The Kassites had settled by 1800 BC in what is now western Iran in the region of Hamadan-Kermanshah.
The Kassite upper class, always a small minority, had been largely "Babylonianized." Babyloniannames were to be found even among the royalty, and they predominated among the civil servants and the officers.
The Kassitic nobility, however, maintained the upper hand in the rural areas, their wealthiest representatives holding very large landed estates.
Kassite kings established trade and diplomacy with Assyria, Egypt, Elam, and the Hittites, and the royal house intermarried with their royal families.
Kassite seals and weights, the packet-identifying and measuring tools of commerce, have been found in Thebes in Greece, in southern Armenia, and even in a shipwreck off the southern coast of Turkey.
Kassite rulers in Babylon were also scrupulous to follow existing forms of expression, and the public and private patterns of behavior 'and even went beyong that — as zealous neophytes do, or outsiders, who take up a superior civilization — by favoring an extremely conservative attitude, at least in palace circle.' (Oppenheim, p.
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