Sargon of Akkad: Founder of the World's First Empire

Sargon of Akkad was a Mesopotamian king who, around 2334 BC, began building the first large multi-ethnic state in recorded history. Starting as a court official in the city of Kish, he defeated the most powerful ruler in Sumer, conquered the city-states of southern Iraq and sent armies to Syria, Anatolia’s borders and Iran. The Akkadian Empire he founded lasted for about 180 years and became the model of kingship for every later Mesopotamian ruler.

Mesopotamia before Sargon

In the mid-third millennium BC, southern Mesopotamia was divided among rival city-states such as Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Umma and Kish. Each had its own patron god, temple households and ruler, and they fought frequently over land and water. The long border war between Lagash and Umma, commemorated on the Stele of the Vultures, is a well-documented example.

The population of the region spoke two very different languages. In the far south most people spoke Sumerian, a language with no known relatives. Further north, around Kish, many spoke Akkadian, a Semitic language related to later Hebrew and Arabic. Both were written in cuneiform, the wedge-shaped script pressed into clay.

Shortly before Sargon’s rise, Lugalzagesi, ruler of Umma and later Uruk, had defeated Lagash and claimed authority over much of Sumer. His inscriptions boast that he ruled from the Lower Sea (the Persian Gulf) to the Upper Sea (the Mediterranean). It was this ruler that Sargon had to overcome.

From cupbearer to king

Almost nothing certain is known about Sargon’s early life. His name, Šarru-kīn in Akkadian, means “the king is legitimate” or “the true king”, which many historians read as a throne name chosen by a man with no royal birth to boast of.

The Sumerian King List, a later compilation of royal dynasties, says that Sargon’s father was a gardener and that Sargon served as cupbearer to Ur-Zababa, king of Kish. A cupbearer was a trusted senior courtier, not a mere servant. A Sumerian legend known from later copies adds that Ur-Zababa, warned in a dream, tried to have Sargon killed, and sent him to Lugalzagesi with a letter requesting his death.

The best-known story is the Sargon Birth Legend, preserved on tablets of the 7th century BC. In it, Sargon’s mother, a priestess, bears him in secret and sets him adrift on the Euphrates in a basket of rushes sealed with bitumen. He is found by Aqqi, a water-drawer, raised as a gardener, and loved by the goddess Ishtar, who makes him king. The tale was composed long after Sargon’s death and should be read as legend, not history.

However he came to power, Sargon established a new capital at Akkad, or Agade. The city’s ruins have never been found, although texts make clear that it lay in central Mesopotamia, probably not far from modern Baghdad.

The conquest of Sumer

Sargon’s own inscriptions survive mainly as copies made by scribes at Nippur in the Old Babylonian period, several centuries later, who transcribed statues and monuments then standing in the temple of the god Enlil. These copies give a vivid, if one-sided, account of his campaigns.

According to these texts, Sargon defeated Lugalzagesi and the fifty city rulers allied with him, captured Uruk and tore down its walls. He brought Lugalzagesi in a neck-stock to the gate of Enlil’s temple at Nippur, the religious centre of Sumer. He then conquered Ur, Lagash and Umma, and claimed to have washed his weapons in the sea, a symbolic statement that all of Sumer down to the Persian Gulf was his.

The inscriptions say Sargon won 34 battles. Instead of leaving the defeated cities under their old dynasties, he appointed governors, often described as “citizens of Akkad”, and pulled down city walls that might shelter revolt.

Campaigns beyond Mesopotamia

Sargon then turned outward. His inscriptions describe how he prostrated himself before the god Dagan at Tuttul on the middle Euphrates, and how Dagan gave him the “Upper Land”: Mari, Yarmuti, Ebla and as far as the Cedar Forest and the Silver Mountains. These are usually identified with the Amanus and Taurus ranges on the borders of modern Syria and Turkey.

To the east he fought Elam and the neighbouring land of Barahshum in south-western Iran, and texts record booty taken from Susa and Awan. Later tradition credited him with even more distant campaigns, including one into central Anatolia to protect merchants, but these stories survive only in literary texts written long after his death.

Sargon’s inscriptions also boast that ships from Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun moored at the quay of Akkad. Meluhha is generally identified with the Indus Valley, Magan with Oman and Dilmun with Bahrain. Whether or not the claim is exaggerated, it shows that Akkad sat at the centre of long-distance trade routes.

