“Throughout Mesopotamia, from the earliest times of Sumer and Akkad, all lands were owned by gods and men were their slaves. Of this, the cuneiform texts leave no doubt whatever. Each city-state had its own principal god, and the king was described in the very earliest written documents that we have as ‘the tenant farmer of the god’.”
– Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind