Nationalism often grows from lack of understanding, irritation, and contempt, but not necessarily from hostile feelings toward other ethnic groups. In the edict of king Ammisaduqa (1646-1626 bce), paragraph 6 about debts specifically mentioned ‘‘an Amorite or an Akkadian.’’ In paragraphs 20-1 he included the citizens of Numhia and Emutbal, areas east of the Tigris River, among those who should be released from debts and get their freedom. The king’s measures applied to all, regardless of place of origin or ethnicity. Only the slaves were not to benefit from these measures (Kraus 1958).
We have seen that the Sumerians had hard words for invading neighbors; they were affected by them and did not understand their habits or their customs. On the other hand in the Ur III period they appointed some foreigners to the civil service and the army, if we may judge by their foreign names. Dahish-atal, who was of Hurrian origin, was an important official (Sigrist 1992: 31); many Hurrian slave women were working as weavers, and many Amorites were policemen.
Ishbi-Erra, who was a native of Mari in Syria and contributed to the decline of the Ur dynasty, first offered his services to the Sumerian kings and was at the head of their troops. Ibbi-Sin, the rightful king, complained that the god Enlil had this Ishbi-Erra raised to the rank of a ‘‘shepherd of Sumer,’’ though he was not a Sumerian by birth (Falkenstein 1950: 59). Many centuries later the Assyrians used very much more unpleasant words about foreigners. The otherwise unknown king Puzur-Sin, who destroyed the palace of his grandfather Samsi-Adad, was called ‘‘a foreign plague and not of the flesh of the city of Assur’’ (Grayson 1987: 1: 78, number 1, 24-5, 112-13). In reaction against Assyrian domination, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon asserted that he himself was an ‘‘excellent offspring of Babylon’’ (Frame 1995: 22, no. 7, 3); he was of royal descent and a ‘‘creation’’ of Babylon. In a chronicle the Assyrians showed a dislike of Sumer and Akkad whose ‘‘treachery is to be announced to the entire world’’ (Grayson 1975: no. 21). In a document written in Babylonian (Glassner 1993: 235, 51), the Babylonian writer related the disastrous reign of a king named Nabu-suma-uskun (760-748 bce) whose wrong actions are enumerated, rightly or wrongly; he was a Chaldean and was suspected of having sided with the Elamites and other enemies of Babylon.
We know that Jerusalem and Tyre put up a fierce resistance against Nebuchadnezzar, who finally besieged them and took them and then deported a part of their population. The Jews also felt attached to their country, but their religion made them quite different; Yahweh was also a national god.