Sargon of Akkad

Sargon’s Rise to Power 

Image adapted from Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2021, Map 2.1, at p. 69)  

My additions: text in red and blue 

As Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2021, at p. 44) observed, the creation of the so-called Akkadian or Sargonic Empire by Sargon of Akkad (= Agade or Akkade):

1. “... was a completely novel experiment in the use of political power.”
   

Not least among the novel features of this ‘empire’ were the facts that:

1. ✴the political power in question was passed down by dynastic succession, over a period of about a century, from Sargon to his great grandson, Shar-kali-sharri; and
   

2. ✴at the height of their power, the dynastic kings of Akkad controlled the vast territory marked out in the map above.
   

Nevertheless (as the sharp-eyed will have noticed) Sargon’s capital is marked on the map as ‘Akkade ?’, since no archeological remains of this much-documented city have ever been found. 

Victory stele of Sargon from Susa (now in the Musée du Louvre, Sb. 1) 

Image from museum website: asterisk marks the figure of Sargon, identified by inscription

Furthermore, only two (fragmentary) royal inscriptions of Sargon survive in their original state: 

1. ✴an inscription (RIME 2: 1: 1: 10, P461936) on the reverse of a victory stele from Susa (which might not have been its original location, now in the Musée du Louvre, Sb. 1, illustrated above) names ‘Sargon, the king ....’; and
   

2. ✴a fragmentary inscription (RIME 2: 1: 1: 4, P217324) on a mace head from Ur (now in the Penn Museum: CBS 14396), which describes a now-unnamed king as the ‘conqueror of Uruk and U[r]’, can probably be assigned to Sargon on the basis of an Old Babylonian copy (RIME 2: 1: 1: 5, P461930) from Nippur that records ‘Sargon, king of Akkad, conqueror of Uruk [and Ur].
   

Apart from these two rather uninformative inscriptions, the earliest surviving reference to Sargon is on the earliest known recension of the so-called Sumerian King List, which dates to the reign of the ‘Ur III’ king Shulgi (hereafter the USKL, transliterated at CDLI: P283804: ca. 2050 BC), which was published by Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2003 - see my page on the USKL): in this inscription, after a long lacuna, we read that:

1. “Sargon, in Akkad, [ruled for] 40 years”, (reverse col. 1, lines 6’-7’ in the CDLI transliteration).
   

Unfortunately, we do not know how Sargon was introduced in the preceding (now-lost) USKL text.  However, in the later Old Babylonian recensions of the Sumerian King List (hereafter the SKL), which were compiled after the fall of Ur during the period of the Isin kings, we read that: 

1. “Sargon, whose father was a gardener, the cupbearer of (king) Ur-Zababa, the king of Akkad, the one who built Akkad, was king [there: he] ruled for 56 years”, (SKL 266-271). 
   

I discuss the historical value of this relatively late biographical note below.

Sargon’s ‘Victory’ Inscriptions 

Douglas Frayne (referenced below, 1993, at p. 7) pointed out that, although very few of Sargon’s royal  inscriptions survive in their original form:

1. “... a sizeable number [of them are] known from later Old Babylonian tablet copies: [in particular], two large Sammeltafeln [compilations of such copies] from Nippur:
   

2. ✴one, [now] in Philadelphia (CBS 13972); [and]
   

3. ✴the other, [now] in Istanbul (Ni 3200);
   

4. contain copies of several Sargon inscriptions. ... The originals of these copies may have been inscribed on triumphal steles that once stood in the courtyard of Enlil's Ekur temple in Nippur.” 
   

He also observed (at p. 3) that:

1. “The Sargonic period marks the first time the Akkadian language was extensively used for royal inscriptions [in Sumer].  The majority of Sargon’s inscriptions are recorded in that language, [although] a minority are known in bilingual (Sumerian and Akkadian) versions, and a handful are in Sumerian alone.”
   

In the table above, I have summarised the contents of 10 of Sargon’s surviving ‘victory’ inscriptions (all of which except RIME 2.1.1.4, discussed above) are known from the Nippur Sammeltafeln: I have arranged them in the order suggested by the conquests to which they refer (in the hope that this roughly corresponds to their chronological order).  It seems to me that the events described in these inscriptions probably fit into three chronological periods:

1. ✴an early period, at around the time of Sargon’s conquest to Uruk and the rest of Sumer, when he used the title king of Akkad or king of Kish;
   

2. ✴an intermediate period, in which he conquered Elam, Mari and other territory from the Upper to the Lower Sea, when he used three titles: king of Akkad; king of Kish; and king of Sumer; and
   

3. ✴a later period, in which he consolidated his hold over Elam and extended his area of control to include Ebla to the north west and Parahshum to the south east, when he again used a single title, ‘LUGAL KISH’ (king of Kish).
   

I discuss this suggestion further in the following section, in the context of Sargon’s conquest of Kish.

Sargon’s Conquest of Kish 

Early History of Kish

Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2017, at p. 121) argued that the northern part of Mesopotamia (roughly, the Mesopotamian region north of Nippur, which included Kish): 

1. “... never developed a system of independent city-states even remotely comparable to that of the south.  On the contrary, there is convincing evidence that, during the Early Dynastic (ED) period (2900‒2350 BC), [this northern region] formed a single territorial state, which was governed by the city of Kish, [albeit that] it appears that, on some occasions, its centre of power moved to Mari in the middle Euphrates valley and Akshak in the Diyala Region.  The magnitude of the political power wielded by Kish (especially during the ED I and ED II periods) is reflected in the fact that the title of the ‘king of Kish’ eventually became a generic designation for the authoritarian and hegemonic form of kingship.”
   

This paragraph contains two hypotheses that are important for  present analysis:

1. ✴first, that, in the ED I and II periods, the rulers of the city of Kish also exercised an ‘authoritarian and hegemonic form of kingship’ over ‘a single territorial state’ in northern Mesopotamia; and
   

2. ✴secondly, that their example was long-remembered, to the extent that later rulers who exercised (or aspired to exercise) hegemony in Mesopotamia adopted the title LUGAL KISH because this would underscore their own political legitimacy.
   

Of course, if the first of these hypotheses is rejected, then the second also falls away.

Did Kish Exercise Hegemony in Northern Mesopotamia in the 3rd Millennium BC ? 

In support of the first hypothesis, Piotr Steinkeller cited one of his earlier papers (referenced below, 2013), in which he had published the two surviving two fragments of a stone plaque of unknown provenance (which was then, as now, in a private collection), which he dubbed the ‘Prisoner Plaque’.  He:

1. ✴argued (at p. 132) that:
   

2. “On the basis of its script, the plaque may tentatively be dated to the ED II period ... or (though less likely) to the ED I period ... [and] almost certainly [originated in] Kish or one of its dependencies”; and
   

3. ✴observed (at p. 142) that:
   

4. “As best as it can be ascertained, the plaque is a record of [36,000] prisoners of war who were acquired by the state of Kish in the course of its territorial conquests [from at least 25 locations].”
   

He also observed (at p. 142) that:

1. ✴3 of the 25 conquered locations named in the surviving part of the inscription could be identified:
   

2. “Shubur, which supplied the largest number of captives (6,300), is identical with Assyria; Uri/Wari(um) is the designation of the Diyala Region; and Erud (if this is identification is correct) is to be sought in the trans-Tigridian territory: and
   

3. ✴another 5 were named in the lexical composition known as the ‘List of Geographical Names’ (LGN), which he characterised as a source that:
   

4. “... in all likelihood originated at Kish [and] appears to be a gazetteer of the Kishite kingdom (or, at least, of the areas affected by Kishite conquest).”
   

On the basis of his analysis of this inscription, he characterised the ‘Prisoner Plaque’ (at pp. 144-5) as:

1. “... a singularly unique document, whose importance cannot be overstated:
   

2. ✴To begin with, it is the earliest truly historical source that survives from ancient Mesopotamia. 
   

3. ✴No less importantly, it provides priceless information about the formation and the territorial conquests of the state of Kish during the early phases of the ED period.  In this connection, particularly eloquent is the mention of 6,300 captives acquired in the lands of Shubur (Assyria). Here one witnesses not only the oldest occurrence of Assyria's name, but also a palpable proof of [the extent of]  Kish's ‘foreign’ expansion. 
   

4. ✴[Finally], the plaque confirms [earlier evaluations of the] ... hegemonic and militaristic character [of the early Kishite state].  In particular], the figure of 36,000 prisoners of war ... recorded in the plaque is astonishing, since it was not until the advent of Sargon of Akkad and his followers that rulers were again able to aspire to similar military feats.”
   

Finally, he developed his analysis (at p. 148) as follows:

1. “Although [the Kishite] state probably came into being during the ED I period, its greatest territorial expansion and political power probably belonged to the ED II period.  While the [‘Prisoner Plaque’] offers the strongest and most persuasive evidence here, there are other important indications, [not the least of which is] the fact that a ruler of Kish named Mesalim (whose rule is to be dated to ED II) exercised hegemony over the southern city-states of Adab, Umma and Lagash (and, by implication, over all of southern Babylonia north of Uruk).  Other suggestive data in that regard are:
   

2. ✴the great renown that the title of the king of Kish enjoyed in the ED III period; and
   

3. ✴the testimony of the ED ‘List of Geographical Names’ (LGN), which (since it was known already in the ED IIIa period) must reflect a considerably earlier situation.
   

I discuss the significance of the title ‘king of Kish’ below.  For the moment, we should note that, although Steinkeller’s first hypothesis is widely accepted, not all scholars agree.  For example, Aage Westenholz (referenced below, at pp. 697-8) concluded that:

1. “Taken all together, the evidence collected by Steinkeller [in his paper on the ‘Prisoner Plaque’] is not conclusive: 
   

2. ✴The southern pattern of small city-states, at times acting in shifting alliances, would fit equally well [in the north]. 
   

3. ✴The ‘Prisoner Plaque’, [even if it originated at Kish], scarcely proves the existence of a territorial state in the north, [centred on Kish], any more than [the evidence for] Eanatum’s campaigns  ... [in locations far from Lagash] prove the existence of a territorial state in the south, centred on Lagash. 
   

4. ✴[Steinkeller’s argument, at p. 148 that]:
   

5. ‘... according to the testimony of the LGN, the state of Kish embraced: the entire territory of northern Babylonia; the most northern section of southern Babylonia (Nippur, Isin, and Eresh); and large portions of the Diyala Region’;
   

6. is really a bit of circular reasoning: [i.e. it is argued that]:
   

7. ✴because the LGN enumerates cities in those regions, it [can be] assumed to be a gazetteer of the Kishite state; and
   

8. ✴on the strength of that assumption, it [=the LGN is used to ‘prove’ the geographical] extent of this [same Kishite] state!
   

9. My verdict on the hypothesis of a territorial state in north [Mesopotamia], with Kish as its capital, must [therefore] be: not proven.”
   

Furthermore, as he pointed out:

1. “The textual evidence of ED IIIa (which is, by and large, the earliest we have) [arguably] paints a different picture.  [For example]:
   

2. ✴[while it is true that both]:
   

3. •the ‘Zame Hymns’ and other literary compositions centred on Enlil in Nippur; [and]
   

4. •the great god lists from Fara and Abu Salabikh;
   

5. include Kish and its tutelary deity Zababa ... among the chorus of gods praising and glorifying Enlil of Nippur;
   

6. ✴... they also appear to regard [north Mesopotamia] as a fringe area in comparison to the close-knit Sumerian south.” 
   

He conceded (at p. 698) that:

1. “All this, of course, does not disprove [Steinkeller’s first hypothesis] but, in my opinion, that hypothesis needs much more corroborating evidence before it can be made the basis on which to reconstruct the history and culture of [Mesopotamia] in the 3rd millennium BC.  And, [furthermore], all this does not solve the riddle of the title lugal kishi [= Steinkeller’s second hypothesis].  We have to await further evidence, or better acumen of our own, to clarify this title, obvious as it may have been to those, [including Sargon], who used it.” 
   

Kingship of Kish in the 3rd Millennium BC

Map of Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium BC

From the website of the Lagash Archeological Project: my additions in red 

Enmebaragesi, King of Kish, and his Son, Akka

As Douglas Frayne (referenced below, 2008, at p. 55) observed:

1. “The first king of Kish for whom we have any inscriptions is Enmebaragesi”.
   

More specifically, he is probably:

1. ✴the Mebaragesi whose name appears (tout court) on a fragment of an alabaster bowl from Khafayah (ancient Tutub) in the Diyala valley (RIME 1: 7: 22: 1; CDLI. P431026); and/or
   

2. ✴the Mebaragesi, king of Kish, whose name appears on a similar fragment of unknown provenience (RIME 1: 7: 22: 2; CDLI, P431027).
   

