ACCAD (Akkadian cuneiform Agadek al Akkadu, which Assyriologists transcribe as Achad, Akkad or Accad). - An ancient city of northern Babylonia, one of the four founded by Nimrod in Shinar (Gen. 10:10), perhaps the present-day Tell ed-Deir; it was the site of the temple E-ul-maš of the goddess Anunium. It was the capital of the region of the same name (mât Akkadi) which also included the flourishing Kiš and encompassed the northern part of the Mesopotamian plain (15,000 sq. km.) and bordered Sumer to the south (cf. SUMER).
It was the seat of a kingdom and a dynasty which enjoyed a most flourishing culture between 2525 and 2330 B.C. The Akkadians, who appeared toward the end of the 4th millennium B.C., with a tendency to expand southward, played a leading role in Assyro-Babylonian culture and history. Their not long-lived dynasty was Semitic, as was the majority of the population.
The rulers promoted cultural development, especially in the arts. The king-lists (of a much later period) record eleven names:
1. Sargon (or Šarruken) – 55 years of reign
2. Rimuš – 15
3. Maništušu – 7
4. Naram-Sin – 56
5. Šarkališarri – 25
6. Igigi, Imi, Nanum, Elulu – 3
7. (interregnum)
Dudu – 21
Šudurul – 15
Sargon-Sarruken, the first known king, was a valiant and fortunate warrior. He defeated his rival Lugalzaggesi, king of Uruk and Lagaš, who boasted the title of king of A. and Sumer (in Sumerian: Uri and Kingi); he then deposed him and occupied the southern part of Mesopotamia as far as the Persian Gulf. To the east he conquered the regions of Barahsi and Elam. In the northwest he reached the “cedar forest,” Lebanon, and the “silver mountains,” the Taurus range; indeed, according to later legends, he would have conquered the island of Cyprus.
The following kings enjoyed prosperous reigns, especially Naram-Sin, who promoted culture and art. After two centuries, under Šudurul, the kingdom collapsed and the Semites were again subjected to the Sumerians (IVth and Vth dynasties of Uruk and IIIrd of Ur). These, however, after about two centuries, were themselves subdued (22nd or 21st century B.C.) by a powerful Semitic dynasty (cf. AMORRITES), the 1st Babylonian dynasty (cf. HAMMURABI), which dominated all Mesopotamia unchallenged.
The oldest inscriptions of A., in cuneiform characters borrowed from the Sumerians but in the Semitic language, are contemporary with the oldest Sumerian ones. The Akkadian language, which would later be called Babylonian and Assyrian, belongs to the northern group of Semitic languages. Even before and after its own dynasty, A. maintained its pure language free of Sumerianisms, despite living in permanent contact with the Sumerians with whom it formed a single nation and from whom it had borrowed so many cultural and religious ideas. The inscriptions of A. illustrate its religion and culture, as well as its political and economic history (cf. ASSYRIA; BABYLONIA).