Sargon of Akkad Founds the First Empire
Sargon of Akkad built the first empire in recorded history around 2334 BC. His origin story, written down centuries later, has him abandoned as an infant in a reed basket sealed with pitch and set on the Euphrates, drawn out by a gardener, and raised as a cupbearer to the king of Kish — a narrative pattern that turns up again in the Hebrew Bible. What he did is better attested than who he was. He overthrew his own master, defeated Lugalzagesi of Uruk and led him to the gate of Nippur in a neck-stock, and then conquered the whole of Sumer and campaigned as far as the Mediterranean and the silver mountains of Anatolia. The empire he assembled was held by innovations rather than by conquest alone. He installed Akkadian-speaking governors in the Sumerian cities in place of local dynasties, kept a standing force he described as 5,400 men who ate daily before him, standardised weights and measures, and made his daughter Enheduanna high priestess of the moon god at Ur. She wrote hymns that survive under her own name and is the first author in history whose name we know. Akkadian, a Semitic language, displaced Sumerian as the language of government and became the diplomatic language of the Near East for the next 1,500 years. The dynasty lasted about 180 years and collapsed under Gutian invasion and, on the evidence of soil cores, a prolonged drought. No image of Sargon has been securely identified. The empire's memory was long. Later Mesopotamian kings for two thousand years cited him as the model of a conqueror, Nabonidus excavated his monuments in the sixth century BC, and a copy of his legend was still being made in Assyria seventeen hundred years after he died.
- Year: 2334 BCE
- Category: Political
