Akkad Civilization

 The Akkadian civilization existed during the Mesopotamian times.

 About 6,000 years ago they lived with the Sumarians and
Babylonians.
 Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language
of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the 3rd and the 2nd
millennium BCE.
 Sargon and his sons were a powerful and dominant dynasty in
Mesopotamia, ruling an empire based on political domination, taxation,
and literacy.
 The Akkadian language became the lingua franca of commerce
and diplomacy for the millennium following Sargon.
 Akkadians put their language into cuneiform and many early stories
were found preserved in Akkadian text.
 The Akkadians worshiped a pantheon of Gods.
 The Akkadians lived on the Arabian Peninsula, a piece of land that
sits between Europe, Africa, and Asia.
 Their most famous buildings are called ziggurats, which are sort of like
square pyramids.
 Akkadians hunted fish, duck, geese and they also ate dates, bread,
onions, beans, cucumbers, garlic, and a few other fruits and vegetables.
 The Akkadians adopted the Sumerian culture and its ideas, they were
polytheistic.
 The Akkadians were Semitic people and their descendants survive
today among the modern Jews and Arabs.
 One Akkadian treaty with the Hittites refers to “your friend being my
friend, and your enemy my enemy.
 The fame of the early establishers of Semitic supremacy was far
eclipsed by that of Sargon of Akkad.
 The population of Akkad, like all pre-modern states, was entirely
dependent upon the agricultural systems of the region.
 The first system of astronomical observations.
 Amorites begin to infiltrate Mesopotamia.
 Sharru-Kin (Sargon) conquers Mesopotamia.
 Ur-Nammu builds ziggurats in Ur, Eridu, Uruk, and Nippur.
 Ur-Nammu founds Ur III.
 Gutians invade and the Akkadian Empire falls.
 Its collapse caused the Mesopotamian Dark Ages, a time of little
progress in technology and culture.
 One version of the history of the abacus begins with
the Akkadians who are often credited with its invention.
 A very specific type of cylinder seal portraying a bull-headed hero.
 A crude form of arithmetic that included addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division of numbers.