ESHNUNNA (TELLASMAR)

   Mesopotamian city in the Diyala valley in the east Tigris area. The site was excavated by Henri Frankfort in the 1930s. It proved to have been inhabited since the fourth millennium B.C. and grew in importance in the Early Dynastic periods II and III. Eshnunna experienced its greatest growth between 2000 and 1800, during the Isin-Larsa period. After the fall of the Third Dynasty of Ur, it became the capital of a small independent kingdom called Warum. According to the archives found at Mari, the kings of Eshnunna also engaged in the armed rivalries for supremacy that characterize this age. An interesting document from the last king of Eshnunna, Dadusha, is a collection of laws regulating commercial activities and social relations. The same king was eventually defeated by Hammurabi of Babylon in c. 1763 B.C.