BIRTH OF BABYLON

Now all the earth continued to be of one language and one set of words. And it came about that in their journeying eastward they eventually discovered a valley plain in the land of Shinar, and they took up dwelling there. And they began to say, each one to the other: "Come on! Let us make bricks and bake them with a burning process." So brick served as stone for them, but bitumen served as mortar for them. They now said: "Come on! Let us build ourselves a city and also a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a celebrated name for ourselves, for fear we may be scattered over all the surface of the earth." -- Genesis 11: 1-4.
And Jehovah proceeded to go down to see the city and the tower that the sons of men had built. After that Jehovah said: "Look! They are one people and there is one language for them all. And this is what they start to do. Why, now there is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them. Come now! Let us go down and there confuse their language that they may not listen to one another's language." Accordingly Jehovah scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth, and they gradually left off building the city. That is why its name was called Babel, because there Jehovah had confused the language of all the earth, and Jehovah had scattered them from there over all the surface of the earth. Genesis 11:5-9 NWT.

The Mesopotamians believed that these pyramid temples connected heaven and earth. In fact, the ziggurat at Babylon was known as Etemenankia or "House of the Platform between Heaven and Earth".
An example of an extensive and massive ziggurat is the Marduk ziggurat, or Etemenanki, of ancient Babylon. Unfortunately, not much of even the base is left of this massive structure, yet archeological findings and historical accounts put this tower at seven multicolored tiers, topped with a temple of exquisite proportions. The temple is thought to have been painted and maintained an indigo color, matching the tops of the tiers. It is known that there were three staircases leading to the temple, two of which (side flanked) were thought to have only ascended half the ziggurat's height.
Etemenanki, the name for the structure, is Sumerian and means "The Foundation of Heaven and Earth". The date of its original construction is unknown, with suggested dates ranging from the fourteenth to the ninth century BC, with textual evidence suggesting it existed in the second millennium.   George , Andrew (2007) "The Tower of Babel: Archaeology, history and cuneiform texts" Archiv fuer Orientforschung, 51 (2005/2006). pp. 75-95.
Evidently there seems to be some obvious contradictions. First of all, this narrative in the early part of chapter 11 of Genesis says "all the earth continued to be of one language and of one set of words." Although, in chapter 10, verses 5, 20 and 31, it describes all the descendants of Noah "according to their tongues."
Secondly, the narrative speaks of only "a city and also a tower," as referring to Babel. When although, there were many cities with towers built before, during and after Babel existed, according to the archaeological record.
The problem is, that this narrative is not a single event in time and space. It is an historical summary of a very long and complex social, religious and political development. Because, the "city" and "tower" are factors, the foundation to a mind-set towards building a civilization, with monuments dedicated to polytheist pathologies. The resulting political developments were climaxed by Nimrod who built an empire. The ancient Arabs knew him as Nimrud, which is the name on a monument dedicated to Sargon of Akkad. Sargon is the real name of Nimrod (who is Hamitic), and he began his conquests from Akkad, a Semitic territory in Mesopotamia. Which shows that the sons of Cush were of the Hamito-Semitic languages and nations, whereas, the Sumerian territory of Mesopotamia were evidently the descendents of Cain.
In regards to language, the verses in chapter 10 that identifies the nations "according to their tongues" is making a statement after the fact. It's a statement after they have grown into many nations and after the event at Babel. Since the descendents of Cain and the descendents of Noah once shared the same language before the Great Flood, it is still possible that the language of the two families would be similar. In consideration, Noah spoke the language that existed in the antediluvian world and it was only from him that the current post-diluvian families and descended. So why would there be different languages from children of the same family of Noah’s sons? Because, It is a narrative, written after the fact of the event at Babel by the patriarch Shem in the 5th Table series. And the archaeological record does show that the Sumerian cuneform script was the Lingua Franca, the international language of trade, as English is today. For example: In the book "Archaeological History of the Ancient Middle East" by Jack Finegan c1979, in page 43, first paragraph:
Like Sargon, Naram-Sin marched to the Cedar Mountain and into Asia Minor…among various places on the expedition to the Cedar Mountain, this text mentions Ebla. Ebla is now identified with Tell Mardikh in North Syria, where a library of 15,000 cuneiform tablets has been brought to light. Most of these are written in the Sumerian script but in a language (now called Eblaite) that is a dialect of West Semitic and that is related to biblical Hebrew. A number of syllabaries provide bilingual vocabularies in Sumerian and Eblaite.

             There was a slow development of the temples construction and architecture in Sumeria all preceding the dynasty of Sargon of Agad, who actually represents the person Nimrod. And, there was a temple built specifically for the city Babel. Thus there is a dilemma in thinking that the occurrence of the Tower of Babel had no precedence and was built at an instance of time. Aside from that, there was a time that Babel and Sargon’s empire was destroyed and communication fell into disarray, but it was during an invasion of barbarians. What is notable also is that the empire fell into disarray and there was no cultural or political progress at all during the reign of the Gutian barbarians. The moment when God had confused the languages of mankind is a matter for further investigation, as the event occurring during the Gutian invasion.
In the following section, two books will describe the details of that empire and of its destruction.



Archaeological History of the Ancient Middle East by Jack Finegan c1979, chapter 3 “Old Akkadian (2371- 2230) And Post-Akkadian (2230-2112) Periods”:



Dynasty of Akkad
The Sumerian King List describes the transition from the Third Dynasty of Uruk to the Dynasty of Akkad in the usual fashion, by saying that Uruk was defeated and its Kingship carried off to Akkad, then list the kings and their lengths of reign. The first five and the most important of these are shown, with their probate dates, in Table 4.
TABLE 4. DYNASTY OF AKKAD

Name            Year of Reign            Date

1.    Sargon                56            2371 – 2316
2.    Rimush                  9            2315 – 2307
3.    Manishtushu                15            2306 – 2292
4.    Naram-Sin                37            2291 – 2255
5.    Sharakalisharri            25            2254 – 2230

 


The capital city of Akkad has not been located but was probably somewhere in the vicinity of the later Babylon; at any rate, the region of Akkad was the narrow northern plain of Lower Mesopotamia, the people were the Akkadians, and their speech the East Semitic language called Akkadian. From Akkad as their base, these Semitic-speaking kings established their control of all Lower Mesopotamia and of a much wider realm as well, and numerous Old Akkadian sources, both royal inscriptions and other texts, survive to attest their rule. Foreshadowed by the appearance of some Semitic names in several earlier dynasties and by the proto-empire of Lugalzagesi, the transition was now fulfilled from Sumerian to Semitic rule from city-state and kingdom to empire. Yet the continuity of Mesopotamian civilization persisted: in spite of differences in language and political control, fundamental ideas in religion, art, government, and law remained the same and provided strongly unifying factors.



Sargon of Akkad
    At the point where the Sumerian King List introduces Sargon, the text is not entirely clear, and it appears to be said that either he or his father was a gardener. The so-called legend of Sargon, available only in New Babylonian and New Assyrian fragments, elaborates the account to the effect that his father was unknown, that his mother was a “changeling” (presumably referring to some kind of alteration in social, religious, or national status), that she put him in the river in a basket of rushes (cf. Exod. 2:1-10[only that it must be a common practice in those days equivalent to people putting their baby at some one’s doorstep these days.]), and that Akki, a drawer of water, lifted him out, reared him as his son, and made him his gardener. The King List says further that Sargon served as cupbearer to Ur-Zababa and that he was the king of Akkad who built Akkad. Ur-Zababa appears in the King List as the second king of the Fourth Dynasty of Kish, being the son of the first king of that dynasty, Puzur-sin, who was himself the son of Ku-Bau, the queen and only ruler in the Third Dynasty of Kish. Ur-Zababa was also famous, according to a later text, for having given his name to a musical instrument. Evidently Sargon broke away from the service of Ur-Zababa, was somehow able to establish his own kingship, built his own capital city, meanwhile assuming the name by which we know him, Sargon, meaning “the legitimate king.”
The Legend of Sargon describes his conquests in broad terms, to the effect that he not only ruled the black-headed people but also scaled the upper and lower ranges, circled the sea lands three times, and captured Dilmun. The mountains were perhaps in the northeast and northwest, Dilmun in the Persian Gulf, and the sea lands the so-called Sealand kingdom on the Gulf. Other texts make it possible to follow Sargon’s conquests in more exact detail. From Akkad he marched against Uruk and overthrew the powerful Lugalzagesi, who claimed the kingship of the land, i.e., of Sumer. A historical inscription, probably written soon after the time of the Dynasty of Akkad, describes the victory: “Sargon, king of Akkad…defeated Uruk and tore down its wall; in the battle with the inhabitants of Uruk he was victorious.Lugalzagesi, king of Uruk, he captured in this battle, he brought him in a dog collar to the gate of Enlil.”
    The gate of Enlil would have been at Nippur, the special city of Enlil, and the presentation at that place of the captured Lugalzagesi to the chief god of the Sumerians showed that the rule had now passed to Sargon. With respect to Sumerian religious tradition, Sargon also installed his own daughter, Enheduanna, as high priestess of the moon god at Ur. On a carved disk from Ur, she wears a long flounced robe and conducts an offering ceremony, yet she was also devoted to Inanna and wrote in Sumerian a long hymn in exaltation of this goddess.
    After establishing himself firmly in Sumer and Akkad, Sargon moved against Amurru in the west, Elam in the east, and Subartu in the north. The same historical inscription just quoted makes him victorious in thirty-four campaigns. He went to Tutul (Hit, on the Euphrates, 200 kilometers above Babylon), prayed there to Dagan, chief god of the western Semites (well known in the Ras Shamra texts and among the Philistines, Judg. 16:23, etc.). Dagan gave him the Upper Region, including Mari Another 200 kilometers up the Euphrates) and other cities, and as far as the Cedar Forest (the Amanus and Lebanon) and the Silver Mountain (the Taurus). He caused ships from Tilmun (Dilmun) and other places to moor at Akkad; thus he controlled the shipping of the Persian Gulf. Another inscription calls him “the subjugator of Elam;” a chronicle, in a late Babylonian copy, and two oman texts mention his wars in Sabartu. A stela, showing his soldiers taking captives, was found at Susa; a magnificent bronze head, found in a rubbish heap at Nineveh, is thought to be Sargon himself. Old Akkadian tablets found a Gasur (Yorgan Tepe, 20 kilometers southwest of Kirkuk, the later Nuzi of the Hurrians) show the commercial activities of this one small city extending over considerable portions of this far-flung empire of Sargon.
    Rimush and Manishtushu, the younger and older sons respectively of Sargon, and his successors in turn, faced revolts. Rimush fought against Kaku, king of Ur, and the warriors of many cities of Sumer; Manishtushu speaks of rebellion by all the countries his father had left him. Across the Lower Sea, Manishtushu made an expedition in ships; in the north, he left an inscription at Ashur and is said by Shamshi-Adad I to have built a temple at Nineveh. Eventually both sons died in revolts at home. Omen texts describe Rimush as the one “whom his servants killed with their tablets” (clay tablets used as weapons?) and Manishtushu as the one “whom his palace killed.”



Naram-Sin
    Naram-Sin, son of Manishtushu and grandson of Sargon, emulated his famous grandfather in the conquests and went beyond him in the titles he assumed: “The divine Naram-Sin, the mighty, the god of Akkad, king of the four quarters.” For the first time in Mesopotamia, the determinative of divinity is found with the name of a king; the custom was followed by all kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur except the first, the kings of Isin, and by a few others. But otherwise, in contrast with Egypt, it did not prevail here. Likewise, the claim to universal dominion – expressed in the words king of the four quarters is new. Shulgi and following kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur made the same claim.
    Like Sargon, Naram-Sin marched to the Cedar Mountain and into Asia Minor. An inscription at Ur tells of his conquest of the Cedar Mountain – explicitly identified with the Amanus – and makes acknowledgment to the gods Negral and Dagan for what he did. Among various places on the expedition to the Cedar Mountain, this text mentions Ebla. Ebla is now identified with Tell Mardikh in North Syria (halfway between Hama and Aleppo), where a library of 15,000 cuneiform tablets has been brought to light. Most of these are written in the Sumerian script but in a language (now called Eblite) that is a dialect of West Semitic and that is related to biblical Hebrew. A number of syllabaries provide bilingual vocabularies in Sumerian and Eblaite. The texts reveal Ebla as a city of 260,000 inhabitants and the center of a kingdom that controlled much of Syria and Palestine and flourished around 2400-2250, i.e., until it was destroyed by Naram-Sin. The written materials reportedly include a law code, the oldest so far found, with the regulations formulated in the standard form of case law (“if, then”); a treaty between Ebla and Ashur, probably the oldest international treaty extant; an account of the creation of the world; and an account of the flood, said to be closer to the previously known Mesopotamian flood stories than to the biblical account. The chief god at Ebla was Dagan. The king –had the Sumerian title en, for which the Eblaite vocabularies give malik as the equivalent. The names of six of the kings are preserved; one is Ebrum (eb-uru-um), linguistically similar to Eber, eponymous ancestor of the Hebrews (Gen. 10:21) and to (cibri).
    An inscription at Larsa asserts that Naram-Sin marched to Talkhadum (in Anatolia). Doubtless to protect the rout to the northwest, he built a large fortresslike palace at the ancient site of Tell Barak, where the mud bricks are stamped with his name. In the north he left an inscription at Nineveh; in the east he set up statues with his name at Susa. There in the Zagros, he also fought with the Lullubi and celebrated the campaign with a very impressive Victory Stela, discovered at Susa, on which, wearing the horned helmut of a god, he strides inexorably up the mountain as his enemies fall beneath his feet.
    Although Naram-Sin thus exercised power from Anatolia to Susa, formidable foes were already appearing upon the periphery of the empire. Certain texts refer to an apparently barbarous people, called the Umman-Manda, who seem to have come from Anatolia or beyond and swept along the northern border of Akkad in his time. A Sumerian composition Known as the Curse of Akkad (probably composed a century or two after Naram-Sin and preserved on tablets of the eighteenth century) tells of the invasion of the Gutians, a people from the mountains to the east or north. Originally, it is said, Enlil gave Sargon the rule of Akkad, Inanna dwelt in her shrine in the city, and all was prosperity. During the reign of Naram-Sin, However, the gods for some reason withdrew their favor and the city suffered. At first, Naram-Sin accepted the reversal of fortune humbly, but then defied the word of Enlil, marched against Nippur, and destroyed the Ekur, the sacred precinct of Enlil. Thereupon Enlil brought Gutium down from the mountain, and this uncontrollable people covered the earth in vast numbers like locusts. Communication were disrupted, cities struck down, agriculture ruined, and famine and death prevailed. Finally some of the great gods uttered a curse upon Akkad, evidently to the end that this city might suffer a worse fate than it had inflicted upon Nippur. Thus would Enlil be satisfied and the rest of the land be saved. So Akkad became an uninhabitable ruin. “On its canalboats towpaths…no one walks among the wild goats and darting snakes…. Akkad is destroyed. [compare with prophecy in Isaiah 13:19-22; Rev.18:2]
    It is hardly probable that all of this disaster was fulfilled in the time of Naram-Sin, although in the foregoing text he was blamed for the whole matter. Rather, he followed on the throne his son Sharkalisharri, who was able to rebuild the Ekur, a work upon which there is considerable emphasis in his inscriptions. A year in the reign of Sharkalisharri, who is also named a “Year when he undertook a campaign against Gutium,” which presumably reflects a countermilitary action of some success. But the pressure of the Gutians is unmistakable and is illustrated, for example, in a letter from a farm owner of the time of Sharkalisharri to his representative insisting that the latter proceed with cultivation in spite of the danger and, if the Gutians attack, bring the cattle into town for security.
    Another year name in the reign of Sharkalisharri is “Year when Sharkalisharri overcame Martu in Basar,” which points to danger in the west. Basar is identified with Gebel Bishri, a low mountain range between Palmyra and the Euphrates, and Martu (Akkadian Amurru) designates both the land and the peoples in that region, the originally nomadic people known in the Bible as the Amorites (Gen. 10:16, etc.).



