STATUE OF GUDEA
Other cities emerged on the plains of Sumer in Uruk’s wake. Encompassing small, oudying settlements as well as the adjacent fields and irrigation systems, these population centers developed into politically independent city-states. All Sumerians worshiped the same pantheon of gods, but each city-state had its own patron deity and ruling dynasty.
Perhaps inevitably, conflicts arose among these city-states over relative w'ealth and the distribution of vital natural resources, mainly w'ater. The w'orld’s first armies crisscrossed the dusty plains as the monarchs of Kish, Lagash, Umma, Ur, and the other city-states vied for supremacy in a seemingly endless series of internecine wars. The net result was a depletion of manpower and capital and an erosion of rights for the common people. To finance their military ventures, rulers raised taxes, arbitrarily seized property', and assessed fees for almost every activity imaginable.
Around 2400 BC an enlightened despot named Urukagina ascended the throne of Lagash, avowing that a ruler’s responsibility extended to rich and poor alike. He was, how'ever, overthrown less than a decade later by Lugalzaggesi, king of Lagash’s old enemy Umma.
The w'arring city-states of Sumer were forcibly unified under one ruler, Sargon the Great, who, ironically, was not even Sumerian. Under Sargon—and, later, his grandson Naram-Sin—the Akkadians, a Semitic people who had settled in the northern part of the alluvial plain possibly during the fourth millennium, ruled Sumer and dispatched their conquering armies beyond the boundaries of Mesopotamia.
E'entually, though, the w'orld’s first empire crumbled under the twin threats of internal rebellion from the subjugated city-states and external pressure from less-settled tribes, such as the Gutians, on the periphery. The capital city of Agade w'as destroyed—its location remains unknown—and Akkadian rule in Sumer came to an end.
Much information relating to the Akkadian period comes from written records, for, by this time, the original piaographs used by Uruk’s citizens had evolved into an “alphabet” of abstract symbols—called cuneiform script—that could express the fiill range of human thought. Although their spoken languages w’ere quite dissimilar, both Sumerians and Akkadians used cuneiform to create epic literature, lyric poetry, and even propaganda.
After the collapse of Sargon’s dynasty, Sumer enjoyed a brief revival of political power. The city-state of Lagash, which had chafed under Akkadian domination, regained some of its lost autonomy. Around 2140 its ruler, Gudea, set about rebuilding temples as a symbolic act of independence. Twenty years later, venerable Uruk, under King Utuhegal, drove the Gutians out of Sumer altogether.
In 2112 Ur-Nammu, whom Utuhegal had appointed governor of Ur, ascended the throne, thus founding the Third Dynasty of Ur. Many of his w'orks survive, including the great ziggurat, built around 2100, and the oldest legal code ever found. Ur-Nammu’s kingdom was even more tighdy organized than Sargon’s, with a highly centralized bureaucracy' accountable to the king for everything and every'-one in his realm.
Ur-Nammu ruled for 18 years; his son Shulgi for 48 more. After that, however, the reigns become more abbreviated, and Ur’s authority inexorably declined. By about 2000 BC Sumer as a political entity had disappeared. Even so, its glory' was preser'ed in the literary traditions of its successors, the great civilizations of Babylonia and Assyria.
IK
World History
