In the 5 th millennium BCE, from Sumer, one of the world’s earliest, most creative civilizations, sprang spiritual and cultural achievements. Among their many “firsts,” they established the first cities, schools, bicameral Congress, tax reduction, irrigation and agricultural techniques. Sumer was cradle of the first writing; moral ideals, proverbs, sayings, hymns and elegies; the first historian; love song; sex symbolism; cosmology; a book of healing; and the first Farmer’s Almanac. When the Babylonians—followed by the vicious Assyrians—conquered, they overcame the lands and people and spread Sumer’s great achievements to the world.
Sargon the Great conquered Sumer’s city states in the 23rd and 24th centuries BCE. He is also famous as the father of Enheduanna, the high priest whom he put in charge of the priests in the temples of two great cities Ur and Uruk. Imagine the consternation of the priests to be governed by a woman! Her administration of the temples kept the cities loyal as Sargon ranged throughout Mesopotamia adding to his vast empire. “Who controls the priests controls the nation.”