How Did This King Bullshit Even Begin?

Have a safe and successful protest, America

What does a far-right middle-aged misogynistic British bag of bollocks have to do with the world’s first emperor? Not a goddamn thing, except this unfuckable douchecanoe named Carl decided to style his online persona as “Sargon of Akkad” while going on YouTube tirades about everything from feminism to Islam to women being better than him at video games. The two men did share similar attitudes toward women, except the real Sargon had the excuse of living forty-three centuries ago when everyone believed women inferior.

Crying on the internet about how life isn’t fair for white men won’t result in anyone being referred to as “Carl the Great.” Sargon of Akkad achieved that honorific via conquest, because raising massive armies to kill the shit out of people then take their stuff is something history considers awesome; when modern military academies teach Alexander the Great’s battle tactics, they don’t worry over his right to conquer. Born in the middle of the twenty-fourth century B.C.E., Sargon is considered the world’s first emperor, conquering several Sumerian city-states and personally ruling over them for four decades, with his empire lasting another century-and-a-quarter after his death. Compared to later empires, the Akkadian was geographically small, but that didn’t stop Sargon from being boastful of his conquests, daring potential rivals to “Let’s see you losers do what I did!” Paraphrased. This megalomaniacal desire of alleged great men to stamp their way into the history books was eloquently detailed in the nineteenth century by Percy Bysshe Shelley in his poem “Ozymandias.” Written about the thirteenth century B.C.E. Egyptian Pharoah Rameses II, who also got “the Great” added to his name, it describes the pharaoh’s self-aggrandizement as the “king of kings,” demanding other rulers “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Calm the fuck down, dude. Shelley’s sonnet is likewise critical of such hubris, describing the ephemeral nature of any ruler’s accomplishments.

How did this king bullshit even begin?

Leadership was precarious. Early chiefs of smaller societies achieved and retained power via a series of favors, forging alliances, and depending on family support. To stay in power, the bribes and gifts had to flow. As settlements grew larger, so did the wealth the leaders controlled, and it got easier to just hire muscle to maintain their dominance and extract more wealth from the laboring populace. For so many rulers, having a little power wasn’t enough, but neither was great power sufficient. The pioneering psychologist Alfred Adler explained early in the twentieth century that feeling inferior is a universal human experience rooted in childhood, and some develop an “inferiority complex” from being surrounded by those more powerful, whereas others come to manifest a superiority complex, a need to be relentlessly ambitious, always seeking additional recognition via achievement. It creates a vicious circle; attaining higher status releases pleasurable hormones, and they keep chasing that high. And so, many rulers endeavor to expand their holdings. Sometimes this was done via cooperative methods, such as supporting farmers in increasing the amount of land under cultivation. Alternatively, they leaned on their populace harder and/or invaded their neighbors to take their shit. Unfortunately for our species, raising armies and conquering other people proved successful often enough it created myriad warlike societies. Thieving from your neighbors and demanding tribute rapidly became a popular way to grow the economy.

Power converges to a center, and it quickly became about more than just wealth accumulation in the hands of the few taken from the exploited many. To keep wealth flowing, it was necessary to establish order. Monarchs may have welcomed initiating wars beyond their borders, but internal security was paramount, especially for ensuring the security of the ruler from the machinations of the ruled. With so much wealth to be gained by being on top, there were always men of violence ready to do some toppling. A modern-day actuary would insist on high premiums for any ancient king seeking a life-insurance policy; twenty per cent of Rome’s eighty-two emperors were assassinated while in office.

To protect themselves and their allied elites, early leaders endeavored to create a monopoly on violence, and the result was a decreasing of it. The first states were a protection racket, and so has been every state since, with the populace trading freedom for internal and external security. And that all sounds … not the worst, considering how dangerous being alive was back then. As horrible as kings could be, anarchy was generally worse, because instead of having a small number of elite assholes inflicting occasional abuse upon you, you had to worry about a whole lot of assholes chaotically inflicting random and frequent violence via banditry, blood feuds, and other small-scale quests for dominance. Just like the mobsters in the movies squeezing the working classes for their “protection money,” it was all about the upward flow of wealth to make the rich even richer.

And yet, the elite didn’t just sit around and count their wealth. Rulers did get shit done in addition to maintaining a semblance of internal peace, which was good for the economy, like managing massive irrigation projects to help their people prosper so they could tax the hell out of them even more. With the threat of famine ever present, people did appreciate someone taking charge to ensure the water flowed and food production was managed. It is less certain how the populace felt about being coopted into the more useless building projects, however, such as the many giant pyramids proclaiming I was here, I have a massive penis, my power is eternal. And the penis was of utmost importance, because a female monarch arose only in times of dynastic crisis, a tool surrounded and influenced by powerful men to keep the family in power when there was no male heir. With such wealth and power at stake, men made rules to ensure their offspring were truly theirs. Half the population was not easily dominated. It took massive organization and complex systems of control to create the patriarchies that persist into modernity. It required a critical mass of male power invested in female oppression to bring it about.

Men sought to control every aspect of women’s lives, not just their sexuality. “Mate guarding” has a strong biological drive in the animal kingdom, but male humans used their intelligence and organizational capabilities to institute sexism at much higher levels of oppression. Men wanted to ensure their property passed on to their own biological children, and in the process made women into property. For some rulers, their female property numbered in the thousands.

Some wanted more women than they could sleep with, while others pursued more gold than they could spend. Although the subject of mythology, King Midas did exist, ruling over part of what is now Turkey in the eighth century B.C.E. And yes, he was filthy rich. So was a successor to his throne who came two centuries later, King Croesus. Croesus’s fate is a subject of debate, but legend has it that when facing defeat by Persian Emperor Cyrus the Great, Croesus took his own life atop a funeral pyre made of his own wealth as a fuck you to those who say you can’t take it with you.

Greed has proven a key motivator of human behavior across the ages. It originated as a means of survival and reproductive success during times of precarious existence. Yet there seems to be no restraining it, as long after basic needs are met and even exceeded, avarice continues to run amok. What began as a “better safe than sorry” mentality of hoarding against future shortages during the earliest days of agricultural settlements devolved into many willing to risk their lives and engage in horrific violence in an endless quest to quench the unquenchable desire for more.

And the mass of humanity has suffered for it.

Those who cannot remember the past … need a history teacher who says “fuck” a lot. Get both volumes of On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.