Post-Akkadian (Gutian) Period
    Like Rimush and Manishtushu, Sharkalisharri evidently died by assassination, for an omen text speaks of  him, too, as one “whom his servants killed their tablets.” After him, the Sumerian King List asks, “Who was king? Who was not king?” and four kings – Igigi, Nanum, Imi, and Elulu – who together reigned only three years. It then names two more – Dudu and Shudurul – with longer reigns of twenty-one and fifteen years respectively, but of whom little is known, In the next mentioned Fourth Dynasty of Uruk, five kings are listed as reigning for thirty years, but of them also little is known. Then the King List names “the Gutium hordes” and credits them with twenty-one kings. But it does not have all of their names and gives the length of their period as either ninety-one or one hundred twenty-four years, according to various texts. It is evident that after Sharkalisharri, anarchy and Gutium domination prevailed, and the time, usually put at somewhat over a century, down to the Third Dynasty of Ur, may be called the Post-Akkadian or Gutian period (2230-2112). In a text copied at Babylon in the third century but probably composed after the death of Sharkalisharri and during the domination of the Gutians, the state of affairs is reflected in a lament in which the women of various towns are said to be weeping, and then a series of summonses is issued to mourn for a certain number of the same towns. Both Uruk and Akkad are prominent in the list.
    It is possible to see, however, that even in this time Sumerian civilization persisted. At Lagash, prominent already in the Early Dynastic period, a certain Lugalushumgal is known from seals of Naram-Sin and Sarkalisharri as governor of Lagash. Sometime afterward, Ur-Bau, Gude, Ur-Ningirsu, Ugme, Urgar, and Nammahani appear in the same position. In order, these governors probably ruled in the sequence just given, and Nammahani, at the end of the list, was slain by Ur-Nammu, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, as the latter claims. In family relationships, Gudea, Urgar, and Nammahani were sons-in-law of Ur-Bau, Ur-Ningirsu was son Gudea, and Ugme was grandson. Of them all, the best known is Gidea, many of whose statues and inscriptions were found at Telloh. The statues represent a turban-wearing, clean-shaven, grave, and kindly man. The inscriptions present the Sumerian language in its classic form, even as the Code of Hammurabi is the classic in Akkadian.
    Also at Uruk, the line of local rulers must have persisted. The Sumerian King List follows the period of “the Gutium horde” with the fifth Dynasty of Uruk, in which there was only one king, Utuhegal, who reigned for seven and one-half years and who was evidently considered the deliverer of the land from the Gutians. A text, probably inscribed originally on a stela in Uruk and available in two later copies, describes Gutium as “the dragon of the mountains” and tells how Enlil and Inanna chose Utuhegal for his mission. He marched forth against the Gutians, defeated and captured their king, Tirigan (whose name is probably also to be read in the damaged text of the King List as the last Gutian king), and brought the sovereignty of Sumer back into his own hands. This important event is also recalled in the omen texts, in one of which it is said the Tirigan “died amidst his army. But Utuhegal himself apparently drowned at the end of his relative brief reign, for a text says that “the river bore his corpse away.”



