Around 2350 BCE, cities in Mesopotamia were governed by gods, each ruled by a patron deity like Enlil in Nippur, Enki in Eridu, Nannar in Ur, and Utu in Sippar. This divine balance was disrupted by Inanna of Uruk, who rejected ancestral kingship by choosing Sargon of Akkad as king, marking the birth of the first empire.

Inanna's rise involved ambition and loss. The deaths of her consort Dumuzi and the imprisonment of Marduk enabled her ascent within the divine council. Her descent into the underworld, where she was stripped of powers and temporarily killed, is viewed as a failed political attempt to consolidate southern divine domains. Her resurrection, aided by Enki’s emissaries, restored her power.

Inanna's influence extended eastward, with archaeological parallels suggesting the Indus Valley may have been her