Gilgamesh

Gilgamesh the semi-mythical ruler is widely accepted as the historical 5th king of Uruk. Who reigned in the 26th century BC. The name Gilgamesh is found on the famous Sumerian King List, which dates to the late third millennium BC. Later kings respected Gilgamesh greatly; some even considered him as their very own god. Yet, no inscriptions have been found that can be attributed to him.

What Gilgamesh is most known for is The Epic of Gilgamesh which was found by a group of archaeologists looking for evidence of the bible's truth. In 1849, archaeologist, Austinuou  HenryLayard found a clay stone with loads of scratches on it. However these were not regular scratches, this was cuneiform. The ancient writing of the Mesopotamians. Only they did not know that so they took weeks to decipher the writing and once they deciphered it the group found a great story, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

In the story a troubled Gilgamesh is bored and not being the king he could be, so the gods send the demi-god Enkidu to fight him. However after a long hard fight. None die in fact they become best of friends. After words they fight Humbaba and The Bull of Heaven. For that Enkidu is punished and dies. After that Gilgamesh has a vision of a place where people eat sand and drink stone, a place where people go where they die. Gilgamesh could not go there; he had to find eternity he thought, so he went to find eternity. After a long journey he found someone to tell where he would find it.

He was told he had to dive deep into the water and grab a branch from a tree and eat the fruit. So that is exactly what he did. After that deep dive he had to get some rest before he ate it so he went to sleep. Whilst he went to sleep a snake was sent by the gods to take the branch for they did not want Gilgamesh to be immortal. However instead of taking the branch he ate the fruit, and was punished by the gods. When Gilgamesh woke up he was first livid that it was taken, but after some time had passed he had realized something. He realized that he does not need to be immortal, he needs to be a good ruler. Which he was after that, and he was also content. (WW)

Sargon the Great

Sargon the Great was one of Mesopotamia's most well known rulers. Sargon the Great lived a very eventful life. Sargon Conquered Ur, Umma and Lagash.Conquering these city-States really made Sargon more powerful.  Sargon had a few problems though one of which was being self absorbed. Being self absorbed was a big problem because he always cared for himself over the people in the city. Although he had some problems, Sargon was still a good leader in some ways. One way he was a good ruler was because he made his capital city akkad and made the first empire.

Sargon The  Great ruled Mesopotamia, built his capital city (Akkad) in a prime spot in Mesopotamia, and created the world's first empire. Although Sargon's life finally came to an end. When Sargon died he died peacefully because of natural causes. Soon after Sargon died he was succeeded by his son, Rimush.

The Akkad empire lasted 150 years after Sargon The Great's death. First his son took over, then his grandson finished it off, Naramsin. Throughout the whole family all the men ruled greatly for Akkad. The Akkad empire wouldn't be the same without these strong men.  (MG)

Hammurabi

In his early life Hammurabi went to a school called the tablet house. We don't know a lot today about Hammurabi’s youth. We do know that he was born and raised in babylon.  Hammurabi became king when his father died in 1793. Hammurabi became king when he was just 18 years and was the king of Babylon from 1792 to 1750. As Hammurabi grew older he learned how to become king by watching his father and listening to what his advisors said. 

While he was king he created Hammurabi’s code which is a collection of 282 rules. Hammurabi established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. He was best known for his law code. The laws were later lost in history and weren't rediscovered until 1901.  This helped with regulated trade, business, and social relationships in Babylon. His code includes many harsh punishments, sometimes demanding the removal of the guilty party's tongue, hands, breasts, eye or ear.

In many ways Hammurabi also served as a model for how to combine military power, diplomatic finesse and political skill to build and control an empire that stretched from the Persian Gulf inland for 250 miles along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. This helped Babylon because they had power and trust in their king, Hammurabi. Hammurabi died in 1750 BC after 43 years of rule. His final years were ones of peace and prosperity for the people of Mesopotamia. Hammurabi died because of an age-related illness. (EP)

Nebuchadnezzar

Nebuchadnezzar was the king of Babylon. He had incredible building skills, for example he built the Ishtar Gates and The Hanging Gardens. He conquered Jerusalem and made them move to Babylon.  For he is a powerful king he is also known for some tragedies. 

Some of these are, He destroyed the kingdom of Judah, and its capital, Jerusalem. First he enslaved them and forced them to come to Babylon. This was a terrible tragedy. God punished Nebakanezer because of this. He had to eat grass like oxygen for 7 years straight. 

Daniel from the Bible had to come to Babylon too. But before all of this happened, he had many visions. This was reported to Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar thought and thought then it got to him, this was telling him something. He started to dream at night over and over again. One of his dreams got him mad. So that is why he decided to do all of these bad things to Jerusalem and Judah. (HB)

Sennacherib

Sennacherib was the second king of Sargonid which was also the dynasty of Assyria (founded by his father). He is the most famous Asirian king for the biblical part he plays in the old testament. His fame mainly rests on his poem “The destruction of sennacherib” in modern days. He is also the second assyrian king to sack up Babylon's temples and be killed for his  affront to the gods. He abandoned his fathers city ( Dur Sharrukin) and moved to the capital Nineveh and built beautiful parks and gardens. 

Since Sennacherib had been forced to be a government official under his father, it's not surprising that when he had the throne his people thought he was weak. Sennacherib had not done anything to make his people love him or even like him that much. Sennacherib was a very important king to Babylon, because his father made him the king so he got respect from his peers. This is because his father was a very important man so they thought he would punish them if they did not show respect to the new king. (KF)

Ashurbanipal

Ashurbanipal was a popular king who ruled the city of Nineveh and his citizens fairly but was marked for his cruelty toward those who he defeated, the best-known example being a relief depicting the defeated king with a dog chain through his jaw, being forced to live in a kennel after capture.He was the great king of Assyria. His name means "the god Ashur is creator of an heir" and he was the son of King Esarhaddon of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. In the Hebrew Tanakh he is called Osnapper .

Ashurbanipal was the most powerful person on Earth. As the dominant force in Mesopotamia, the crucible of civilisations, he furthered Assyria’s reach beyond what had been achieved in the previous two millennia. He used his power to build a vast library of texts from across his empire – the oldest of its kind surviving – that has bestowed a wealth of knowledge about this ancient world and its peoples.

For all he did as King of Nineveh, Assyria, Ashurbanipal did not expect to take the throne. His father, Esarhaddon, appointed him crown prince in 672 BCE following the death of Ashurbanipal’s oldest brother. This meant skipping over the older Shamash-shum-ukin, who instead took the lesser title of King of Babylon, a major city state under Assyrian control. 

The northern Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria dominated the history of the Ancient Near East during the first half of the last millennium B.C. Under a succession of powerful warrior-Kings, the Assyrians created a large empire, founded on military supremacy and control of trade routes. Which earned them the epithet ‘the Romans of the East’.

Assyria emerged as one of the leading military powers in Mesopotamia during the thirteenth century, and the reputation of the Assyrian army as a fierce and merciless force became firmly established. Yet despite some important successes, including the capture of the rich prize of Babylon, Assyrian influence remained spasmodic; until the tenth century, its history was a cycle of rise and decline, with brief periods of ascendancy and expansion alternating with years of stagnation.Ashurbanipal was really the undisputed king of Assyria. (JT)