Divine Abandonment & the Fall of a Dynasty

Mesopotamians explained political disaster theologically: a city was not simply defeated, it was abandoned by its gods, who had withdrawn their favor and their protection in anger. 'The Cursing of Agade' tells how the great Akkadian empire fell because its king Naram-Sin offended the god Enlil, whose curse then doomed the city to ruin. The same logic underlies the city-laments and much royal rhetoric. To explain why kingdoms rise and fall, one looked not to politics alone but to the gods' pleasure and displeasure — and a fallen dynasty was, by definition, one the gods had forsaken.