Fantastic Metropolis

Interestingly, the origin of the older, pre-invasion Sumerian language is unknown, although unlike the Harappan script we can at least read it. What we know about them is that they came into the region at roughly six thousand years before Christ, and that within two thousand years they had founded cities such as fabled Ur, at what was then the mouth of the Euphrates. (Yes, much like the Indus Civilization, they built near rivers—a common practice for all early cultures. You go where the water is. Even Tyrannosaurus Rex knew that one.) We know that Akkad was a Semitic people in terms of their language, which to me is telling: it implies that the reason the Amorites were a Semitic-speaking people could well be because they were adopting the more common language of the region to make rulership easier, and not because it was native to them. Many historians, linguists and archaeologists have already made the point that the difference between the Indo-European and Semitic language groups are exactly that: linguistic differences. It’s entirely possible that people of similar regional origins could take on and speak different languages: look at France and Germany, two nations whose origins in the period after the fall of Rome were inextricably linked to the empire of Charlemagne.

What does any of this mean? Well, let me be honest: I don’t know that it means anything. I’m certainly not going to let that stop me from coming up with a deranged theory or two… or three… or five… but I am aware that much of this is at best remarkably thin speculation. We have the total collapse of the Indus Civilization, a trade partner with the Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations whose influence and ships made an impact as far as the Nile, followed by a wave of invaders on chariots who in turn destabilized much of India, swept through Mesopotamia itself and very rapidly adopted the language and the culture of the city-states of the region, and then invaded Egypt and held onto power there for centuries, so thoroughly assimilating into the culture of Avaris that they forever changed the religious conception of a major god of the Egyptians and added the name of one of their great monarchs to that of the serpent that sought to devour the sun-god Ra. They may have been a Semitic-speaking people, but their resemblance to the later-coming Hittites and Mitanni (who spoke Indo-European, the Mitanni actually considered speaking a dialect close to that of the Rig Veda itself) makes us wonder if they merely adopted that language group from their Akkadian subjects much as the Frankish conquerors of Gaul adopted the peculiar Latinate forms of that region upon a century or two of conquering it. It seems likely that this group had fractured upon its arrival in the Middle East (or perhaps even earlier, while crossing overland to reach it) and this is the reason for the different waves of conquest; that the proto-Vedic Harappa simply split into different, competing hero-cults led by strong leaders who each overtook a different power base and in time came into conflict either with each other or with peoples strong enough to blunt their forward motion.

Is it possible that the initial Harappan wave in this theory smashed into Sumeria and Akkad for reasons other than convenience?

Meanwhile, in Akkad, north of Sumeria, there was a ruler called Sargon of Agade (the leading city of Akkad). Legends grew about him in later generations, including one in which, as a baby, he was supposed to have been found in a small boat floating on the river. (The legend, famous in the Middle East, was taken over by the Biblical writers and applied to Moses.) Sargon gained control of Kish and, about 2340 BC, he easily defeated Lugalzaggisi and united all of Sumer and Akkad under his rule. He then went on to conquer Elam and the mountainous lands to the east, as well as the upper reaches of the Tigris-Euphrates, and Canaan to the west. His dominions spread from the Mediterranean Sea to the Caspian Sea in the north and to the Persian Gulf in the south. It included all the civilized regions of western Asia.

—Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Chronology of the World