Continuing conflict between the cities was debilitating and made the southern plains vulnerable to outsiders. In about 2330 Bc southern Mesopotamia was conquered by history’s first recorded emperor, Sargon of Akkade. Sargon’s origins were among the Semitic-speaking peoples of the north. (One legend records that his mother, a priestess, placed him in a wicker basket and left him to float downstream where he was rescued. There are obvious parallels here with the story of Moses, an indication of how these legends spread and reappear within the Near East. Another tells of his having come to power as the result of an upheaval in the palace at Kish where he was serving as a royal cupbearer.) The site of Sargon’s capital, Akkade, lay possibly at the junction of the Tigris and Diyala rivers, in a suburb of modern Baghdad. It seems to have acted as a focus for trade routes and attracted a cosmopolitan population. The text of the so-called Curse of Akkad talks of ‘foreigners cruising about like unusual birds in the sky’ and monkeys, elephants, buffalo, ibexes, and sheep ‘jostling each other in the public square’. At the height of the city’s prosperity it abounds in gold, silver, copper, and tin and ‘blocks’ of that most precious commodity of all, lapis lazuli.
From this bustling metropolis Sargon created an empire that stretched as far north as Anatolia and east as the Iranian plateau. Uruk was among the cities subdued by his armies, its walls broken down and its ruler, Lugalzagesi, taken off north in triumph. The walls of Ur too were destroyed. Sargon and his successors idealized kingship by presenting themselves in reliefs as dominant over their enemies who are shown as tiny in comparison to their semi-divine conquerors (compare the Narmer Palette, p. 42). Akkadian, a Semitic language, eventually became the dominant language of the empire and most surviving cuneiform documents are written in it. Sumerian remained distinct as the language of the priesthood and religious texts.
The extent of surviving written texts for the Akkadian empire marks an important moment in history, when a civilization is known more fully through its texts than its archaeology. These texts contain a dating system, a year being marked by a major event that took place in it. Yet while Akkade is well represented in the texts, its site is still unconfirmed and it is hard to distinguish a distinct Akkadian culture through artefacts. There are tales of conquests and campaigns but the structure of control is obscure. Sargon’s empire was based primarily on personal conquest and needed to be continually reinforced through battle against both internal and external enemies. The evidence suggests that some defeated kings were allowed to continue in post as provincial governors but the number of local revolts suggests that this approach did not work well. The empire eventually fell apart seventy years later during the rule of Sargon’s great-grandson, Shar-kali-sharri, when invaders, the Gutians, swept down the Zagros mountains to destroy the rich city of the plain. The Curse of Akkad tells how the god Enlil withdrew his protection from the city and the Gutians destroyed the trade routes and scattered the flocks. ‘For the first time since cities were built and founded, the vast fields did not produce grain, the inundation ponds produced no fish, the irrigated orchard yielded neither syrup nor wine.’
The beneficiaries of this collapse of power in the north were the southern cities of Mesopotamia, now able to regain their independence (a sign in itself that Akkadian control had not been crushing). After some decades of turmoil, the Sumerians achieved one final burst of glory. In the so-called Third Dynasty of Ur (c.2150-2004 Bc) a highly efficient bureaucratic state emerged in southern Mesopotamia under one Ur-Nummu and his son Shulgi. Shulgi glorified himself. ‘When I sprang up, muscular as a cheetah, galloping like a thoroughbred at full speed, the favour of the [sky-god] An brought me joy.’ The dynasty is remembered for its ziggurats, massive stepped platforms ascended by ramps. It is possible that they were symbolic homes of the gods, whose preservation high in shrines above any conceivable flood ensured the psychological well-being of all. Even though the upper layers of the ziggurats have now disappeared they were well built with an outer layer of baked brick steeped in bitumen to give it strength and rush matting placed between layers to spread the weight of the brick and absorb moisture. The ziggurats speak of the dominance of the gods who are used by the rulers to ensure their survival. The so-called royal hymns from Ur stress the respect shown by rulers for the gods and their role in leading the main ceremonies of the city, some of which were probably held on the summits of the ziggurats. Like most religious texts they were written in Sumerian and may even have been used as a ritualistic means of preserving distance between ruler and ruled. One of the most attractive features of the hymns is the value given to musical accomplishment.
