The World

‘A water carrier Akki rescued him,’ raised him as his own son and appointed him ‘his gardener’: in a society where all prosperity was based on irrigation and rainfall, the river, the water carrier and the garden all represent purity and holiness. Through Akki, young Sargon found service with the king of Kish, Ur-Zababa, descendant of Queen Kubaba, rising to become cupbearer. Power is always personal; proximity is influence; the more personal and absolute the power, the closer to the body the better: cupbearers, physicians, bodyguards and bearers of the royal chamberpot shared its glow. Inanna (later known as Ishtar), the goddess of love, sex and war, appeared to Sargon in a terrifying dream in which he was covered in blood. When he told the king, Ur-Zababa sensed that the blood was his own and ordered his assassination, but Inanna warned him. Sargon reappeared as if nothing had happened, ‘solid as a mountain. Ur-Zababa was afraid,’ unsure if Sargon knew of his duplicity. But then came alarming news.

The most aggressive king in Iraq, Lugalzaggesi of Umma, was marching on Kish: Ur-Zabada sent Sargon to negotiate with him. But his letter asked Lugalzaggesi to kill Sargon. Lugalzaggesi contemptuously revealed the request and unleashed Sargon, who seized Uruk. But then he routed Lugalzaggesi and around 2334 surges into history in his own inscriptions, taking the regnal name Rightful King – Sharrumkin.^* He paraded the fallen Lugalzaggesi through the Temple of Enlil, where he smashed his skull with a mace.

Sargon galloped south ‘to wash his weapons in the sea’ – the Persian Gulf – then eastwards. ‘Sargon King of Kish,’ reads the inscription on his tablets, ‘triumphed in thirty-four battles,’ invading the kingdom of Elam in Iran and, after advancing northwards, defeating the nomadic Amorites and taking the cities of Ashur and Nineveh, before turning west into Syria and Türkiye. He was now calling himself King of the Four Quarters of the World, and a later legend praises his fighting prowess in an unforgettable metaphor:

The writhing ranks will writhe back and forth,

Two women in labour, bathed in their own blood!

Sargon created the first power family which we can know personally: it was his daughter Enheduanna, who was the first poetess. But naturally she was also a connoisseur of paternal power: ‘My King, something’s been created here that no one’s created before.’ She meant empire.

ENHEDUANNA’S REVENGE

It was no coincidence that Sargon appointed his daughter Enheduanna as high priestess of the moon god of Uruk. Temples were rich complexes at the centre of Akkadian cities. Sargon himself may have been the first ruler to maintain a standing army – 5,400 men ate daily at his table in Akkad. He enforced law that was a mixture of reason and magic: water ordeals decided difficult cases. At her temple, Enheduanna presided over thousands of employees and estates. The relationship between the temples and the royal family was close: Sargon believed that Inanna (Ishtar) and her divine husband Dagan were his special protectors.

When Sargon died he left Enheduanna in charge of her temple, but the new king, her brother Rimush, immediately faced rebellions and invasions. These he defeated, killing 23,000 people, torturing, enslaving and deporting others, then he invaded Elam (Iran), and returned with gold, copper and more slaves. Rimush died in a special way, assassinated by killer scribes, stabbed either with the reeds used for writing or the copper pins used to attach the cylinder seals – the first death by bureaucracy! The Sargons lived by conquest: it was Sargon’s grandson, Enheduanna’s nephew Naram-Sin, who probably faced the revolt of Lugal – and the capture and rape of his aunt. Naram-Sin smashed the usurper and restored the high priestess to her temple. We do not know when she died, but Naram-Sin ruled for thirty-seven years, carrying out sorties into Iran to smash the Lullubi raiders, boasting of killing 90,000 and claiming that he ruled lands as far away as Lebanon. On his Victory Stele, Naram-Sin is a muscular, bare-chested warrior wearing a divine horned helmet and tight kilt, holding a spear and bow and crushing his enemies in Iran, with nothing between him, the Mighty, and the sun and stars: the first mortal to be depicted as equal to a goddess.