Akkadians: Who They Were And What Their Mesopotamian Civilization Was Like
Considered the founders of the first empire as a regime that subjugated other peoples, the Akkadians are one of the most peculiar cultures in all of history.
With their capital in Akkad, founded by King Sargon, the Akkadians conquered practically all of Mesopotamia, leaving a deep mark on the region and, in addition, creating some of the myths that are fundamental in the Christian tradition.
Next we will discover who were the akkadians its known history, its religion and a little about its language.
The Akkadians were the inhabitants of the vast empire founded by Sargon, with capital in the city of Akkad This town was characterized by being one of the first to have founded a state that corresponds to the idea of empire as a regime that culturally, religiously and economically subjugates other towns.
The Akkadians They constituted one of the several civilizations that developed in the prosperous region of the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a place where other Mesopotamian peoples such as the Sumerians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Hittites and Ammonites lived.
History of the Akkadian Empire
Before the appearance of the Akkadians and their vast empire Mesopotamia was made up of many city-states, each with its own king, area of influence and culture If the culture and political system of these cities was similar, all of them occasionally competed to have more resources. Those cities that managed to exert the most influence within the Mesopotamian world were those that managed to make their culture the most prestigious, although without directly governing the entire region.
To the south of Mesopotamia lived the Sumerians, while to the north it was occupied by people who spoke Semitic, a language that would evolve into Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic. Although the Semitic languages and Sumerian were already quite different languages at that time, about 4,000 years ago, their speakers shared many cultural characteristics, so one could more or less say that the Mesopotamian cultures constituted, roughly speaking, the same civilization.
Around 2,400, King Eannatum, ruler of the city of Lagash, stood out in Sumer, who had defeated the armies of Uruk and Ur. The city of Lagash exercised important power for more than a century, dominating a territory of about 4,500. square kilometers. Its last king was Urukagina, who ascended the throne around 2,350 BC. At that time the Semites created a powerful kingdom with its capital in Ebla , present-day Syria. This city would dominate many cities in Anatolia and Upper Mesopotamia. In turn, the city of Mari began to dominate other cities in its surroundings, including Assur.
Returning to the city of Lagash, it seems that its king, Urukagina, was an enlightened character who tried to reduce the excessive power of the priests, to give greater representation and well-being to his people. However, the priests were not willing to lose their influence and, taking advantage of the fact that the people feared the gods more than their king, they made the king lose strength.
This caused the prosperous city of Lagash to end up weakened by its internal squabbles and the city of Umma, his old rival, took advantage of the opportunity to take revenge for all the defeats and humiliations that that city had put him through. Thus, the king of Umma, Lugalzagesi, seized the cities of Ur and Uruk, then attacked Lagash in 2330 and, soon, this king would have power over all of Sumer.
Another city, Kish, had been achieving great splendor while the other cities were weakening and fighting wars. While Lugalzagesi reigned over Uruk and all of Sumer, the prime minister of the king of Kish managed to usurp the throne. This new ruler took the name Sargon, which means “the legitimate or true king.” Naturally, not everyone saw him as the true king, so he decided to move the court to a new capital, free of the influences of the previous monarchy.
This new city would be Agadé, better known as Acad , and its foundation would be the moment in which the seed of what would later become the vast Akkadian Empire would be sown. Thus, in 2300 Sargon faced Lugalzagesi, defeating him and taking away all power over Sumer in a very short time. Mesopotamia fell into the hands of the king of Akkad and gave its name to the new culture of the Akkadians.
As Sargon fought and subdued more cities, the capital, Akkad, grew. Some cities, taking advantage of the fact that the city-states that had invaded them were too busy fighting Sargon, achieved independence. But this freedom was temporary: sooner or later, Akkadian armies appeared before these new states and turned them into tributary cities of Akkad. Thus, the Akkadian empire was becoming a vast multicultural empire.
