This book identifies and analyses, on the basis of recently discovered sources and original research, three story-patterns associated with human kingship in early Greek and ancient Near Eastern myth. The first, which I call the Myth of the Servant, is a well-attested but so far unrecognised story-pattern that was used to explain how an individual of non-royal lineage rose to power from obscure origins. As will be shown in Chapter 1, this myth is first documented in connection with the early Mesopotamian king Sargon of Akkad, the founder of the Old Akkadian dynasty in the third millennium bc. In later periods the story-pattern was applied to other rulers who seemingly emerged from nowhere and created influential new royal dynasties: these include king David of Israel and Judah (according to the Hebrew Bible), and Gyges of Lydia, Cyrus of Persia and Semiramis of Assyria (according to Greek historians).