Conclusion

Attempting to trace the true path of Sargon’s eighth campaign, as well as charting the geography of the region from it, is no easy feat. With the main primary source text more focused on impact than accuracy, there is no clear way to identify the locations of certain sites: as Zimansky concluded, perhaps rather pessimistically, “scholarship on the Eighth Campaign will continue to wander as long as we have to ask poets for directions.”[1] Perhaps it is true that we will only confidently know the path of Sargon’s campaign when additional evidence is discovered. This project, however, has attempted to more clearly demonstrate the differing of opinion over the potential routes Sargon took. That new digital history techniques, such as those employed in this study, may help to fill in the blanks of our contemporary evidence is the hope of such a project.