Due to its cultural diversity and the desire to homogenize the lands conquered by Sargon, the Akkadian Empire is considered the first historical empire in the sense of a people that dominated other peoples militarily, culturally and economically. This is not the case of the Egyptians of that time who, despite the size of their country, were quite homogeneous and had not yet subjugated other peoples by imposing their culture on them. The Akkadians severely oppressed the conquered peoples
To the south, the rulers of the cities of Sumer were deposed and replaced by brutal warriors of Akkadian origin, which naturally aroused no sympathy for the conquering king Sargon. Likewise, the monarch knew how to quell revolts and continued his intention to standardize the empire, making Akkadian the official language of the country, especially in the most important matters, and taking measures to promote it. His intention was to displace the language that, until then, had been the vehicle of culture and prestige: Sumerian.
Around 2280 Sargon of Akkad died. Immediately, Sumer and the people of the Zagros Mountains tried to free themselves from the Akkadian yoke, taking advantage of the death of the tyrant, however, the new king, Rimush, Sargon’s eldest son, with the help of his brother Manishtusu quelled the revolts. In 2252 Naram-Sin, grandson of Sargon, occupies the throne of Akkad and manages to quell several internal revolts, in addition to continuing the family tradition of expanding the empire and subjugating new peoples.
So that, Naram-Sin deposed the flourishing kingdom of Ebla in 2200 and, to consolidate his power, proclaimed himself a god in addition to organizing a body of noble-officials who supervised local kings and made sure that cities suspected of treason were duly reprimanded. Culture flourished at court during his reign, with scribes developing and surpassing Sumerian traditions and, although the Sumerian language continued to have influence, Akkadian had managed to displace it in administration and commercial relations.
Its mythology
The Akkadian culture drew heavily on the Sumerian culture when it came to configuring its myths. The Akkadian worldview is especially interesting since, especially in the Christian world, there are several current myths that were believed in the ancient Akkadian Empire
The universal flood
We know the historical events of the Akkadians because, starting in the year 2,800 BC, the Sumerians began to systematically use writing for historical and literary purposes. This fact surprised both the Sumerians and the Akkadians centuries later, who were surprised by the total absence of records prior to that time and, before imagining that writing did not exist before that date or that there were few literate wise men, they decided to give it a mythological explanation.
Thus they conjectured that the lack of written records must have been caused by a great Universal Flood, which occurred before 2800 and which had destroyed all previous written sources. Both Sumerians and Akkadians placed all their legends in the time before this flood
According to their worldview, the world had been created in just seven days. It was seven days because astronomers identified seven main celestial bodies, apart from the stars: the Sun, the Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. These stars were part of the Sumerian and Akkadian pantheon, and it was believed that they influenced the destiny of men.
The destiny of people depended on the star that dominated the sky on the day and time of their birth Each day was named according to the star that dominated its first hour, and thus the division of time into weeks of seven days arose.
Following the belief in the Universal Flood, the list of Sumerian kings was completed with ten monarchs prior to this event, to whom reigns of tens of thousands of years were attributed. The last and most famous of these kings was Gilgamesh, king of Uruk.
The legend of this Gilgamesh is based on the historical Gilgamesh, who reigned around 2,700, but was attributed to having been born several centuries earlier, he survived the Flood that had been caused by the very angry gods. When his friend died, he began to search for the secret of eternal life, going through a long series of adventures.
Another of the survivors of this mythological flood was Utnapishtim who built a boat in which he and his family were saved After the flood the gods did not have men to offer themselves for sacred sacrifices and feed them, so Utnapishtim sacrificed animals as an offering. In gratitude the gods granted him the gift of immortality.
Utnapishtim met Gilgamesh, still searching for the secret of eternal life. He told him that he should look for a magical plant. Gilgamesh found it but, when he was about to eat it, a snake stole it and ate it, which is why snakes rejuvenate when they shed their skin.
Babel’s tower
The arrival of the conquering Akkadians in the cities of Sumer, in which Sumerian was the language of culture, caused great confusion Firstly because the people did not understand very well why they were being cruelly invaded, and secondly it was because the conquerors spoke in a very strange, almost unintelligible way. It is likely that the most humble people in the conquered cities, whose vision of the world was reduced to their immediate surroundings, did not even understand why men of unknown speech had suddenly appeared, a language that they were now forced to learn.
Given the cruelty of war and the unfairness of the conquest No wonder the conquered Sumerians thought they were being punished by the gods This idea would take shape over the centuries, although Akkad and Sumeria would end up being erased in the popular mentality, their ancestral temples, the ziggurats, would remain there.