He was certainly an actual ruler of the city of Kish and, as we shall see below:

1. ✴he is named (as Enmebaragesi, the father and predecessor of Akka) in the surviving part of the USKL, and he is the only one of the 19 Kishite kings in this part of the list list who is also known from his royal inscriptions;
   

2. ✴he is also named (as Enmebaragesi, the father and predecessor of Akka) in the SKL, in which he is additionally described as having destroyed Elam; and
   

3. ✴he is also known (as Enmebaragesi, father of Akka) in the literary traditions of Ur and Uruk, in which both Enmebaragesi and Akka exercised hegemony over Uruk until the city was liberated by the (probably mythical) Urukean hero Gilgamesh. 
   

Mesalim, King of Kish

Jerrold Cooper (referenced below, at p. 8) observed that the surviving royal inscriptions of Mesopotamian rulers in the ED II/ ED III periods usually: 

1. “... tell us all too little about the political history of the period.  The great exception [in this respect] is the corpus of inscriptions of the rulers of Lagash, for the most part excavated by the French at Tello (ancient Girsu) [in the late 19th century] and augmented in recent years by some important finds of the American expedition to Al-Hiba (ancient Lagash).  The state of Lagash itself consisted of three major cities, Girsu (Tello), Lagash (Al-Hiba) and Nina (Surghul), as well as many smaller settlements.  So, too, the neighbour and antagonist of Lagash, the state of Umma, must be considered not just as the city of Umma itself, but as a broader territory including at least one other major city, Zabala.  We know nothing about the origin of the union of the three cities comprising the state of Lagash; the texts take it for granted, and it goes back at least to the time of Mesalim [ca. 2600 BC].” 
   

Three surviving inscriptions that refer to Mesalim and come from the period of his reign:

1. ✴ one from Girsu, which was found on a stone mace-head, recorded that:
   

2. “Me-silim, king of Kish,  temple builder for the god Ningirsu, set up(?) this mace for the god Ningirsu [when] Lugal-sha-engur (was) ensi of Lagash”, (RIME 1.8.1.1; P462181); and
   

3. ✴two from Adab
   

4. •one that was found on two bowl fragments recorded that: 
   

5. “Me-silim, king of Kish, performed the burgi -rite in the E-SAR [when] Nin-KISAL-si  (was) ensi of Adab”, (RIME 1.8.1.2; P462182); and
   

6. ✴the other, which was found on a vase fragment, recorded that:
   

7. “Me-silim, king of Kish, beloved son of Nunhursag ...”, (RIME 1.8.1.3; P431033).
   

The first two of these inscriptions suggest that the hegemony of Mesalim, king of Kish, was accepted by the  rulers of Lagash and Adab.  

Eanatum, ensi of Lagash, who ruled more than a century after Mesalim, referred to Mesalim’s role as the original arbitrator of a chronic boundary dispute between Lagash and Umma in:

1. ✴an inscription (RIME 1.9.3.2; P431076) found on three boundary stones;  and
   

2. ✴a very similar inscription RIME 1.9.3.3; P431077) found on two spheroid jars;
   

all of which came (or probably came) from Girsu or Lagash.  More specifically, he::

1. ✴referred to a victory over Umma, after which, he had apparently restored the boundary stele that Mesalim had erected to mark the boundary between the respective territories, which had been marked out by the god Enlil (see, for example, RIME 1.9.3.2; P431076, lines 4-7); and 
   

2. ✴stressed that he had not marched beyond the point at which Mesalim had erected his boundary stele (see, for example, RIME 1.9.3.2; P431076, lines 55’-60’).
   

Fortunately, we have a more complete account of these events from a royal inscription of Enmetana, ensi of Lagash: at the start of his  account of his own boundary dispute with Umma, he recorded that:

1. “Enlil, king of all lands, father of all the gods ... demarcated the border between Ningirsu, [the chief god of Lahash and Girsu], and Shara, [the chief god of Umma].  Mesalim, king of Kish, at the command of Ishtaran, [marked out this border] and erected a monument there.  Ush, ensi of Umma, acted arrogantly: he smashed that monument and marched on the plain of Lagash.  Ningirsu, warrior of Enlil, at his (Enlil's) just command, did battle with Umma. ... Eanatum, ensi of Lagash (the uncle of Enmetena, ensi of Lagash), demarcated the border with Enakale, the ensi of Umma. ... He inscribed (and erected) monuments at [the god-given border] and restored the monument of Mesalim, but did not cross [the border] into the plain of Umma”, (R1ME 1.9/5/1; P431117, lines 1-58).
   

On the basis of these later testimonies, we might reasonably conclude that:

1. ✴Umma (as well as Lagash/Girsu and Adab) had accepted the hegemony of Mesalim, king of Kish; and
   

2. ✴his authority as the arbiter of boundary disputes between Lagash and Umma was long-remebered at Lagash, although, apparently not at Umma. 
   

Enna-il, King of Kish 

Gianni Marchesi( referenced below, 2015, at pp. 152-4) produced a list of 12 documented ‘kings of Kish’ in the pre-Sargonic era in roughly chronological order, three of which were discussed above.  He also listed Enna-il (at number 9), who is known from two royal inscriptions:

1. ✴one (RIME 1.8.3.1, P462184, from Adab) simply recorded that Enna-il, son of A-anzu, had defeated Elam ‘for Inanna’; and
   

2. ✴the other (RIME 1.8.3.12, P005984, from Nippur) recorded that Enna-il, LUGAL KISH, had set up a statue of himself  ‘before Inanna’.
   

Marchesi (as above) suggested (at note 19, p. 140) that, given the find spot of this second inscription, we might reasonable assume that:

1. “Nippur was still in the orbit of Kish at the time of Enna-il (Period ED IIIb), [and he] was probably the last great king of Kish proper.”
   

The term ‘Kish proper’ is used in the quote above because of a looming problem with the title ‘king of Kish: as Douglas Frayne (referenced below, 2008, at p. 5) observed:

1. “... complicating the historical picture ... is the fact that the title lugal kish of ED royal inscriptions, while clearly referring in some cases to actual kings of Kish (such as Enmebaragesi, Akka and, presumably Mesalim), seems, at other times, to be an honorific epithet meaning something like ‘king of the world’.”
   

Eanatum, Ensi of Lagash, King of Kish

Eanatum is the first ruler of a Sumerian city who is known to have adopted the additional title of ‘king of Kish’: the inscription on the so-called ‘Eanatum Boulder’ from Girsu, which is now in the Musèe du Louvre (exhibit AO 2677), recorded that:

1. “Because Inanna so loved Eanatum, the ruler of Lagash, she gave him the kingship of Kish, in addition to the rulership of Lagash.  Elam trembled before him (and) he sent the Elamite back to his land. Kish trembled before him.  He (also) sent the king of Akshak back to his land.  Eanatum, the ruler of Lagash, who subjugates foreign lands for Ningirsu, defeated:
   

2. ✴Elam, Subartu and Urua at the Asuhur [canal ... ; and]
   

3. ✴Kish, Akshak and Mari at the Antasura of Ningirsu”, (RIME 1.9.3.5, P222400: col. 5, line 23 - col. 7, line 2).
   

From this, it is clear that, for whatever reason, Eanatum, ensi of Lagash, having defeated Elam, Subartu, Uru, Akshak, Mari and Kish, marked these victories by adopting the additional title, ‘king of Kish’.

Meskalamdug and Mes-Ane-pada: Kings of Ur and of Kish 

The inscription (P247679) on a seal from the royal cemetery of Ur that is now in the British Museum (exhibit BM 122536) reads:

1. ‘mes-kalam-du10 lugal’. (Meskalamdug, the king.
   

We can reasonably assume that he was the king of Ur.  However:

1. ✴the inscription (RIME 1: 13: 5: 1) on  a bead found at Mari names Mes-Ane-pada as king of Ur and the son of ‘Meskalamdug, king of Kish’; and
   

2. ✴the inscription (RIME 1: 13: 5: 2) on a clay sealing from Ur names Mes-Ane-pada himself as king of Kish. 
   

It therefore likely that both men held both titles at some time, but there is no surviving evidence that either of them ever held bot titles at the same time. Gianni Marchesi (referenced below, 2015, in Table 1,2, at p. 142) suggested that their successive reigns were broadly contemporary with those of Eanatum and Enanatum I at Lagash.  Marchesi argued (in this table and in entry B6 at p, 145) that both Meskalamdug and Mes-Ane-pada also ruled at Uruk, but there is no hard evidence for this.  Interestingly, Jerrold Cooper (referenced below, at p. 23) based his synchronisation of Meskalamdug/Mes-Ane-pada and Eanatum/Enanatum I on the assumption that (as discussed below) that the union of Ur and Uruk only happened in the reign of a later king of Uruk, Lugal-kigine-dudu.  He pointed out that Urnanshe, a predecessor of Eanatum at Lagash, recorded (in RIME 1. 9. 1. 6b, P431040, lines 65-6) victories over both Ur and Umma (who were presumably in alliance against him).   He therefore suggested that:

“

Lugal-silasi, who was probably king of Uruk, as evidenced by an inscription on a foundation tablet that probably came from Uruk, (RIME 1.14.13.01, P431215); and

Lugal-kigine-dudu, as evidenced by:

numerous fragmentary vase inscriptions from Nippur in which he is entitled lord of Uruk and king of Ur (RIME 1.14.14.1: P431216, lines 9-13); and

an inscription on two stone vases from Nippur that recorded a dedication to An an Inanna, by:

“Lugal-kigine-dudu, king of Kish: when the goddess Inanna combined lordship with kingship for Lugal-kigine-dudu, he exercised lordship in Uruk and kingship in Ur (RIME 1.14.14.2: P431217, lines 3-14.

Gianni Marchesi (referenced below, 2015, in entry Uruk 8, Urzag’ek at p. 145) suggested that:

“In the reign of Lugal-kigine-dudu’s successor, Lugalkisalesi, this [use of the additional title ‘king of Kish’] apparently fell into disuse, presumably because it was considered obsolete.”

The main evidence for this is from the ‘vase inscriptions’ at Nippur of two kings of Uruk who conquered Kish:

in that of Enshakashuna (RIME 1.14. 17.1, P431228), which records, inter alia, his sack of Kish and his capture of its king, Enbi Istar, Enshakashuna is given the titles en kiengi (lord of the land of Sumer) and lugal kalamma (king of the nation);

in that of Lugal-zagesi (RIME 1.14. 20. 1, P431232), who also captured Kish (see below), he is given the titles  king of Uruk and lugal kalamma (king of the nation).

Of course, it is possible that Enshakashuna and/or Lugal-zagesi used the additional title ‘king of Kish’ in other contexts but, as the glory days of Kish were now a distant memory, this seems unlikely.

Sargon’s conquest of Kish is not recorded in any of his surviving inscriptions, albeit that, in  two of  them (RIME 2.1.1.: 1 and 2, see the table above), we read that, having conquered Uruk and captured its king, Lugal-zagesi, he:

1. “... altered the two sites of Kish [and] made the two (parts of Kish) occupy (one) city”, (RIME 2: 1: 1: 2, CDLI P461927, lines 100-8);
   

which presumably refers to his amalgamation of the previously twin cities of Kish itself and nearby Hursagkalama.   This suggests that he had already conquered Kish (and possibly developed it as a second dynastic capital, alongside Akkad) before his victory over Uruk and the other city states of Sumer.  As discussed above, he used the title LUGAL KISH:

1. ✴as a single title in one of his three victory inscriptions from the early period (RIME 2.1.1. 3); and
   

2. ✴as one of three titles (along with king of Akkad and king of Sumer) in three inscriptions  from the intermediate period (RIME 2.1.1: 1, 2 and 6).
   

He was always and exclusively entitled  LUGAL KISH in:

1. ✴all his subsequent ‘victory’ inscriptions RIME 2.1.1: 8, 9, 11 and 12; and
   

2. ✴all of his other inscriptions in which he had any title at all.
   

Furthermore, LUGAL KISH was the only title used subsequently by his sons, Rimush and Manishtushu (although it was not used by their successors).

This brings us to the thorny question of the significance of the title LUGAL KISH.  Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013, at p. 146 and note 51), for example, argued that, as early as the Sargonic period, it:

1. “... served as a generic designation of a universal ruler, corresponding to ‘shar kishshatim’ (king of all).”
   