How the empire worked

Sargon’s achievement was not only military. To hold a large and varied territory, he and his successors created new institutions:

• Governors and garrisons. Loyal Akkadians were installed as governors (in Sumerian, ensi) in the conquered cities, backed by troops. One inscription claims that 5,400 men ate daily before the king, a sign of a large standing force supported from the palace.
• A royal administration. Akkadian, written in cuneiform, became the main language of government alongside Sumerian. Scribes used standardised formats for records and the empire is associated with a common system of weights and measures.
• Land and tribute. The crown took over large estates, which were granted to officials and soldiers, while the provinces sent tribute to Akkad.
• Religious control. Sargon appointed his daughter Enheduanna as high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur, binding the most important Sumerian cult to the dynasty. She is remembered today as the earliest author known by name.

Royal art changed too. Fragments of a victory stele of Sargon, later carried off to Susa and now in the Louvre, show rows of soldiers and bound captives, and later Akkadian sculpture became famous for its naturalism.

Successors and the fate of the empire

Sargon is traditionally said to have ruled for about 55 or 56 years. Under the widely used middle chronology, his reign is placed at c. 2334–2279 BC, though some scholars prefer dates a few decades earlier or later. Late in life, according to later chronicles, he faced a general revolt.

His sons Rimush and Manishtushu each had to crush uprisings in Sumer and fight in Iran. His grandson Naram-Sin, who reigned about 37 years, pushed the empire to its greatest extent, took the title “king of the four quarters” and was declared a god in his own lifetime, as recorded on monuments such as his famous victory stele.

After Naram-Sin, Akkadian power declined. Under his son Shar-kali-sharri the empire lost ground to the Gutians from the Zagros mountains, to Elam and to Amorite groups from the west. By about 2154 BC Akkadian kings ruled little more than their capital. Climate change around 2200 BC may also have played a role; the collapse of the Akkadian Empire is still debated by historians.

Legend and memory

Sargon’s fame outlived his empire by two thousand years. Old Babylonian scribes copied his inscriptions, and literary works such as “The King of Battle” told of his heroic campaigns. Omen texts cited events from his reign as examples, and later chronicles summarised his deeds.

Later kings deliberately borrowed his image. When an Assyrian usurper took the throne in 722 BC, he adopted the name Sargon (Sargon II), and the Babylonian king Nabonidus in the 6th century BC searched for and restored monuments of the Akkadian kings. The Birth Legend itself may have been composed or popularised in Sargon II’s time.

Modern visitors often meet Sargon through a life-size bronze head found at Nineveh in 1931. It is a masterpiece of Akkadian metalwork, but it carries no inscription, and scholars disagree whether it portrays Sargon, Naram-Sin or another ruler.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Sargon was found as a baby floating in a basket. The basket story is a later legend. The Sumerian King List does say his father was a gardener, but this too was written down long after his time.
• Myth: Sargon created the first state. Cities such as Uruk had been organised states for many centuries. Sargon’s innovation was to rule many such states, and their different peoples, from a single capital.
• Fact: his capital is still lost. Despite thousands of texts naming Akkad, archaeologists have not located it, which is why so much of Sargon’s history depends on copies of inscriptions rather than excavated palaces.

Timeline

• c. 2340 BC: Lugalzagesi of Umma and Uruk dominates much of Sumer.
• c. 2334 BC: Sargon comes to power and founds his capital at Akkad (middle chronology).
• c. 2330s–2320s BC: Sargon defeats Lugalzagesi and conquers Uruk, Ur, Lagash and Umma.
• Later in his reign: Campaigns to Mari and Ebla in Syria and to Elam in south-western Iran.
• c. 2279 BC: Death of Sargon; his son Rimush succeeds him.
• c. 2254–2218 BC: Reign of Naram-Sin, the empire’s high point.
• c. 2154 BC: End of effective Akkadian rule amid Gutian incursions.
• 722 BC: An Assyrian king takes the throne name Sargon (Sargon II).
• 1931: A bronze head often identified as Sargon or Naram-Sin is found at Nineveh.

Why it matters

Sargon showed that a single ruler could govern many cities and peoples through appointed officials, a professional army and a shared administrative language. Every later Mesopotamian empire, from Ur and Babylon to Assyria, looked back to Akkad as its model, and the idea of universal kingship that he pioneered shaped the politics of the ancient Near East for two millennia.