Political sequence: Sumerians to Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians

Detail

The frame: four city-based powers, one river plain

• From 3500 BCE onwards, four powers rose one after another in Mesopotamia (the land between the Tigris and Euphrates): Sumerians, Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians.
• The basic political unit at the start was the city-state — a sovereign state built around one city, which also ruled the farm land and villages around it. "Sovereign" means no one above it; the city made its own rules.
• The big political shift across this sequence is simple: many small city-states → one empire ruled from one capital. Watch that shift; UPSC questions usually hang on it.

Sumerians — the first city-builders (from c. 3500 BCE, core at Ur)

• Earliest city-based civilisation in the world. Main cities in southern Mesopotamia, with Ur the best known.
• They were the first to build dams and canals to carry river water to fields. This mattered because the rain was poor and the rivers flooded at the wrong time of year.
• They made the first mud bricks and burnt bricks. Burnt brick (baked in fire) lasts longer and resists water, so buildings could be bigger and taller.
• They built ziggurats — stepped temple towers, the tallest thing in a Sumerian city.
• Cuneiform (wedge-shaped writing pressed into wet clay with a reed) appears from 3200 BCE.
• They invented the wheeled cart and the sailboat — one moved goods over land, the other over water. Both made trade and tax-collection easier, and trade is what fed the city.
• Politically this stage is many separate city-states, not one state. No single Sumerian king ruled them all for long.

Akkadians — the world's first dynastic empire (Akkad, 2334 BCE)

• The Akkadians rose in central Mesopotamia with their capital at Akkad, from 2334 BCE.
• This was the world's first dynastic empire — "dynastic" means power passed down inside one family, father to son, instead of each city choosing its own ruler.
• They spoke Akkadian, a different language from Sumerian, but they kept the same cuneiform script. So: new language, old writing system. This is a standard exam trap.
• This was an age of creative literature — myths, hymns and royal stories written down.
• Sargon's clay tablets record trade through the Gulf, showing the empire reached the sea trade routes. (Class 11, Ch 1 "Writing and City Life" dates Sargon to c. 2370 BCE.)
• Sargon's rule is usually dated c. 2334–2279 BCE; around 2350 BCE he marched into Sumer and conquered the city-states, becoming king of southern Mesopotamia. [2]
• His conquests reached beyond Mesopotamia into parts of Syria, Anatolia and Elam (western Iran), and he founded the region's first Semitic dynasty. [2]
• The Akkadian period as a whole is dated c. 2350–2150 BCE; the Sumerian King List gives its first five kings — Sargon, Rimush, Manishtusu, Naram-Sin, Shar-kali-sharri — a combined 142 years, of which Sargon alone ruled 56. [2][3]

Note: NCERT gives Sargon c. 2370 BCE and the Akkadian start as 2334 BCE. Britannica/Met use c. 2334–2279 BCE for his reign. Keep the NCERT dates for the exam; the gap is only a difference in dating method. [2][3]

Assyrians — the early phase from Assur (c. 2154 BCE)

• The Assyrians came from Assur in the north of Mesopotamia, from c. 2154 BCE.
• They supplanted (replaced) Akkadian supremacy — the centre of power moved from central Mesopotamia to the north.
• In Class 9, Ch 4 "Early Humans"'s survey, this early Assyrian dominance lasted till the early 1700s BCE — that is, until Babylon rose under Hammurabi.

Babylonians — city-state to empire (from 1900 BCE)

• Babylon becomes a power from 1900 BCE.
• Hammurabi (1792 BCE) turned Babylon from a city-state into an empire. He is the hinge of the whole sequence — one man converting one city's rule into rule over the whole plain.
• His reign is dated 1792–1750 BCE, in the 1st dynasty of Babylon. [4]

The Code of Hammurabi

• The Code of Hammurabi is a set of civil and social rules — how people should behave with each other, and what happens if they break the rule. It became a foundational model for later legal systems.
• The stele (a tall stone slab set up in public) shows the king receiving the law from Shamash, god of justice, with the code cut in cuneiform below the carving.
• Details of the object:
• Made of highly polished black basalt; now kept in the Louvre, Paris. [4]
• Found by French archaeologists at Susa (in modern Iran) in 1901–1902 — carried there as war loot, so it was not found in Babylon itself. [4]
• It carries 282 case laws covering prices, tariffs, trade and commerce; marriage and divorce; assault and theft; slavery and debt. [4]

• In the carving Shamash hands the king a ring and a rod/sceptre — the symbols of power. Shamash was judge of both gods and men. [4]

• Why it matters politically: writing the law on stone in public says the king's law applies to everyone, everywhere in the empire — not just to his own city.

Why Babylon fell (by the end of 1400 BCE)

Three causes, all working together:

• Outside attack — repeated raids by the Hittites, Indo-European empire-builders based in Anatolia (modern Turkey), plus other rising powers who had new technologies (better metal weapons, chariots).
• Environmental degradation — the land itself wore out. Constant irrigation left salt in the soil and there was growing pressure on farmland as population rose.
• Internal political and economic problems — quarrels at the top and a weakening economy.

