The rulers of Agade, in particular the founder of the imperial line, Sargon, and his grandson and third successor, Naram-Suen, have an impressive literary legacy, primarily recounting their heroic deeds but also reflecting on the dynasty’s catastrophic end. Much of this literature is in Akkadian. Two compositions, however, are in Sumerian: Sargon and Ur-Zababa, which recounts the founder’s rise to power, and The cursing of Agade (Group C), which is concerned instead with the dynasty’s downfall.
Little is known about Sargon’s origins. According to a much later Akkadian legend, he was the illicit child of a priestess who, much in the manner of Moses in the Bible, was placed in a wicker basket and cast adrift upon the water, to be rescued and raised by a gardener. Such folk-tale motifs were also incorporated into Sumerian literature, including, in Sargon and Ur-Zababa, instances of dreams which foretell the future. This folk-tale motif is embedded within a narrative which has theological concerns, dreams being regarded as messages predicting a divinely ordained future which man alone cannot resist. Given the social status of the dreamers, political as well as theological significance also attaches to the dreams.
Sargon and Ur-Zababa has been tentatively reconstructed from two manuscripts, a fragment from Unug (Segments A and C) and a more complete tablet from Nibru (Segment B). While the events that concern the poem occur primarily in the north of Babylonia, the tablets on which it is recorded thus come from the south.
Segment A describes how Kis has been restored to splendour under its king Ur-Zababa, but how the two chief deities, An and Enlil, have decided to bring its splendour to an end; then Sargon himself is mentioned in a fragmentary context. These lines belong to the tradition in Sumerian literature which interprets political events in terms of divine intervention, more specifically in this case in terms of intervention that brings royal dynasties to an end, a fate that also befalls Agade itself in The cursing of Agade (Group C) and the Third Dynasty of Urim in The lament for Sumer and Urim (Group D).
Segment B develops the relationship between Ur-Zababa, who has an ill-omened dream which he refuses to discuss, and Sargon, who is appointed to be his cupbearer, an important post in the royal household. Some days later, Ur-Zababa has a trembling reaction to his dream: ‘Like a lion he urinated, sprinkling his legs.’ A further dream then comes to Sargon which, to his horror, confirms that Ur-Zababa has reason to tremble. As Sargon recounts to the king, in his dream the goddess Inana, the patron deity of Kis, drowned Ur-Zababa in ‘a river of blood’.
Ur-Zababa distorts the contents of Sargon’s dream, claiming that it is Sargon instead who is doomed, and instructs his chief smith to fulfil the distorted dream in melodramatic fashion, by disposing of the cupbearer in the type of mould used for casting statues. However, Inana, whose support lies with Sargon rather than Ur-Zababa, saves the cupbearer by advising him not to enter the fated temple because he is polluted with blood, presumably as a consequence of his own dream.
Sargon’s survival fills Ur-Zababa with further foreboding and he devises another plot against the cupbearer: to send him to the ruler of Unug, Lugal-zage-si, with a message instructing that its bearer be killed. Thus an additional folklore motif is incorporated within the ideological narrative, another bearer of such a message being the ancient Greek hero Bellerophon in the Iliad.
The contents of Segment C, set not in Kis but in Unug, whose patron deity was also Inana, remain unclear. They do, however, indicate the continued survival of Sargon. The historical evidence also supports his survival: he became king of Kis, giving him control of the north of the Land; defeated Lugal-zage-si, giving him control of much of the south; and founded his own capital city, Agade, whose patron deity was again Inana.
World History
