Sargon of Akkad (; ; died 2279 BC), also known as Sargon the Great,also "Sargon the Elder", and in older literature Shargani-shar-ali and Shargina-Sharrukin. Gaston Maspero (ed. A. H. Sayce, trans. M. L. McClure), History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria (1906?), p. 90. was the first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, known for his conquests of the Sumerian city-states in the 24th to 23rd centuries BC.The date of the reign of Sargon is highly uncertain, depending entirely on the (conflicting) regnal years given in the various copies of the Sumerian King List, specifically the uncertain duration of the Gutian dynasty. The added regnal years of the Sargonic and the Gutian dynasties have to be subtracted from the accession of Ur-Nammu of the Third Dynasty of Ur, which is variously dated to either 2047 BC (Short Chronology) or 2112 BC (Middle Chronology). An accession date of Sargon of 2334 BC assumes: (1) a Sargonic dynasty of 180 years (fall of Akkad 2154 BC), (2) a Gutian interregnum of 42 years and (3) the Middle Chronology accession year of Ur-Nammu (2112 BC). He is sometimes identified as the first person in recorded history to rule over an empire.
He was the founder of the "Sargonic" or "Old Akkadian" dynasty, which ruled for about a century after his death until the Gutian conquest of Sumer.Van de Mieroop, Marc. A History of the Ancient Near East: ca. 3000–323 BC. Blackwell, 2006, . p. 63. The Sumerian King List makes him the cup-bearer to King Ur-Zababa of Kish before becoming king himself.
His empire, which he ruled from his archaeologically as-yet-unidentified capital, Akkad, is thought to have included most of Mesopotamia and parts of the Levant, Hurrian and Elamite territory.
Sargon appears as a legendary figure in Neo-Assyrian literature of the 8th to 7th centuries BC. Tablets with fragments of a Sargon Birth Legend were found in the Library of Ashurbanipal.
Name
The Akkadian name is normalized as either Šarru-ukīn or Šarru-kēn. The name's cuneiform spelling is variously LUGAL-ú-kin, šar-ru-gen6, šar-ru-ki-in, šar-ru-um-ki-in. In Old Babylonian tablets relating the legends of Sargon, his name is transcribed as (Šar-ru-um-ki-in).Cooper, Jerrold S. and Wolfgang Heimpel, "The Sumerian Sargon Legend", Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 103, no. 1, pp. 67–82, January–March 1983 In Late Assyrian references, the name is mostly spelled as LUGAL-GI.NA or LUGAL-GIN, i.e. identical to the name of the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II. The spelling Sargon is derived from the single mention of the name (in reference to Sargon II) in the Hebrew Bible, as , in Isaiah 20:1.
The first element in the name is šarru, the Akkadian (East Semitic) for "king" (cf. Hebrew śar ). The second element is derived either from the verb kânu "to confirm, establish" (cognate to Hebrew kūn ),Strong's Concordance H3559 "to be erect (i.e. stand perpendicular); hence (causatively) to set up, in a great variety of applications, whether literal (establish, fix, prepare, apply), or figurative (appoint, render sure, proper or prosperous)" or from the related adjective kēnu "authentic, legitimate".
A possible interpretation of the reading Šarru-ukīn is "the king has established (stability)" or "he [the god] has established the king". Such a name would however be unusual; other names in -ukīn always include both a subject and an object, as in Šamaš-šuma-ukīn "Shamash has established an heir". There is some debate over whether the name was an adopted regnal name or a birth name.Lewis 1984: 277–292Sallaberger & Westenholz 1999: 34 The reading Šarru-kēn has been interpreted adjectivally, as "the king is established; legitimate", expanded as a phrase šarrum ki(e)num.Peter Panitschek , Lugal - šarru - βασιλεύς (2008), p. 51.
