Sargon of Akkad

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That's El CaminoHealth.org slash CHIGuide. is one of the earliest recognisable names from history, a warlord who lived more than 4,000 years ago and forged what some have argued was the world's first empire.
He was a king who became revered by later generations in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area of modern-day Iraq, with his story becoming mythologized with great legends for almost every aspect of his life. And yet, the real story of Sargon of Akkad remains steeped in mystery down to the present day.
It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's episode, where we're exploring the story of Sargon of Akkad, the founder and first ruler of the Akkadian Empire back in the 3rd millennium BC.
To talk through his life and the evidence we have surviving for him, I was delighted to interview a good friend of mine and an esteemed Assyriologist who has been on the podcast several times over the past few years, covering everything from the Sumerians to Uruk to Nineveh. I am of course talking about Dr.
Paul Collins, assistant keeper of later Mesopotamia in the Department of Middle East at the British Museum. My producer Joseph and I, we headed to Paul's office at the British Museum just before Christmas to record this episode, and I really do hope you enjoy.
Paul, welcome back.

It is always a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you very much.
Thrilled to be back. And we're doing it once again in your lovely office in the British Museum.
And Sargon of Akkad, this feels like one of the first big names we have from written history. Well, it is a big name and it's a big name in antiquity that was certainly considered.
He was considered to be someone very special in ancient Mesopotamia itself. And in a way, his legacy continues.
The rediscovery of Sargon through the texts and some monuments have transported him into sort of superstar status in this period as well. Just get a bit of a superstar status and we'll kind of explore that, especially when we get to the sources very quickly.
But I mean, first of all, context, how far back are we going with

the story of Sargon? So Sargon can be dated to the second half of the third millennium BC.

So approximately 2,330.

So over 4,000 years ago.

From the surviving archaeology, can we date it quite precisely when he's about in that millennium? Yes, we can date him based on king lists to approximately 2,330 BC, thereabouts. And whereabouts are we talking with Sargon's story? I mean, the whole region of Mesopotamia, it feels such a vast region.
So Mesopotamia, of course, is modern day Iraq, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates River. And Sargon's power base was in the centre of Mesopotamia, effectively, where the modern capital of Iraq, Baghdad, is located.
That's where he has his origins.

