The Weidner Chronicle

Anonymous / tradition · c. 12th-11th century BC (composition date debated; the epistolary frame casts it as a letter between two Old Babylonian kings, centuries before the likely date of actual composition) · Babylon (Iraq) · history

Framed as a letter from Damiq-ilishu of Isin to his Old Babylonian contemporary Apil-Sin of Babylon, the chronicle argues a single didactic thesis across roughly a thousand years of legendary and historical kings, from Enmerkar to Sargon of Akkad and beyond, that every king who properly honored Marduk's cult at Babylon and its fish offerings prospered, and every king who neglected it fell.