The Legend of Sargon of Akkad

A bust of an unknown king,
though often believed to be of
Sargon the Great of the Akkadian Empire.
(Image from Sargon of Akkad on Wikipedia).

Another text that I would share with students in Ancient or Western Civilizations is the Legend of Sargon of Akkad, and I’d have them do a compare and contrast with the Birth of Moses in Genesis. 

Sargon reigned from 2334 to 2284 BCE, and was called Sargon the Great in large part because he created the first empire. It’s believed that Sargon was a commoner who rose through the ranks to become the Cupbearer of Lugalzagesi, the ruler of the Sumerian city state Umma. Even though Lugalzagesi had conquered other city states, he failed to create a cohesive union. Indeed, for centuries, the Sumerian city states had a tradition of defeating one another in battle, receiving concessions from the loser, and then releasing control of the defeated. Each of the city states prized its own independence and lacked the ability to retain control of other city states, largely because each city state was largely devoted to agrarian production and religious devotion of the local deity.

As Cupbearer, Sargon was Lugalzagesi’s best military lieutenant and most trusted advisor. However, Sargon overthrew Lugalzagesi and used Umma’s resources to conquer the other Sumerian states. In order to retain a large cohesive state, Sargon made several innovations that became the hallmark of latter Mesopotamian empires, including:

• establish a standing army,
• place garrisons near trouble points for quick reaction,
• have messengers carry information between him and his garrisons so that he knew what was happening in distant places,
• rotate governors and generals so that nobody could build a following to contest his authority.

The success of his empire lies not just in the fact that he reigned for 55 years but also in that his son and grandson were able to succeed him.

Despite his ability to conquer and retain control of the region, Sargon’s authority was contested by critics, and some of his responses to these criticisms can be found in “The Legend of Sargon of Akkad.” The text addresses how his parents were commoners (most translations say that Sargon’s mother was a priestess, while this one uses the term “changeling”), not members of the elite. In fact, he emphasizes that he was raised by a man who took care of the canals and not by his own parents. The association with religious deities is also important in these texts.

While I spent a lot of time helping my students understand the necessary infrastructure needed to organize people at different sizes of scale (city state versus kingdom/empire), I also wanted them to see how many stories used to shore up criticisms of legitimacy were reused by other peoples largely because those stories are effective. If a narrative works, it will be someone else will rewrite it with a different protagonist simply because the narrative is effective. It also means that we can’t trust many of these origin stories, because they are political stories meant to shape popular opinion and not to state facts about a person’s life. 

Amazingly, the students always seemed to take the similarities between the story of Sargon’s and Moses’ birth in stride. What they always—and I mean always—asked about was the phrase “black-headed peoples.” I have to admit that I still don’t know enough to say anything other than this was a term that the Sumerians used for themselves. Offhand, I’d argue that the Sumerians had at some point been in proximity with a group of peoples with brown or blond hair, and their hair color was the most striking differentiation. 

To a person, the students wondered if this was an expression of racial difference, but I did my best to explain that racial terms weren’t used until the late 1400s/early 1500s. Although people tried to differentiate themselves from other groups in Antiquity, it was never along what we call “race.” Even though people in Antiquity noted differences in skin tone or color between peoples, this factor was never used to separate groups. Other matters, such as language spoken or kingdom of origin were much more important as dividing lines in Antiquity. Even in Ancient Egypt, the peoples of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms were represented with varying skin colors depending upon where they lived along the Nile. Despite that representation in tombs, the peoples of Egypt were considered one people for the very reason that they were all Egyptians. Within the kingdom, people were divided by status and roles.

Within Sumerian and Akkadian culture, the primary division was between the Sumerians and a Semitic people that immigrated to the city states and integrated into the Sumerian culture. In many cases, the integration of these peoples in the ancient texts is marked not by either peoples’ appearances but by the introduction of Semitic words into Sumerian texts and the eventual rise of people with Semitic names within Sumerian politics, society, religion, and culture. While there might have been some conflict between the Sumerians and the Semitic peoples, I have yet to see any indications of it in primary or secondary sources.

https://www.ancient.eu/article/746/the-legend-of-sargon-of-akkad/