And this is geographically, so with those two rivers there, I'm guessing very fertile lands, you know, kind of known as part of that fertile crescent, early farming and so on. This feels, it's an ideal place where you see these extraordinary early civilisations from thousands of years ago, and then these extraordinary figures emerging too, like Sargon.
So Sargon belongs to a period when the vast alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia, southern Iraq, immensely fertile region, crisscrossed by rivers, and then modern canals, as it were, dug to increase that fertility. Sargon is king in a period when that region is divided between city-states.
So this huge area split up between capital cities and surrounding villages and towns dominated by individual kings. So you've got a fragmented political world.
That's interesting. So population-wise, do we think the majority of the population would be in those great cities or are they spread around the countryside and those cities, they're just the nodes of power almost? The cities clearly become the main place for residence, I think, in the third millennium BC.
So the first great cities in the world emerging a thousand years earlier, the fourth millennium BC, in southern Mesopotamia. And urbanisation, living in cities, becomes the main way in which people live their lives.
These are cities like we've actually covered in a previous episode with you. These are cities like the fabled Uruk, aren't they? Uruk, Ur, yes, famous names.
So these are some of the world's earliest urban centres. That's extraordinary.
Before we delve more into that world that Sargon is born into, I'd like to take a step back and ask about the source material that we have. For learning about this figure, this ruler, from some 4,000 years ago, what types of sources does an Assyriologist like yourself have to learn more about this figure and the world he's living in? Sargon is known to us, really, from very, very fragmentary evidence from early on.
So from his own time, there are a few inscriptions, a few clay documents inscribed in cuneiform and the wedge-shaped writing of Mesopotamia. That's the writing, the cuneiform, isn't it? That's the writing, the script, so written on clay tablets.
And we have a few references to Sgon from his own time. There are also a few stone monuments, carved sculptures dating to the time of Sargon, a few of which are inscribed with his name.
But they really tell us very little about the man himself and his achievements. So what we're really reliant on are later texts, texts that claim to be copies of inscriptions on monuments that simply no longer survive, or increasingly fables and tales, myths and legends about this man.
And our challenge is to tease out historical information from these later accounts because that's so interesting it's that's also the case you get sometimes let's say with arthurian legends later emerged like romances of the achievement so it sounds like with sargon's something similar later they create these you say the great myths these extraordinary feats that feel unbelievable that surround this figure, and then looking at those later accounts, but also seeing, like, is there a basis of truth, at least for some of the information that survives? That's it. I mean, the challenge is, of course, working out in between all those exciting adventures what reflects reality a thousand or more years earlier? And in regards to that archaeology, not as much from his own time.
So is it, as you say, inscriptions, are they a key source of information for people to have figured out that this figure of Sargon, he's not just this legendary person, that there was actually a ruler called Sargon? Well, we certainly know there was a ruler called Sargon. As I say, we have documents which are economic in nature.
They're records of transactions, and many of them are dated by a so-called year name, a classic way in which Mesopotamian rulers determined the change of time. So each year was given a name based on a spectacular event that had happened either the year before or earlier in the year in question.
And it tells us a lot about what they thought was important in terms of events. And very often it's about conquests, it's about building, it's about great achievements of individual kings.
So someone like Sargon, does he name certain years after certain military conquests or something like that? Is that what he does? Completely. And that becomes the standard way in which Mesopotamian kings order their world, order time, up until around 1500 BC and then some new.
So let's move on from the source material and go back to the world of Sargon. So do we know much about his background or his rise to power and what the Mesopotamian world looks like as he is rising to prominence? So teasing out from these very different types of sources, we get a sense that Sargon emerges in this world of city-states.
And the most important city-state, it seems, in the middle of the third millennium BC, is the city of Kish. Located quite close to the modern city of Baghdad in the northern half of this rich alluvial plain of Mesopotamia, Kish had come to dominate large areas, it seems, of the region.
And Sargon, so the texts seem to imply, emerges out of this important political centre and establishes his own base. However he does it, he gathers together followers in sufficient numbers that he can rival the king of Kish in power and establish his own authority.
And it is from that authority he marches out and conquers the other city-states of southern Mesopotamia. That's interesting.
So for his own power base, it seems he's almost a usurper. So he's not an original prince of Kish or anything like that.
He gathers support. And as I said, presumably it's unclear, but seems to overthrow the ruler of Kish and becomes the leader potentially of that city.
Well, it's thought that he probably was a commoner in the sense that he's not a member of the royal family, although it's very hard to be certain about that. It's very difficult to be certain that he wasn't in some way related to a royal family.
He, however, adopts the throne name on coming to power of Sharo Kain, what we describe as Sargon. And that means the king is established or the king is legitimate, which suggests that perhaps he wasn't.
Yes, it's more kind of affirming his status, isn't it? And he's now come to power, but presumably if he's got these ambitions of expansion with his soldiers, who are the other big players in the region? Surely they're not going to be lying down when this happens. No, so the king of Kish, of course, is a primary source of power in the north of the alluvial plain of Mesopotamia.
But to the south are the great cities of Ur and principally Uruk. And it is those cities that represent, as it were, the opposition to Sargon's authority over the entire region.
And earlier on, a powerful ruler of Uruk called Lugalzagesi had gone out with his own armies and conquered neighbouring city-states. So you end up with this picture of the alluvial plain divided between two great powers, Kish, or with Sargon, in the north of the region, and then Lugalzagesi and his power base to the south, the old heartland of Sumer.
And it is when Sargon defeats Lugalzagesi that he can claim to be the supreme ruler over the entire alluvial plain. And it's the first time politically that the region is unified.
Well, because it seems almost a bit of a silly question from me, but of course, was the first empire builder sometimes get associated with Sargon. Had there been much of that there before the time of Sargon and the king of Uruk who he faces? There certainly had been lots of conflict.
So city-states were often in conflict with each other. Battles over access to water, over access to trade routes, over access to farmland.
So this was a common feature, it seems, as far as the evidence we have suggests. But no one had managed to conquer the entire region before.
So that vast plains across southern Mesopotamia brought together politically for the first time. And how does Sargon react to this achievement of defeating Lugazegesil and uniting the plain in one political entity.
But he doesn't stop there. That's what's remarkable, is that he marches both north, up the river Euphrates to places like Mari in modern-day Syria, another major city, trading centre, but also a powerful political centre.
And he marches south to the Persian Gulf, where he conquers, so he tells us, the region of Elam in southwest Iran. Again, a very powerful state, wealthy access to metals and stones.
Quite how far his claims to conquest actually were, we of course don't know. And it may well be that his armies are simply controlling the trade routes and access to them.
But nonetheless, he becomes immensely wealthy and his power reaches right the way across much of the Middle East. And does he boast of his military achievements much? Like in the surviving archaeology, do we see him as the victorious king, like over and almost towering above his defeated enemies? So that's a vision of kingship, which of course later compilers of accounts in Mesopotamia imagined.
They saw Sargon emerging as this great conquering hero. Whether he was as powerful as later stories would tell us is unclear, but certainly his inscriptions point to widespread conquests, but also widespread then rebellions that followed.
Well, we'll get to that in a second. I must also ask, I mean, you've mentioned how he gathers this large army, this powerful army.
I said we don't know the extent, but it certainly seems that he had a sizable army with him for the conquest that he did do. Do we know much about the army itself? We have some images of the soldiers of Sargon.
They are shown with battle axes over their shoulders, marching in regiments with Sagan leading the way.

