is very likely that the warriors were at least occasionally sent into battle in the open
country.^33 The famous Victory Stela of Naram-Sin was erected for the several gods
who gave him victory over the Lullubi of the northern Zagros. That they were able
to defeat the Lullubi in their own mountainous and wooded terrain suggests that
Naram-Sin led men who excelled in some kind of mêléewarfare. The same may
have been true of some of the warriors employed by Sargon and Rimush.
Although the Akkadian kings must have led their armies into open battles against
mountain dwellers and nomadic tribesmen, Aaron Burke has argued that the many
victories that the Akkadian kings claimed over Mesopotamian and Syrian cities
were won not on battlefields but in sieges:
In the many inscriptions that record these engagements it is said, for example,
that a particular king was victorious over a given town in battle, conquered
that town, and destroyed its walls. One notable example refers to Sargon’s
defeat of Uruk:
[Sargon]... conquered the city of Uruk and destroyed its walls. He was
[victorious] over Uruk in battle [conquered the city],... (RIME 21.1.1.
Ins. 12–22)
Identical phrases were employed in the same text to describe Sargon’s battles
against other cities such as Ur, Eninmar, and Umma. Although it is possible
that what is meant in such texts was that opposing armies first fought in open
battle outside the town and the victorious invaders ruthlessly destroyed the
town, the juxtaposition of references to “battle” and “that he conquered the
city” more probably means that the battles referred to were sieges. This is,
in effect, a poetic parallelism that depicts the nature of the battle. This
interpretation is corroborated by another inscription of Sargon in which a
reference to his victory in thirty-four battles is followed by the phrase, “he
destroyed their (city) walls” (RIME2.1.1.11, Ins. 5–6).^34Although Burke is very likely correct that in the days of Sargon and his
successors at Akkad warfare meant mostly the besieging of a city and the
destruction of its walls, some fighting may have taken place before a siege began.
Taking our cue from what is known about warfare in the reign of Hammurabi we
may imagine that when Sargon’s troops (many of whom would have been laborers,
needed for construction of siege-works) approached a city the king of the
threatened city may have sent out at least a few of his archers and slingers in an
attempt to ambush the Akkadians, and so to delay or discourage their progress.
In this ambush the Akkadian archers would have prevailed and Sargon’s massive
column would have continued on toward the city. The battle would in any case
not have been—and would not have been intended to be—a decisive encounter:
it was a delaying or disrupting tactic, and what was decisive was the siege itself,
commencing with the battle from below and from atop the city’s wall.
Finally, during the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. 2112–2004 BC), and with it the
“Sumerian Renaissance,” warfare seems again to have consisted of sieges rather
Warfare in Western Eurasia 65