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I'm not an expert on this topic, but the conclusion of the Wikipedia article is consistent with theories I've developed over the past forty years. Humans were thought to have been created to serve the gods and kings to be those gods' representatives. Warfare was justified as the will of the gods to maintain the established order.
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The first war in recorded history was between Sumer and Elam c. 2700 BCE, though there were no doubt military conflicts left unrecorded before that date. Afterwards, armed conflict is regularly attested through inscriptions, artwork, and archaeological evidence from the time of the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE) through that of the Sassanian Empire (224-651 CE). Scholar Stephen Bertman comments:
Bertman's claim is supported by the inscriptions of kings, Mesopotamian literature, archaeological evidence, and Mesopotamian art (including the Royal Standard of Ur) and architecture (especially in the form of defensive city walls), all strongly suggesting a state of ongoing warfare for over 3,000 years broken by periods of peace briefly maintained by victors.
Among the many 'firsts' of ancient Sumer, as noted, is the first recorded war as well as the first monument to a military victory, the Stele of the Vultures, dated to the period of Early Dynastic III (2600-2334 BCE). The stele commemorates the victory of Eannatum, king of Lagash, over Ush, king of Umma. The monument, which takes its name from the depiction of vultures flying over the bodies of the fallen, shows Eannatum leading his victorious army over the corpses of the men of Umma on one side while, on the obverse, the war god Ninurta captures Eannatum's enemies in a net and the Mother Goddess Ninhursag is shown giving her blessings.
The two sides of the Stele of the Vultures (which today exists only in fragments in the Louvre) illustrate how wars were fought in ancient Sumer as well as the rationale given: the war was not between two kings but between their gods. In this case, Ninurta, patron god of Lagash, was warring with Shara, patron god of Umma; Eannatum and Ush were merely the instruments they worked through. Humans were thought to have been created to serve the gods and kings to be those gods' representatives. Accordingly, warfare was justified as the will of the gods to maintain the established order.
The war of Lagash and Umma was over a piece of irrigated land that lay between the two cities which had been marked by a boundary stone. Ush had removed that stone and entered the territory of Lagash. Open land for grazing livestock in Mesopotamia was vital to a city's survival as the fields directly surrounding a settlement were given over to agriculture. Farther fields were necessary for livestock, and there were no doubt many more unrecorded conflicts over these spaces as well as over water supplies.
By removing the boundary stone, it would have been thought, Ush transgressed against the will of the gods, who had created order out of chaos, as well as failed in his responsibility to help maintain that order. Eannatum, responding according to the will of Ninurta, claims in the stele that he triumphed in the name of justice, of the restoration of order, and Ush is depicted as promising to never threaten the stability of the region again.
The Army of Akkad
Militia forces could number from a few hundred to 6,000 or more, depending on the size and wealth of a city. Scholar Paul Kriwaczek describes the troops as they would have been formed for battle:
We should see a Sumerian military unit as consisting of a central shock-force, a tightly packed phalanx of several hundred, perhaps thousand, spearmen. To control them, drill them, and keep them in proper formation would have required many skilled and loud-voiced NCOs; to keep them in step, marching steadily forward or maneuvering in close order, they would have needed music, perhaps a corps of drummers.
And behind this central strike-force another thousand or so slingers, the equivalent of today's riflemen, fusiliers, or even gunners, would have been drawn up in loose formation, buzzing around like angry wasps, sending lethal showers of both small and large projectiles into the heart of the enemy's formations, supported by the ass-drawn battle chariots carrying supplies of missiles. (93)
This would have been the kind of army Eannatum led against the other city-states, and it would form the basic model improved upon by Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great, r. 2334-2279 BCE) who conquered Sumer in 2334 BCE and established the Akkadian Empire (2334-2218 BCE), the first multinational empire in the world. Sargon began his conquest with troops loyal to him and then conscripted others from the cities he vanquished. Once he had consolidated power and Sumer was subdued, he established a professionally trained, standing army and expanded his empire up through the region of modern-day Syria, down through Lebanon, and over to the Zagros Mountains and the region of modern-day Iran.