One very fragmentary steely, now in the Louvre museums, inscribed with the name of Sagan, shows the king leading his forces. He's marching forward, dressed in typical Sumerian fashion and protected by a parasol or umbrella, marking him out as a major ruler and his soldiers marching behind him.
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Forgive my ignorance, but this is a time when bronze working has been discovered. So is it bronze weapons or is it still stone? Do we know much about that? Oh, bronze had been in use for tools and weapons for many hundreds of years by the time Sargon comes to the throne.
But certainly prestige weapons in metal were being used by his soldiers.

Okay, so how far and wide? I know it's debated and it's unclear, but at least for boasts of Sargon that emerge, how far do his conquests supposedly stretch? If one interprets his own inscriptions as copied by later scribes in Mesopotamia, then they reach north as far as modern-day Syria and south down the Persian Gulf. Because I see words like upper sea to lower sea.
Is that in reference to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf? They would certainly later describe these two areas, the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, as the two ends, as it were, of any Mesopotamian empire worth its existence. And Sargon is credited very often with establishing that as a model that future kings should follow.
Whether he actually achieved it himself, of course, is debatable. And Paul, this all feels, you know, regardless of the extent of his conquests,

this all feels unprecedented to the extent that he's undertaken, that he's achieved so far.

But if it is unprecedented, and you hinted at it earlier, is it also quite unstable?

He's conquered these lands, but is it very quick before rebellions break out?

That is true. I mean, the whole story of Sargon is one of sort of origins.

