Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/26

18 13. “And the black-headed (Accadian) race have governed.

14. “In multitudes of bronze chariots I rode over rugged lands.

15. “I governed the upper countries.

16. “I ruled the chiefs of the lower countries.

17. “Three times to the coast of the (Persian) sea I advanced, Dilvun submitted,

18. “The Fort of the God of Hades bowed.”

The story, it will be seen, is the oft-told one, how the hero of noble birth is born in secret and exposed to death, but rescued and brought up in obscurity until the time comes when his true origin and character are revealed, and he becomes a mighty prince and conqueror. Sargon of Aganè is but the prototype of Perseus in Greece, of Romulus in Italy, or of Kyros in Persia; and, as in the case of Kyros so also in the case of Sargon, the legend has been fastened upon a real personage. It is curious that the doomed hero-child is usually enclosed in an ark or chest, which is entrusted to the water. This was the case with both Perseus and Romulus, whose story has a remarkable resemblance to that of Sargon; and it is impossible not to recognise the close likeness that exists between what we are here told of Sargon and the account of the exposure of the infant Moses, who was similarly placed in an ark of bulrushes, daubed with bitumen, and laid among the flags of the river Nile. On the other hand, Kyros, like Oidipous, was exposed on a mountain, and not on a river, and accordingly no chest or vessel was required for him. In declaring that Sargon was loved by Istar “in his gardenership,” the tale confuses the king of Aganè with Isullanu, “the gardener” of Anu, Istar’s father, “who made bright her dish each day,” until she forced him to eat his own eyes and changed him into a pillar of stone. The rationalising history of a later day made the gardener Belêtaras or Tiglath-Pileser II. who had served the former king Beleous or Bêlokhos, it is recounted, in that capacity, and subsequently seized the crown (Agathias II. 25, 15.) That the successful usurper of popular tradition had been a gardener or “overseer of the orchard,” was indelibly impressed upon the mind of the people.

Like other heroes, Sargon’s father was unknown, though the legend