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Entry 11 of 240War

Sargon Builds the First Empire

c. 2334 BCE/Mesopotamia/Akkadian Empire
Today Central Iraq (his capital, Akkad, is a famous lost city)Span Akkadian Empire · c. 2334–2154 BCE

Sargon of Akkad — by legend a gardener's adopted son who seized the throne — conquered the squabbling Sumerian city-states and ruled them from a single capital, creating what historians usually call the world's first empire. He held it together with the first standing professional army, some 5,400 soldiers who, an inscription boasts, 'ate bread daily' before him. The imperial template starts here: reach outward, bind many peoples under one center, and hand your heirs a machine that must keep expanding or crack.

◆ Worth knowingSargon's capital, Akkad, was among the greatest cities of its age — and today no one knows where it stood. Archaeologists have hunted for it for over a century without success.
◆ The mechanismState formation & institutional founding

A durable new order — a state, an institution, a system of rule — is deliberately built and consolidated, outlasting the people who founded it.

Also: Imperial overstretch · Military-technological disruption

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