I think that's what happens. but is it very quick before rebellions break out? That is true.
I mean, the whole story of Sargon is one of origins. He begins it all.
He's the individual who establishes a dynasty that does conquer much of Mesopotamia. And he does so, of course, from his own power base, which is also new, establishing his own capital city of Agade.
Oh, Kish goes out the windows. Kish is sidelined in favour of a new royal centre.
We call it either Agade or Akkad, hence Sagan of Akkad. And that becomes the base from which he then marches out and conquers the region.
So that is all new. And he tells us in his own inscriptions that he had at least 5,000 men eating before him on a daily basis.
So this is perhaps an indication of some sort of standing army. And yes, that power is then a threat, of course, to other city-states.
They're conquered, but they never actually disappear. And lying behind the Agade Empire is always the city-state structure with dynasties attempting to rival and return to their authority.
so do we know much about saga and if he's got these troublesome families in other city-states? How does he go about deciding to consolidate his control, his rule over this empire that he has created? It seems as if Sargon establishes his control by using the old city-state structure. So some rulers are left in place as long as they submit to his authority, and that authority is one based on force.
The empire is held together by brute strength. Later, his successors will introduce new forms to hold the empire together, new forms of administration, weights and measures, standardisation, and the introduction of, increasingly, texts written not in Sumerian, the traditional royal language of inscriptions in Mesopotamia, but in the language that he's speaking, a Semitic language, which we call Akkadian after his capital.
And is that a game changer for the time, kind of changing, I guess it's not the lingua franca, is it, but making that the main language of his empire? You know, these are all things you see later on with empires established and then making a new language, the main administrative language of an empire. But of course, is this the first time this is done? So this also feels really significant if he's also just implanting on these other places, right, the main bureaucratic figures, you've now got to learn this language and do writing this way kind of thing.
I think the challenge again, as always, is finding ways in which we can understand how much this was a novelty with Sargon, or actually a development of the empire under his successors. And certainly he succeeded by two of his sons, Rimush and Manishtushu.

And under those rulers, you start to get consolidation and centralisation of the empire much, much more effectively. And the development of some of the most incredible art from the ancient Near East, a court art of incredible refinement.
But that comes later. Well, we'll get to that in a moment, but let's then keep on Sargon for a bit and not jump the gun.
My apologies there for kick-starting that. But I'd like to ask a bit more about Sargon's new capital, Akkad or Agade.
I mean, do we know much about this new capital? We know really, very little about Agadé. It was clearly a magnificent place.

It is referenced in later inscriptions by later Mesopotamian kings, but we have no idea exactly where it is. It's never been located archaeologically.
It's likely that it lies under a suburb or indeed under the centre of modern-day Baghdad.

And so as a result, it may never be discovered.

But if it is, then it will no doubt have some of the most magnificent palaces and temples to have survived. This is a bit of a tangent, but I still think it's very interesting.
For myself, Paul, coming into Mesopotamia from the outside, originally I would have heard names like Nineveh, Babylon, maybe Susa as well. But you've mentioned names like Kish, Lagash, Uruk.
I didn't realise just the sheer quantity of extraordinary cities that there were in ancient Mesopotamia. And is Agade, is it an anomaly? Do archaeologists know where most of the cities mentioned from Mesopotamia are today? Or are there still quite a lot of cities that we don't know where they are quite yet in Iraq? We know where most of the great cities were located.
Many of them have had excavations. So we can actually know from spades in the ground, literally, that these cities existed, and they weren't just described in text.
But there are certainly many cities, names recorded in political, economic documents, which have yet to be located. Economically, with Sargon's new empire, you mentioned earlier, you've got the Euphrates River, the Tigris River, and he's covering a huge amount of land and fertile land as well.
What are the economic benefits that brings Sargon? Does his new empire quickly become very rich? We imagine he was immensely rich because, of course, he was controlling not just the rich agricultural land now brought together under his control, which could be taxed centrally. And so the whole system is based on siphoning off from each of the old city-states an element of taxation to the centre, again, part of the centralising policy.
But of course, the conquests also allow him to dominate the rivers and the roads. And that means that those exotic materials, which Mesopotamia doesn't have, like metal and stone, can also be funnelled towards the centre.
So again, Agade may well have been the most extraordinary place with this great wealth pouring in. And this is shipping like copper in and stuff from the Mediterranean.
But I guess maybe also the Great Steppe as well, are these all kind of areas or lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, should we be imagining? You know, that is the extent of trade that Sargon and his empire has, is that they have these great connections far beyond the empire's supposed borders. Yes and of course trade had been a major factor in Mesopotamian civilisation for hundreds of years before that, those trade routes.
Copper actually coming at this time from up the gulf, some places like Oman and Iran. That was the main source and And Sargon, in his own inscription, tells us that he had the boats of Magan, Dilmun, and Meluja dock at the quays of Agadeh.
And that refers to Bahrain, the island that we know today, of course. Magan was the shoreline of Iran, and Malukha, the Indus Valley civilisation.
So all the way across the Indian Sea, boats would have brought resources like carnelian, lapis lazuli, but of course also copper to Agadeh, and it's to his capital that he brings them. I'd like to ask now about some of the figures surrounding Sargon and his administration.
And first of all, before we focus on particular figures, given the administration and recording all the stuff and controlling an empire, how important are scribes for Sargon and for the running of his empire in his court, let's say?

