Thousands of years ago, the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic age precipitated the rise of human civilization in the hospitable climes of the Fertile Crescent. The sedentary peoples of Mesopotamia, especially the ancient Sumerians, required rapidly increasing levels of social coordination to utilize the sporadic flooding of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, a need that could only be accommodated by implementation of a governmental structure. Surplus crop yields generated by the organizational success of this primitive government allowed for the presence of specialists in Sumerian society, which in turn led to great technological developments, the most important of which was a system of writing using phonetic characters. Gradually, cultural elements unique to the Sumerians, such as their shared religion and heroic epics, acted to unite the once-isolated cities of Southern Mesopotamia into a single people.
             The unquestioned authority of the local Sumerian rulers, maintained for centuries, was broken by Sargon, ruler of Akkad, in 2340 B.C.E. His army of professional soldiers, one of the earliest of its kind, swept north from the Arabian Peninsula and sacked the ancient cities of Southern Mesopotamia. This new Akkadian empire, under the leadership of Sargon, adopted Sumerian culture and further developed the innovations of their predecessors. Sargon was the first to concentrate the combined resources of the Mesopotamian city-states under monarchical control, thus creating a cohesive nation where all assets could be consolidated for the sake of warfare. This aggressive stance in the management of the empire was not maintained by his successors, however, and after two hundred years the rule of the Akkadians was overthrown when the Southern Mesopotamian cities revolted in 2125 B.C.E.
             For more than a century, Mesopotamia drifted into chaos, the city-states isolated and beset by Asiatic invaders. In the 19th century B.C.E., the Amor...