was both furious and really concerned; especially as Arishaka had taken his youngest son with him. They should have been back long before this.
Chapter Five – The Battle of Hiritum – 1769 to 1768 BCE
Arishaka had sent the two horsemen out to scout ahead but they didn’t encounter anyone before he reached his favoured vantage point: a scrub covered knoll from where he could view the south eastern section of wall against which the ramp had rested. He could clearly see that it had collapsed into the ditch. Where the end of the ramp had stood against the city wall, there was now a rounded mound of earth which only came about a third of the way up the wall. The mound made a dam for the water in the ditch but this was slowly being washed away as water trickled into the ditch beyond the mound.
From his vantage point it was difficult to see how full the ditch was beyond the collapsed mound, but further along, where the ditch curved around the south western corner of the city, the water looked to be a couple of feet deep. On the river side of the mound the ditch was full.
The first task the Elamites faced was the repair of the dam between the Tigris and the ditch. Here a thousand men were hard at work. They were being supervised by men with whips and Ashlatum came to the conclusion that the workers were probably the Eshnunnans, who had given such a poor account of themselves the night before. That wouldn’t improve relations between the conquered and the conquerors, he thought, with some satisfaction.
Then he noticed that something was going on in the besiegers’ camp. Some of the onagers had been rounded up again and these were being harnessed to chariots. Several thousand men were busy clearing up the camp after last night’s attack, but many more were parading with their weapons. As he watched the chariots set off and, as they left the camp they divided into four parties and set off to the south. One group of a dozen chariots was heading almost directly towards where his army was now camped.
‘It looks as if the Elamite commander has decided that the time has come to locate our camp and deal with us,’ Arishaka grinned at Mutu-Namaha. ‘Come on, we had better get back to our base.’
But, as they went to get up and return to the hollow where they had left their horses with the two guards, a chariot appeared followed by ten spearmen. It was obvious that the enemy had learned many lessons last night, including the wisdom of patrolling beyond the perimeter of their camp.
~#~
There wasn’t room in the defensive camp for the Babylonian reinforcements so they found a valley a mile further south to camp in temporarily whilst Abi-Maras searched for a new site that could accommodate the whole army. He was not particularly pleased about this. It had taken him some time to find this one and the original army had expended a lot of effort to make it defensible. He knew the area well by this time and he was fairly certain that there wasn’t another suitable site anywhere near Hiritum.
When he had explained this to the king, Hammurabi had told him that he was too much of a perfe
ctionist.
‘This camp is a fortress, and you are to be congratulated on it, but it is at capacity. What do you suggest I do with the other three thousand plus men I have brought with me? Well?’
‘You are correct, of course, lord king,’ he muttered. ‘It just seems such a shame. If the Elamites attacked us here we would slaughter them.’
Hammurabi was about to respond angrily when he stopped himself. He thought for a moment, then clicked his fingers.
‘You have given me an idea. Call a meeting of all the commanders of a thousand so we can discuss it.’
An hour later, after he had explained his plan, he asked if anyone had any questions.
‘How will you ensure that they attack our camp, lord king?’ one of the captains asked.
‘That will be job of the horsemen. A patrol will be tasked to lead them here. I need to talk to Arishaka to work out how best to do this. Hopefully he will return shortly.’
‘He should have returned before this. Can I send out a patrol to see if they can find out what has happened to him? Perhaps I should lead it myself?’ Dadanum suggested.
The king nodded. ‘But take care; I can’t afford to lose you as well.’
‘What about the two hundred slingers you have brought with you, lord king,’ Uktannu asked in his unbroken voice. ‘Are they to form part of my command or do you have other plans for them?’
Hammurabi smiled. ‘From what little I have seen since my arrival, you and your brother have done well in training the boys who came with you. It makes sense to let you whip the new recruits into shape as well. How is Narem-Suen by the way.’
‘I’m nearly fit again, lord king.’ A voice from the back of the tent called out and the youth hobbled forward on his crutches.
‘You’ll be fit when you can run young man, not hobble around; but I admire your spirit. Just concentrate on getting better; I need men like you.’