“Indeed each city, as long as it could, maintained a jealous independence, and indulged itself in a private king.
It called him 'patesi', or priest-king, indicating by the very word that government was bound up with religion.
By 2800BC, the growth of trade made such municipal separatism [that is, the complete sovereignty by city] impossible, and generated 'empires' in which some dominating personality subjected the cities and their patesis to his power, and wove them into an economic and political unity. [That] despot lived in a Renaissance atmosphere of violence and fear; at any moment he might be despatched by the same methods that had secured him the throne. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.7, Part 2, Segment 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)
"[...] The wars were waged frankly for commercial routes and goods, without catchwords as a sop for idealists. King Manishtusu of Akkad announced frankly that he was invading Elam to get control of its silver mines, and to secure diorite stone to immortalize himself with statuary -- the only instance known of a war fought for the sake of art.
The defeated were customarily sold into slavery; or, if this was unprofitable, they were slaughtered on the battlefield. Sometimes a tenth of the prisoners, struggling vainly in a net, were offered as living victims to the thirsty gods. As in Renaissance Italy, the chauvinistic separatism of the cities stimulated life and art, but led to civic violence and suicidal strife that weakened each petty state, and at last destroyed Sumeria."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.7, Part 2, Segment 3, 1935 (italics, bold, and formatting added)
"To this system of royal and feudal administration was added a body of law, already rich with precedents when Ur-engur and Dungi codified the statutes of Ur; this was the fountainhed of Hammurabi's famous code.
It was cruder and simpler than later administration, but less severe: where, for example, the Semitic code killed a woman for adultery, the Sumerian code merely allowed the husband to take a second wife, and reduce the first to a subordinate position.
The law[:]
covered commerical as well as sexual relations
regulated all loans and contracts
[regulated] all buying and selling
[regulated] all adoptions and bequests
Courts of justice sat in the temples
[Judges] were for the most part priests
[Professional] judges presided over a superior court
The best element in this code was a plan for avoiding litigation: every case was first submitted to a public arbitrator whose duty it was to bring about an amicable settlement without recourse to law. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Book 1, Ch.7, Part 2, Segment 3, 1935 (italics and formatting added)
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