In chapter XIX, The Dynasty of Agade and The Gutian Invasion, ibid. "The Cambridge Ancient History"; I. The Reign of Sargon:
The written tradition, so far as it is at present available to us, does scant justice to a king who could not only achieve greatness but could record it for posterity more clearly than any before and most after him. The inscriptions of Sargon must have numerous and their remains show that they were informative and detailed as to his warlike and religious, possibly even his civil, transactions. With a different language something of a new spirit came into the records, and seemed for a time to overcome the historical reticence which is so disappointingly manifest in other not inglorious periods of the nation’s experience.
Like several notable successors he had, and did not disguise, an obscure birth and a humble beginning. The account of this is not only explicit but conveyed in a form which purports to be his own words. Only the first few lines are preserved of Assyrian tablets which begin, ‘I (am) Sargon, the mighty king, king of Adade’, and go on to relate the birth and earliest years of the speaker, name in broken lines some of his subsequent conquests, and then break off…According to this, therefore, his mother was a Priestess, his father an unknown wanderer. He was born in secret at an obscure village on the Euphrates called Azupiranu, perhaps ‘Saffron Town’, from a local product which has kept its name almost unaltered. His mother, to rid herself of the child, enclosed him in a basket, which she covered and made fast with pitch, and launched it upon the river. Miraculously preserved from drowning, he was carried downstream, and fished out by one Aqqi, a labouer in a palm-garden, who noticed the basket as his bucket dipped in the water. Aqqi took the child and reared him as his own, making him to follow the same profession.
At this point the tradition is taken up by two corroborative texts; one is the king-list itself which says that Sargon was a gardener, the other a Sumerian story of his life which repeated the details about his place of origin, and his mother and father. The next incident of this miraculous career was that the goddess Ishtar bestowed her favour upon the youth, and owing to this he was soon found in the service of Ur-Zababa, known from the king-list as a king of the Fourth Dynasty of Kish. This potentate lived in great state, for one of the texts named above calls him ‘the shepherd (who) rose like the sun in the temple of Kish'’ and he had the curious distinction of giving his name to a musical instrument. But he came to offend the god Marduk, and this in a matter where Sargon was concerned. The latter had attained the intimate degree of cupbearer to Ur-Zababa, who at this time commanded him to ‘change the drink-offering of E-sagila’. Sargon, evading this impiety, and redoubling his own service to the god, weaned the divine favour from his master, and Marduk made the servant lord of the land (and, it is added, the world) in place of Ur-Zababa. But as it may be observed that the Dynasty of Kish continued for another five reigns after this successful defection, Sargon was at first no more than a rival, not a destroyer.
The earlier years of his rule may have been devoted to providing himself with a capital city, for all the sources describe how he built this in a new place. But in doing so he too committed some act which the jealous god took as an impiety, for he is said to have dug out earth from Babylon for the purpose of building a city ‘next to Agade’, and to have called this city ‘Babylon’. The incident is related in two chronicles and an omen, but its purport is hardly clear – it means perhaps that Sargon is accused by these late records of ambitiously attempting to make for himself a capital which should have the prestige enjoyed by Babylon in subsequent ages, and regarded by them as immemorial
There is much to bespeak his alien origin, and to indicate the upper Euphrates for his birthplace, although, if the story of his solitary journey be true, he cannot be considered the leader of an inferred invasion of ‘Akkadians’ taken to be the first ‘historical’ migration of Westerners into Babylonia. But his native tongue, which he was to graft upon the old Sumerian script, qualified him to enter service in the court of Kish, where kings with Semitic names had been among the earliest rulers…The foundation of his new city is placed by our authorities after other chief events of his reign, but might be thought to occur more naturally after his revolt from Ur-Zababa, for he did not become master of any other existing city, and his new era could best be inaugurated from a new capital. This was signalized also by the adoption of a new name, for the obscure boy was assuredly not called at birth '‘True King’. His career justified the name and gave it a magic for generations after.
Upon the chronology of Sargon’s reign and the order of its events we are hardly at all informed, and can be guided only by what seems the natural progression. The next dynasty in the king-list after that in which Ur-Zababa ruled at Kish was the third of Uruk, and its only member was Lugalzaggisi, who is credited with a reign of twenty-five years. The main outlines of this king’s career can be traced from his own inscriptions and from other allusions. As ensi of Umma he took up again the inveterate war against his neighbours at Lagash, and avenged the many defeats of his predecessors by a savage destruction of the rival city. Some time after this he gained possession of Uruk, and reign of twenty-five years is doubtless reckoned from that event. During those years he added the successes claimed in his only long inscription, found upon vases dedicated at Nippur. Under various titles, priestly as well as civil, he was the ruler and benefactor of Umma, Uruk, Ur, Larsa, Nippur, and two other religious centres, and specifically he asserted that the supreme god had appointed him ‘king of the land’ thus assuming in the most formal terms the ancient title of sovereignty among the cities of Sumer…But a wider prospect than local domination is open for the first time with Lugalzaggisi; in a striking passage of unmistakable import, if slightly obscure wording, he proclaimed that not only had the god given him the kingship over ‘the land (kalam, i.e. Sumer), and ‘directed the eye of the land upon him’, but that he had rendered the foreign lands (kur-kur) subject at his foot, and from the raising sun to the setting he had bowed the neck (of all) to him’. When this state had been achieved Enlil in addition from the Lower Sea (by) the Tigris and Euphrates unto the Upper Sea made him to have no opposer’. If by no more than a vigorous sortie, Lugalzaggisi had broken out from those limits beyond which the Sumerian chroniclers had not looked, and had shown the way to a new world for his successor to conquer.
With its usual formula the king-list records the end of this prosperous reign, and the transfer of supremacy to Agade. That Lugalzaggisi was defeated, and also captured, by Sargon we have not only this tradition, but the explicit statement of the victor, who relates in one of his inscriptions the course of his campaign. A later narrator already quoted had an account of the preliminaries to this contest, but the condition of the text and its obscure phrases show little more than that messages were exchanged between Sargon and Lugalzaggisi, the latter at length refusing to listen to the overweening demands of the challenger, but being compelled finally to admit his messenger. Appeal to arms soon followed, and Sargon was first in the field. He marched swiftly to Uruk, and seems to have carried the city by a surprise attack, for he ‘smote the city of Uruk and destroyed its wall’ before’ he battled with the man of Uruk and defeated him’, although, as another inscription adds, this commander was aided by the forces of fifty town-governors. Only after these two disasters did Lugalzaggisi himself reach the field of battle, where he shared the same fate; Sargon ‘captured him and brought him in a yoke to the gate of Enlil’ at Nippur as a trophy to the national god, whose choice for the kingship he was shown by the issue to have forfeit, and Sargon to have inherited.
His next task was to complete the subjugation of the rest of Sumer, and his first objective the city of Ur. Whoever was the general of its forces (its Second Dynasty was probably ended by Rimush) he was defeated in the field and Sargon ‘smote his city and destroyed its wall’. Next he turned against the territory of Lagash, now as often in close alliance with Ur, but having put aside for the nonce its ancient feud with its neighbor Umma. E-Ninmar was the first of the cities within the domain of Lagash to be attacked and destroyed, ‘and its territory from Lagash to the sea he smote (and) his weapons he washed in the sea’. Of this South Babylonian alliance only one stronghold now remained, and Sargon turned back to deal with Umma. The result was no different – ‘with the man of Umma he did battle and defeated him and smote his city and destroyed its wall’. Hereby he was master of all the old Sumerian homeland, and his principal opponents were probably all his captives…Another inscription of Sargon adds to this tale of victories over the old Sumerian cities a kind of summary; it reckons that he won altogether thirty-four battles, as the result of which a real advantage was gained, for ‘the ships of Meluhha, the ships of Magan, the ships of Tilmun he moored at the quay in front of Agade’. That is, the Persian Gulf was now in his power, and he was able to receive the products of the lands upon its shores or accessible only by its trade routes. Ur-Nanshe, at the beginning of the last Early Dynastic age, had been the first to proclaim that he obtained timber from Tilmun, and it was this trade which now passed into the hands of Sargon.
Two of Sargon’s inscriptions place after the account of his victories in southern Babylonia a summary description of distant triumphs in a march up the Euphrates and widespread conquests in Syria. The original inscriptions (or rather the copies of them which have been preserved) devote only a few lines to these events, but find room for some interesting details. The first stage of his march ended at the place called Tuttul, now the town of Hit, some ninety miles west of Baghdad. Here he ‘knelt to the god Dagan…and he gave him the upper land, Mari Iarmuti, Ibla, up to the cedar forest and the silver mountains’. A curious note is added upon his numbers – ‘5400 men ate bread daily before him’. Besides this original and authentic account the omens and chronicle have also something to relate of this western expedition; the chronicle says that ‘in the eleventh year the land of the west to its limit his hand reached, he made its word (as) one, he set up his images in the west, their booty he brought over (sea) on rafts’. The version in the omens does not differ greatly except in naming the third instead of the eleventh year, and this receives a certain support from a reference to a ‘third year’ in the story called King of the Battle to be described later. This congruent account is nevertheless preceded in the chronicle and the omens by sentences of completely opposite import, the chronicle averring that Sargon crossed the ‘sea in the east’, whereas the omens call it the ‘sea of the west’. It seems likely that the chronicle is here in error, since the following lines in both documents agree in relating to the west’. Similar claims to conquest, and even to the establishment of memorials in the Lebanon, were registered by other early kings, Iakhdunlim of Mari and his supplanter Shamshi-Adad I, but it was the much later Sargon II of Assyria who erected his monument in a unique situation far to the west of all others, in Cyprus, possibly in emulation of his pattern. The omens have also three other references to a conquest of the country of Amurru, that is the west; the first two relate generally that he ‘went to the land of Amurru, defeated it, and his hand reached over the four regions (of the world)’, but the third omen states that he ‘went to the land of Amurru…smote it for the second time (and) his warriors…brought him forth from the midst’ – the last phrase remains enigmatic owing to damage of the text. Possibly the ‘second time’ was ‘eleventh year’ of the chronicle.
