THE CLIMATE OF MAN--II.(Babylon)

The world's first empire was established forty-three hundred years ago, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The details of its founding, by Sargon of Akkad, have come down to us in a form somewhere between history and myth. Sargon--Sharru-kin, in the language of Akkadian--means "true king"; almost certainly, though, he was a usurper. As a baby, Sargon was said to have been discovered, Moses-like, floating in a basket. Later, he became cupbearer to the ruler of Kish, one of ancient Babylonia's most powerful cities. Sargon dreamed that his master, Ur-Zababa, was about to be drowned by the goddess Inanna in a river of blood. Hearing about the dream, Ur-Zababa decided to have Sargon eliminated. How this plan failed is unknown; no text relating the end of the story has ever been found.

Until Sargon's reign, Babylonian cities like Kish, and also Ur and Uruk and Umma, functioned as independent city-states. Sometimes they formed brief alliances--cuneiform tablets attest to strategic marriages celebrated and diplomatic gifts exchanged--but mostly they seem to have been at war with one another. Sargon first subdued Babylonia's fractious cities, then went on to conquer, or at least sack, lands like Elam, in present-day Iran. He presided over his empire from the city of Akkad, the ruins of which are believed to lie south of Baghdad. It was written that "daily five thousand four hundred men ate at his presence," meaning, presumably, that he maintained a huge standing army. Eventually, Akkadian hegemony extended as far as the Khabur plains, in northeastern Syria, an area prized for its grain production. Sargon came to be known as "king of the world"; later, one of his descendants enlarged this title to "king of the four corners of the universe."

Akkadian rule was highly centralized, and in this way anticipated the administrative logic of empires to come. The Akkadians levied taxes, then used the proceeds to support a vast network of local bureaucrats. They introduced standardized weights and measures--the gur equalled roughly three hundred litres--and imposed a uniform dating system, under which each year was assigned the name of a major event that had recently occurred: for instance, "the year that Sargon destroyed the city of Mari." Such was the level of systematization that even the shape and the layout of accounting tablets were imperially prescribed. Akkad's wealth was reflected in, among other things, its art work, the refinement and naturalism of which were unprecedented.

Sargon ruled, supposedly, for fifty-six years. He was succeeded by his two sons, who reigned for a total of twenty-four years, and then by a grandson, Naram-sin, who declared himself a god. Naram-sin was, in turn, succeeded by his son. Then, suddenly, Akkad collapsed. During one three-year period, four men each, briefly, claimed the throne. "Who was king? Who was not king?" the register known as the Sumerian King List asks, in what may be the first recorded instance of political irony.

The lamentation "The Curse of Akkad" was written within a century of the empire's fall. It attributes Akkad's demise to an outrage against the gods. Angered by a pair of inauspicious oracles, Naram-sin plunders the temple of Enlil, the god of wind and storms, who, in retaliation, decides to destroy both him and his people:

For the first time since cities were built and founded,, The great agricultural tracts produced no grain,, The inundated tracts produced no fish, , The irrigated orchards produced neither syrup nor wine,, The gathered clouds did not rain, the masgurum did not grow., At that time, one shekel's worth of oil was only one-half quart,, One shekel's worth of grain was only one-half quart. . . ., These sold at such prices in the markets of all the cities!, He who slept on the roof, died on the roof,, He who slept in the house, had no burial,, People were flailing at themselves from hunger.

For many years, the events described in "The Curse of Akkad" were thought, like the details of Sargon's birth, to be purely fictional.