Sargon of Akkad

Summary

Sargon is the king of Akkad, the city he built in central Mesopotamia around 2300 BCE, and the first king to bring all the cities of Sumer and Akkad under one rule. His inscriptions write his name in Akkadian šar-ru-GI, Šarru-kīn, and his daughter Enheduanna was priestess of Nanna at Ur.

Sargon tells his own birth in an Akkadian text copied in Ashurbanipal's library: I am Sargon, the mighty king, king of Akkad. My mother was a high priestess; my father I did not know; my father's brothers dwell in the hills; my city is Azupirānu on the bank of the Euphrates. My mother the high priestess conceived me and bore me in secret. She set me in a basket of rushes, sealed its lid with bitumen, and cast me into the river, which did not rise over me. The river carried me to Aqqi the water-drawer. Aqqi lifted me out as he dipped his bucket, reared me as his son, and made me his gardener. While I was a gardener, Ishtar loved me, and I became king. He then lists what he did as king and calls on every king after him to do as he did.

A Sumerian tale knows another side of his rise. Ur-Zababa was king of Kish, and the gods had decided to end his reign; Sargon was his cupbearer in charge of the drinks, and Inana did not leave his side. Sargon dreamed that Inana drowned Ur-Zababa in a river of blood, and when he told the dream the king was afraid and ordered him thrown into the casting mould in the E-sikil temple; Inana stood at the temple gate and said the house was holy and no one stained with blood might enter it. The king then sent him to Lugal-zage-si, king of Uruk, with a clay tablet ordering his death. The Sumerian King List says: in Akkad, Sargon, whose father was a gardener, the cupbearer of Ur-Zababa, became king, who built Akkad, and ruled fifty-six years.

In his inscription Sargon says he fought the men of Uruk, defeated them and tore down the city wall, captured Lugal-zage-si its king in battle, put him in a neck stock and led him to the gate of Enlil; he took the cities as far as the sea and washed his weapons in it, and Enlil gave him the land from the Upper Sea to the Lower Sea. He also says that he bowed down to Dagan at Tuttul, who gave him the upper land as far as the Cedar Forest.

The idea his story turns on is that a king without a lineage takes his legitimacy from somewhere other than a father. The child cast into the river with no known father, raised by a water-drawer and made a gardener, becomes king by Ishtar's love; the cupbearer whom the king wanted dead is saved by Inana; the conqueror says Enlil gave him the land and Dagan the mountains. His name rests on the same thing: it holds neither a father's name nor a god's, only a claim, "the king is firm and true". Later literature knew that such legitimacy is given and taken back: in The Cursing of Agade Enlil gives the kingship to Sargon and Inana builds the city, then leaves it in the time of his grandson Naram-Suen when he attacks Enlil's temple, and the gods curse Akkad until it falls.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Šarru-kīn is two words: šarru, king, whose final -u is the Akkadian nominative ending, leaving šarr; and kīn, from kânu, to be firm, lasting, true. The second word is of the root that gives Arabic kāna, "was", kawn, being, and takawwun, coming into being, and Hebrew kûn, to be firm and upright: one root in the three sister languages, meaning in Akkadian firm and true, and said of a legitimate son and a legitimate king. The Persian and Canaanite essays give šarru the meaning king but do not read it in Arabic. We read it, as a reading proposed on the method, as al-sariyy and al-sarāh: in Lane sariyy is a man who joins generosity to manly virtue and high rank, said to come from istaraytu al-shayʾ, "I chose the thing", and sarāh is the highest part and back of anything. On this reading the name is "the chosen noble who stands firm", which is what a man who did not know his father needed.

Linguistic Root

Forms of the name

Kīn and kāna

In the Akkadian dictionary kânu is to be permanent, firm, true, said of a house, a land, a reign and a foundation, and in the doubled stem to establish a foundation or a kingship firmly. The adjective kīnu is permanent and true, said of a legitimate son and a legitimate ruler, and in personal names it is written with the sign GI, as in Sargon's name. The consonants: k is k; the middle w of the root becomes a long ī in the adjective, as Arabic qāma gives qiyām; n is n. Lane gives kāna, the verb of being, takawwana, it came into existence, and istakāna, he humbled himself. Hebrew has kûn, to be firm, whence nākôn, firm and right. This part of the name passes all four tests: the form is attested in the king's own inscription, the letters answer without substitution, Lane has the sense of being and firmness, and the story is that of a king who needs to be told he is firm and true.