Later tradition thus agrees with Sagon’s own testimony that he marched up the Euphrates and become master of Syria, with its various resources. Upon this point the only details are given by the King’s own inscription which, in addition to Hit, mentions three places and two districts. The latter are not difficult to locate; the ‘cedar forest’ is generally agreed to be the Amanus mountains, for their name is coupled with this description by Naramin-Sin and by Gudea. The ‘silver mountains’ are rather less definite, but it seems necessary to take 'silver' no less literally than 'cedar', assuming that Sargon was interested chiefly in the valuable products of his conquests. The Taurus range, therefore, with its many deposits of lead and silver must  be indicated. Mari is no longer in doubt; it was the site now called Tell el-Hariri, on the Euphrates, near Abu Kamal, as proved by recent excavation, and a later ruler couples it to his kingdom with Tuttul or Hit, just as it was the next stage in Sargon's march.
    While therefore it is beyond doubt that Sargon carried his arms to the limits of north Syria, later tradition avers much more. One source of this is a composition which bore the name King of the Battle. Most of this story is preserved upon a tablet in a very imperfect condition which was found in Egypt with the Amarna letters, and there furthermore evident allusions to its subject in a broken text accompanying the celebrated 'Babylonian Map of the World' in the British Museum. After some very uncertain preliminaries it appears that Sargon hears of the complaints of merchants from the city of Purushkhanda (the Hittite Parashukhanda), but it is not clear what their grievances were, nor to whom these were due; but they appealed to Sargon to champion their cause and offered him rich inducements. Only from the sequel can it be inferred that the alleged oppressor was a certain Nur-daggal, who was probably ruler of their city, and this must be, presumably, Purushkhanda. Despite the hesitation of his followers Sargon resolved to undertake this expedition and relieve the aggrieved merchants. He enquired of the road to Purushkhanda, and was told of its incredible difficulty; one stage was encumbered with blocks of lapis-lazuli and gold, another with forest trees, others with thorny thickets. At length, overcoming all these, Sargon reached the enemy's city,, to the consternation of Nur-daggal who had boasted that he could never accomplish a march through the floods and Forrest. His appearance in these circumstances was enough, for it appears that Nur-dggal made instant submission, and agreed to redress the wrongs of the merchants, who had covenanted with Sargon the price of his aid. After this the army apprehensive, and murmured that it was time to return home, which was done, and Sargon resumed a peaceful rule in his own city.
    The central interest of this story lies in the introduction of the city called Purushkhanda, for this place if not exactly located, is at least proved, by evidence from two different periods, to lie in the neighbourhood of Caesarea (Kayseri) in Cappadocia. It figures not only in the Hittite records, but more prominently in the affairs of the early Assyrian merchants whose business documents have been found in greatest number at a site called Kultepe, about fifteen miles from Kayseri; and Kultepe (the ancient Kanesh) there were only four caravan stages to Purushkhaddum, as it is called in those tablets. It is generally concluded to have lain to the south-west of the Great Salt Lake of central Anatolia. If the King of the Battle has any historical foundation, Sargon did not stop short at the mountain barrier, but extended his sway deep into Asia Minor.
    It is interesting to observe that very similar stories were current concerning Naram-Sin, the famous grandson of Sargon whose relations with the north-west will be related in the place below. For the present purpose, the most significant feature in these is the recurrence of Purushkhanda(r) in a later text which purports to tell, with many mythical accompaniments, how the empire of Naram-Sin was invaded by a demoniac horde which made that town the first conquest,  as though it had  been the most distant bound of the Akkadian possessions. Recently too there has come to light a fragment concerning an expedition of Naram-Sin which appears to have borne a curious likeness in matter and phraseology to the King of the Battle, for a speaker is urging, on behalf of himself and others, that the hero should undertake a long march through mountains and deserts. This he does, under favorable signs, and is at length met by a messenger who craves mercy for the land of Apishal. Now this campaign against Apishal is well attested as one of the triumphs of Naram-Sin, and the narration of it in a style so clearly similar to the King of the Battle may well suggest that Sargon's exploit was no less authentic, both stories applying the same romantic colour to facts which might seem exciting enough in themselves.
    In the remains of Sargon's inscriptions there is no detail, nor indeed mention, of his conquests in the north. But the chronicle and omens relate a successful war with Subartu; the aggression came from one or the other (the reports differ) and in the event Sargon 'defeated them, cast them in heaps, and over threw their widespread host', carrying off their possessions to his city of Agade. The land of Subartu was also included in the catalogue of Sargon's provinces supplied by the geographical list already noticed. Near the beginning the limits of land were defined: 'from...to Anzanzan (is) Subartu, and in a later section the 'space' of Subartu is given as 120 beru, that measure being the distance covered on a march of two hours, which has been reckoned in modern equivalent as nearly seven miles. It is, however, very uncertain what is meant by the 'space' of the countries here defined, and since the north-western limit of Subartu is lost from the list, the south-east being perhaps Anzan (Anshan), a country which certainly lay in the nearer vicinity of Susa, it is not easy to decide what territory was included in this conquest of Sargon. It was at least one of the most extensive, its120 beru being exceeded only by Akkad with 180, and its people being already described as 'widespread'. But if Subartu were taken as extending to Syria the dimension for it in any case greatly exceed that of Akkad. Despite this difficulty it is impossible to ignore the phrase of Naram-Sin, 'ruler of Subartum up to the cedar-forest', or to evade its implication unless an improbable land of cedars was to be found somewhere in the hills east of the Tigris. But in fact Sargon's own inscription leaves no room for doubt; it was by Hit and the Euphrates that he made his way to the 'cedar-forest', and it was this region which Naram-Sin boasted of ruling over as Subartum.
    The next sector, in a geographical sense, of the conquests of Sargon was in the hill country to the east and north-east of Babylonia, and upon these campaigns we are best informed, both by his own inscriptions, and by other evidence, partly contemporary, but mostly of later date. To begin with the first: a general expression in the copied inscriptions of Sargon claims that 'the man of Mari and of Elam stood before Sargon', but this made more explicit in other passages, containing lists of the rulers and places from which the conqueror took tribute. The districts were Elam, B(W)arakhshe, Awan, and some places of lesser note, and the principal characters were Sanam-simut, called ensi of Elam, and Lukh-ishshan, called son of Khishep-rashir, king of Elam. Here for the first time occurs a contact with the native records of Elam, for a king named Khishep-ratep was the ninth member of a dynasty ruling in the district of Awan, and this name was complete, and his inscriptions close with the tribute or plunder of Awan itself and of Susa, where the sole surviving monument of the great king has been discovered.
    In its turn, the 'geographical survey' already described above includes in Sargon's dominions the lands of Arrapkha, Lullubi, Armanum, Gutium, Parashi, Tukrish, Anshan, and Elam, which taken as a whole, might be regarded as comprising almost the entire mountainous region in south-western Persia.
    Sargon's conquests, whatever the order in which they were made, had now come full circle with his triumph over the princes of Elam. One result of them was naturally a great inflow of wealth, and there are preserved from a later age parts of a long poetical composition which celebrated the rise and the fall of Agade, particularly under Naram-Sin. At its beginning this poem refers to the days of Sargon - his defeat of Kish and Uruk, and his choice by the supreme god Enlil, who granted him 'the priesthood and the kingdom from the lower to the upper (land)'. At this time Inanna made Agade into her residence and dwelt in the temple there, giving prosperity to her citizens; their food and drink were of the finest, their festivals were continual and splendid, they were enriched by an influx of useful or exotic animals, their treasures were full, the people danced to music in the streets, and unceasingly ships were bringing to the quays the products of distant lands.
    But a reversal o all this glory had not, it seems, to await the days of Naram-Sin, for there is a strong tradition that the reign of Sargon himself was clouded at the end by difficulties both external and internal. This account is preserved only in the late chronicle and omens, but is not likely to be merely a lesson upon the instability of fortune. Accordingly, in his old age (such is the more probable version) 'all the lands revolted against him', and so serious was his peril that 'they beset him in Agade'. But the old warrior was still himself, for 'Sargon went forth to battle, defeated them, cast them in heaps, and overthrew their widespread host': the omens add a picturesque conclusion, 'their chattels he bound upon them and cried "(they are) thine, O Ishtar"' - thus dedicating his spoils of war. Other lines in the chronicles and omens refer obscurely to a sacrilege which he was deemed to have committed in the building of his new city of Agade; it was too near, or too like, the holy city of Babylon, and attracted the wrath of the god Marduk, who caused his subjects to rebel against him 'from the rising to the setting of the sun, and gave no rest'. What was actually the state of Sargon's empire at his death may be partly inferred from the action which was forced upon his son after his accession.



