Akkadians

The World’s First Empire

The reign of Sargon marked not only the beginning of Akkadian rule but also an important turning point in Mesopotamian history. The various Sumerian city-states were brought together under one ruler, and a new, more powerful state emerged in Mesopotamia.

During their period of dominance, the Akkadians created what has sometimes been called the world’s first empire. They conquered Sumerian cities in southern Mesopotamia, such as Ur and Erech, and later, Akkadian power was extended farther, to the "four corners of the world," according to Mesopotamian texts recording the achievements of Akkadian kings.

Mesopotamian records claim that the Akkadians ruled from the Lower Sea (the present-day Persian Gulf) to as far west as the Upper Sea (the Mediterranean). Although there is very little evidence to support these claims, there is no doubt that the Akkadian state extended beyond Mesopotamia. However, evidence of an Akkadian presence does exist in what is now northern Syria, as well as in the land of the Elamites (now southwest Iran). The Akkadians traded through the Persian Gulf, but how far they established control over land to the east is not known.

Language

The Akkadians were a new force in the region, and they spoke their own language, quite different from the Sumerian language of the cities Ur and Erech. Royal inscriptions were first written in both the Sumerian and Akkadian languages, but over time Akkadian became the most widely spoken language of Mesopotamia.

The Akkadian language is the oldest-known member of the Semitic family of languages, a group of languages spoken in North Africa and Southwest Asia that includes Hebrew and Arabic. The Akkadian language developed two main dialects that continued to be used for a period of nearly two thousand years. The Assyrian dialect was used in northern Mesopotamia, and the Babylonian one spread outward from southern Mesopotamia to become, by the ninth century BCE, the more widely spoken and written language.

The Akkadian language has some six hundred signs for words and syllables, twenty consonants, and eight vowels and uses the present and the past tenses. The language was not deciphered until the nineteenth century CE, and in 1921 scholars at the University of Chicago began working on an Akkadian dictionary, of which twenty volumes have been published.

Writing

The earliest Mesopotamian documents were written in Sumerian, a language that uses pictures both for objects and for the pronunciation of proper names. The use of lines in drawings gradually increased. Made by pressing the slanted edge of a reed stylus into soft tablets of clay, the lines have a wedge-shaped appearance. This style of writing is known by scholars as cuneiform, from the Latin word cuneus, which means "wedge." As cuneiform came to be adopted, the Akkadians began to write from left to right instead of in separate columns. The use of Akkadian written in the cuneiform script spread beyond Mesopotamia to other peoples, including the Elamites and the Persians.

Important works of literature, such as the Gilgamesh epic, were written in Akkadian and drew on earlier Sumerian sources. Archaeologists have uncovered thousands of clay tablets written in Akkadian, mostly dealing with such everyday matters as court decisions, marriage contracts, divorce settlements, and land sales.