One of the most numerous invading peoples came out of the Arabian Desert sometime around 2400 B.C. They were a Semitic group called the Akkadians. At first the Akkadians moved into older Sumerian cities or founded cities of their own in Mesopotamia. Although the Akkadians adopted Sumerian religion and culture, the Akkadian language came to dominate Mesopotamia by about 2400 B.C. Increasingly also during this period, the power of the priests gave way to war leaders and a professional warrior class. Some lands that had belonged to the gods were relegated to war chiefs (lugals) and professional soldiers. Lugals began to control government and the economies of the city-states. Professional military leaders became an aristocratic class and lugals became, essentially kings. This increased power in the hands of a warrior class probably reflects the increasingly violent conditions of life in Mesopotamia. As warriors became more and more important, we can assume that they needed something to do, so warfare became both more frequent and more sophisticated.

Sumer was eventually unified by a man named Sargon (2371-2316 B.C.), a native of Akkad, on Sumer's northern border. Sargon was a self-made man of obscure origin. He is said to have been abandoned as an infant and found floating in a basket on the Euphrates. (Similar stories were later told about the infancies of the Hebrews' Moses and Rome's Romulus and Remus.) Sargon's empire extended from the Persian Gulf up the Euphrates and across the caravan stations of northern Syria to the Mediterranean and Asia Minor. He could not have exercised much direct control over such a large area, for communication systems were primitive. If his major concern was continuously to police the trade routes that coursed through these territories, it is easy to see why he created history's first standing army. He doubtless hoped that family ties would foster loyalty, for he assigned key posts to relatives-some of whom were women.

 

 

Another group of Semitic peoples had already begun to wander into Mesopotamia by then. These peoples, called the Amorites gradually took control of the region and founded a new Empire, often named after their capital, Babylon. Possibly the founder of the Babylonian Empire, and greatest Amorite leader was Hammurabi, who ruled from ca. 1792-1750 B.C.

Hammurabi conquered all of Mesopotamia and took the modest title “King of the Four Quarters of the Earth.” Hammurabi solved one of the perennial problems of rulership; how do you rule an empire? He appointed governors to rule in each of his cities. These governors represented the king, supervised in his name, and presided over the local courts. Hammurabi also created a single law code for his entire empire, providing a relatively stable and uniform system of law throughout his empire. The Amorite Empire lasted down to about 1650, when again, Mesopotamia fell to outside invaders. Weakened by a series of barbarian invasions, the great city-states fell in the mid-1500s B.C. to an Indo- European people called the Hittites. This very militant people who probably came from the Caspian region and had settled in Northern Asia Minor by 1650 B.C., created an empire that covered most of the Near East and flourished from 1400-1300 B.C.

 

The Amorites