Dawn of Empire

by H A CULLEY

  A party of six old men came out riding onagers to greet Uktannu and, dismounting, bowed low before his chariot.

  ‘Welcome, great king, all we have is yours,’ the leading elder intoned formally.

  Uktannu laughed. ‘I am no king, merely one of King Hammurabi’s many commanders,’ he corrected them.

  For a moment they looked confused. ‘But you have so many soldiers. We thought you must be the King of Babylon who has destroyed both armies of King Rim-Sim including, sadly, all our men.’

  ‘A great number did die in battle, it is true, but many survived and now fight under Hammurabi’s banner.’

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw some of his men waving excitedly at the crowd of people who had started to venture out of the city to gawp at Uktannu’s army. He frowned and sent one of his captains to reprimand the men and to confirm that, as he suspected, they were from this city. When the captain returned he brought several men with him.

  ‘They say that they are from Girsu, lord.’

  Uktannu turned back to the elders. ‘You see, some of your young men are now in my army.’

  In the end he stayed at Girsu for a week and when he departed he left a captain of a hundred behind with his men and detachments of archers, camel archers and slingers. There were few men of military age in the city but plenty of boys and few old men who could still fight. The captain’s task was to re-build the walls and train them to defend their city. He was delighted to discover that the city bred camels and onagers. The latter were being replaced by horses to draw lighter chariots with spoked wheels in the Babylonian army, but onagers were still useful to pull wagons.

  He had purchased fifty camels and told the handful of camel archers he left behind that they were to train some of the younger boys to control them and pick some of the more promising fifteen and sixteen year olds to become mounted archers. He emphasised that he expected them to have made good progress by the time he returned.

  Lagash was a different proposition. Whereas Girsu had welcomed him and his men, the gates of Lagash were firmly shut against him. He had been told that the city had a population of some fifty thousand and the walls stood eighteen feet high behind a deep ditch. He knew from what his father had told him several years ago that the Elamites had tried to take it several times and had always failed.

  He had asked whether any of his men were from this city but he was told that, because it was the major fortress on the frontier with Elam, none of its militia were required to serve in the Sumerian field armies. This meant that there were probably between eight and ten thousand men manning the walls against him. As he only had ten thousand spearman, a thousand archers and few hundred each of chariots, camel archers and slingers, the odds were not in his favour if he attacked the city directly.

  He decided a little subterfuge was called for. The elders at Girsu had little time for the Governor of Lagash, saying that he was arrogant and full of self-importance. Even allowing for the understandable jealousy between the two cities, because of the transfer of the capital between them centuries ago, Uktannu felt that the governor’s weaknesses might be the key to his defeat.

  He calculated that the Lagash militia must number at least eight thousand and so he arrived to lay siege to the town with five thousand spearmen, five hundred archers and twenty chariots. As he had hoped, this tempted the governor to bring his militia out to defeat the smaller force on the plain in front of the town in preference to withstanding a tedious siege. The previous night Uktannu had hidden his other five thousand spearmen and units of archers, slingers and camel archers, together with eighty more light chariots, in dead ground two miles away.

  The gates remained open behind the militia as they deployed into position facing the Babylonians with the archers in front and the spearmen in ranks seven deep and one thousand across the front, overlapping the opposing army. Uktannu placed his twenty chariots on his right flank with both slingers and archers in front of his spearmen. Suddenly a hundred or more chariots charged out of the open gates and headed straight for the Babylonian centre.

  No doubt the governor hoped to terrify the enemy with the sudden charge of his massed chariots but they were of the old heavy type with solid wheels drawn by onagers. As they lumbered around the left flank of the militia Uktannu’s twenty light chariots charged forward but, instead of meeting the other chariots head on, they cut across their front, firing volley after volley of arrows as they went aimed at the onagers. The front rank of the enemy chariots slewed to a sudden halt and the row behind crashed into them.

