Akkad
AKKAD (ăk'ăd, Heb. ’akkadh, Gen.10.10). One of the cities or districts of Nimrod’s kingdom, with Babel, Erech, and Calneh. Babel and Erech are located on or near the lower Euphrates, Erech being not far from what was then the head of the Persian Gulf. Calneh, formerly identified with Nippur between Babel and Erech, is now generally thought to be, not the name of a city, but a word meaning “all of them,” referring to Babel, the capital, and to Akkad and Erech, the chief cities of the northern and southern districts of Babylonia respectively. The location of Akkad is uncertain, though it is thought to be identified with Agade, the chief city of a district of the same name in northern Babylonia, which Sargon I, the Semitic conqueror of the Sumerian Akkadians, made his capital in c. 2350 b.c. The kingdom called Nimrod’s had evidently fallen into disorder, and Sargon united the warring city-states under his firm rule. With the help of invaders, first from the NE and then from the NW, Akkadian civilization flourished sporadically and precariously until Semitic Amorites from the west founded a dynasty at Babylon about 1894. The most illustrious ruler of this dynasty was Hammurabi (1792-1750). Sumerian or Akkadian civilization now finally came to an end. As Nimrod cannot be certainly identified with any person otherwise known, so Akkad remains a shadowy city or region (Gen.10.10).