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246 had had enough. Once before, when the Deluge was coming, Enlil was so disgusted with mankind that he schemed its obliteration by the great flood. Then, in the Tower of Babel incident, he ordered mankind's dispersion and the confusion of its languages. Now, again, he was growing disgusted. The historical background to the events that followed was the final attempt by the gods to reestablish Kish, the original capital, as the center of kingship. For the fourth time they returned kingship to Kish. starting the dynasty with rulers whose names indicate fealty to Sin, Ishtar. and Shamash. Two rulers, however, bore names _ in- dicating that they were followers of Ninurta and his spouse- evidence of a revived rivalry between the House of Sin and the House of Ninurta. It resulted in the seating on the throne of a nonentity—"Nannia. a stone cutter"; he reigned a brief seven years. In such unsettled circumstances Inanna was able to retrieve the kingship for Erech. The man chosen for the task, one Lugal-zagesi, retained the favor of the gods for twenty-live years; but then, attacking Kish to assure her permanent desolation, he only managed to raise En- lil's ire; and the idea of a strong hand at the helm of human kingship made more and more sense. There was a need for someone unin- volved in all these disputes, someone who would provide firm leader- ship and once again properly perform the role of the king as sole intermediary between the gods and the people in all matters mundane. It was Inanna who. on one of her flying trips, found that man. Her encounter with him, circa 2400 B.C., launched a new era. He was a man who began his career as a cup-bearer to the king of Kish. When he took over the state reins in central Mesopotamia, he quickly extended his rule to all of Sumer. to its neighboring coun- tries, and even unto distant lands. The epithet-name of this first empire-builder was Sharru-Kin ("Righteous Ruler"); | modern textbooks call him Sargon I or Sargon the Great (Fig. 80). He built himself a brand-new capital not far from Babylon and named it Agade ("United"); we know it as Akkad—a name from which stems the term Akkadian for the first Semitic language. A text known as The Legend of Sargon records, in Sargon's own words, his odd personal history: Sargon. the mighty king of Agade. am I. My mother was a high priestess; I knew not my father. . . My mother, the high priestess, who conceived me. in secret she bore me. She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen sealed the lid. THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN