Akkad Sentence Examples
The earliest settlement there goes back to neolithic times, but it was already a fortified city when Elam was conquered by Sargon of Akkad (3800 B.C.) and Susa became the seat of a Babylonian viceroy.
About 1330 B.C. Khurba-tila was captured by Kuri-galzu III., the Kassite king of Babylonia, but a later prince Kidin-Khutrutas avenged his defeat, and Sutruk-Nakhkhunte (1220 B.C.) carried fire and sword through Babylonia, slew its king Zamama-sum-iddin and carried away a stela of Naram-Sin and the famous code of laws of Khammurabi from Sippara, as well as a stela of Manistusu from Akkuttum or Akkad.
This Biblical city, Akkad, was most probably identical with the northern Babylonian city known to us as Agade (not Agane, as formerly read), which was the principal seat of the early Babylonian king Sargon I.
It is not likely, as many scholars have thought, that Akkad was ever used geographically as a distinctive appellation for northern Babylonia, or that the name Sumer denoted the southern part of the land, because kings who ruled only over Southern Babylonia used the double title "king of Sumer and Akkad," which was also employed by northern rulers who never established their sway farther south than Nippur, notably the great Assyrian conqueror Tiglath pileser III.
Professor McCurdy has very reasonably suggested 6 that the title "king of Sumer and Akkad" indicated merely a claim to the ancient territory and city of Akkad together with certain additional territory, but not necessarily all Babylonia, as was formerly believed.
Khammurabi and the sun-god Shamash, on the former's famous code of laws, have the same features and almost the same frizzled beard, and, according to Meyer, the king in claiming supremacy over Sumer and Akkad wears the costume of the lands.
Opposed to Kengi and Sumer were Urra (Uri) and Akkad or northern Babylonia.
In Semitic times Urra was pronounced Uri and confounded with uru, " ciiy "; as a geographical term, however, it was replaced by Akkadu (Akkad), the Semitic form of Agadewritten Akkattim in the Elamite inscriptions - the name of the elder Sargon's capital, which must have stood close to Sippara, if indeed it was not a quarter of Sippara itself.
The rise of Sargon's empire was doubtless the cause of this extension of the name of Akkad; from henceforward, in the imperial title, Sumer and Akkad " denoted the whole of Babylonia.
Here in Akkad the first Semitic empire was founded, Semitic conquerors or settlers spread from Sippara to Susa, Khana to the east of the Tigris was occupied by " West Semitic " tribes, and " out of " Babylonia " went forth the Assyrian."
AdvertisementBut the fame of these early establishers of Semitic supremacy was far eclipsed by that of Sargon of Akkad and his son, Naram-Sin.
He is even called " the god of Agade " (Akkad), reminding us of the divine honours claimed by the Pharaohs of Egypt, whose territory now adjoined that of Babylonia.
For 7 years Tukulti-In-aristi ruled at Babylon with the old imperial title of " king of Sumer and Akkad."
Sargon, who meanwhile had crushed the confederacy of the northern nations, had taken (717 B.C.) the Hittite stronghold of Carchemish and had annexed the future kingdom of Ecbatana, was now accepted as king by the Babylonian priests and his claim to be the successor of Sargon of Akkad acknowledged up to the time of his murder in 705 B.C. His son Sennacherib, who succeeded Serena- hi m on the 12th of Ab, did not possess the military or cherlb. ?
Astronomy was of old standing in Babylonia, and the standard work on the subject, written from an astrological point of view, which was translated into Greek by Berossus, was believed to go back to the age of Sargon of Akkad.
AdvertisementNothing can be better than two seal-cylinders that have come down to us from the age of Sargon of Akkad.
All that can be said is that both archaeological and epigraphic evidence indicates that no very long interval separated the empire of the Semitic kings of Agade from that of the kings of Sumer and Akkad, whose rule was inaugurated by the founding of the Dynasty of Ur.1 To use caution in accepting the chronological notices of the later kings is very far removed from suggesting emendations of their figures.
King, History of Sumer and Akkad (1910), which appeared after this article was written.
It was formerly thought that Shumer was employed especially to denote the south of Babylonia, while Akkad was used only of the north, but this view is no longer regarded as tenable.
It is more probable that the expression Shumer designated the whole of Babylonia in much the same manner as did Akkad, and that the two words "Shumer and Akkad " were used together as a comprehensive term.
AdvertisementEarly in the 3rd millennium B.C. the city was conquered and occupied by the Semitic rulers of Akkad, or Agade, and numerous votive objects of Alu-usharsid (Urumush or Rimush), Sargon and Naram-Sin testify to the veneration in which they also held this sanctuary.
It is natural that under the Sumerian revival, which characterized the united kingdom of Sumer and Akkad, the ancient ritual should have been revived and the Sumerian servicebooks adapted for the use of the reigning monarch.
Records dating from the reign of Sargon of Akkad (3800 B.C.) imply that even then the varying aspects of the sky had been long under expert observation.
The southern alluvial plain of Sumer and the more northerly Akkad were once densely populated city-states.
They belonged to an ethnic scattered widely over Eastern Asia Minor and Syria at an early period (Khatti invaded Akkad about 1800 B.C. in the reign of Samsuditana); but they first formed a strong state in Cappadocia late in the 16th century B.C. Subbiluliuma became their first great king, though he had at least one dynastic predecessor of the name of Hattusil.
AdvertisementIn later days, in the time of the Sargonid kings of Akkad or the monarchs of Ur, stones such is granite, basalt, diorite and dolerite were probably brought from the Sinaitic peninsula, if not from the western desert of Egypt, if the Red Sea coast is to be identified, as seems very probable, with Magan, " the place to which ships went," the land whence the Babylonians got some of their first stones for sculpture and architecture.
A cadastral survey for purposes of taxation was already at work in Babylonia in the age of Sargon of Akkad, 3800 B.C. In the British Museum may be seen a series of clay tablets, circular in shape and dating back to 2300 or 2100 B.C., which contain surveys of lands.
Midway in the mound is a platform of large bricks stamped with the names of Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin (3800 B.C.); as the debris above them is 34 ft.
The Babylonian name Shumer was used in the cuneiform inscriptions together with Akkad, viz.
The south part of Syria was known to Sargon of Akkad (Agade) as Ammon and was visited by his armies.