Welcome to season 4 of Head on History: Empires of Faith. This season we are going to discuss the ancient world up to the arrival of Islam through an examination of the intersection of empire and religion. In this episode we establish the basic outline of complex societies, the common characteristics of the early civilizations, and introduce the Akkadian Empire and Sargon of Akkad. We discuss the likely theories for how civilizations emerge, the environmental influence of early Sumerian religion. We analyze the myth of Inanna and Damuzi and the Epic of Gilgamesh, setting the stage for the coming of the Hammurabi.