rom time to time some prince arose whose conquests
allowed him to claim the imperial title of "king of Sumer and Akkad," of
Southern and Northern Babylonia, but the claim was never of long
duration, and often it signified no more than a supremacy over the other
rulers of the country.

It was while Babylonia was thus divided into more than one kingdom, that
the first Chaldaean empire of which we know was formed by the military
skill of Sargon of Akkad. Sargon was of Semitic origin, but his birth
seems to have been obscure. His father, Itti-Bel, is not given the title
of king, and the later legends which gathered around his name declared
that his mother was of low degree, that his father he knew not, and that
his father's brother lived in the mountain-land. Born in secrecy in the
city of Azu-pirani, "whence the elephants issue forth," he was launched
by his mother on the waters of the Euphrates in an ark of bulrushes
daubed with pitch. The river carried the child to Akki the irrigator,
who had compassion upon it, and brought it up as his own son. So Sargon
became an agriculturist and gardener like his adopted father, till the
goddess Istar beheld and loved him, and eventually gave him his kingdom
and crown.

Whatever may have been the real history of Sargon's rise to power,
certain it is that he showed himself worthy of it. He built himself a
capital, which perhaps was Akkad near Sippara, and there founded a
library stocked with books on clay and well provided with scribes. The
standard works on astronomy and terrestrial omens were compiled for it,
the first of which was translated into Greek by Berossos in days long
subsequent. But it was as a conqueror and the founder of the first
Semitic empire in Western Asia that posterity chiefly remembered him. He
overthrew his rivals at home, and made himself master of Northern
Babylonia. Then he marched into Elam on the east, and devastated its
fields. Next he turned his attention to the west. Four times did he make
his way to "the land of the Amorites," until at last it was thoroughly
subdued. His final campaign occupied three years. The countries "of the
sea of the setting sun" acknowledged his dominion, and he united them
with his former conquests into "a single" empire. On the shores of the
Mediterranean he erected images of himself in token of his victories,
and caused the spoil of Cyprus "to pass over into the countries of the
sea." Towards the end of his reign a revolt br