In the 3rd millennium BC, long before the rise of the Assyrians and the Babylonians,

thousands of years before the time of the Greeks and the Romans, the very last Sumerian kingdom

arose upon the plains of modern-day southern Iraq, and succeeded in unifying all of the already ancient Sumerian city states into a political hole.

From his power base at Umah, directly between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, one Sumerian

ruler gradually brought together every other town and citadel of the Mesopotamian plain

through a combination of military might and political machination. He has even thought to have launched

military campaigns as far afield as the Mediterranean to the northwest,

the very first time in history that a Sumerian ruler extended his influence to reach the place that they perceived to be the very edge of the world.

That king's name was Lugel Zagzi, and had he not been very quickly overshadowed at the end of his life by a non-Sumarian

newcomer, Sargon of Akad, who swiftly conquered an even larger empire for himself and his descendants

out of the ashes of his predecessors, it would have been Lugalsargsi, not Sargon, who would

likely be remembered today as history's first conqueror.

At the time of Lugel-Zargsie's birth in around 2,320 BC, a vast plethora of competing

states had existed upon the grasslands of southern Iraq, in an almost unbroken line of succession,

dating back thousands of years to the world's very first city builders. There, in an almost unbroken line of succession, dating back thousands of years to the world's

very first city builders. There, in the fertile, yet difficult lands between the Tigris and

the Euphrates rivers, they had established long-lasting dynasties, and gradually expanded their

cultural and political influence outwards to theing states to the north and the east.

Umah was just one of these cities, and not a particularly old one, probably being founded

sometime during the early dynastic period of 2,900 to 2,300 BC. Older cities, such as Uruk,

which had its roots sometime in the 4th millennium BC, and reached

its apex of between 50,000 and 80,000 inhabitants by around 2,900, had long played the

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