Gilgamesh and Agga

Gilgamesh and Agga is an account sumérien, dating from the end of the 3rd millenium. He tells the fight between Agga, the king of Kish, the city which dominated Low the Mésopotamie, and Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, his rival who refuses this sovereignty.

The account begin with the sending by Agga from an ultimatum intended for Gilgamesh, in which he asks this last to recognize his superiority, and to become its vassal. Not wishing to subject itself, Gilgamesh convenes an assembly of the men of the city. The latter consists of two rooms: an assembly of old (a Senate to some extent), and another consisted of the citizens in the force of the age (i.e. potential combatants). Gilgamesh is resolutely for the war, but the Old ones are opposed, and proposed the tender to it. The combatants, on the other hand, support their king.

Gilgamesh takes account of this last opinion (the " Parlement" thus seem especially to have been advisory), and Kish, more powerful than Uruk, besieges the latter. But in front of the power of Gilgamesh which measures the unfavourable troops top of its ramparts, terror settles in the enemy camp. Agga then agrees to make peace with its enemy. Uruk thus resisted the hegemony of Kish thanks to its powerful sovereign

This account reports the competition between the cities of the south of Mésopotamie at one time which did not known us by written sources. The royal Liste sumérienne brings back also conflicts between Uruk and Kish to this period, since first is supposed to supplant the second, precisely after the reign of Agga (but king d' Uruk is then Meskiangasher, Gilgamesh being its third successor).

The other interest of the text is its evocation of the two assemblies which Gilgamesh convenes, which was used as a basis for the theory of the " primitive Democracy " development by Thorkild Jacobsen. These assemblies do not appear to have of decisional role, since it is the king who chooses to do what he wants.

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