Šarru and sariyy

In the Akkadian dictionary šarru is king, of gods and men, the Great King, king of a country or a city; it is also said of the first quality of textiles, and of a beloved man. The Persian essay says that Persian šahr, city, comes from Akkadian šarru, since the city is the place of the king, and the Canaanite essay sets šarru beside malik as the Semitic word for king. Neither reads the word in Arabic. We read it, as a reading proposed on the method, as sariyy: in Lane saruwa is to have generosity with manly virtue, or manly virtue with nobility and high rank, and sariyy is the man who has it, said to come from istaraytu al-shayʾ, I chose the thing, or from sarāh, the highest part of a thing; sarāh is also the plural of sariyy. Akkadian š answers Arabic s in this project's table of sound changes. The tests: the form is attested; s and r answer; Lane gives high rank and choice, which meet the Akkadian sense "first quality"; and the story is that of a man chosen by Ishtar. The weak points are that Hebrew writes śar, prince or chief, with the letter that the usual comparative tables set against Arabic sh, and that the Akkadian r is doubled while the Arabic root ends in w.

The cupbearer and the water-drawer

Two Akkadian words in his story read letter for letter in Arabic. In the Sumerian tale Sargon is the king's cupbearer, in Akkadian šāqû, "the one who gives to drink", which is Arabic sāqin from saqā. Aqqi who lifted him out is a dālû, a water-drawer, from dalû, bucket, and Lane gives dalā al-dalwa, he drew the bucket up full from the well. The man who lifted the child out of the river did it with the bucket he was named after.

Key Mythic Narratives

Inana and Akkad

The Cursing of Agade opens with Enlil, after bringing down Kish and Uruk, giving Sargon king of Akkad the rule from the south to the highlands; Inana makes Akkad her house and sets her throne in the Ulmaš temple, fills its storehouses with gold, silver and copper, and ships come to it from Meluḫḫa, Elam and Subir, with monkeys and elephants in its squares. Then troubling news comes from Enlil's temple; Inana leaves the city and gives its weapons to the enemy, and Naram-Suen, Sargon's grandson, dreams that Enlil has doomed his kingship, gathers his troops and tears down Enlil's temple at Nippur. The gods curse Akkad: grass is to grow on its roads, its water to turn brackish, and whoever settles there to find no rest. The poem ends: "Inana be praised for the destruction of Agade!" The city built by Inana's love for Sargon falls when Inana leaves it.

The letter that carries death

The Sumerian tale sends Sargon to Lugal-zage-si with a letter ordering his death, and remarks that putting tablets into clay envelopes did not yet exist, so the messenger carries his own sentence in his hand. The text breaks off after Lugal-zage-si reads it; what remains says that Sargon does not yield. In Sargon's inscription it is Lugal-zage-si who is led captive to Enlil's gate.

Symbolic Reading

Sargon's story joins water, planting and drink. The river carries him in a basket, the water-drawer lifts him out with his bucket and makes him a gardener, then he becomes the king's cupbearer, then a king loved by Ishtar. The man who comes to rule the whole plain passes through every task of its water, from the river to the orchard to the cup. The King List makes his father a gardener, so in both versions the orchard is the place of the child without a lineage. In both, the king takes his name from firmness and choice, not from blood, which is what the page on the exposed child follows in other peoples' stories.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In Rome Amulius orders Romulus and his brother Remus thrown into the Tiber; the servants leave the basket in the floodwater, a she-wolf suckles them and a herdsman raises them, and Romulus later kills the king and builds a city. Both stories have the basket, the river and the poor foster father, and the child returns to rule.

In Iran Zal is left on Mount Alborz because his hair is white; the Simurgh rears him in her nest, and he returns to his father and becomes prince of Sistan.

In Japan Izanagi and Izanami put their first child Hiruko in a reed boat and leave him to the water, and Aston's note to the Nihongi recalls the Akkadian legend of Sargon and his ark of rushes, and Moses as an infant, at this point. The stories part in that Hiruko does not return in the Kojiki.

In the Hebrew Bible the mother of Moses puts her son in a papyrus basket daubed with bitumen and pitch and sets it among the reeds at the river's edge, and Pharaoh's daughter draws him out and has him raised.