However, Nikita Artemov (referenced below, at p. 72) argued that:

1. “The popular view that the Old Akkadian title LUGAL KISH is either:
   

2. •to be read ‘shar kishshatim’; or,
   

3. •while being formally identical with the Early Dynastic title ‘shar Kish’, means ‘shar kishshatim’ on the connotative plane;
   

4. is, in fact, neither provable nor plausible.  The earliest attestations for ‘kishshatum’ (totality) are Old Babylonian; the word occurs in neither Old Akkadian nor (what is more) in Old Assyrian sources.”
   

She argued (at pp. 72-3) that:

1. “... the revival of the title ‘king of Kish’ and its adoption by Sargon and his immediate successors makes perfect sense in the political constellation created by the defeat of Lugal-zagesi and the subjugation of the Sumerian city states by the king of Akkad.  The memories of the mighty ancient kingdom of Kish, which once enjoyed supremacy in Sumer and was the main rival of Uruk in Gilgamesh’s times, survived well into the Old Babylonian period in Sumerian literature and must have been much more vivid in the Sargonid period. ... Thus, the Sargonic title LUGAL KISH did not introduce any new concept, but rather was aimed at representing the newly forming and expanding ‘empire’ of Akkad as the revived kingdom of Kish ... .  Staging Akkad as the ‘new Kish’ helped:
   

2. to legitimise its (recent and not uncontested) supremacy over Sumer; and
   

3. to romanticise its military assaults against Uruk (recalling the legendary clashes between Enmebaragesi [of Kish] and Gilgamesh [of Uruk]).”
   

However, this does not explain why, as far as we know, neither En-shakushana nor Lugal-zagesi adopted this title after their respective conquests of the ancient enemy, Kish. 

Thus, we need to look for other reasons why the title LUGAL KISH was particularly attractive for Sargon, at least in the latter part of his reign) and for his two immediate successors.  It seems to me that the analysis of Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2003) in relation to the the USKL (the Ur III recension of  recension of the  so-called Sumerian King List: CDLI: P283804) is of particular importance in this respect.  As he pointed out, (at p, 274)  this list began with a two line introduction describing the descent of kingship from heaven to Kish,  In the present context, the precise wording of this introduction is of considerable interest:

1. “When kingship came down from heaven, (the city of) Kish was sovereign; in Kish, Gushur exercised (kingship) for 2,160 years”, (translated by Gianni Marchesi, referenced below, 2010, at p. 231).
   

Steinkeller (as above) established that, on the only surviving USKL tablet, this introduction was followed by:

1. ✴a list of about 30 more kings (and a queen) of Kish; and then
   

2. ✴a lacuna that would have contained the names of about 12 kings, the last of whom would have been Lugal-zagesi of Uruk;
   

before reaching the record that:

1. “Sargon, in Akkad, [ruled for] 40 years”, (reverse, col. 1, lines 6’-7’). 
   

Steinkeller reasonably argued (at pp. 281-2) that, although this recension dates to the reign of the Ur III king Shulgi:

1. “... it is inconceivable that [he] ... would have had any part in a project that assigns much of the past glory to Kish ... If one accepts this line of argument, then the author of [this part of] the USKL [also] could not have been Utu-hegal of Uruk, [the immediate predecessor of Shulgi’s father, Ur-Namma, the last king to be named in the list].  This leaves us with only one possible [candidate], ... the dynasty of Akkad.  Sargon and his followers would, in fact, have had an obvious interest in promoting the idea that Kish remained the seat of kingship from time immemorial down to Sargon’s own day.”
   

In a later paper, Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2017, at p. 37) developed this idea:

1. “There are ... indications that the first version of the SKL was composed under the Sargonic dynasty.  However, that original version appears to have differed significantly from the later redactions, [including the USKL], in that it centred on the dynasty of Kish as a direct predecessor of the Sargonic kingdom.  In other words, it propagated the idea of a single northern monarchy, which commenced in Kish at the dawn of history and later continued in Akkad with Sargon and his successors.”
   

Gösta Gabriel (referenced below, 2023, at p. 244) further developed this line of reasoning by arguing that:

1. “It is unlikely that the historical Old Akkadian [= Sargonic] rulers invented the long list of Kishite kings [that subsequently found its way into the USKL].  It is much more probable that they copied an existing list of [Kishite] rulers and so continued the Kishite historiographical tradition, including the celestial origin of the city’s power and its extremely long first reign.  Accordingly, the first recension of what would [ultimately] become the SKL [in the hands of the Isin kings] was most likely written in Kish before ca. 2350 BC.”
   

He also argued (at pp. 247-8) that this first recension:

1. “... depicted an ordered and continuous past, [in which] the divine gift of kingship guaranteed stability, and the gods established Kish as the eternal capital of the [undefined] country.  The Sargonic rulers added the concept of a change of hegemony to the [list].  In this version of events, the gods did not bequeath kingship to Kish forever: [rather], they later passed it on to other worthy cities.  This change results in the altered semantics of the identical initial copular phrase kisheki lugal-am3 ;
   

2. ✴from an eternal truth: Kish has (always) been king’; to
   

3. ✴a delimited segment of history: ‘Kish was [initially] king’.
   

4. To convey the concept of change, the Akkadian redactors supplemented the ‘vertical’ transfer of kingship from heaven to earth with a ‘horizontal[ transfer of kingship from city to city.  The new model of change led to the inclusion of two new phrasal components [that characterised all later recensions].”
   

He characterised these as the ‘collapse formula’ and the ‘transfer formula’, so that, in the putative Sargonic recension, the record of the last king of Kish would have been followed by the information that:

1. ✴‘Kish was struck with weapons’, (collapse formula); and
   

2. ✴‘its kingship was brought to [another specified city]’, (transfer formula).
   

Gabriel suggested (at p. 249) that these ‘Akkadian redactors:

1. “... began by taking contemporary events into account, specifically the fact that Lugal-zagesi of Uruk had established a large polity before being defeated by Sargon, the founder of the Akkadian empire, who began to rule the territories in the south after deposing Lugal-zagesi.  ... By assigning a former supremacy to Uruk, the Old Akkadian recension claims that [Uruk] had long been integrated into the institution of divinely transferred kingship. ... [Furthermore, Uruk] metonymically represents all of southern [Mesopotamia]. ... In this way, the Akkadian kings presented themselves as both the heirs to Kish in the north and the successors to the southern rule of Uruk.  Since the text portrayed them as rightfully ruling both centres of power, their enemies were given to understand that they had no legitimate cause for opposition.”
   

Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2017, at p. 40) had earlier reached a similar conclusion (although he had  not proposed a first Kishite recension): he argued that the original recension of what became the USKL:

1. “... was written down in Sargonic times, with an express objective of demonstrating that, save for a brief interlude involving Lugal-zagesi and perhaps some other kings of Uruk, the Sargonic dynasty was a continuation of the kingdom of Kish.  In other words, this hypothetical list was, in its essence a linear history of the northern Babylonian monarchy.  If so, this ‘history’ would have been part of the ideological innovations that the Sargonic kings introduced to foster the idea of a unified Babylonian state, thus radically differing from the traditional, Sumerian types of historical records.”
   

In fact, it seems to me that assumptions that the putative  ‘Akkadian redactors’ had:

1. ✴introduced collapse and transfer formulae to the list; and
   

2. ✴documented an Urukean ‘interlude between Kish and Akkad;
   

go beyond the available evidence: as discussed above, the inscriptions RIME 2.1.1: 1 and 2 suggest that Sargon already controlled Kish when he conquered Uruk, and no surviving evidence contradicts that proposition.   If this were the case, then it is entirely possible that the putative Sargonic recension simply added the names of Sargon and (in time) his successors to a pre-existing Kishite king list, thereby identifying them as the legitimate heirs of Gushur and the rightful recipients of divine gift of kingship of Kish, as expressed by the title LUGAL KISH.

1.  
   

2. 
   

Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2017, Essay 2, at p. 122) observed that, although Lugal-zagesi of Uruk:

1. “... conquered Kish, thus putting an end to the Kishite domination of northern [Mesopotamia], ... it is unlikely ... [that he] ever succeeded in turning his possessions into a uniform centralised state. ... At best, [he] could only claim to be a primus inter pares among the southern ensiks.  As it happened, the person who managed to capitalise on [his] achievement was, not unexpectedly, a northerner.  His name was Sargon, and he hailed from the obscure town of Akkad (which was probably situated in the neighbourhood of modern Baghdad).  After he had conquered northern [Mesopotamia],  together with its traditional political centre, Kish, Sargon then confronted [and defeated] Lugal-zagesi ... [who was at the head of] a formidable coalition of southern city-states ..., [and thus became ] the master of the South as far as the Persian Gulf.”
   

However, in Essay 3 (at p. 183), he argued that:

1. “... contemporary historical sources ... offer no indication that Sargon was in any way connected with Kish prior to his conflict with Lugal-zagesi.  According to their testimony, Kish had been conquered by Lugal-zagesi, to be subsequently captured by Sargon as part of his war on Lugal-zagesi.” 
   

To support this ‘alternative view, he reasonably cited only surviving narrative account of Sargon’s conquest of Kish, which  comes in an Old Babylonian copy from Mari of part of the so-called ‘Legend of the Great Revolt against Naram-Sin’ (discussed and translated by Joan Goodnick Westenholz, referenced below, as entry 16a, at  pp. 231-7).  This text included a complaint allegedly made by Naram-Sin about the ingratitude of the Kishites when they joined this widespread rebellion against his hegemony: 

1. “... after my (grand)father Sargon conquered the city of Uruk, he established freedom for the Kishite (people): he had their slave marks shaved off and their shackles removed: he escorted Lugal-zagesi, their despoiler, to Akkad.  And (yet), ... they rebelled against me, [his grandson. ... They] assembled and raised Iphur-Kish, the man of Kish, son of Summirat-Ishtar (the lamentation priestess), to kingship”, (lines 5-9). 
   

According to Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2017, at p. 171, citing Claus Wilcke, referenced below, note at p 30 on lines ix 32 - x14), although this text belongs to an Old Babylonian version of the legend: 

1. “... the passage [therein] describing how Sargon ... wrested Kish from Lugal-zagesi’s control was part of the Old Akkadian original.” 
   

Thus, this passage might well have been composed during or shortly after the reign of Naram-Sin, certainly suggests that Sargon’s ‘liberation’ (aka his conquest) of Kish took place immediately after his victory over Lugal-zagesi. 

In fact, given the state of our surviving evidence, it is impossible to establish with any degree of certainty how Sargon’s conquest of Kish fitted into his early career . In order to take this further, I will attempt to look at the evidence in favour of the view that Steinkeller took in his Essay 2 and then comment on the apparent balance of probabilities.

However, this does not mean that Sargon, having captured Akkad, ever claimed that, simply by virtue of has subsequent capture of Kish, he exercised a degree of hegemony on Mesopotami to rival that previously achieved by (for example) Eanatum of Lagash or by En-shakushana of Uruk.  Rather, in my view, he was only likely to have made that claim after his victory over Lugal-zagesi.  In other words, it seems to me that the most likely explanation for the evolution of Sargon’s titulary, as summarised in the table above, is that he:

1. ✴started his career as ‘king of Akkad’;
   

2. ✴then, after he conquered Kish, he used the titles ‘king of Akkad’ and/or ‘king of Kish’;
   

3. ✴then, after he conquered Uruk and other Sumerian cities, he added the title ‘king of Sumer’; and
   

4. ✴only after his second major military campaign against Elam and Parahshum did he adopt the title of  ‘king of Kish’ (tout court) to denote the fact that he was now ‘king of the world’.  
   

As Stephanie Dalley (referenced below, at p 25) observed, the title ‘king of Kish’ could (but did not invariably) result from:

1. “... a punning abbreviation of ‘kishshatum’ (totality).”
   

My suggestion here is that its use in this way by Sargon (after his expansion beyond Mesopotamia) and subsequently by his sons, Rimush and Manishtishu,  would have made lesser titles such as ‘king of Akkad’ or ‘king of the land’ redundant. 

Evidence of an Administrative Document from Ebla  

Stephanie Dalley (referenced below, at p. 28) pointed out that, at around the time of Sargon’s rise to power:

1. “... evidence from administrative texts found at Ebla, [a city on the upper reaches of the Euphrates], shows that Kish was the most important city of northern Mesopotamia, maintaining its prestige despite a defeat ... [probably inflicted in the  campaign led by] En-shakushana of Uruk against Enbi-Istar, king of Kish. ... A victory over [nearby] Mari, in which Kish was an ally [of Ebla], a few years later ... was followed by the dynastic marriage of the Eblaite princess Keshdut to the [unnamed] king of Kish.  Ebla was ‘destroyed’ not long afterwards ...” 
   