THE SUCCESSORS OF SARGON
    The next two kings of Agade and successors to the empire of Sargon were his two sons, Rimush and Manishtusu, who reigned, according to the king-list, in the reverse order of age, for that authority assigns nine years to Rimush, and afterwards fifteen to Manishtusu, who is said to have been the elder brother of his predecessor; but it must be added that there are variants of the lengths of reigns. Both kings seem to have begun with campaigns against rebels, involving expeditions into the lands east of the Tigris and into Elam, but it is Manishtusu who, in of his monuments, refers to 'all the lands...which my father Sargon left' as having 'in enmity revolted against me', thus implying that he was in fact the immediate successor of Sargon, as might be expected from his primogeniture. There seems no evidence at present capable of settling this, and therefore the order of the king-list may provisionally be kept.
    Rimush, in any case, was clearly faced upon his succession with a general revolt. The chronology of his military measures is as little ascertainable as those of his father, but in one place he tells how in the third year after the god Enlil had given him the kingdom he carried out a victorious invasion of Elam, and relates the numbers of prisoners and slain. His first years were doubtless occupied with the other campaign described in his inscriptions, one that would necessarily precede the re-subjugation of the more distant provinces in the east. The south country of Babylonia proper, the 'land' and the great Sumerian cities, had taken the opportunity of Sargon's death to throw off the domination of the interlopers who, however much they had come to resemble and to imitate culturally the Sumerians, must have been regarded by these with some of the same feelings as they afterwards were to cherish against the Gutians or the Amorites - indeed, the Akkadians were in this as in other respects forerunners of the Amorites. It has been observed that we find no trace of hostility in the records between Sumerians and Semites: thus stated it is true, for there was no ethnic distinction involving these terms, but the opposition comes out clearly in the campaign of Rimush which may have taken place in his place in his first year. He states explicitly that his opponents were 'the cities of Sumer', and that he treated them with exemplary severity, for after their defeat he brought forth 5700 of their soldiers and (apparently) put them into prisons.
The leader of this revolt was the king of Ur; he is called 'king' by his conqueror, and evidently occupied, by some sort of general recognition, the sovereignty over the 'land' which was the distinction recorded in the king-list. This is, in fact duly recorded by that authority, for it is possible to insert the name of this Kaku as last of the Second Dynasty of Ur, otherwise broken out of the documents as we have them. Herewith is obtained (if the restoration be correct) synchronism between rulers named in the king-list, and also one more example of the characteristic weakness of that compilation, for in the dynasties of Ur II and Agade are divided by no less than six other dynasties and twenty-two kings. Kaku, the leader of the Sumerian revolt, was captured together with his city, which was rendered defenseless by having its wall dismantled. The calamity which fell upon Ur at this moment is perhaps reflected, however obscurely, in the lament ascribed to Enkheduanna, the first older (known to history) of the celebrated office of high-priestess to the Moon-god in that city, which because traditionally the prerogative of sisters and daughters of the reigning monarch, and so continued until the very last years of Babylon record. Enkheduanna has left a monument of her own, and her upon some cylinder-seals belonging to her servants. The lamentation represents her as the victim of a disaster which had afflicted Ur - the Moon-god, being angry, had ceased his care for his people, and had suffered his priestess to be driven into exile, powerless, as it seem, to appease the wrath of her own brother against the rebellious city. But there was more than one centre of the revolt, for Rimush gathered his prisoners from other 'cities of Sumer', and the inscriptions reveal the names of those who, as good subjects of the national 'king' and as patriots, took part in the in the battle against the alien dynast. Two of these were the neighbours Lagash and Umma, ancient rivals but always likely to be under the same control as they were under the same necessities. On this occasion they were led by their respective ensi; the name of Umma's chief is missing, that of Lagash is written with characters of uncertain reading. The ruler of Umma was probably the superior of these two, for he is described as accompanied by his 'forerunner', while other local chiefs have their 'messenger' or vizier. Notable allies, destined alike to be trophies of the victorious Akkadian, were Meskigala, ensi of Adab, and Lugalushumgal, ensi of Zabalam. From all of these places the inscriptions of Rimush reckon long tales of slain and prisoners.
    Being as a result of this campaign secure in his rear, the king was now able to address himself to reconquest of the east. His inscriptions do not distinguish clearly between wars in Sumer and in Elam, but they have least a tendency to relate the events in the two regions apart, and it may be assumed that the operations were spread over two campaigns in different directions. The preliminaries of the Elamite campaign were prepared at the end of his subdual of the Sumerian cities, for in one place he states distinctly that, after his victory over kaku and the southern allies, 'on his return' he smote Kazallu, took prisoner its ensi Asharid, and inflicted upon the rebel city an enormous loss of slain and captives. Elsewhere in the inscriptions Der is associated with Umma in a common disaster, and it is not likely that Umma was able to face Rimush again in a second year.
    Whenever it was, the expedition against Elam, which is described in a group of texts copied at Nippur, was to prove the greatest triumph of Sargon's successor. Though Elam is named generally, the scene of his principal victory was the district of Barakhshe, where his father before him had fought one of his most glorious wars. According to the inscriptions of Rimush the armies of Elam and of a land called Zakhara had united against him. Their leader was Abalgamash, king of Barakhshe, who had with him Sidgau, called 'governor' of Barakhshe. In command of the host of Zakhara was the 'governor' of that land. Sidgau, at least, was an old opponent of Sargon, and his restoration was doubtless an act of defiance. The battle took place 'between Awan and Susa', apparently upon a river named in an obscure phrase which seems to tell of 'pouring' it over them (?). However achieved, the victory was complete, and the king counted over 16,000 defeated, perhaps slain and 4000 prisoners, as well as a great weight of gold and copper some of which he dedicated to the god Enlil in Nippur. The result of this victory was not only the complete recovery of Barakhshe from the control of the Elamites but the destruction of some Elamite cities and the establishment of at least a tributary sovereignty over Elam itself: 'Rimush, king of Kish, was over Elam.' The king ends with a strong affirmation that his kingdom was now unchallenged, Enlil had revealed (?) it, and 'by the gods Shamash and Ada I swear it; no lies, but truly!'
    Rimush was now equal to his father and declares that 'he held for Enlil the upper and the lower sea and the mountains, all of them'. His boast has been substantiated by the widespread finding of trophies dedicated by him throughout his empire, especially fragments of alabaster vases inscribed with his triumph over Elam and Barakhshe, being themselves part of the countless spoils brought back from there. In the extreme north of Mesopotamia one of these fragments has been found at the great but still unnamed site of Tell Barak, and even so far, to the headwaters of the Khabur, did the sway of Rimush extend. Concerning the remainder of his rule, nine years in all, there is no information; presumably he enjoyed his power and revenues peacefully. But his reign and life were ended by a palace conspiracy, in which he was assassinated by certain of his courtiers 'with their seals', or 'sealed tablets', as certain omens relate, whatever weapons are indicated by this. Another omen announces the 'presage of Agade, of Rimush and Manishtusu': what happened upon this occasion is not recorded, but it might possibly be taken to mean that Manishtusu had some hand in the murder of his brother, whom, innocent or guilty, he succeeded.
    His first years may have been peaceful, for there is a stone figure of the king, found at Susa, upon which Eshpum the ensi of that city inscribed a dedication to local goddess for the benefit of his master. But, later revolt was renewed and the battles of Sargon, perhaps of his successor, had to be fought again. Yet Manishtusu, when he writes that 'all the lands...which my father Sargon left had in enmity revolted against me and not one stood fast', seems to ignore the reign of his brother, if in fact this had preceded.
    His tasks against the rebels were those which had confronted his forebears; he had to subdue both south and east. In one place occurs an interesting detail about his operation - he divided his army into two parts, but does not relate what these two divisions had as objectives. One of them, at least, met the forces of two different but allied, and presumably adjacent, lands Anshan and Sherikum, which were defeated and their king (for both seem to have been under one ruler) carried off in triumph and led into the temple of the Sun-god in Sippar, accompanied with rich gifts for the god out of the booty captured. The other division was perhaps the force which waged a war 'on the other side of the sea' against thirty-two kings of cities who had assembled for battle. These were defeated, their  cities subdued, their leaders slain, and their country occupied 'up to the silver-mine'. Manishtusu took the opportunity of shipping stone from this region to the quays of Agade, and made a statue of himself to stand before the god Enlil at Nippur. He also transported timber for his temple-building at Sippar.



