Akkad (city)
Akkad (; or Agade, cuneiform , "A-ga-de" in Akkadian, also URI in Sumerian during the Ur III period) was the name of a Mesopotamian city. Akkad was the capital of the Akkadian Empire, which was the dominant political force in Mesopotamia during a period of about 150 years in the last third of the 3rd millennium BC. Its location is unknown, although there are a number of candidate sites, mostly situated east of the Tigris, roughly between the modern cities of Samarra and Baghdad. Textual sources. Before the decipherment of cuneiform in the 19th century, the city was  known only from a single reference in where it is written ("ʾĂkăḏ"), rendered in the KJV as "Accad". The name appears in a list of the cities of Nimrod in Sumer (Shinar). Sallaberger and Westenholz (1999) cite 160 known mentions of the city in the extant cuneiform corpus, in sources ranging in date from the Old Akkadian period itself down to the Neo-Babylonian period. The name is spelled logographically as URI, or phonetically as "a-ga-dè", variously transcribed into English as "Akkad", "Akkade" or "Agade". The etymology of the name is unclear, but it is not of Akkadian  (Semitic) origin. Various suggestions have proposed Sumerian, Hurrian or Lullubian etymologies. The non-Akkadian origin of the city's name suggests that the site may have already been occupied in pre-Sargonic times, as also suggested by the mention of the city in one pre-Sargonic year-name. The inscription on the Bassetki Statue records that the inhabitants of Akkad built a temple for Naram-Sin after he had crushed a revolt against his rule. The main goddess of Akkad was Ishtar-Astarte (Inanna), who was called "‘Aštar-annunîtum" or "Warlike Ishtar". Her husband Ilaba was also revered in Akkad . Ishtar and Ilaba were later worshipped at Sippar in the Old Babylonian period, possibly because Akkad itself had been destroyed by that time. The city was certainly in ruins by the mid-first millennium BC. Location. Many older proposals put Akkad on the Euphrates, but more recent discussions conclude that a location on the Tigris is more likely. The identification of Akkad with "Sippar ša Annunîtum" (modern Tell ed-Der), along a canal opposite "Sippar ša Šamaš" (Sippar, modern Tell Abu Habba) was rejected by Unger (1928) based on a Neo-Babylonian text (6th century BC) that lists "Sippar ša  Annunîtum" and Akkad as separate places. Harvey Weiss (1975) proposed Ishan Mizyad, a large (1000 meters by 600 meters) low site northwest from Kish. Excavations have shown that the remains at Ishan Mizyad date to the Ur III period and not to the Akkadian period, though Akkadian fragments were found in a surface survey. Discussion since the 1990s has focused on sites along or east of the Tigris. Wall-Romana (1990) suggested a location near the confluence of the Diyala River with the Tigris, and more specifically Tell Muhammad in the south-eastern suburbs of Baghdad as the likeliest candidate  for Akkad, although admitting that no remains datable to the Akkadian period had been found at the site. Sallaberger and Westenholz (1999) suggested a location close to the confluence of the ʿAdhaim river east of Samarra (at or near Dhuluiya). Similarly, Reade (2002) suggested a site in this vicinity, by Qādisiyyah, based on a fragment of an Old Akkadian statue (now in the British Museum) found there. This had been suggested much earlier by Lane. The area of the Little Zab river has also been suggested. Based on an Old Babylonian period itinerary from Mari, Akkad would be on the  Tigris just downstream of the current city of Baghdad. Mari documents also indicate that Akkad is sited at a river crossing. An Old Babylonian prisoner record from the time of Rīm-Anum of Uruk in the 18th century BC implies that Akkad is in the area of Eshnunna, in the Diyala Valley north-west of Sumer proper. It has also been suggested that Akkad was under the control of Eshnunna in that period. Khalid al-Admi proposed, based on a kudurru dating to the time of Kassite ruler Marduk-nadin-ahhe (with an earlier one dated to the reign of  Nebuchadnezzar I) that Akkad had been renamed sometime in the 2nd millennium. The suggestion from the kuduru is that the name would be Dur-Sharru-Kin, which is not to be confused with the one built by the Neo-Assyrians in the 8th century BC. The location would be "on the bank of the river Nish-Gatti in the district of Milikku". The most likely site would be Dur-Rimush (Tell el-Mjelaat).