  The fast moving Babylonian chariots charged down the side of the formation killing more onagers and the occasional charioteer, then they turned and raced back to their original position. They left behind forty disabled chariots.

  This was not the sort of battle that the governor was used to and he screamed with rage at the failure of his vastly superior numbers of chariots to wreak the usual havoc upon the enemy foot. Ordering his chariots to engage the Babylonian chariots again he gave the command for his whole force to advance and attack the enemy. As soon as he was committed Uktannu gave the signal and the other half of his army emerged from hiding. The foot advanced on the enemy right flank and the chariots and camel archers raced to cut off the militia’s retreat back into the city.

  Seeing the city gates were still open the senior captain of the camel archers detached a hundred of his men to seize the gates. Foolishly the governor had been so confident of victory that he had only left a score of men to guard them and the gates were soon in Babylonian hands. The rest of the camel archers and the chariots kept up a withering fire on the rear ranks of the militia and they quickly broke, fleeing away from the city as their retreat back inside the walls had been cut off.

  Fifteen minutes later it was all over. The commander of the militia blamed the foolish governor for the debacle and called to his men to surrender. When the governor objected the commander cut off his head and mounted it on his spear before riding his chariot over to Uktannu’s.

  The latter was enormously relieved that he had taken Lagash without a drop of civilian blood being shed. His worst nightmare was that the city would have to be taken by storming it, followed by the type of sack that had so dismayed him at Kutallu. As it was, he left a garrison of a thousand in place to support the new governor, one of his green crests who had been in charge of five thousand spearmen. He demanded tribute, some of which he paid to his men to compensate them for not being allowed to sack the city and, having taken hostages from the sons of the leading merchants to serve in his army, he moved on to Urukag.

  This city lay in the middle of a pleasant fertile area on the west bank of the Tigris, but the farms and villages had been raised to the ground and their crops burned. His scouts returned to say that an Elamite army was laying siege to the city. Urukag itself was quite small with perhaps twenty thousand inhabitants, but it was well defended by tall walls and was surrounded by a moat. Uktannu was immediately suspicious. The scouts’ estimate was that there were no more than five thousand Elamites camped before the city; nowhere near enough to prosecute a proper siege. It had to be a trap.

  He sent out a patrol to search the ground between Urukag and Nina, the Sumerian port city on the Tigris estuary a few miles inland from the Gulf coast. They returned to say that Nina had been taken and burned and some fifteen thousand Elamites were camped there. As Nina was only a few miles from Urukag it was obvious that they were waiting for an attack on the besieging force. They could then destroy the attackers.

  That night the Babylonians skirted Urukag and arrived north of the Elamites at Nina just before dawn. As the sun rose in the east Uktannu attacked. Most of the Elamites were still in their tents and asleep when the chariots and the camel archers tore through their camp. Once they had done what damage they could, they chased the large herd of onagers away and left it to the spearmen to systematically work their way through the camp. Most of the slingers and all the archers waited to pick off any who fled whi
lst fifty slingers set about killing the few sentries left with the Elamite fleet, which had conveyed them up the Gulf from further south. That done they started to set fire to it.

  The Elamites gradually organised themselves to fight back but, by that time, they had lost a third of their number, either dead, wounded or fled. They hadn’t had time to put on armour and, in many cases, they had been so eager to get out of their tents that they had forgotten their spears and bows.

  Uktannu’s spearmen stood back and allowed the foot archers and the camel archers to whittle down the Elamites until they surrendered. Once the captives were secured, Uktannu found that he had six and a half thousand captives to take back to the slave markets. The proceeds would be more than enough to rebuild both Kutallu and Nina, as well as repair Girsu.

  Hammurabi would be delighted, he thought. He would be less pleased to find that Elamite tribesmen from the south, along the east coast of the Gulf, had invaded Sumeria. Although born an Elamite, Uktannu hated them and worried that they would forever be a thorn in Babylon’s side.

