A short testimony from Sargon has been pieced together from two incomplete Neo-Assyrian tablets and one Neo-Babylonian fragment. It begins, “Sargon the mighty king, king of Agade, am I.” Sargon goes on to tell of his humble birth. Following are four lines of the thirty-two line text:
And for four and […] years I exercised kingship.
The black-headed [people] I ruled, I gov[erned];
Whatever king may come up after me
Let him r[ule, let him govern] the black-headed [peo]ple;…1
Building on what we have learned, these words from the Semite king imply that he was ruling over a people whose racial characteristics were different from his own people. Clearly, it refers to the Sumerians.
Notes
- Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts , 94; E. A. Speiser, Annual of the American Schools of Oriental Research, VIII (1928), 119.