Part III
Chapter 9

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.1 The Empire as a Heterogenous Aggregation

The concept of empire must be understood in the light of two factors:

1. the realignment of the structural elements of the nuclear territorial state;
2. the phenomenon of homogenous aggregation (cf. Chapter 8.7.3).

In this dynamics, through a process of hegemonic aggregation and the development of the concepts of capital city and provinces, the empire started emerging.

In a nutshell, the imperial experiment tried to integrate wholly diverse elements into a single reality; this heterogeneity of components is specifically what defines the empire, besides the geographical vastness of the territory (see Map 8).

To maintain an empire, two factors are involved:

1. imperial identity;
2. internal cohesion.

These two components requires that the empire elaborates new practical systems and new ideologies.

“While in the primordial territorial state it is the people that in a certain sense need the state, both on the nuclear level (6.5) and the expanded level (7.3), here it is the state that imposes a political and cultural configuration from without. The empire is therefore the height of institutional development: the political dimension from on high takes the upper hand and shapes basic reality, adapting it for its own goals” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 122).

And, once more, this is the result of a para-perceptual capacity of aggregating and integrating people in a “totalitarian” dimension.

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.2 Development Dynamics and Enduring Factors

In the couple of millennia discussed in Part II, the city was the center of the political development of the nuclear territorial state which prevented the possibility of both territorial and institutional expansion.

Around 2300 BC, impulses beyond the territorial base (Chapter 8) are triggered, leading to a fast acceleration of the empire developmental phases: “The historical analysis is based on the examination of this concatenation of elements that are suitable to being optimized in their structural components. And what happened in the political development of Mesopotamia can be justly seen as a classic case of analysis of the longue durée type” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 123).

Besides these developmental dynamics, there are also two underlying constants:

1. the central role of the “axle” of power, able to keep a constant control;
2. the permanent effort to re-equilibrate the relationship between institutions and individuals.

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.3 The Titles of the Kings of Akkad

The rapidity and the suddenness of transformation leading to the transition to the empire are evident in the few year that occurred to the first king of the new dynasty of Akkad, Sargon (Sharrum-kīn in Akkadian, meaning “the king is legitimate/stable”)^{Note 1} to establish the first empire (the empire of Akkad).

A new city, not yet archaeologically discovered (even if sometimes it is wrongly considered as a suburb or district of Kish), appeared on the stage; this is the first time that a new capital is introduced as the result of a specific political act, as a new concept, that of capital city (cf. Chapter 8.7.3) marking a new central point of reference.

A particular deity was also chosen as the protector of the dynasty, Ishtar (becoming a dynastic deity), who was not associated with a specific city, being a simbolic gesture of political unification transcending the dimansion of local pantheons.

The royal titularity of Sargon gives explicit evidence of his political awareness with a well-balanced sequence of epithets:

There are several important implications in this titularity:

1. name of Akkad in the first position affirms the break with tradition, as it happens with the role of Ishtar as new patron deity of the city;
2. Kish is the state immediately preceding that of Akkad, to whose royal court Sargon originally belonged; the mention of Anum, the supreme god of the Sumerian pantheon, is an indicator of a larger territorial power;
3. the term kalam is used (the Sumerian for “land”); it had been used by his predecessors in a supra-urban sense and was now connected with Enlil, the god of Nippur, the reference city for the Kengir league.

After Sargon, his sons took the power and, later, a grandson, Naram-Sin became king; his name reconnects him to the city of Ur, of which Sin was the principal deity, where Sargon had established his daughter Enheduanna as a priestess (for a famous hymn left by her, cf. below, 9.6).

“Naram-Sin applied the divine qualification to himself, in a way that as such constitutes a unicum in Mesopotamian history […] and provided reasons for the historiographic tradition of Mesopotamia to stamp him as responsible for a hubris that could explain the coming ruin of the dynasty” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 125).

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.4 Media Awareness

The reification of first thought and then words (with the introduction of language and writing, for which cf. Chapters 1.6 and 4, respectively) made possible the manipulation of both. And eventually, writing became the media instrument that we know as propaganda, already attested in royal inscriptions before Sargon; nevertheless, was Sargon that reached the apex in this “art”.

