King of Battle

šar tamhāri

Anonymous / tradition · c. 18th-14th century BC (an Old Babylonian narrative tradition; the fullest copies come from Amarna in Egypt and Hittite Boghazkoy) · Babylon (Iraq) · epic

A separate legend from the Sargon Birth Legend, this narrative has Sargon of Akkad march to distant Purushanda in Anatolia at merchants' request, arguing that the memory of Akkad's first king could be stretched to justify a king's rescue of endangered trade routes centuries after his actual death. Its place of composition is a conventional attribution, unprovenanced by any findspot.