The Legend of Sargon of Akkad
The Legend of Sargon of Akkad (c. 2300 BCE) is an Akkadian work from Mesopotamia understood as the autobiography of Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great, r. 2334-2279 BCE), founder of the Akkadian Empire. The earliest copy is dated to the 7th century BCE and was found in the ruins of the Library of Ashurbanipal in the 19th century.
The text, most likely composed c. 2300 BCE, and also known as The Birth Legend of Sargon, describes the king's humble origins and rise to power with the help of the goddess Ishtar and concludes with a challenge to future kings to go where he has gone and do as he has done. Sargon was the founder of the first multinational empire in the world whose reign became legendary, inspiring many tales about him, but very little is known of his life apart from works such as The Legend of Sargon of Akkad and the literary piece Sargon and Ur-Zababa.
Both pieces today are sometimes classified as belonging to the genre of Mesopotamian naru literature – the world's first historical fiction – in which a famous figure, usually a king, is featured as the main character in a fictional work. This genre appeared around the 2nd millennium BCE and was quite popular, as evidenced by the number of copies found of naru works.
The purpose of naru literature was not to deceive an audience but to impress upon them some important religious or cultural value. In the case of The Legend of Sargon of Akkad, however, the naru genre seems to have been used to establish Sargon as a 'man of the people' who, beginning life as an orphan with nothing, forged his own destiny and established an empire.
The Legend & Naru Literature
Sargon of Akkad was keenly aware of his times and the people he would rule over. He seems to have understood, early on, that the common people resented the nobility and, while he was clearly a brilliant military leader, it was the story he told of his youth and rise to power that exerted a powerful influence over the Sumerians he sought to conquer.
Instead of representing himself as a man chosen by the gods to rule, he presented a more modest image of himself as an orphan set adrift in life who was taken in by a kind gardener and granted the love of the goddess Inanna/Ishtar. According to The Legend of Sargon of Akkad, he was born the illegitimate son of a "changeling", which could refer to a temple priestess of Ishtar (whose clergy were androgynous) and never knew his father.
His mother could not reveal her pregnancy or keep the child, and so she placed him in a basket which she then set adrift on the Euphrates River. She had sealed the basket with tar, and the water carried him safely to where he was later found by a man named Akki, a gardener for Ur-Zababa, the king of the Sumerian city of Kish. In creating this legend, Sargon carefully distanced himself from the kings of the past (who claimed divine right) and aligned himself with the common people of the region rather than the ruling elite.
The Legend, as noted, is considered by some scholars today as belonging to the genre of Mesopotamian naru literature, but it is unknown whether it would have been understood that way in its time. Scholar O. R. Gurney defines the genre and its origin:
A naru was an engraved stele, on which a king would record the events of his reign; the characteristic features of such an inscription are a formal self-introduction of the writer by his name and titles, a narrative in the first person, and an epilogue usually consisting of curses upon any person who might in the future deface the monument and blessings upon those who should honour it. The so-called "naru literature" consists of a small group of apocryphal naru-inscriptions, composed probably in the early second millennium B.C., but in the name of famous kings of a bygone age. A well-known example is the Legend of Sargon of Akkad. In these works, the form of the naru is retained, but the matter is legendary or even fictitious. (93)
The extant copy, made long after Sargon's death, conveys the story Sargon would have presented regarding his birth, upbringing, and reign. Naru pieces such as The Legend of Cutha or The Curse of Agade use a well-known historical figure (in both these cases Naram-Sin, Sargon's grandson) to make a point concerning the proper relationship between a human being (especially a king) and the gods. Other naru literature, such as The Great Revolt and The Legend of Sargon of Akkad, tell a tale of a great king's military victory or origin. In Sargon's case, it would have been to his benefit, as an aspiring conqueror and empire builder, to claim for himself a humble birth and modest upbringing.
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