THE REIGN OF NARAM-SIN
    Manishtusu, according to an omen, was murdered in a palace conspiracy, and was succeeded by his son, Naram-Sin destined to become the second of a pair whom later history regarded as the greatest figures in its annals. Because of this likeness Naram-Sin was known afterwards as the son of Sargon; if the word is pressed it is incorrect for the king-list rightly calls him son of Manishtusu. His reign was long and, until its closing years, glorious.
Both the original inscriptions of Naram-Sin and their copies are marked by two significant changes in the royal styles; first, he used himself, and permitted to be used in the address of his subjects, the divine determinative before his name. This is not invariable in his own titulary, and may have been assumed later in his reign, but the language of obsequious servants who dedicated their seals to him was unrestrained in the attribution of divinity, for they often address him not only as divine in his nature but do not hesitate to call him 'the god of Agade'. He was perhaps the first to bear this title, which marks a monstrous usurpation according to the ideas of the older Sumerian rulers who took pride in being simply the city-god's executant. It is not impossible that some of the stories of downfall and disaster which later tradition attached to his memory were motivated in part by the belief that such presumption could not go unpunished by the offended gods. At least, he had not many imitators in the later history. A second vainglorious, but less blasphemous, title was one which again appears for the first time with Naram-Sin, 'king of the four regions', a claim to universal dominion over the earth, which was revived by Shulgi and his successors at Ur, when they also seemed for a time to enjoy a boundless empire.
    Towards the north there is material proof of the extant of his dominion. Fartherest of all is the site now called Tell Barak, of which the ancient name is still unknown. Here has been found, upon a most imposing mound, the sear of a flourishing population and cult in ages long before the dynasty of Agade, and the ruin of a great palace built by Naram-Sin with bricks bearing his name. Such a building testifies to the order which was established in a remote district under this king's reign, for therein were collected and stored the tributes of the surrounding country, at found a stele with a figure of the king and an obliterated inscription, at a village near the town of Diyarbakr. Of his presence and supremacy in the cities of Assyria there is direct and inferential evidence, which has been noticed before.
    Whereas it may be assumed that the supremacy of Naram-Sin in the west and north was maintained without serious contest he had some hard struggles upon his eastern frontiers against the various hill peoples who enviously overlooked the Babylonian plain, and were at length to overthrow the kingdom which he left to his sons. The rock-relief chiseled upon the steep side of a gorge called Darband-i Gawr in the district of Kara-Dag south of Sulaimaniyyah is a monument reproducing in situ the famous scene upon the Naram-Sin stele discovered at Susa which, according to its own inscription, pictures the triumph of Naram-Sin over Satuni the king of the Lullubi. This location, coupled with evidence from the topography of Assyrian campaigns against the Lullu, makes it appear that the centre of Lullubu was the valley of Shahrazur; a similar conclusion may be drawn from the geographical list of Sargon's empire which place Lullubi immediately after Arrapkha (Kirkuk). From this centre Lullu raiders sometimes marched out, and one of their penetrations reached the district of the modern Zuhab, near Sar-i Pul, for there has been found a well-known rock-relief with figures and the inscription of Annubanini, king of Lullubi, who writes in Agadean style a description of his monument and a long imprecation against any violator. The danger from this enemy is vividly recalled in a later and confused tradition, where he appears as father of a band of seven fearful ogres, with gruesome names invented to strike terror, who swept across the dominions of Naram-Sin leading a countless horde of monsters, laid waste Gutium and Elam, and were halted only at the shore of the Persian Gulf. Not far from his monument is another rock-relief with the name of Tar...dunni, doubtless another king of the Lullu.
    The Gutians are not so easy to fix upon the map; they were close neighbours, hardly to be distinguished from the Lullu, but no territorial monuments mark their abodes. Their descendants, called Qutu, can be found dubiously mentioned in the Mari letters, but appear most prominently much later in the campaigns of Assyrian kings towards the end of the second millennium and subsequently. In those times they were a great and powerful, if loose-knit, people epithet was 'wide-spread' and their land seems to have been in the mountains south of the Lesser Zab, to the north of Sulaimaniyyah and the legendary Mount Nisir, where the ark of the Babylonian Noah rested after the Deluge. The homes of these mountaineers, Guti as well as Lullu, are represented by parts of the territories occupied by the modern Kurds and Lurs, who have perhaps preserved the ancient names with some of the same turbulence.
    To seal his mastery of the 'four regions' Naram-Sin celebrated a triumph in the south over Manium, king of Magan. This is attested by the unimpeachable consent of his own inscriptions, of later omens and chronicles, and of existing alabaster vases inscribed with his name and the words 'booty of Magan'. These vases, combined with the names of Magan and Manium, have given a singular interest to this episode, for Magan was a name undoubtedly applied to Egypt in a later period of Babylonian history, and the alabaster vases, which more commonly bear inscriptions in the late Fifth and in the Sixth Dynasties, the dates of which accord well enough with that of Naran-Sin. It was natural, therefore, that the name of Manium, or Mannu, should recall Menes, traditionally the first king of United Egypt. But a synchronism is out of question, for the beginning of the First Dynasty can by no means be reduced to the date of Naram-Sin, and the resemblance of the alabaster vases must be ascribed to no more than artistic influence and products emanating from Fifth Dynasty Egypt over trade routes to the east as they did to the north. There is no sufficient reason to believe that Naram-Sin can have been a foreign invader who helped to end the Sixth Dynasty in Egypt and to bring in its First Intermediate Period.