The Akkadian Empire, c. 2334 - 2218 BCE
To maintain order throughout his empire, he installed trusted officials and family members as governors, high priests and priestesses, and administrators in all his cities, people who were loyal to him, not necessarily to the people of a given city, and garrisoned each with his troops, having disbanded the militias of the cities. Kriwaczek writes:
This must have been a highly militarized society, with armed warriors often seen patrolling the streets, particularly in provincial cities, on whose loyalty the center could not always depend. Sargon wrote that every day 5,400 men, perhaps the nucleus of a standing army, took their meal before him in Akkad. (125)
Having replaced the local militias with a professional army, Sargon then improved upon their formation and reach. He had the troops trained to fight in a tightly formed, six-man-deep phalanx with the front line protected from enemy fire (from slings and bows) by long, rectangular shields. As the phalanx marched toward the opposing army to break their front line, slingers and archers behind it would open fire on the enemy with the archers using the most significant improvement in warfare: the composite bow.
As Sargon improved his weaponry, his opponents tried to match him with their own, as Bertman notes:
Offensive and defensive equipment evolved reciprocally and supported an ongoing arms race: developments in weaponry led to countermeasures in armor, and innovations in armor inspired further advances in weaponry. The introduction of the metal helmet, for example, led to the introduction of a battle-axe with a head like an adze to pierce the helmet's metal shell. (264)
Assyrian Empire
The Assyrian Empire expanded through military conquest and, by the time of Ashurnasirpal II (r. 884-859 BCE), they had perfected the art of the siege in taking cities. Scholar Simon Anglim writes:
More than anything else, the Assyrian army excelled at siege warfare, and was probably the first force to carry a separate corps of engineers…Assault was their principal tactic against the heavily fortified cities of the Near East. They developed a great variety of methods for breaching enemy walls: sappers were employed to undermine walls or to light fires underneath wooden gates, and ramps were thrown up to allow men to go over the ramparts or to attempt a breach on the upper section of wall where it was the least thick.
Mobile ladders allowed attackers to cross moats and quickly assault any point in defenses. These operations were covered by masses of archers, who were the core of the infantry. But the pride of the Assyrian siege train were their engines. These were multistoried wooden towers with four wheels and a turret on top and one, or at times two, battering rams at the base. (186)
The Assyrians perfected the art of war and continued the tradition of justifying conflict as the will of the gods. Eannatum had invoked Ninurta, Sargon called on Inanna/Ishtar, Hammurabi claimed the great god Marduk as his commander, and the Assyrians elevated their god Ashur (Assur) to an almost monotheistic level of supremacy as the leader of their troops. When Sargon II (r. 722-705 BCE) of the Neo-Assyrian Empire defeated Urartu in 714 BCE, against all odds, he took no credit for the victory but attributed it to Ashur.
Conclusion
The Neo-Assyrian empire fell in 612 BCE to a coalition of Babylonians, Medes, and Persians, and, afterwards, the Persian king Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE) established the Achaemenid Empire (c. 550-330 BCE), which, again using a professionally trained army, conquered a larger expanse than even the Assyrians had managed. Alexander the Great toppled the Achaemenid Empire, which, after Alexander's death, was replaced by the Seleucid Empire (312-63 BCE), which gave way to the Parthian Empire (247 BCE-224 CE), which fell to the Sassanian Empire (224-651 CE). Although there were significant reforms along the way, including the much faster and more mobile two-wheeled chariot, the paradigm of all these armies was based on the one first established by Sargon of Akkad.
Invading Muslim Arabs who also invoked a deity to justify their conquest. The claim that a god is on one's side in a military campaign has been made by many leaders over the centuries and continues, in one form or another, into the present day. Each time, the claim is presented as self-evidently true and completely novel when, actually, it is only a repetition of a justification for violence and bloodshed going back over 4,000 years.
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