Given that modern nationalist feelings were absent from the Ancient Near East, we may ask the question of how foreshadowings of nationalism arose in ancient Mesopotamia and of what the sources and conditions of nationalism were. First, a well-defined territory with a homogenous population was needed, but in this case a population more vast than that of a small city. Agreements defining territorial boundaries are known in all historical periods, for instance around 1300 bce between the Assyrian Adad-Nirari and the Babylonian Nazi-Maruttash and between the Assyrian Adad-nirari II and the Babylonian Samas-mudammiq in 900 bce.
In addition to an abstractly defined boundary, this line could be made plain on the ground by stelae, stones, and ditches. Nebuchadnezzar built a great wall north of the city of Sippar, the ‘‘wall of the Medes’’ that Xenophon still saw at the time of the Greek expedition of the 10,000 in about 400 bce (Xenophon 1998: 181 II iv 12). Nebuchadnezzar also built a second wall, farther south between the Tigris and Euphrates. The fortifications remind us of the wall called ‘‘pushing away the Amor-ites’’ constructed by Su-Sin, the king of the Ur III dynasty, and also the wall of his predecessor Siulgi. So there was a long history of wall-building to keep invaders out, but the walls may not always have been seen as national boundaries.
The name of the Babylonian territory, after Kassite domination, again became ‘‘the land of Akkad’’ as it was in more ancient times. The sovereigns who previously appeared in the chronicles as ‘‘kings of Karduniash’’ again used the title of ‘‘kings of Babylonia.’’ So the chronicles stated that a man ‘‘sat on the throne of Babylon’’ in such and such a year. ‘‘The people of Sumer and Akkad’’ were again mentioned. The connection is obvious with the glorious and splendid city of long ago, and the name of Akkad was in current usage in the Neo-Babylonian chronicles (Grayson 1975), although we now do not know where exactly that great city was.
Similarly, the scholars of those times tried to revive the past traditions and to suggest models of good kings that were more or less mythical. Sulgi and
Ur-Nammu had claimed they belonged to an old and good lineage, that of Lugal-banda and Nin-sun, so that they were brothers of the legendary Gilgamesh (Glassner 1993: 121). Sargon I (1921-1881 bce) of Assyria took the name of the great king Sargon of Akkad (2334-2279 bce), and so later did Sargon II (721-705 bce). We notice that the Assyrian kings were keen on tracing their ancestry. They recalled the names of their ancestors who constructed and restored a temple or a wall. The important thing was to show that the town went back to the earliest antiquity and that the king was connected to a famous dynasty, the members of which had distinguished themselves in defeating enemies or in building city walls and temples. Mesopotamian theologians were insistent upon the antiquity of cities and their temples which were always constructed and restored in the same place. Remembering such historical facts is a foreshadowing of a form of nationalism.
World History