THE LAST KINGS OF AGADE AND THE GUTIAN SUPREMACY
    But if Naram-Sin ended his life with a realm not much impaired, there were already signs of decay, and ample presages of the troubles which were to burst upon his son. Elam under Kutik-In-Shushinak was growing independent and almost defiant, and the wild men of the Zagros were poised to swoop upon the wealthy land which they saw protected only by a weakening arm. The old king died at length after a reign of thirty-seven years, and left this menacing situation to his son Shar-kali-sharri. Whether he was the eldest is not known, but another son of Naram-Sin bore the significant name of Bin-kali-sharri, the two brothers thus standing in a relation which among the old Sumerian dynasts would have marked a king and his son destined to reign after him.
The confusion is reflected in a contemporary letter from a man who was striving to rehabilitate his farm after the devastation, and in a striking poetical account, written in Sumerian, which purports to describe the glories and the downfall of Agade. In the pride of domination and wealth Naram-Sin (for to his reign is the disaster assigned in this account) had committed a sacrilegious assault upon the holy city of Nippur and its temple, leaving everything in ruins. No reason is given for this outrage, but its effect was to enrage not only the god Enlil, who visited Sumer with foreign invasion of the Gutians and with famine, but other gods as well, who cursed the guilty city of Agade and vowed its desolation and of all its inhabitants. This doom was dramatically fulfilled, and life came almost to an end in the tyrant's capital. To mark this catastrophe even the king-list halts for a moment its jog-trot of names to ask rhetorically 'who was king, who was not king?,’ before it names four shadow-figures who claimed the throne within three years.
    Of the four factionary kings who could not maintain themselves even against one another hardly anything is known, as would be expected, although there has survived a short inscription perhaps belonging to Elulu, one of them. These were followed by two who ended the dynasty with reigns of considerable length, probably when the first force of the Gutian invasion was spent, for a few inscriptions reveal that the rule of the last king, named Shu-Durul, was of some importance and to Eshnunna. It is not possible to discover how this partial supremacy fitted in to the general but undoubtedly loose sovereignty of the Gutians. These are allowed in the list twenty or twenty-one kings and a total of 125 years of supremacy. At the time of the invasion either they had not a king at all, as one version runs, that is, they were typical barbarians, or their king was one whose name was not preserved, a reading which has better authority, though less point. The Gutian kings have left, in any case, very little mark upon Babylonian history, and very few monuments of their feeble and sporadic rule. Their names, outlandish at first, show a tendency towards the end to take on a Babylonian colour, for no doubt the superior culture of the plains gradually permeated the rude tribes-men. A few monuments, dedications inscribed with their names, attest the decent observance of these alien rulers towards the impressive cults which they were ill able to comprehend. But for the most part they were doubtless mere destroyers and harpies of the wealth of the country. Their passage over Assyria from which we have no written evidence (as indeed there is hardly any from anywhere in this time of decadence) is marked by the condition of the ruins at the city of Ashur, where upon the site of the great and flourishing temple of Ishtar, which had been filled with works of art until the end of the Agadean dynasty, there was found nothing in the succeeding level except the remains of hovels covering the sacred site; if these were not the huts of the mountaineers themselves, they had reduced the remnant of the inhabitants to this miserable pass. Nothing was recalled concerning this period, ever afterwards held in humiliating memory by the Babylonians, except its end.