Fertile Crescent ept than their Egyptian counterpart at building secure, stable empires Over time, however, they mastered the art, and the Assyrians briefly unified the entire Fertile Crescent under a single sovereign entity, in the middle of the seventh century b.c.e Initially, Mesopotamia was broken into tiny citystates, with each town and its surrounding land claiming all the prerogatives of a sovereign state Collectively called Sumer, the city-states near the Tigris and Euphrates delta developed a distinctive culture, featuring literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh Although Gilgamesh’s town of Uruk clearly influenced others, neither it nor any of the other city-states of Sumer established a clear military or political dominance over the others The first major military power in Mesopotamia was not native to the region at all but an invader: the Gutians, who had domesticated the horse and invaded over the Zagros Mountains Although repulsed by the Sumerians, militia in the individual towns—such as the 24-man garrison of Lagash—could not overcome the next invasion, from northern Arabia Sargon of Akkad unified southern Mesopotamia c 2350 b.c.e not only by force with his 6,000-man army but also by adopting the local culture This empire only lasted until 2100 b.c.e., however, before native Sumerian rule was restored by the third dynasty of Ur The first leader of this new empire, Ur-Nammu, organized neighboring city-states into administrative districts and imposed one of the world’s first codes of laws across the whole federation His son, Shulgi, conquered a few neighboring city-states and was revered as a god, though his empire was soon dwarfed The problem with Sumer-Akkad was that local food supplies were unable to cope with a growing population—still less so in periods of drought and when the cult of personality failed Shulgi’s successors All three factors came into play when the Amorites, another North Arabian tribe, came into the fertile valley of the Euphrates River around 2000 b.c.e and established themselves at Babylon, blocking the major trade route Slowly they absorbed almost all of the territory and culture of their more numerous subjects, but some Sumer-Akkadians may have moved altogether to a different collection of city-states on the northern Tigris, in the old kingdom of Assyria ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA Though it went through many evolutions, these migrations ultimately set the stage for the major Mesopotamian rivalry of the next 1,500 years, between Assyria and 147 The Fertile Crescent is an area of land irrigated by several rivers, most notably the Tigris, the Euphrates, and the Nile (above) Babylonia—both of them centers of trade, culture, and learning, which became increasingly militaristic and antagonistic over time At first, early Babylon was the more impressive, with leaders such as Hammurabi writing their own codes of laws and increasingly advanced institutions of politics, culture, and religion Assyria, meanwhile, grew rich as a trading empire but fell subject to invasion by the Mittani, a mysterious people who may have introduced iron working to the region When Assyria reemerged around 1350 b.c.e., it was no longer a trading empire but a state governed by a continual call to war For some 700 years Assyria steadily expanded, dominating its neighbors and unifying large areas of the Fertile Crescent, until by 671 b.c.e the entire region was subject to the rule of a single leader, Esarhaddon, governing from the city of Nineveh on the middle Tigris Deeply religious and eminently pragmatic, many Assyrian leaders combined respect for their neighbors with a calculated ruthlessness Although they allowed many conquered peoples to retain their political institutions, Assyrian bas-reliefs suggest that their leaders favored a policy of large-scale devastation and deportation for recalcitrant populations, and later dynasties built centers of culture at home from the spoils of rival neighbors Despite suffering from one or two major expeditions, Assyrian hegemony worked relatively well for Phoenicia, a collection of semifederated maritime trading states in the northern Levant that provided tribute from islands in the Mediterranean The Israelite lands were less compliant, however, and required a judicious mix of deportations, depredations, and diplomacy