  When they returned to Urukag they found that the Elamites there had fled and the city threw open its gates to welcome the Babylonians as saviours. They were running short of food after the two month siege but, nevertheless, they laid on a splendid feast for them. They were somewhat bitter that Lagash hadn’t come to their aid and so the news about the death of the governor there was an added cause for celebration.

  Once Uktannu was satisfied that the Elamites had crossed back across the Tigris, he left another garrison at Urukag and set off with his prisoners towards Larsa, wondering how the siege there was going.

  ~#~

  Hammurabi had been advised that the city council of Larsa, after enduring the siege for six months, wanted to sue for peace as the inhabitants were starving. By the time that he and Samsu-Iluna had arrived the negotiations were finished and it only remained for him to agree the terms of the surrender. King Rim-Sim had been violently opposed to capitulation but his people had had enough; they stormed the palace and took him prisoner. He was now locked in a room in his former palace, waiting for Hammurabi to decide his fate.

  This gave Hammurabi a real problem. It didn’t do for kings to kill one another, not in cold blood at any rate. On the other hand, the possibility of future revolt would haunt him if he allowed the old man to live. All his sons and grandsons were now dead but he still had a daughter who was married to the Governor of Ur, a major city on the west bank of the Euphrates. They had a fourteen year old daughter who he would need to find a suitable husband for if she wasn’t to become the focus for insurrection in due course.

  However, that still left Rim-Sim. Hammurabi went to see him and was startled by his appearance. He was now seventy and so Hammurabi had expected him to be a frail old man. Instead he was the picture of robust health. His face was lined, his hair grey and most of his teeth were missing but otherwise he didn’t look any older than Hammurabi himself. All thoughts of him dying soon from old age could be dismissed.

  ‘What would you do if I let you live?’

  ‘What would you do? Try to regain what you have stolen from me, of course!’

  ‘To what end? Your male heirs are all dead and you can’t have many more years left to live.’

  ‘I’m not so old that I can’t sire a few more if I have to,’ Rim Sim boasted to a sceptical Hammurabi.

  ‘Even if that were true, and I doubt it is or you would have done so, you can hardly expect to live long enough to see them grow up.’

  The old man sighed. ‘Perhaps.’ Suddenly he looked weary. ‘So what are your plans for me?’

  ‘I have been pondering that for some time. At first I thought it would be best to quietly dispose of you but, after my own father was murdered in his bed, that is something for which I have a particular aversion. So, I will announce your regrettable demise and spirit you away to the city of Upi far away in the north. There you can spend the rest of your days in peace and tranquillity – under a different name, of course.’

  Rim Sim smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘I would like to say that the idea has a certain attraction but, in truth, I cannot imagine a worse fate for someone like me. Don’t forget I have been a king for the past sixty years; I’m afraid that the life of a recluse has little appeal for me. No, do me the courtesy of leaving me your dagger when you go and I will solve your little problem for you.’

  Hammurabi studied the man to see if he had trickery in mind but he decided that he was being sincere. He pulled the sheathed dagger from the sash around his waist and regarded it for a moment. It was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, a bronze blade with a bone handle bound in gold wire with a gold sheath studded in lapis lazuli. It had been a present from Adiar and he was loathe to see it put to the use that Rim-Sim intended. But it did solve his problem, so he laid it down on the table and left the room.

  ~#~

  Mutu-Namaha regarded the ancient city of Ur in some awe. It occupied the whole of a large island in the Euphrates near where it flowed out into the Gulf. There were only two gates through the walls that followed the shoreline of the island. One was connected to the mainland to the north west and the other led to the port area alongside the river to the east. The whole of the centre of the city was devoted to a walled temple complex above which a ziggurat, much bigger than the one at Babylon, towered.

  The population of Ur at its height, when it was the capital of an Akkadian kingdom before the arrival of the Amorites, was said to be nearly seventy thousand, which was what Babylon was now. Since its heyday, the number of inhabitants had shrunk somewhat but there were still about forty-five thousand inside those walls. This probably meant a militia of about seven thousand and, although he had brought with him an army twenty thousand strong, the advantage in numbers availed him nothing given Ur’s impregnable location.