Walther Sallaberger and Ingo Schrakamp (referenced below, at p. 98) discussed a number of documents found at Ebla that refer to the gifts that the court  distributed on the occasion of this marriage (which were published in the same volume by Alfonso Archi, at pp. 178-9).  They argued that: 

1. “This [unnamed Kishite] ruler can be identified only with Sargon of Akkad, [assuming that] one applies the here-established synchronisms of the late Pre-sargonic period.” 
   

They also pointed out that the gifts were made not only to the Kishite king himself but also to his father, a practice that was otherwise unknown in: 

1. “... the enormous documentation of royal gifts known from the palace of Ebla”
   

They further argued that: 

1. “The unique reference [here] to a ‘father’ of the ‘king of Kish’ ... exactly fits the situation of the newcomer Sargon, whose main royal title was ‘king of Kish’ and who never appears (in either his own inscriptions or in the Mesopotamian tradition) as the successor of a preceding ruler ...” 
   

It seems to me that, in this particular context, a dynastic marriage between a princess of Ebla and a ‘new man’ described as ‘king of Kish’ would have implied that the man in question was, first and foremost, the actual king of the city of Kish.  In other words, I suggest that, assuming that Keshdut’s bridegroom can indeed be identified as Sargon, then this marriage must have taken place after he had conquered Kish but before his victory over Lugal-zagesi (at which point, as argued above and discussed further below) he would have had even grander titles). 

Evidence of Sargon’s Royal Inscriptions

As set out in the table above:

1. ✴in one of Sargon’s early inscriptions (RIME 2.01.01.07: P461932), he used a single title, lugal a-ka-deki (king of the city of Akkad);
   

2. ✴in another (RIME 2.01.01.03: P461928), he again used a single title, this time LUGAL KISH (see below); and,
   

3. ✴in each of three others (RIME 2.01.01: numbers 1, 2 and 6), he used both of these titles, together with a third, ‘king of the land [= Sumer]’, a title that had previously been used by the Uruk rulers En-shakushana and Lugal-zagesi.
   

Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2013, note 51, at p. 146) argued that LUGAL KISH:

1. “... meant ‘shar kishshatim’ [king of the totality], already in Sargonic times, [as] is shown by the fact that, in the same inscriptions:
   

2. ✴LUGAL KISH invariably lacks the indicator KI; whereas
   

3. ✴the toponym Kishki, [city of Kish], is always written with it.”
   

I think he refers here to inscriptions such as RIME 2.01.01.2 (P461927), in which Sargon, who is:

1. ✴entitled, inter alia, LUGAL KISH (king of Kish, see line 6) and  LUGAL a-ka-de.KI (king of the city of Akkad, see lines 2-3); and
   

2. ✴recorded as having changed the layout of [K]ish.KI (the city of Kish: see line 103). 
   

Steinkeller’s argument is that, without the indicator ‘KI’, ‘KISH must mean a wider territory that just the city of Kish.  However, as I argued above, it seems to me that:

1. ✴LUGAL KISH would only have been a ‘punning abbreviation of ‘kishshatum’, indicating king of the totality (= ‘king of the World’), when it was used tout court (since any other title would have been redundant); and
   

2. ✴in this earlier period, it must have meant ‘king of Kish’ and been used as an alternative to/ in addition to ‘king of the city of Akkad’.
   

I wonder if Steinkeller’s point about the significance of the absence of the the indicator KI in Sargon’s title might be met if, in this early period ‘LUGAL KISH’ referred to the territory that had previously been under the hegemony of the city of Kish (although I am not suggesting that this is more than a possibility).

Evidence of the ‘Sumerian Sargon Legend’ 

The so-called ‘Sumerian Sargon Legend’ is known from two surviving fragmentary tablets (one from Uruk and the other from Nippur) that were published in 1983 by Jerrold Cooper and Wolfgang Heimpel (referenced below: see also the on-line translation by ETCSL).  As these authors noted, this Sumerian text survives in three segments (labelled as segments A-C in ETCSL):

1. ✴‘segment A’ (on the obverse of the Uruk fragment) contains the beginning of the surviving text;
   

2. ✴‘segment B’ (on the Nippur fragment) contains the central part of the legend; and
   

3. ✴‘segment C’ (on the reverse of the Uruk fragment) contains all that we know about its ending. 
   

In this account, Sargon, who is introduced (in segment B, at line 12) as the cup-bearer of Ur-Zababa, the king of Kish, inadvertently becomes the subject of Ur-Zababa’s paranoid conviction that the gods have already chosen him (Sargon) as his successor.  After an unsuccessful attempt to murder Sargon at Kish:

1. “King Ur-Zababa despatched Sargon, the creature of the gods, to Lugal-zagesi in Uruk with a message written on clay, which was about murdering Sargon”, (B: 55-6). 
   

Although, in the text (as it now survives), the relationship between Ur-Zababa and Lugal-zagesi is not explicitly defined, the nature of the interactions between them arguably suggests that Ur-Zababa was Lugal-zagesi’s vassal (see, for example, Nshan Kesecker, referenced below, at p. 87).  It is worth reproducing all of the surviving text on segment C here, in order to illustrate how little we know about the events that (allegedly) followed: 

1. “With the wife of Lugal-zagesi ... She (?) ... her femininity as a shield.  Lugal-zagesi would not (reply) the envoy, (and said): 
   

2. ‘Come now!  Would he step within E-ana’s (walls)’.
   

3. Lugal-zagesi did not understand, so he  did not talk to the envoy.  (But), as soon as he did talk to the envoy, the eyes of the prince’s son were opened.  The lord (sighed) and sat in the dirt.  Lugal-zagesi replied to the envoy:
   

4. ‘Envoy, Sargon does not yield.’
   

5. When he submits, Sargon ...”, (see Cooper and Heimpel, referenced below, at p. 77).
   

Cooper and Heimpel observed (at p. 68) that, in this segment: 

1. “Lugal-zagesi is questioning a messenger (presumably Ur-Zababa's from Kish) about Sargon's refusal to submit to Lugal-zagesi: 
   

2. ✴If the composition ends with that column, there is scarcely room enough to give the messenger's response and then very summarily to relate events back in Kish and Sargon's triumph. 
   

3. ✴If, however, this tablet is only the first half of the composition, the second tablet would [presumably have recounted] the foretold death of Ur-Zababa, the succession of Sargon, and the battle in which Sargon finally defeated Lugal-zagesi and established his hegemony over all of [Mesopotamia].” 
   