Thus, in Mesopotamia the idea would begin to emerge that the ancients built high temples to get closer to the gods, an idea that is not wrong at all, since it is a common pattern in all religions to build high places of worship to touch the kingdom of heaven. . People interpreted that this human attempt to get closer to the divine did not please the gods and, as punishment, the deities sowed confusion among humans by making them speak hundreds of different languages.
It is from this legend that the myth of the tower of Babel arises. The ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, who built taller and taller ziggurats, stopped building them when the gods made them speak different languages they could not understand each other and could not collaborate in building the towers.
The religion of the Akkadians
The Akkadians, as in the other first great civilizations, practiced a polytheistic religion, which had many points in common with that professed by other Mesopotamian peoples, especially the Sumerians.
Religion acquired great importance when it came to politically and socially organizing the Empire and there was a powerful priestly hierarchy where the ruler was considered the representative of the gods on Earth, something like the Pope is in Catholicism.
The Akkadian gods were generally related to different natural phenomena. There are many gods that make up the Akkadian pantheon, but the following can be considered the most important:
1. An or Anu
The god An He was the god of the sky and was the supreme ruler of all the gods Under his command were different phenomena related to the heavens, such as stars and constellations. This god in the Sumerian mythology from which he originated was represented as a celestial dome that covered the earth. The Akkadians inherited this representation and, as supreme god, it was among his tasks to judge human and divine crimes, and he had to impose punishments for them.
2. Enlil or Bea
The god Enlil has outstanding importance not only in the Akkadian worldview, but also in the Sumerian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Hittite worldviews. Enlil He was the god associated with winds, storms and breathing He is also the father of several natural divinities, such as the god of the Moon or the goddess of wheat. Due to his close relationship with the goddess of agriculture, Enlil, also in charge of storms and, therefore, rain, was one of the most prominent gods of the Akkadian pantheon.
3. Sin or Nanna
Sin was the god of the Moon, who was called Nanna in Sumerian culture. He was the main god of the city of Ur and during the period of splendor of this city-state the god Sin acquired almost greater importance than An. He had also an important award as god of wisdom and related arts especially astronomy and astrological divinations.
4. Utu
Utu was the god of the Sun. The sun was fundamental in Akkadian culture, since its economy was agrarian-based and crops depended on how benign or suffocating the sun was. He was also considered the god of justice and truth, since the sun sees all and knows all.
5. Ishtar
Ishtar, from which the name Esther comes, is the best known Mesopotamian goddess today , especially for the famous remains dedicated to her that are preserved in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. Ishar was the goddess of fertility, love, sex and passionate war. She has been credited with having possessed numerous lovers and it is believed that she was worshiped with rituals of sacred prostitution.
Akkadian language
The Akkadian language, in Akkadian “lišānum akkadītum”𒀝𒂵𒌈, is currently extinct and so is its writing system. It was mainly spoken in ancient Mesopotamia by both the Assyrians and the Babylonians during the 2nd millennium BC and, naturally, by the Akkadians who conquered several Sumerian and Semitic peoples. As we have mentioned, it became the official language of the Akkadian Empire, trying to displace Sumerian and forcing the conquered peoples to learn it as a method of standardizing the state.
The Akkadian language came to Mesopotamia from the north, with the Semitic peoples The first Akkadian proper names are found in Sumerian texts from 2,800 BC, indicating that, at least, Akkadian-speaking people had already settled in Mesopotamian lands. The first tablets written entirely in the Akkadian language using the cuneiform system date from 2,400 BC, but there is no significant use of this language in its written form before 2,300 BC, coinciding with the emergence of Sargon’s Akkadian Empire.
Thanks to the vast power of the Akkadian Empire and its spirit of imposition of this language, The Akkadian language ended up relegating Sumerian in legal and religious contexts, becoming the dominant language in Mesopotamia for almost 1000 years. In addition, it became the lingua franca in commercial and diplomatic relations, being used by the Egyptian pharaohs when they spoke with the Hittite kings.
Akkadian vocabulary is mostly of Semitic origin. Below we will see some examples of words in this extinct language:
