City-State, Kingship, and Justice in Sumarian Political Thought: Justice Loving Shepherd Kings

This article turns to the Sumerians to understand the emergence of certain root paradigms in political thought. The Sumerians, as in many other respects, have laid down the beginnings of political thought. The article examines political thought in the Sumerians based on the Sumerian King Epics and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Accordingly, the main trajectories of political thought in the Sumerians can be summarized in the following terms: City-state, civilization, first assemblies, political struggle and war, royal ideology, justice, the circle of justice. The aim of this article is to examine the emergence of the concept of justice in Sumerian political thought and its nature based on these terms. The Sumerians put forward a unique understanding of justice that would be effective from the beginning of written history until the Ottoman Empire, and the precursors of an understanding that would later be conceptualized as the “circle of justice.”