Origins of Great Ancient Civilizations | Mesopotamian Kings and Scribes (Lecture 3)

Lecture 3: The Sumerians, although united in language and culture, were divided politically. City-states clashed over border lands and trade routes and battled Akkadians to the north and Elamites to the east. In this era of warring states (c. 3000–2350 B.C.), ensi (dynasts) drilled armies and employed scribes. Those ensi who imposed their hegemony over rivals assumed the honorific lugal, “great man.” Lugals and ensi cloaked themselves in religious symbols, as seen in the royal burials at Ur of about 2900–2800 B.C.

Wars made the kingship but also undermined dynasties, as seen in the costly clash of Lagash under the family of Eannatum against Umma. In 2340 B.C., Sargon, king of the Akkadians, conquered Sumer and forged the first territorial empire embracing Mesopotamia. His grandson, Naram-sin, carried Akkadian arms into Anatolia. Akkadian emperors had insufficient royal servants to rule their wide-flung empire and faced the hostility of Sumerian cities. The Akkadian Empire fragmented in 2200 B.C., but Ur-nammu, king of Ur, constructed his own territorial empire a century later. Ur-nammu issued a law code and sponsored vast building programs; his son, Shulgi, developed royal administration. This Neo-Sumerian Empire, too, fragmented by 2000 B.C., but two centuries later, an Amorite prince of Babylon, Hammurabi (r. 1792–1750 B.C.), forged the third Mesopotamian Empire.

Further Reading:
Henri Frankfort et al., eds., The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancient Near East. Rev. ed.
H. W. F. Saggs, The Greatness That Was Babylon.

Lecture 4. https://www.bitchute.com/video/32xox3DDPSku/