However, this possible end to the legend is a matter of pure speculation: all we know for certain is that, in segment C:

1. ✴Sargon refused to submit to someone (Lugal-zagesi ? Ur-Zababa ?); and
   

2. ✴whatever happened next, he survived the envoy’s visit to Lugal-zagesi’s court. 
   

This brings us to the question of whether or not this literary composition broadly reflects the political situation at Kish during the reign of Lugal-zagesi.  Jerrold Cooper and Wolfgang Heimpel (referenced below, at p. 68) observed that the surviving text: 

1. “... is full of grammatical and syntactic peculiarities that suggest a later Old Babylonian origin. ... But, this may just be a degenerate version of a text composed in the Ur III period; only the future discovery of more literary texts from that period and from other sites will enable us to know for certain.”  
   

I presume that they suggested that a possibly earlier text might have been ‘composed in the Ur III period’ because:

1. ✴it was written in Sumerian (rather than Akkadian); and
   

2. ✴each of Nippur and Uruk was the site of a ‘house of wisdom’ under the auspices of the Ur III kings.
   

Thus, there is a possibility that the legend, as it has come down to us, originated as an Akkadian legend that was reproduced in Sumerian in ca. 2100 BC, a thought that leads us to consider the possible evidence of the USKL.

Evidence of the USKL

As we have seen, apart from two very fragmentary royal inscriptions, the earliest surviving reference to Sargon is on the earliest known recension of the so-called Sumerian King List, which dates to the reign of the ‘Ur III’ king Shulgi (ca. 2050 BC; hereafter the USKL), which was published by Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2003 - see my page on the USKL): after a long lacuna, we read:

1. “Sargon, in Akkad, [ruled for] 40 years”, (col. 4, lines 16’-17’: see Piotr Steinkeller, referenced below, 2003, at p. 272).
   

As I pointed out above, we do not know how Sargon was introduced in the preceding (now-lost) USKL text but, in the later Old Babylonian recensions of the Sumerian King List (hereafter the SKL), we read that:

1. “Sargon, whose father was a gardener, the cupbearer of (king) Ur-Zababa, the king of Akkad, the one who built Akkad, was king [there].  He ruled for 56 years”, (SKL 266-271). 
   

However, this last observation is of little help, since this biographical information might well have been based on the ‘Sumerian Sargon Legend’ discussed above.

Fortunately, this line of attack does yield some important information: the USKL named the last six kings of Kish as: Ur-Zababa; Zimudar; Ishtar-muti, Ishme-Shamash; Nanne and Meshnune, son of Meshnune (see Piotr Steinkeller, referenced below, 2003, col. 3, lines 4-15, at p. 271).  Furthermore, he suggested  that

1. ✴Nanne and his son, Meshnune, had been added in error (see p. 274) ; and
   

2. ✴all of the other Kishite kings named in the list must have been taken from a king list that existed in the Sargonic period (see p. 282).
   

He also observed (again at p. 274) that the now-lost text between Meshnune and Sargon probably listed the names of about 12 kings, the last of whom would have been Lugal-zagesi of Uruk.  Piotr Steinkeller (referenced below, 2017, at p. 183 and note 468) argued that:

1. “... the proposition that Sargon was a cup-bearer of Ur-Zababa is invalidated ... [by] the fact that ... [the USKL names five] additional kings of Kish following Ur-Zababa.  This evidence precludes any possibility that Sargon could have served Ur-Zababa before his ascent to the throne of Akkad.”
   

However, as we have seen, the original Sargonic king list that almost certainly named only three kings between Ur-Zababa and Sargon: Zimudar; Ishtar-muti, Ishme-Shamash, who (at least in the USKL) ruled for a total of 37 years.  Steinkeller (as above, in note 469, at p. 183 and again at p. 184) reasonably pointed out that, under Sargon, Kish would have been ruled by governors who were royal appointees.  However, it is at least possible that Ur-Zababa and the other three kings of Kish who followed him held their titles as vassals of Lugal-zagesi, but that would mean that the figure of 37  years for the reigns of the last three reigns would have to be discounted, since, as Walther Sallaberger and Ingo Schrakamp (referenced below:

1. ✴observed (see p. 83) that, at least in the SKL, Lugalzagesi ruled for only 25 years; and 
   

2. ✴argued (at p. 93) that:
   

3. “... [while]  we do not blindly trust the SKL , but we accept t[this figure] as a model for a plausible chronological reconstruction.
   

This leaves us with a simple choice: either:

1. ✴the figure of 37 years in the USKL for the reigns of Zimudar; Ishtar-muti and Ishme-Shamash must be too high and/or the figure of 25 years in the SKL for the reign of Lugal-zagesi must be too low; or
   

2. ✴the biographical note in the SKL that made Ur-Zababa a contemporary of Sargon and (by implication) of Lugal-zagesi must have been pure invention. 
   

Piotr Steinkeller (as above, at p. 184) strongly supported the second of these choices, although he conceded that:

1. ”... it is still theoretically possible that, despite the SKL’s own evidence arguing to the contrary, Ur-Zababa indeed was the last independent king of Kish before its sack by Lugal-zagesi.”
   

I suggest that we should accept this ‘theoretical possibility’, since the alternative is to accept that the ‘inventor’ of the information in the SKL biographical note chose to synchronise Sargon with Ur-Zababa, despite the fact that he could just as easily have chosen Zimudar, Ishtar-muti or Ishme-Shamash for this purpose.  In other words, I would argue that the most likely scenario (notwithstanding the evidence of the ‘Legend of the Great Revolt against Naram-Sin’) is that Sargon conquered Kish before his victory over Lugal-zagesi. 

Sargon’s Rise to Power: Conclusions

Although our sources are both scanty and, in some case, contradictory, it seems to me that the most likel scenario is that Sargon:

1. ✴established himself as king of Akkad at about the same time as Lugal-zagesi replaced Enshakushana or one of his successors as king of Uruk;
   

2. ✴subsequently ‘liberated’ Kish from Lugal-zagesi’s hegemony (perhaps, but not necessarily, 25 years later), at which time he assumed the additional title LUGAL KISH (perhaps claiming control of the entire region that had been subject to Kishite hegemony):
   

3. ✴subsequently defeated Lugal-zagesi himself and his Sumerian allies, after which he became king of Akkad, king of Kish and king of Sumer; and
   

4. ✴shortly thereafter, having defeated Mari and Elam, adopted the single title king of Kish, where ‘KISH’ now represented a ‘punning abbreviation of ‘kishshatum’, indicating king of the totality (= ‘king of the World’).