This is evident in two fundamental changes in the scribal system:

1. Akkadian took over Sumerian as the language of the administration;
2. a marked change of the graphic form was introduced, through which a true cuneiform calligraphy reached the level of true artistic expression.

The entire Mesopotamian area was affected by these changes, from Gasur (Nuzi in the later periods) in the North to Lagash in the South.

“The royal inscriptions now reach the pinnacle of formalization” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 126); the mixture of text and iconography contributing to the transmission of the royal ideology, since royal inscriptions were visible to the people, “so that the text (indecipherable to the majority) acquired the subliminal value of verification at the very moment that it could not be understood” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 126) [on this topic cf. also Mes-Lit].

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.5 The Institutionalization of Conflict

The exclusivity of war as the only topic of communication in the royal inscriptions tells us how conflict is now institutionalized and defines the very essence of the empire as a new conception of a state which is based on a strategy and ideology of conquest which requires a permanent military organization leading to an endemic situation of war.

A symbolic feature of the determination to subject the conquered territories can be seen in the systematic destruction of citadel walls which represent an act of social and political identity, imposing a compulsory integration in the imperial system. Military activities are the result of a well planned and articulated project.

Furthermore permanent garrisons were established in the urban centers, intended to ensure the respect of the central authority: the best example is Nagar (cf. Chapter 6.10.6), where Naram-Sin erected a massive structure for the local garrison in order to prevent revolts which frequency is intrinsic in such a system, being them necessarily expected to be able to consistently validate the mechanisms of power; against these revolts, repression was brutal, as we can read in the royal inscription where, even if considering exaggerations, we are told of thousands of deaths.

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.6 The Administrative System

Parallel to the military presence there is an administrative presence that was just as pervasive and systematic, as it is clear from the administrative texts which are very similar in different centers of the empire, prototypical of what we could label as an “administrative mind”.

Awareness of the heterogeneity of the empire is evidenced by the fact that Akkadian administrators came to be installed in important administrative positions, as is attested by many seals and brief dedicatory inscriptions even left by members of the royal family, as in the case of Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon and priestess of Nanna/Sin at Ur (cf. above, 9.3), who wrote in the first person a hymn about a local revolt against Sargon (see Helle 2023 Enheduana and the companion website Enheduana): in the composition, the princess invokes both Inanna/Ishtar, the patron goddess of the dynasty of Akkad, and Sin, the local god; this is a manifestation of her role as a representative of imperial power.

In a royal inscription, Sargon stated that “5400 men eat daily in his presence”; three notes can be drawn:

1. the huge number of people who are indicated as direct dependents of the sovereign;
2. the concept of “eating in the presence” indicates a direct relationship between the king and his dependents;
3. the fact that this was included in a royal inscription indicates that there was an explicit consciousness of the importance of this type of relationship.

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.7 The Artistic Vision

[On this topic cf. also Mes-Art].

Akkadian art and iconography has a special place in ancient Mesopotamian artistic tradition, revealing not just a brilliant creative and innovative capacity in the artists, but also an explicit will from the clients, who should clearly be identified with the king himself and his court.

“It is as if the imperial syndrome had galvanized the entire society and contributed to forge a new and profoundly different total vision of the world. Here, too, we note how this extended to the entire geographical area of the empire and was therefore not an isolated phenomenon restricted to the court. In other words, this was a capillary and systematic diffusion” (Buccellati, Origins, p. 129).

Furthermore, a clue of general uniformity of material culture can be envisaged in the new shape of mudbricks, squared (and not flat and convex as in the Sumerian tradition) and with similar dimensions in various sites, a typology that started being used in northern centers like Mari and Ebla.

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.8 The International Horizon

The institutionalization of conflict (above, 9.5) is specifically an “imperialistic” conflict: it was not for defending the central nucleus but in the perception that it could not be confined to other empires or potential empires.