  Even the one access gate from the land was over the other side of the river. This close to its mouth, the Euphrates was too wide to cross except in a boat and he had none with him. Furthermore, without boats he couldn’t even blockade the city and starve them out. As he sat on the east bank pondering what to do he saw a small boat leave the dock and sail over to a small jetty near where he stood.

  Three men disembarked from the boat and climbed the bank towards him. Two were richly dressed and the third wore the robe of a priest with a diadem on his head. He suspected that they were the governor, the chief elder and the high priest. After Mutu-Namaha had greeted them and confirmed his suspicions as to who they were, he led them to a tent which had been hurriedly pitched when the boat had set out. Refreshments were served by some of the slingers and then they withdrew.

  ‘I see you prefer slave boys to serve you instead of girls,’ the high priest sneered, no doubt hoping to put Mutu-Namaha on the defensive.

  ‘There are no slaves in my army, nor any servants of either sex,’ he smiled back at the man. ‘Everyone who accompanies me is a trained soldier and they are all very good at killing; maybe not so proficient at serving refreshments though,’ he admitted with a wry smile.

  ‘But they are only young boys!’ the high priest clearly didn’t believe him so Mutu-Namaha sent for one of his green crests. Ten minutes later, when all was ready, he led his guests outside where three boys no older than eleven or twelve waited with their slings. Suddenly the ground shook as three camels raced towards them. The archers in the double saddles all carried a gourd full of water suspended from a stick held above the head of the camel boy riding in front of them. As one the three boys whirred their slings and released. All three gourds disintegrated at the same time, covering the laughing camel boys with water and pieces of gourd.

  The visitors were astounded. It was difficult enough for a slinger to hit a gourd but for three of them to hit one when it was fast moving was astonishing. Duly impressed, the three followed Mutu-Namaha back to the tent.

  ‘As I’m sure you have heard, King Rim-Sim committed suicide when Larsa surrendered to my father. Hammurabi
intends to make my elder brother, Samsu-Iluna, King of Sumeria in his place. However,’ he went on before he could be interrupted, ‘he is conscious that one daughter and one granddaughter of Rim-Sim are still alive and well.’ He looked at the governor as he said this and caught a fleeting flicker of fear cross his otherwise impassive face.

  ‘Samsu-Iluna has heard excellent reports of your daughter, Darya, and he desires to marry her and make her his queen.’ As he said this Mutu-Namaha was conscious that Samsu-Iluna wasn’t at all keen to marry a girl who was many years younger than him and whom he had never seen. However, it was what his mother and father had agreed would be the best way of cementing his rule over Sumeria and so he had little say in the matter.

  The governor looked delighted by the prospect of his daughter becoming queen. No doubt he saw himself being promoted to a more important post than governor of a provincial city on the back of Darya’s elevation. After that, the submission of Ur to Mutu-Namaha was merely a formality; something he was really grateful for as he had no idea how he would have captured the city otherwise.

  That night he was invited to dine with the governor and, accompanied by the senior commanders, they were conveyed over the river where they were met and escorted to the governor’s palace in the walled temple area. Mutu-Namaha did worry that he was taking something of a risk because, had the governor wanted to, he could have killed him and all his senior officers. However, Mutu-Namaha was certain that the capitulation of the rest of Sumeria and the lure of becoming father of the queen meant that he could trust the man.

  When Mutu-Namaha was introduced to Darya she proved to be completely different to what he was expecting. She was attractive but not pretty in the conventional sense. Part of her allure was definitely sexual and, for a young girl, she seemed to know how to captivate men without making any effort to do so. Her skin was flawless and she had a small button nose. She was confident without being precocious and interesting to talk to. This was partly because she was a good listener. Mutu-Namaha began to think how lucky his brother was and he realised with a start that he was jealous of him.