rebellion within his reign, although A. Westenholz ( 2000 : 553 ) now seems to place it
rather towards the end of Nara ̄m-Sîn’s reign. Nara ̄m-Sîn reports the successful defeat
of the rebellion and declared that in response to his success the people of the city of
Akkad asked him to be their god, making him the first deified king in Mesopotamian
history.
Nara ̄m-Sîn became immortalised as an Unglücksherrscherin the Sumerian tale of the
Curse of Akkad (Cooper 1983 b, 1993 ). The tale does not connect his misfortunes with
his deification but rather states that the king failed to obtain the proper omen to build
the god Enlil’s temple in Nippur. Enlil was already at that time the highest god in the
Mesopotamian pantheon and Nippur was the religious centre, therefore, the failure to
obtain the proper omen to build the temple can be seen as a serious failing on the king’s
part and shows at the same time that the most important god had withdrawn his divine
favour, thus depriving Nara ̄m-Sîn of his legitimate right to reign and leading to Akkad’s
downfall. As a literary tale it tells us about what Mesopotamians thought was the cause
of Akkad’s collapse.
Administrative sources indicate that the state of Akkad began to collapse under
Nara ̄m-Sîn’s successor Sˇar-kali-sˇarrı ̄, probably due to a combination of internal and
external problems.
During the Old Akkadian period the first administrative documents written in
Akkadian, the oldest Semitic language, appear, and royal inscriptions were also fre-
quently written in Akkadian. In particular the history of the dynasty of Akkad has
sometimes led modern scholars to see an ethnic (Sumerian–Akkadian) or geographic
(southern–northern) dichotomy that clashed at various times in history. However, the
construction of such dichotomies may be rather due more to the wish of modern
scholars to explain complex historical processes than actual dichotomies (Rubio 2007 ).The Second Dynasty of Lagash and the Third Dynasty of Ur:
a Sumerian renaissance?After the fall of Akkad, it appears that a group of non-indigenous peoples called
Gutium took advantage of the power vacuum. This phase is sometimes referred to as
the Post-Akkadian period (Porada et al. 1992 : 116 – 117 ). Different dates are given for the
end of the dynasty of Akkad. Porada et al. ( 1992 : 116 ) put the end of the dynasty of
Akkad at 2150 , whereas some radiocarbon dates seem to indicate an end of Akkad at
2250 (Thomas 1992 : 148 ). It is unclear how long this ‘intermediate’ period lasted, and
because of the (almost complete) absence of written records it is difficult to reconstruct
events between the Akkad dynasty and the Third Dynasty of Ur (also called Ur III,
2112 – 2004 ). Sources from around the beginning of the Ur III period frequently
mention expelling the Gutium from Babylonia, first under Utuhegal, a king of Uruk,
who overlapped with Ur-Namma of Ur, then under Ur-Namma himself.
The chronology of the Second Dynasty of Lagash remains difficult, not even the
sequence of rulers is certain (Table 6. 5 ). However, a synchronism between Gudea of
Lagash, the best-known ruler of Lagasˇ, and Ur-Namma of Ur now seems fairly
accepted (Steinkeller 1988 ; Suter 2000 : 15 – 17 , with further literature). Gudea is well
known because a number of inscribed statues were excavated at Girsu and because two
cylinders recorded how Gudea built the god Ningirsu’s temple at Girsu. The cylinders
(Edzard 1997 : 68 – 106 ), which probably were originally placed in a temple (Suter 2000 :
–– Nicole Brisch ––