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137 “Karduniash” and had names such as Barnaburiash and Kara- indash, but little else is known about them or their original language. To this day it is not clear from where they came and why their kings were allowed to replace the Hammurabi dy- nasty circa 1660 B.C.E. and to dominate Babylon from 1560 B.C.E. until 1160 B.C.E. Modern scholars speak of the period that followed Mar- duk’s humiliation as a “dark age” in Babylonian history, not only because of the disarray it caused but mainly because of the paucity of written Babylonian records from that time. The Kassites quickly integrated themselves into the Sume- rian-Akkadian culture, including language and cuneiform script, but were neither the meticulous recordkeepers the Sumerians had been nor the likes of previous Babylonian writers of royal annals. Indeed, most of the few royal records of Kassite kings have been found not in Babylon but in Egypt—clay tablets in the El-Amarna archive of royal cor- respondence. Remarkably, in those tablets the Kassite kings called the Egyptian Pharaohs “my brother.” The expression, though figurative, was not unjustified, for Egypt shared with Babylon the veneration of Ra-Marduk and, like Babylonia, had also undergone a “dark age”—a period scholars call the Second Intermediate Period. It began with the demise of the Middle Kingdom circa 1780 B.c.E. and lasted until about 1560 B.c.E. As in Babylonia, it fea- tured a reign of foreigner kings known as “Hyksos.” Here, too, it is not certain who they were, from where they came, or how it was that their dynasties were able to rule Egypt for more than two centuries. That the dates of this Second Intermediate Period (with its many obscure aspects) parallel the dates of Babylon’s slide from the peak of Hammurabi’s victories (1760 B.C.E.) to the capture and resumption of Marduk’s worship in Babylon (circa 1560 B.C.E.) is probably neither accident nor coinci- dence: those similar developments at parallel times in Mar- duk’s principal lands happened because Marduk was “hoist by his own petard”—the very justification for his claim to supremacy was now causing his undoing. The “petard” was Marduk’s own initial contention that the The Promised Land