A Scepter by Any Other Name

One of the most consistently viewed pages on this blog is the Symbology of Scepters, which gets looked at a few times each month without pause or interruption in its popularity. Recently, I've been reading a lot of Mesopotamian history and literature and I've come upon something I felt I should make public—

Scepters don't go back to Greece. Those long king-tall rods are even older.

The scepter is one of the meh handed down by Enki in the very dawn of time to the people of Eridu. The list of the meh includes:

1. Enship
2. Godship
3. The exalted and enduring crown
4. The throne of kingship
5. The exalted sceptre
6. The royal insignia
7. The exalted shrine
8. Shepherdship
9. Kingship
10. Lasting ladyship
11. "Divine lady" (a priestly office)
12. Ishib (a priestly office)
13. Lumah (a priestly office)
14. Guda (a priestly office)
15. Truth
16. Descent into the nether world
17. Ascent from the nether world
18. Kurgarra (a eunuch, or, possibly, ancient equivalent to modern concepts of androgyne or transsexual ^[6])
19. Girbadara (a eunuch)
20. Sagursag (a eunuch, entertainers related to the cult of Inanna ^[7])
21. The battle-standard
22. The flood
23. Weapons (?)
24. Sexual intercourse
25. Prostitution
26. Law (?)
27. Libel (?)
28. Art
29. The cult chamber
30. "hierodule of heaven"
31. Guslim (a musical instrument)
32. Music
33. Eldership
34. Heroship
35. Power
36. Enmity
37. Straightforwardness
38. The destruction of cities
39. Lamentation
40. Rejoicing of the heart
41. Falsehood
42. Art of metalworking
43. Scribeship
44. Craft of the smith
45. Craft of the leatherworker
46. Craft of the builder
47. Craft of the basket weaver
48. Wisdom
49. Attention
50. Holy purification
51. Fear
52. Terror
53. Strife
54. Peace
55. Weariness
56. Victory
57. Counsel
58. The troubled heart
59. Judgment
60. Decision
61. Lilis (a musical instrument)
62. Ub (a musical instrument)
63. Mesi (a musical instrument)
64. Ala (a musical instrument)

So we can see that the scepter springs from ostensibly the oldest civilized times when it was wielded by sacred kings of Sumerian city-states. The Greeks must have picked it up from the Mesopotamians; whether before or after the Anabasis is hard to say, but I'd wager they got it some time during the Archaic Period, because Homer talks about the rods of kings. Whether Agamemnon really had a rod of rulership is impossible to know, but Homer or roughly contemporary poets must have had the idea about the rods (scepters) by their time.