Here, the ideological support is symptomatic: Sargon declared he “wash his weapons in the upper and the lower sea”, i.e. the Mediterranean and the Gulf. The sea was the limit of the inhabited world, of the ecumene, and therefore the acceptable limit to the empire.

The concept of “imperial peace” is based on reaching the extreme limit of the territory; in fact, long-distance conflict reached the Iranian highlands, to the Est; Oman and the Gulf (Magan), to the South; the Mediterranean plains (with Ebla), to the West; to the North, the Anatolian plateau was not yet reached.

Curiously, Urkesh remained not interested by conflict with the empire of Akkad; instead, the local king married Tar’am-Agade, a daughter of Naram-Sin (cf. Section 12.3)^{Note 2}. Another dynastic marriage also took place with Elam, previously affected by conflicts. In any case, in the imperial mindset alliances are not acceptable.

Nonetheless, military expansion was in the end disastrous; not only because military campaign implies problems in the provision of natural resources, but also because the very fabric of the empire, not able to keep a long lasting control over all the conquered lands, was at risk and this will be the essential cause of its collapse (cf. Chapter 12.3). In this light, matrimonial politics was therefore little more than an escape that acknowledged, but did not solve, the problem.

Commerce and trade were other important trends toward internationalism but also ideological components; e.g. Sargon claimed ships from Magan and Meluhha reached his harbor. A new scenario and an alternative formula to the empire was starting, i.e. that of an equilibrium based on equal contacts among great powers, a phenomenon ultimately ending in the “cosmopolitan” period of the second half of the second millennium BC, more specifically the Late Bronze Age, ca. 1500-1200 BC (cf. Part V).

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

9.9 Ethnic Affiliation

The main feature of the empire, i.e. the heterogenous aggregation (see above, 9.1), refers also to another decisive historical development: ethnic identity.

This concept implies a dichotomy between the historical and the historiographic dimension: in fact, we use ethnical labels in our (historiographic) narrative but we avoid thinking of them as referring to an actual (historical) reality.

A clear definition of ethical identity (valid both historically and historiographically) must necessarily include seven aspects:

1. The group must be numerically extended, beyond the level of face-to-face association;
2. it must be structurally cohesive, especially on the basis of a long-term sense of identity.
3. The resulting sense of identity is not connected to a given territory, except as an ideal point of origin;
4. the sense of identity is rather based on an awareness of agnatic belonging to a single root and strain (real or fictitious),
5. as well as on the sharing of certain cultural traits that acquire a semiotic value by serving as distinctive signs of the group (chiefly language).
6. The ethnic group is recognized as definable by a single given name,
7. but it remains independent from mechanisms of organization (therefore without complex hierarchies and administrative structures). [Buccellati, Origins, p. 131]

Defined according to these criteria, an ethnic group can be seen as a “tensional” factor alternative to the urban one, having a strong bond of solidarity and very deep roots. And this type of ethnic identity emerges particularly in the case of the empire, as intrinsecally disassociated from organizing mechanisms.

The political expansion of the previous periods was substantially the result of what we can call a “Sumerian” aggregation trend which possibly included into its fabric even other pre-Sumerian populations; nonetheless, the true state revolution is a specifically Sumerian phenomenon.

In any case, Sargon was part of an ethnic group, the Akkadians, who set in motion the first imperial experiment; within this dynamics, the Amorites developed their own identity (cf. Chapter 16.8).

The case of Ebla is less clear, since there the language (the Eblaite) was in fact very close to the Akkadian of Sargon, but the material culture was different.

As regards the Hurrians and the Elamites, the imperial project adopted an approach not of conquest, but of dynastic alliance (cf. above, 9.8).

Back to top: Part III Chapter 9

Notes

• Note 1: the form “Sargon” comes from the Bible (Hebrew סַֽרְגֹ֖ון), where the name of Sargon II (721-705 BC), successor of Shalmaneser V (727–722 BC), is found just once in Isa 20:1. _{Back to text}
• Note 2: Tar’am-Agade is attested at Urkesh as wife of the local king; see sealing AFc1 (for a complete bibliography, see the “Urkesh electronic Library”). _{Back to text}