Every city-state was dependent on scribes, and scribes at all levels of society, from your basic accountant who had a little bit of skill in writing to manage estates privately. but at the state level, scribes were fundamental in recording and managing the flow of goods, people, resources in and out.
And what other types of professions, what other people would have been very close to Sargon in his court, let's say at Agade? I mean, do we know much about the other, the job roles that were available and that were important in an early Mesopotamian empire like Sargon's? You had administrators, of course, of the palace and the treasury, but the other key part of any Mesopotamian city were the temples. And the temples, of course, were the homes of the gods, and it was the gods who supported the kings.
And so you devoted huge resources into constructing their homes, but also, of course, furnishing them and offering them gifts. So much of the wealth that was coming into places like Agade would have been deposited in the temple.
You achieved the support of your gods and therefore you could achieve even greater conquests and stability. But the gods and their worship were key.
So members of the royal family would have been closely associated with the temple complexes. Do we know which gods he worshipped? So we know that Ishtar, the goddess of battle and sexuality, was one of the most important goddesses for the Agade dynasty.
And she's constantly referenced as a source of power and authority. So you see in the inscriptions, once again, understandably that close connection between the rulers and the gods.
Is there a sense of him portraying himself as a god-king or his successors portraying themselves as god-kings or is that a step too far?

Sargon doesn't appear to present himself in any other way other than a typical, what we describe as an early dynastic king, a king like those of other city-states. It's just that he extends his control over a much broader area.
His successors, however, in the dynasty that follows him, do gradually acquire more divine-like characteristics. And it's his grandson, Naram-Sin, who ultimately is given the title of divine ruler.

Not a god per se, he's not elevated to a god everywhere,

but in his city, in Agadeh, a temple is built for him where he is worshipped as a god.

