The Babylonian World (Routledge Worlds)

(lu) #1

‘Akkadians and Amorites’, and it would seem that everybody in the realm was included
under these terms. Both names were traditional and could be used in varying shades
of meaning. Akkad was the name of the capital city and the country of Sargon, the
founder of the Akkad Dynasty, and the terms ‘land of Akkad’ and ‘Akkadians’ in a
comparable narrow sense were applied in the Old Babylonian period to the kingdom
of Eshnunna. Second, it designated a language, and could accordingly be used in a
broader geographical meaning, which occurs in the pairing ‘Sumer and Akkad’ first
attested in the late third millennium BC, when the whole of Lower Mesopotamia
could be described as a Sumerian-speaking southern, and an Akkadian-speaking
northern part; the concept was maintained throughout the second millennium BC,
when Sumerian as a spoken language had long died out.


— Frans van Koppen —

Figure 14. 2 Two impressions of the same seal on a tablet from Hursagkalama dating to the
eighteenth year of Ammisaduqa (YOS 13 217) depicting an archer (left) and a warrior with shield
and dagger in combat (Yale Babylonian Collection).

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