by
Damien F. Mackey
“The Akkadian kings were extensive builders, so why, then,
so few traces of their work?
Not to mention, where is their capital city of Akkad?
The Ur III founder, Ur-Nammu, built a wall at Ur. Not a trace remains”.
Such are the sorts of anomalies that we have been encountering in ancient history.
Given the much-touted greatness of the kingdom of the Akkadians, and their capital city called Akkad (Sumerian Agade), this civilisation, with its culture, should really stand out. According to Joshua J. Mark (2011), “Akkad and the Akkadian Empire”:
https://www.worldhistory.org/akkad/
Akkad was the seat of the Akkadian Empire (2334-2218 BCE), the first multi-national political entity in the world, founded by Sargon the Great (r. 2334-2279 BCE) who unified Mesopotamia under his rule and set the model for later Mesopotamian kings to follow or attempt to surpass. The Akkadian Empire set a number of “firsts” which would later become standard.
No one knows where the city of Akkad was located, how it rose to prominence, or how, precisely, it fell; yet once it was the seat of the Akkadian Empire which ruled over a vast expanse of the region of ancient Mesopotamia. It is known that Akkad (also given as Agade) was a city located along the western bank of the Euphrates River possibly between the cities of Sippar and Kish (or, perhaps, between Mari and Babylon or, even, elsewhere along the Euphrates).
According to legend, it was built by the king Sargon the Great who unified Mesopotamia under the rule of his Akkadian Empire and set the standard for future forms of government in Mesopotamia.
Sargon (or his scribes) claimed that the Akkadian Empire stretched from the Persian Gulf through modern-day Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Syria (possibly Lebanon) through the lower part of Asia Minor to the Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus (there is also a claim it stretched as far as Crete in the Aegean).
While the size and scope of the empire based in Akkad is disputed, there is no doubt that Sargon the Great created the first multinational empire in the world.
[End of quote]
While already this article makes perfectly clear just how significant and how archetypal was the kingdom of Akkad, some corrections are required to be made to it.
Firstly, the BC dates for the kingdom, and for Sargon the Great, would need to be lowered on the time-scale by about four centuries. For, the Akkadian founder-king, Sargon, I have identified as the biblical Nimrod, an older contemporary of Abram:
Land of Shinar, Nimrod, and the Tower of Babel
(3) Land of Shinar, Nimrod, and the Tower of Babel | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
Again, Sargon’s kingdom was situated largely westwards of Mesopotamia.
While he did come later to rule the region of Assyria, in northern Mesopotamia, “the land of Nimrod” (Micah 5:6), he could not have had anything to do with, I think, southern Mesopotamia, which was at that very early time (according to my article, “Land of Shinar”) water-logged from the great Noachic Flood.
Joshua J. Mark is mostly correct in writing that “the Akkadian Empire … stretched from the Persian Gulf through modern-day Kuwait, Iraq, Jordan, Syria (possibly Lebanon) through the lower part of Asia Minor to the Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus (there is also a claim it stretched as far as Crete in the Aegean)”, except for the first bit, “from the Persian Gulf through modern-day Kuwait, Iraq”. Due to a mis-identification of the countries Magan and Meluḫḫa in one of his Inscriptions, which normally mean in ancient records, respectively, Egypt and Ethiopia, but which, for some strange reason, in the case of the Akkadians, become, say, Oman and the Indus Valley, the Empire is stretched much too far SE-wards.
Traditions associate Abram (Abraham) and his father, Terah, with the despotic Nimrod, upon whom the semi-legendary characters Gilgamesh and Enmerkar of Uruk (not the southern Mesopotamian Uruk) may also be based.
Now, ancient king lists can be notoriously unreliable, with duplications – and even triplications – being common:
Chaotic King Lists can conceal some sure historical sequences
(2) Chaotic King Lists can conceal some sure historical sequences | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
In various articles, I have identified Sargon the Great also as his supposed grandson, Naram-Sin, and even as Shar-kali-sharri:
Sargon and Shar-Kail-Sharri
(2) Sargon and Shar-Kali-Sharri | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
If this be the case, if the Akkadians did not produce much of an actual dynasty beyond Sargon himself, then it would further explain the strange obscurity of the Akkadians.
Through the more adaptable name of Naram-Sin, I have identified Sargon the Great as the biblical “Amraphel … king of Shinar” (Genesis 14:1), who was one of the four coalitional kings who invaded Syro-Palestine at the time of Abram.
