SPACE: AN EASTWARD SHIFT | 93into the plain of Piedmont, “not on the back of an Elephant,” Gibbon was
characteristically eager to ironize (not analyze) his own experience with a
classical allusion; but the reference also serves to remind us in what a long
and dominant tradition he stood, of men descending on Italy from the
North. Nevertheless, the earliest surviving accounts in Eurasian literature of
coming to and beholding the Mediterranean were written, not by Northern-
ers, but by men from the East, from Mesopotamia.
As early as c. 2300 BCE, more than two millennia before Hannibal, we
find King Sargon of Akkad conquering Lagash and washing his weapons in
the Persian Gulf (where his kingdom came in contact with a trading system
that already reached as far as India^2 ). He also subdued the Upper Land as far
as the Mediterranean shore, the Cedar Forest, and the Silver Mountains.^3 We
may compare the Old Babylonian Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh, which seems
to have crystallized in the eighteenth century but was based on Sumerian
poems of the third millennium. The epic has its hero and his friend Enkidu
make their way from Gilgamesh’s kingdom of Uruk in Southern Babylonia
all the way to the Cedar Forest (Mount Lebanon) in order to cut down a
giant tree for the door of the temple of Enlil at Nippur.^4 This may reflect
Sargon’s exploits and claims:^5 apparently Gilgamesh was a literary construct
not a historical personality. We reach firmer ground about the year 1800
with King Iahdun- Lim of Mari on the Euphrates, who marched his army to
the Mediterranean coast, “and made a great offering (befitting ) his kingship
to the sea; his troops bathed themselves in the sea.” Then he ascended “the
great mountains,” cut down cedar, cypress, and other trees, and erected a
monument to attest his might. He loudly proclaimed himself the first king of
Mari to reach the sea, the mountains, and their forests.^6
Almost a millennium later, when the coast dwellers of Phoenicia had al-
ready begun to explore even the furthest occidental reaches of the Mediter-
ranean (see below), we find the great inland kings of Assyria, Ashurnasirpal
II (883–59) and his son Shalmaneser III (858–24), following closely in
Iahdun- Lim’s footsteps toward the western horizon, and erecting vast, repeti-
tive inscriptions to boast about it. In the sea Ashurnasirpal washed his weap-
2 M. R. Bhacker, “The cultural unity of the Gulf and the Indian Ocean,” in L. G. Potter (ed.), The
Persian Gulf in history (New york 2009) 167.
3 D. Frayne, The royal inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early periods 2. Sargonic and Gutian periods
(2334–2113 BC) (Toronto 1993) 11, 14, 17, 28–29, 30. For an archaeological perspective on cedar and
silver supplies in early Syria, Mesopotamia, and Eg ypt, see L. Marfoe, “Cedar forest to silver mountain:
Social change and the development of long- distance trade in early Near Eastern societies,” in M. Row-
lands and others (eds), Centre and periphery in the ancient world (Cambridge 1987) 25–35.
4 Epic of Gilgamesh [ed. and tr. A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic (Oxford 2003)],
tablets 2–5, 7.
5 As suggested by George, Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic [4:4] 20.
6 D. Frayne, The royal inscriptions of Mesopotamia: Early periods 4. Old Babylonian period (2003–
1595 BC) (Toronto 1990) 604–8.