dense and life active in the plains of the Lower
Euphrates. The cities in this region formed at their origin so many
individual and, for the most part, petty states, whose kings and patron
gods claimed to be independent of all the neighbouring kings and gods:
one city, one god, one lord--this was the rule here as in the ancient
feudal districts from which the nomes of Egypt arose. The strongest
of these principalities imposed its laws upon the weakest: formed into
unions of two or three under a single ruler, they came to constitute a
dozen kingdoms of almost equal strength on the banks of the Euphrates.
On the north we are acquainted with those of Agade, Babylon, Kuta,
Kharsag-Kalama, and that of Kishu, which comprised a part of Mesopotamia
and possibly the distant fortress of Harran: petty as these States were,
their rulers attempted to conceal their weakness by assuming such titles
as "Kings of the Four Houses of the World," "Kings of the Universe,"
"Kings of Shumir and Akkad." Northern Babylonia seems to have possessed
a supremacy amongst them. We are probably wise in not giving too much
credit to the fragmentary tablet which assigns to it a dynasty of
kings, of which we have no confirmatory information from other
sources--Amilgula, Shamashnazir, Amilsin, and several others: this list,
however, places among these phantom rulers one individual at least,
Shargina-Sharrukin, who has left us material evidences of his existence.
This Sargon the Elder, whose complete name is Shargani-shar-ali, was
the son of a certain Ittibel, who does not appear to have been king.
At first his possessions were confined to the city of Agade and some
undetermined portions of the environs of Babylon, but he soon succeeded
in annexing Babylon itself, Sippara, Kishu, Uruk, Kuta, and Nipur: the
contemporary records attest his conquest of Elam, Guti, and even of the
far-off land of Syria, which was already known to him under the name of
Amuru. His activity as a builder was in no way behind his warlike zeal.
He built Ekur, the sanctuary of Bel in Nipur, and the great temple
Eulbar in Agade, in honour of Anunit, the goddess presiding over the
morning star. He erected in Babylon a palace which afterwards became a
royal burying-place. He founded a new capital, a city which he peopled
with families brought from Kishu and Babylon: for a long time after his
day it bore the name which he bestowed upon it, Dur-Sharrukin. This
sums up all the positive know