Naram-Sin, who apparently conquered Menes, the first dynastic ruler of Egypt, may perhaps also be the similarly-named Narmer of a re-dated ancient Egyptian history.
Having thus set the foundations more firmly, I hope, then all that remains to be done in this present article is to fit the Akkadian Empire - of whatever duration it was - to its capital, Akkad, and to its archaeo-culture.
Akkad, I believe I have already found and re-located as the important port-city of Ugarit on the NW Syrian coast of the Mediterranean. (See “Land of Shinar” article).
As to the worrying lack of a stratigraphical culture, this may be due to chronological miscalculation. I propose that the brilliant Halaf culture (c. 6500-5500 BC, conventional dating), geographically most appropriate for the empire of Nimrod (including Nineveh, see map below) needs to be massively re-dated (lowered by some 4000 to 3000 years) to impact upon the Akkadian era (c. 2300 BC, conventional dating).
Halaf spreads perfectly for the Akkadian Empire from (Akkad) Ugarit (NW) through the land of Shinar, which I have situated between the Euphrates and Chabur rivers, and on to Assyrian Nineveh (NE). Surely this is the archaeo-culture of the Akkadians!
Alisar Iram (she died in 2014) wrote as follows on the striking pottery known as Halaf:
https://alisariramart.wordpress.com/the-pottery-of-ancient-tell-halaf-of-mesopotamia-and-my-ceramics/
The pottery of ancient Tell Halaf of Mesopotamia and my ceramics
The love affair between me and the ancient pottery of Tell Halaf started when a friend of mine, a fellow potter and a university lecturer lent me some of his books about ancient Mesopotamia and the history of archaeological excavations there. It was then that I began a serious study of arguably the finest pottery in the Neolithic produced.
We, the Syrians, belong to a country which was a cradle of civilization, taking part in creating the first civilizations known to mankind. Even in prehistoric times and before the invention of writing, Syria recorded in the amazing pottery of Tell Halaf (circa 7000 BC onward), the awakening of the artistic spirit in mankind and their early attempts to express themselves in images, patterns and shapes. Our lands witnessed in the Neolithic, the human revolution which introduced the first agricultural settlements and the domestication of animals. The first settlements or small villages led gradually to the building of the first cities ….
Looking at the pottery of Tell Halaf from a potter’s point of view, was exciting and revealing. I was still learning the techniques of the potter at that stage with a passion that coloured everything I did or learnt.
The Tell Halaf culture … produced, in my opinion, some of the most elegant and refined pottery of the Neolithic ancient world. The delicacy of the best examples of this pottery is breathtaking, the dexterity and intricacy puzzling and the craftsmanship of a very high quality. The Halaf culture covered the geographical expanse between upper Iraq and Syria reaching as far as Ras Shamra, Ugarit, on the Syrian coast, and spreading its influence even further to Anatolia. ….
The final phase of Halaf culture, about 4900 – 4500 BC, displays in its pottery an accumulation of skills learned and tested. The vividly painted ware using mainly red and black paint over the common apricot slip or grayish background enhanced by the use of details in white over darker paints, shows vivid reliance on balance and symmetry. By now, the geometric design of Halaf which started simple and tentative in the earlier phases has multiplied to include cruciform shapes, fish scales, dotted circles, wavy patterns, also double ax, herringbone and small diamond patterns. In addition, multiple rows of hatching and cross hatching, a variety of ornament, including the very popular chequer design and many textile-like motifs were also in vogue. The splendid thin plates of this period are among the most beautiful products of the Tell Halaf kilns, probably the first of their kind in the world.
On a visit the British Museum, I had the opportunity to see some of the pottery and shards of Tell Halaf. What impressed me most was the breath-taking quality of the brushwork. How did they do it? What methods of preparing and mixing the colours did they develop in order to produce such consistency, and what kind of brushes did they use to achieve this complex, sophisticated quality which I and many fellow potters can only dream of achieving? In describing the Halaf Pottery, Some archaeologists tend to emphasize qualities like static and formal in order to mean lacking in vigour and inventiveness. However, what I see is beauty of composition and a sensitive admirable control. James Mellart, the archeologist, commented, “Precise and neat, minute but repetitive, the Halaf designs formed an overwhelming rich brocade’.
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