Exam point: this is a rare NCERT case where a civilisation's fall is explained by environment + technology gap + internal weakness together, not by invasion alone. Useful in any "causes of decline" answer.

The first-millennium sequence (Class 11, Ch 1 "Writing and City Life")

• The iron-age Assyrian empire, 720–610 BCE, stretched all the way to Egypt.
• Class 11, Ch 1 "Writing and City Life" calls it a predatory state economy — "predatory" means it lived by hunting others: it did not mainly grow its wealth, it extracted labour and tribute (forced payment) from a huge subject population.
• Nabopolassar freed Babylonia in 625 BCE, ending Assyrian rule there.
• External detail on the same collapse:
• Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE) was the last great Assyrian king; he built the first systematically organised library of the ancient Middle East at Nineveh, with royal scribes copying texts of every kind — science, religion, dictionaries, legends — onto thousands of clay tablets. [5]
• Nabopolassar took ten years to push Assyrian forces out of Babylonia, then invaded Assyria in 616 BCE; the Medes (from north-western Iran) took the old Assyrian home city of Assur in 614 BCE and then allied with him. [5]
• Nineveh was captured and destroyed in 612 BCE by Nabopolassar with his Median and Scythian allies; the last Assyrian remnant was finished at the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE. [5]

Note: Class 11, Ch 1 "Writing and City Life" ends the Assyrian empire at 610 BCE; Britannica/Met use the sack of Nineveh in 612 BCE as the end date. Use 720–610 BCE in the exam and treat 612 BCE as the date of Nineveh's fall inside that window. [5]

Babylon as the premier world city

• After 625 BCE Babylon remained the premier world city of its age:
• over 850 hectares in area,
• a triple wall for defence,
• a great ziggurat,
• a processional way (a wide ceremonial road) running through the city,

• home to famous mathematicians and astronomers.

• It stayed the great city through the Achaemenid (Persian) conquest of 539 BCE and down to Alexander in 331 BCE.

• External detail:
• UNESCO inscribes Babylon as a World Heritage site, 85 km south of Baghdad; it was the capital of the Neo-Babylonian empire, 626–539 BCE, and its outer and inner walls, gates, palaces and temples are called a unique testimony to one of the ancient world's most influential empires. [6]
• The processional way led to the Ishtar Gate and was lined with coloured glazed-brick reliefs of roaring lions. [6][7]
• Nebuchadnezzar ran a vast rebuilding and fortification programme at Babylon, using labour gangs brought from many lands — which mixed the city's population further. [7]
• The fourth and most elaborate stage of the Ishtar Gate was dug out by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft in the early twentieth century and rebuilt in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, in 1930. [7]

Prelims Hooks

• The Sumerians built the world's first dams and canals and made the first mud and burnt bricks; they also invented the wheeled cart and the sailboat.
• Cuneiform writing appears from 3200 BCE; the Akkadians changed the language but kept the same script.
• The Akkadian empire (from 2334 BCE, capital Akkad) was the world's first dynastic empire; Sargon's tablets record Gulf trade.
• The Sumerian King List names the first five Akkadian kings — Sargon, Rimush, Manishtusu, Naram-Sin, Shar-kali-sharri — ruling 142 years in total. [2]
• The Assyrians rose at Assur in the north from c. 2154 BCE; their early dominance lasted to the early 1700s BCE.
• Hammurabi (1792 BCE) turned Babylon from a city-state into an empire; the stele shows him receiving the law from Shamash, god of justice.
• The Hammurabi stele is black basalt, holds 282 laws, was found at Susa in 1901–02, and is now in the Louvre. [4]
• The iron-age Assyrian empire (720–610 BCE) reached Egypt and ran a predatory state economy on tribute and forced labour.
• Ashurbanipal (668–627 BCE) built the first systematically organised library, at Nineveh; Nineveh was destroyed in 612 BCE. [5]
• Nabopolassar freed Babylonia in 625 BCE; Babylon (850+ ha, triple wall, ziggurat, processional way) fell to the Achaemenids in 539 BCE and to Alexander in 331 BCE.

Mains Points

• City-state to empire is the core political story. Sumer had many sovereign cities; Akkad under Sargon welded them into one dynastic empire; Babylon under Hammurabi repeated the trick and added a written law code to hold it together. Useful when comparing with the Harappan case, where cities look alike but no imperial capital or royal tomb has been found.
• Law as a tool of empire. The Hammurabi code, cut in public stone and shown as a gift from the god Shamash, gave the king's authority a religious cover and one common rule across many conquered cities. Compare with Ashokan edicts on rock and pillar — same method, different content.
• Decline had many causes, not one. NCERT lists Hittite attacks, rivals with new technology, environmental degradation and internal political-economic trouble together. This supports a wider GS-I argument: ancient states fell where ecological strain met military pressure — the same frame used for Harappan decline.
• Two different "Assyrias" in NCERT. Class 9 treats the early Assur phase (c. 2154 to the early 1700s BCE); class 11 treats the first-millennium iron-age empire (720–610 BCE) as a predatory tribute state. Always cite which chapter's claim you are using; mixing them produces wrong dates in an answer.