ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the evidence for ‘robbers,’ both literary and socio-economic, and then establish their context within the age in which they are best attested, the Middle Bronze Age in Mesopotamia. The Middle Bronze would seem an ideal vantage point from which to consider states and their others. By 2100 bc, state organization would seem well rooted after a thousand years of development and practice. The Middle Bronze would seem an ideal vantage point from which to consider states and their others. The shadowy figure of the brigand and the plunderer appears in proverbs and magical spells; his origins perhaps go back to the late Early Dynastic period. Warlordism should describe groups with a primary project identity as mercenaries, identifiable by sufficient attributes such as distinct denomination, toponymic/territorial location, independent subsistence, and parasocial organization. The list of remembered enemies is perilously similar to ethnicities we find for the troops quartered in Dur-Abiesuh.