And therefore you have this sense of them achieving the ultimate authority. Over time, almost as their dynasty has been more consolidated perhaps.
Big question now, Paul. A funny question.
I think we might be going back to his successors too with this as well. But do we have any idea what Sargon looks like? No idea what Sargon looks like.
There wasn't in Mesopotamia the idea of portraiture based on physical characteristics. So most of the monuments that we have depict the ideal kingship.
For example, one of the most magnificent monuments from antiquity is a cast bronze head of what was certainly a life-size statue. Very recognisable.
We got it on the front cover of a book right in front of us. It's one of the most magnificent pieces of art to have survived from antiquity and expresses the power of an Agade king, probably not over Sargon because the style suggests it belongs to the reign of one of his successors, either his son Manishtushu or his grandson Naramseen.
It is a beautiful piece, isn't it? But what strikes me the most is the whole creation. It's bronze statues, it's made out of bronze.
It's the whole creation of the beard and the various kind of little flicks in the beard, very pointed beard as well. It conveys a very striking image.
Very striking, and that is the point. It expresses the power of an Agade king rather than an individual.
It was designed to last for all eternity. And in fact, it was such a powerful and important image that it was then targeted for attack.
So when the Agade Empire fell, it was probably at that point mutilated. Its ears were cut off, its eyes gouged out, its nose flattened by a hammer.
And therefore, the power of this Agade king, hearing, sight and smell were removed. And you the power of these great kings.
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Sign up now at lemonade.com slash amazing now one other key figure which we haven't covered yet but very close to sargon which i'd like to talk about which is introducing his daughter and i think a lovely way to bring this in would be if we could now, first of all, focus on a particular artefact I know you know a lot about, and contemporary to the time of Sargon. Please forgive me if I get the pronunciation wrong.
Kytushtu's seal. What is this? Perfectly pronounced.
You have the impression made by a cylinder seal, so a carved cylinder of stone, which had belonged to one of Sargon's daughter's officials. This impression in clay has a depiction of a deity, of a god, but also part of a cuneiform inscription which records part of that official's name.
This indicates that the inscription tells us that they were an official in the employ of Sargon's daughter, Enheduana. Enheduana is perhaps one of the most famous females from ancient Mesopotamia.
She was appointed as the high priestess of the moon god of the city at Ur. So Sargon appointed his daughter in Heduanna as the high priestess of the moon god at Ur, stressing again the importance of temples as part of the ways in which these kings controlled their territory.
Now, Heduanna had staff, we know from contemporary inscriptions and impressions of seals, including hairdresser and her own personal scribe. And she devoted her time at Ur to ruling that city on behalf of her father.
She's incredibly important to Sargon in the whole ruling of the empire. We have a lot of source material surviving for her.
Perhaps, could you say, more contemporary evidence for Enidwana compared to her father? I would say about the same. About the same, okay.
So we have a very famous little sculpture, a disc carved in relief with an image which almost certainly depicts Enheduanna in a ritual making a libation before what was certainly a seated figure. It's very badly damaged.
The disc is now in the University Museum, Pennsylvania. But the inscription on the back names Enheduanna as the wife of the god Nana, the moon god, and really situates her as this really important individual in this major political centre.
Enheduanna, however, like Sagan, much of what we know about Enheduanna comes from later inscriptions, and there are tales and hymns and prayers which are attributed to Enheduanna, and they may well have been composed by her, but almost certainly were not, and were composed at a later period and then credited to this important, powerful woman of the third millennium.

So she, just like Sagan, gets these extra tales and legends added to them over time.

So it is not just Sagan. It's almost like a family tale.

The story of these figures from the distant past. They get this legendary afterlife that just adds more to their story as the hundreds of years go on.
The Agade dynasty as a whole have become incredibly famous. And as a result, tales and myths and legends are added to them.

Well, if we go to, if we end Sargon's particular story and then go on what happens afterwards, but I mean, do we know much about either the length of his rule or what happens to him at the end of his life, how he dies, how it all ends for Sargon of Akkad? Later texts, Sumerian so-called king lists, list Sagan in the sequence of dynasties that were said to have ruled all of Mesopotamia. And they credit Sagan with a length of reign of about 55 years.
Now, it's very difficult to know how reliable those figures are, and it may well be that he ruled for much shorter. But it gives us a sense again of the importance placed on Sargon as a founding figure in the creation of this unified political world.
And you mentioned earlier how after his conquests there are rebellions from these particular prominent families of other city-states. By the end of his rule, I mean, from the surviving archaeology, can we tell how stable an empire he left for his sons and his successors? We have a sense that the empire was never that stable.
So he certainly passed his achievements to his successors, two sons, Rimush and Manishtushu in sequence, and then ultimately to his grandson, Naram-Sin. But under each of those rulers, there was an attempt to conquer further, but rebellions were always lurking behind the scenes.
And under Naram-Sin, perhaps the greatest of these Agade rulers who conquered even further into Syria, as far as the mountains of Lebanon and down the Persian Gulf to Arabia, a great rebellion occurred, according to the inscriptions, under which the city-state structure once again emerged to try and rival that unified political structure. You know, because I'd heard the name Sargon before, but I'd never heard the name Naram-seem.
But it's interesting. So is it almost by that point, is that the zenith of the Akkadian dynasty, the grandson of Sargon, almost like following Genghis Khan, you have a few of the Khans following him that almost extend the empire further before it rescinds again.
Does it seem that actually with the Akkadians, with Sargon's dynasty, it's not with him at the start that it's at its greatest extent, it's actually with his grandson Naramseemin. If you're interested in conquests and extent of control, then it is certainly under Naram-Sin that it reaches its highest point.

But later legends credit the collapse of the Agade Empire to Naram-Sin. So it's seen as

reaching its greatest extent, but is also, in a way, hubris takes it too far.

And Naramseen is cursed by the gods and the empire collapses. And of course, I mean, as you kind of hinted at there, it's not all about military conquests and all of that with this empire.
with Sargon having established this empire and the generations that follow

with the capital at Agade

culturally how big of a shift is this period marked by? Let's say in regards to art styles and things like that, how much of a change can you see in the archaeology when we get to this period of Sargon and post-Sargon? Artistically, it's one of the high points of Mesopotamian civilization. I mean, extraordinary works of art are produced under this centralized regime.
And that has a legacy that lives on. So when the Agade Empire collapses, the Mesopotamian world fragments once again back to a city-state structure.
But kings now attempt to emulate the achievements of the Agade kings. So they become a model that later kings pursue, and that produces new kingdoms and finally empires.
And so in the first millennium BC, when the Assyrian Empire is dominating the region from Egypt to Iran, a king takes the throne name of Sargon, emulation of this early third millennium ruler. What would you think is almost the most significant part of Sargon's legacy? Is it the fact that later rulers see him as a role model for those who want military conquest and want to build an empire? Or is it that wider idea of that artistic change and that great age of art that this period introduces? Or something else? I think the art is very specific to the Agadé period.
I mean, it impacts later time, but new traditions emerge, new styles emerge. But certainly that idea of a centralised, single political centre, which dominates the region with administrative, strong, centralised control, taxation, those are the messages that are carried into the future and future kings want to emulate.
Does he deserve the title? Is it like the world's first known empire builder? That always depends how you define empire and many people will say the first true empire in Mesopotamia doesn't appear until the Assyrian conquests of the first millennium BC when there is strong centralised control, but with provincial governors. Sargon and his dynasty never quite achieve that.
It's held together by brute force. And as a result, when the Agade Empire collapses, brute force is taken out on their monuments.
That's probably why so few of them survive. And what happens with the legacy of Sargon? So, of course, important in Mesopotamia for hundreds, thousands of years.
Outside of Mesopotamia, does his legacy endure, let's say, when the Greeks take over that part of the world? The Greeks and the Romans. Do we know much about Sargon's later

history as the centuries and millennia go on? So unlike many other Assyrian kings, unlike many other Mesopotamian kings, Sargon's name doesn't reverberate down through time and was really only rediscovered in the 19th century with the excavations at places like Nineveh, where tablets, cuneiform tablets, recorded some of this early history or the myths associated with the Agade dynasty. And then in the 19th century, scholars began to identify Sargon as a key figure that marked a transition in Mesopotamian history.
Do you think there will be more archaeology uncovered, particularly about Sargon, or let's say discovered in an archive of a museum somewhere, more cuneiform tablets that will mention his name? Do you think it's only a matter of time before more information comes to light about this figure? Almost certainly we'll be finding more material about Sargon, contemporary evidence from excavations in Mesopotamia itself, in Iraq. There are excavations happening at the moment that are in third millennium levels.
So at any moment, it's possible a tablet will be found, which will provide additional illumination to this extraordinary period. Well, Paul, this has been absolutely brilliant.
And we're talking talking about an actual figure we're not talking about the pyramids or Stonehenge this is an actual ruler and seems very you know important in the whole story of Mesopotamia. Are there any key messages you would like us to take away from this chat today? I would say go and find translations of these incredible stories about Sargon because they are some of the most impressive creations from the ancient world of Mesopotamia.
Paul, thank you so much as always. Well, there you go.
There was Dr. Paul Collins returning to the podcast to talk through the life and legacy of Sargon of Akkad.
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