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110 city-at-a-time process ran into challenges from other local city rulers, and the erstwhile Sumer remained fragmented and a broken land. Even Babylon itself, though outside the Evil Wind’s direct path, needed a revived and repopulated country if it was to rise to imperial size and status, and it did not attain the gran- deur of Marduk’s prophecies for quite some time. More than a century had to pass until a formal dynasty, called by schol- ars the First Dynasty of Babylon, was installed on its throne (circa 1900 B.c.£.). Yet another century had to pass until a king who lived up to the prophesied greatness sat on Baby- lon’s throne; his name was Hammurabi. He is mostly known for the code of laws proclaimed by him—laws recorded on a stone stela that archaeologists have discovered (and that is now in the Louvre in Paris). It still took some two centuries before Marduk’s prophetic vision regarding Babylon could come true. The meager evi- dence from the postcalamity time—some scholars refer to the period following the demise of Ur as a Dark Age in Mesopotamian history—suggests that Marduk let the other gods—even his adversaries—take care of the recovery an repopulation of their own olden cult centers, but it is doubtfu that they took up his invitation. The recovery and rebuilding that were started by Ishbi-Erra began at Ur, but there is no mention of Nannar/Sin and Ningal returning to Ur. There is mention of Ninurta’s occasional presence in Sumer, espe- cially in regard to its garrisoning by troops from Elam an Gutium, but there is no record that he or his spouse Bau ever returned to their beloved Lagash. The efforts by Ishbi-Erra and his successors to restore the cult centers and their tem- ples culminated—after the passage of seventy-two years—at Nippur, but there is no mention that Enlil and Ninlil resume residence there. Where had they gone? One avenue of exploring that in- triguing subject was to ascertain what Marduk himself—now supreme and claiming to be the giver of commands to all the Anunnaki—had planned for them. The textual and other evidence from that time show that Marduk’s rise to supremacy did not end polytheism—the re- THE END OF DAYS