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76 their inscriptions of "olden cities." And what was the meaning of the title "king of Sumer and Akkad" that the kings of these em- pires coveted so much? It was only with the discovery of the records concerning Sargon of Agade that modern scholars were able to convince themselves that a great kingdom, the Kingdom of Akkad, had indeed arisen in Mesopotamia half a millennium before Assyria and Babylonia were to flourish. It was with the greatest amazement that scholars read in these records that Sargon "defeated Uruk and tore down its wall. . . . Sargon, king of Agade, was victorious over the inhab- itants of Ur. ... He defeated E-Nimmar and tore down its wall and defeated its territory from Lagash as far as the sea. His weap- ons he washed in the sea. In the battle with the inhabitants of Umma he was victorious. .. ." The scholars were incredulous: Could there have been urban centers, walled cities, even before Sargon of Agade. even before 2500 B.C.? As is now known, indeed there were. These were the cities and urban centers of Sumer, the "Sumer" in the title "king of Sumer and Akkad." It was, as a century of archaeological discoveries and scholarly research has established, the land where Civilization began nearly six thousand years ago; where suddenly and inexpli- cably, as though out of nowhere, there appeared a written language and literature; kings and priests; schools and temples; doctors and astronomers; high-rise buildings, canals, docks, and ships; an in- tensive agriculture; an advanced metallurgy; a textile industry; trade and commerce; laws and concepts of justice and morality; cosmological theories; and tales and records of history and prehis- tory. In all these writings, be it long epic tales or two-line proverbs, in inscriptions mundane or divine, the same facts emerge as an unshakable tenet of the Sumerians and the peoples that followed them: in bygone days, the DIN.GIR—"The Righteous Ones of the Rocketships," the beings the Greeks began to call "gods"—had come to Earth from their own planet. They chose southern Meso- potamia to be their home away from home. They called the land KILEN.GIR—"Land of the Lord of the Rockets" (the Akkadian name, Shumer, meant "Land of the Guardians"); and they estab- lished there the first settlements on Earth. The statement that the first to establish settlements on Earth were astronauts from another planet was not lightly made by the Sumerians. In text after text, whenever the starting point was re- THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN