“And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth... And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar.” (Genesis 10:8 and 10.)
My Christian reverence for the Bible, rather than urging me to use it as my most authoritative resource on history, on the contrary, precludes me from such use, as its theological significance renders it immune to a normal critical analysis, and creates an unfair handicap with regard to all other, non-theological sources. It is for this reason that the name of Nimrod, who may have chronological precedence even over King Menes of Egypt, shall remain for me a purely mythological personality, akin to Gilgamesh, whom no one would ever dream of injecting into the actual lineup of history. Rather than shocking, I find this a very reasonable approach, as it thankfully precludes me from commenting on an unnecessary boxing match between history and religion, as to whether any Biblical personality (in this particular case, two of them: Nimrod and Moses) could be an actual borrowing from a preexistent historical legend about an admittedly historical individual who had lived ages before the first books of the Bible were written, circa 1440 BC or even later. (Please note that I’ve given no indication as to whom I might be rooting for in this boxing match, as it is a matter of principle for me not to mix what ought not to be mixed, and therefore, I resent the very idea of having such a contest in the first place.)
For this reason, as I am looking with a historical eye upon the earliest legends of Mesopotamia, going back to the times of Sumer and Akkad, the first fully historical personality whom I encounter there, has to be not the Biblical Babylonian Kingdom-builder Nimrod, but Sargon of Akkad (2334-2279 BC). Chronologically, Sargon lived long after Menes: sometime around the reign of King Cheops to be “precise.” But history gives him, Sargon, the distinction of being the world’s first empire builder, and, as such, his personal niche in the Pantheon of history’s “firsts” is firmly established.
To be sure, everything we know about Sargon comes from the Mesopotamian folk tradition, as no contemporary documents of any kind have survived the millennia passed since his time. His imperial claim lies in overwhelming the power of Sumer, whose own annals of kings offer us no serious attempt at writing history: their first twenty-three kings of the Kish Dynasty are only mentioned by name, each ascribed over 1,000 years of rule (24,510 years altogether) removing from them any value whatsoever both for history (in terms of even a semblance of veracity) and for legend (due to the total lack of any edifying storytelling).
Sumerians and Akkadians were two different races of people, the former were apparently non-Semitic, the latter Semitic, coexisting for some time in Mesopotamia,--- Sumer to the south, and Akkad to the north. His conquest of Sumer alone would make Sargon of Akkad the Emperor of Mesopotamia, but his actual empire is known to have stretched from Elam to the Mediterranean and up north toward Armenia, occupying the present-day territories of Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, and even parts of Turkey and Iran.
[Curiosity Note: By the multi-ethnicity criterion alone, modern Georgia might be very mistakenly called an “empire,” even following the 2008 separation of Ossetia and Abkhazia, but only at first, superficial glance. Georgia is, at best, an accidental empire, turned into such under the auspices of the authentic old Russian, and later Soviet, Empire, largely courtesy of Stalin’s geographical generosity. Modern Georgia can make no imperial claim of her own even to the tragically suppressed and ethnically cleansed, after 2004, Moslem Adjarian Autonomy, as its continued existence as a multi-cultural entity has been entirely a product of artificial political circumstances, in other words, a freak of nature.]
Aside from such mighty, but impersonal, accomplishments, Sargon’s story contains a lot of human interest, which breathes life into his otherwise distant ghost. According to his legend, a humble gardener found him as a baby floating in a plain basket down the river. The boy was raised to be a simple gardener, in his adoptive father’s family tradition. His parents unknown, the legend suggests a virgin priestess to be his mother, thus implying that his origin could well be divine.
But the other side of the story of course points to the fact that Sargon’s meteoric rise to power was the work of his own hands. Whether in his relentless will for upward mobility he could be secretly, or not so secretly, helped by his well-placed mother, can be a subject of speculation, but the fact remains, that, like Napoleon after him, he chose the military career to break out of his humble horticultural environment, and thus set the ball of events rolling.
His prodigious military skill and political genius quickly attracted to him a host of admiring followers, and a very effective personal army of his was born, leading him to victory after victory, soon overpowering the cities of Sumer and Akkad. But his resulting domination of Mesopotamia was not enough for Sargon, and he quickly moved to capture the strategic outlying areas. His vast empire was now capable of engaging in profitable commerce, and artistic and cultural life flourished.
Stated to have ruled for fifty-six years, his empire started to shake with rebellions in the twilight years of his reign, which does not testify to his loosening his grip on power so much as to the vastness of his possessions becoming difficult to keep in check by one man. It did not altogether crumble, however, either in his time or in the time of his successors. In fact, it lasted for nearly two hundred years, and the long venerable tradition of the Mesopotamian civilization counts him as its greatest-ever ruler, and hero.
On a lighter side, the much-mourned later story of how the pristine Greek civilization got contaminated by un-Greek superstition and love for astrology, points to the translation into Greek, allegedly during the reign of Alexander the Great, of the Babylonian astrology treatise The Eye of Bel (Bel, or Baal, is by no means the name of a Babylonian deity, as is often mistakenly believed, but a general title of veneration, Lord, as applied to important gods, such as Marduk, for instance), by a certain Berossus, who was, perhaps, a charlatan, but became a famous teacher of the Greeks in the Babylonian traditions. This treatise, preserved in the famous library of Ashurbanipal, had been actually composed for none other than our hero Sargon, and apparently on his orders. Attributing his superhuman accomplishments to the care of the goddess Ishtar, known, inter alia, as the Queen of Heaven, Sargon’s special interest in the powers of astrology can be better understood.
And finally, writing my historical entries such as this, I am never motivated merely by historical interest. In each case there is a strong personal, subjective interest present. In this particular case, I am interested in the general concept of an empire, its comparative viability, its distinctive footprint in the world-historical dust, etc. It is no secret that I am subjectively interested in the character, from the earlier times to modernity, of the Russian Empire and of the American Empire. Lately, I have been fascinated by the emergence of an all-new Chinese global empire, proliferating ethnographically, via a deliberate vigorous emigration offensive, supported by China’s growing economic power, and targeting certain areas of the United States of America among its primary marks.
…Is there anybody else out there, besides these three, and how will they fare, a few decades down the road, in the sense that there may be some serious considerations and indicators that may allow us to make certain educated projections?…
Later on, I intend to post some of my thoughts in this regard, and rest assured, I will then return to the work experience (naturally, with some Monday-morning quarterbacking) of the first Empire-builder, and now our new good friend, Sargon of Akkad.
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