Babylonian literature : lectures delivered at the Royal institution / by the Rev. A.H. Sayce.
- Archibald Sayce
- Date:
- [1877]
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Babylonian literature : lectures delivered at the Royal institution / by the Rev. A.H. Sayce. Source: Wellcome Collection.
16/110 page 10
![ring, now in the British Museum,' must have been the product of generations of former experience. They simply inherited the labours and wisdom of their Accadian predecessors, just as their monarch himself inherited the organised rule and royal pre- rogatives of the Accadian princes. With affected archaism they gave him the Accadian title'of dadhrum “the deviser,” and styled him, further in their own language “the king of justice, the deviser of justice, and the deviser of prosperity.” Yet Sargon, whose very name signified “the established king,” seems to have been an usurper and sprung from the people. A curious legend of his infancy has been preserved, which assimilates him to Perseus and Romulus, to Moses and other popular heroes of antiquity. “ My mother,” it makes him say, “was an outcast, my father I knew not, my father’s brother ruled the land. In the city Azupiranu, on the bank of the river Euphrates, my mother the outcast conceived me; in a hiding-place she bore me. She laid me in an ark of rushes, with bitumen (its) mouth she closed. She gave me to the river, which drowned me not. The river carried me; to Acci the ferryman did it bring me. Acci the ferryman in the tenderness of his heart, lifted me up. Acci the ferryman as his own child nurtured me. Acci the ferryman as his woodsman made me. And in my woodsmanship did the goddess Istar love me.”^ In spite of this later myth, however, which has fastened upon his name, Sargon was a historical * Nitakh-Anu or Lugur-Ana, son of Gantu. {IV. A. 1. I., 3, ii.) • fV. A. ]. 11., 48, 40. 3 ij^ I 111., 4, 7.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b24857464_0016.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