The terms "Pre-Sargonic" and "Post-Sargonic" were used in Assyriology based on the chronologies of Nabonidus before the historical existence of Sargon of Akkad was confirmed. The form Šarru-ukīn was known from the Assyrian Sargon Legend discovered in 1867 in Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh. A contemporary reference to Sargon thought to have been found on the cylinder seal of Ibni-sharru, a high-ranking official serving under Sargon. Joachim Menant published a description of this seal in 1877, reading the king's name as Shegani-shar-lukh, and did not yet identify it with "Sargon the Elder" (who was identified with the Old Assyrian king Sargon I).Louis de Clercq, Catalogue méthodique et raisonné. Antiquités assyriennes, cylindres orientaux, cachets, briques, bronzes, bas-reliefs, etc., vol. I, Cylindres orientaux, avec la collaboration de Joachim Menant, E. Leroux, Paris, 1888, no. 46. In 1883, the British Museum acquired the "mace-head of Shar-Gani-sharri", a votive gift deposited at the temple of Shamash in Sippar. This "Shar-Gani" was identified with the Sargon of Agade of Assyrian legend.Leonard William King, A History of Sumer and Akkad (1910), 216–218. The identification of "Shar-Gani-sharri" with Sargon was recognised as mistaken in the 1910s. Shar-Gani-sharri (Shar-Kali-Sharri) is, in fact, Sargon's great-grandson, the successor of Naram-Sin."But it is now evident that Sharganisharri was 'not confused with Shargani or Sargon' in the 'tradition' (p. 133), but only by the moderns who insisted on connecting the Sharganisharri of contemporary documents with the Sargon of the Legend" D. D. Luckenbill, Review of: The Civilization of Babylonia and Assyria by Morris Jastrow, Jr., The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures Vol. 33, No. 3 (Apr. 1917), pp. 252–254.
It is not entirely clear whether the Neo-Assyrian king Sargon II was directly named for Sargon of Akkad, as there is some uncertainty whether his name should be rendered Šarru-ukīn or as Šarru-kēn(u).References to Sargon II are mostly spelled logographically, as LUGAL-GI.NA or LUGAL-GIN, but occasional phonetic spelling in ''ú-kin appears to support the form Šarru-ukīn over Šarru-kēn(u) (based on a single spelling in -ke-e-nu found in Khorsabad). The name of the Old Assyrian king Sargon I is spelled as LUGAL-ke-en or LUGAL-ki-in in king lists. In addition to the Biblical form (סרגון), the Hebrew spelling סרגן has been found in an inscription in Khorsabad, suggesting that the name in the Neo-Assyrian period might have been pronounced Sar(ru)gīn, the voicing representing a regular development in Neo-Assyrian. (Frahm 2005)
Chronology
Primary sources pertaining to Sargon are sparse; the main near-contemporary reference is that in the various versions of the Sumerian King List. Here, Sargon is mentioned as the son of a gardener, former cup-bearer of Ur-Zababa of Kish. He usurped the kingship from Lugal-zage-si of Uruk and took it to his own city of Akkad. The later (early 2nd millennium BC) Weidner chronicle has Sargon ruling directly after Ur-Zababa and does not mention Lugal-zage-si.Drews, Robert. “Sargon, Cyrus and Mesopotamian Folk History.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 33, no. 4, 1974, pp. 387–93 Various copies of the king list give the duration of his reign as either 40 or 54–56 years.266–296: "In Agade, Sargon, whose father was a gardener, the cupbearer of Ur-Zababa, became king, the king of Agade, {who built Agade} {L1+N1: under whom Agade was built}; he ruled for {WB:56; L1+N1: 55; TL: 54} years. Rīmuš, the son of Sargon, ruled for {WB: 9} {IB: 7, L1+N1: 15} years. Man-ištiššu, the older brother of Rīmuš, the son of Sargon, ruled for {WB: 15} {L1+N1: 7} years. Narām-Suen, the son of Man-ištiššu, ruled for {L1+N1, P3+BT14: 56} years. Šar-kali-šarrī, the son of Narām-Suen, ruled for {L1+N1, Su+Su4: 25; P3+BT14: 24} years. {P3+BT14: 157 are the years of the dynasty of Sargon.}" mss. are referred to by the sigla used by Vincente 1995. Electronic Text Corpus of the Sumerian Language Only a few contemporary inscriptions relating to Sargon exist, though there are a number of Old Babylonian period texts that purport to be copies of earlier inscriptions of Sargon.
In absolute years, his reign would correspond to c. 2334–2279 BC in the middle chronology. His successors until the Gutian conquest of Sumer are also known as the "Sargonic Dynasty" and their rule as the "Sargonic Period" of Mesopotamian history. Mari A. Gough, "Historical Perception in the Sargonic Literary Tradition: the Implications of Copied Texts", Rosetta 1, pp. 1-9, 2006
Foster (1982) argued that the reading of 55 years as the duration of Sargon's reign was, in fact, a corruption of an original interpretation of 37 years. An older version of the king list gives Sargon's reign as lasting for 40 years.Rebecca Hasselbach, Sargonic Akkadian: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts (2005), p. 5 (fn 28).
Thorkild Jacobsen marked the clause about Sargon's father being a gardener as a lacuna, indicating his uncertainty about its meaning.Jacobsen 1939: 111
The claim that Sargon was the original founder of Akkad has been called into question with the discovery of an inscription mentioning the place and dated to the first year of Enshakushanna, who almost certainly preceded him. Van de Mieroop, Marc., "Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History", Routledge, 1999 The Weidner Chronicle (ABC 19:51) states that it was Sargon who "built Babylon in front of Akkad".Grayson 1975: 19:51 The Chronicle of Early Kings (ABC 20:18–19) likewise states that late in his reign, Sargon "dug up the soil of the pit of Babylon, and made a counterpart of Babylon next to Agade".Grayson 1975: 20:18–19 Van de Mieroop suggested that those two chronicles may refer to the much later Assyrian king, Sargon II of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, rather than to Sargon of Akkad.Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale
Year names While various copies of the Sumerian king list and later Babylonian chronicles credit Sargon with a reign length ranging from 34 to 56 years, dated documents have been found for only four different year-names of his actual reign. The names of these four years describe his campaigns against Elam, Mari, Simurrum, and Uru'a/Arawa (in western Elam).Year Names of Sargon of Akkad
Historiography Many inscriptions relating to Sargon’s reign are known. Some are contemporary though others date to later periods.
Nippur inscription
Among the most important sources for Sargon's reign is a tablet, in two fragments, of the Old Babylonian period recovered at Nippur in the University of Pennsylvania expedition in the 1890s. The tablet is a copy of the inscriptions on the pedestal of a statue erected by Sargon in the temple of Enlil. Fragment one (CBS 13972) was edited by Arno Poebel and fragment two (Ni 3200) by Leon Legrain.L. Legrain, "Royal Inscriptions and Fragments from Nippur and Babylon", Philadelphia, 1926 A. Poebel,"Historical Texts" Philadelphia, 1914 A. Poebel, "Historical and Grammatical Texts", Philadelphia, 1914
Conquest of Sumer In the inscription, Sargon styles himself "Sargon, king of Akkad, overseer (mashkim) of Inanna, king of Kish, anointed (guda) of Anu, king of the land [Mesopotamia], governor (ensi) of Enlil".
It celebrates the conquest of Uruk and the defeat of Lugalzagesi, whom Sargon brought "in a collar to the gate of Enlil":Mario Liverani, "The Ancient Near East: History", Routledge (2013), p. 143Kramer 1963 p. 324
Sargon then conquered Ur and E-Ninmar and "laid waste" the territory from Lagash to the sea, and from there went on to conquer and destroy Umma:
Conquest of Upper Mesopotamia, as far as the Mediterranean Sea