The extent of the surviving texts is vast and varied. The literature of the Dynasty included the earliest recorded epic, that of Gilgamesh, a warrior king of Uruk. (Although the epic dates from this time, the version that survives is several hundred years later and it is not certain what transformations of the text took place during these years.) The Epic of Gilgamesh relates the relationship, first of antagonism and then of comradeship, of Gilgamesh and a wild creature, Enkidu. Their adventures together end when Enkidu slays a monster and is killed in retaliation by the gods. Gilgamesh, now haunted by thoughts of death, goes on a quest to find immortality. Gilgamesh was a favourite of the Sumerians and was translated into other languages of the Near East, including Hittite and Hurrian. Some scholars have suggested that it may have been an influence on Homer’s epics. (Parallels have been drawn between its opening sentence and that of the Odyssey, and with the way similar themes of mortality are dealt with in the Iliad.) Among the stories recorded is that of a great flood, and excavations at Ur itself do contain a layer of undisturbed clay some 2.5 metres thick that Leonard Woolley believed was that of the great flood of the Bible. It has been a difficult claim to sustain as the plains of southern Mesopotamia were so close to sea level that flooding was common and many cities were either lost or abandoned as the river courses shifted closer or further away from them. Yet one flood recorded at Shuruppak was survived by ‘a wise man’ who took to an ark when the god Enlil unleashed his wrath on the city. (For a well-received translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh, see the Penguin Classics edition by Andrew George, London and New York, 2003.)
The ‘Royal’ burials at Ur suggest a society in which some women are given high status in their own right. Another famous text from this period tells the story of the priestess Enheduanna who had been appointed to an elite position in the religious life of Ur by Sargon. (She enjoys the honorary title ‘daughter of Sargon’.) After a later revolt by Ur against Akkad, Enheduanna, not surprisingly, loses her position and is expelled from the city, whose local god Nanner is restored to prominence. Enhedu-anna retaliates by linking herself to the goddess Inanna, from the nearby city of Uruk, who is related to the Akkadian goddess Ishtar. She manages to return to Ur and persuade the populace that An, who has supremacy among the gods, has given judgement in favour of Inanna, who now supplants Nanner in the city. Some later texts even imply that Inanna enjoyed love-making with the king of Ur. The story suggests that women of exceptional ability such as Enheduanna were able to exert influence, especially through the manipulation of the gods in their favour. Yet women as a whole had no special status. Alongside the story of Enheduanna is a text describing the textile workers of Ur, who are listed as the humblest workers of all, and then, as in many parts of the world now, made up of women and children.
Control of the Dynasty’s subjects was much more complete than under the Akkadian empire. The central government conscripted labour. Relationships with local governors were strengthened by marriages with the ruler—Shulgi is recorded as having nine wives, several from prominent local families. Provincial governors acted as judges and supervised the canal system. They were supported by local military leaders even though in foreign policy the aggressive tactics of the Akkadians appear to have been replaced with diplomacy.
By 2000 Bc the power of the Third Dynasty was faltering. The fertility of the land was being undermined by an influx of salt brought down in the annual floods. The bureaucracy of the state had become so complex—it is known that sesame oil was classified in four grades, while a single sheep’s existence is found recorded on three separate tablets—that there may have been a stifling of initiative. There is a sense of internal disintegration that left the state vulnerable when external enemies appeared. The collapse was sudden. Ur was sacked by invading Elamites in 2004 and The Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur records the razing of the residential areas. The devastation was contrasted with an ideal state in which the rivers watered the lands and farmers went about their business in joy with all protected by the care of the gods. Other conflicts followed as another powerful city, Isin, struggled to hold Nippur, the most prestigious religious centre of Sumer, against outside attack.
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