Akkadian: Did you mean...?

The Sumerian language was spoken in southern Mesopotamia before the 2nd millennium BCE and was the first language to be written in the cuneiform script. It is an isolate language meaning we know of no other languages that relate to it ancestrally...

The Legend of Sargon of Akkad (c. 2300 BCE) is an Akkadian work from Mesopotamia understood as the autobiography of Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great, r. 2334-2279 BCE), founder of the Akkadian Empire. The earliest copy is dated to the 7th...

Ur was a city in the region of Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia, and its ruins lie in what is modern-day Tell el-Muqayyar, Iraq. According to biblical tradition, the city is named after the man who founded the first settlement there, Ur, though...

Ur-Nammu (c. 2112-c. 2094) was the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur in Sumer who initiated the so-called Ur III Period (c. 2112-c.2004 BCE) also known as the Sumerian Renaissance. He is best known as the king who composed the oldest extant...

Sargon and Ur-Zababa is a Sumerian poem, date of composition unknown, relating the rise to power of Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334-2279 BCE), founder of the Akkadian Empire. The work is classified as a Mesopotamian folktale, relying on motifs such...

Uruk was one of the most important cities (at one time, the most important) in ancient Mesopotamia. According to the Sumerian King List, it was founded by King Enmerkar circa 5000/4500 BCE. Uruk is best known as the birthplace of writing...

Gilgamesh is the semi-mythic King of Uruk best known as the hero of The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2150-1400 BCE) the great Babylonian poem that predates Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by 1500 years and, therefore, stands as the oldest piece of epic...

Babylon is the most famous city from ancient Mesopotamia whose ruins lie in modern-day Iraq 59 miles (94 km) southwest of Baghdad. The name is derived from bav-il or bav-ilim, which in Akkadian meant "Gate of God" (or "Gate of the Gods"...

Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, sensuality, fertility, procreation, and also of war. She later became identified by the Akkadians and Assyrians as the goddess Ishtar, and further with the Hittite Sauska, the Phoenician Astarte...

A ziggurat is a form of monumental architecture originating in ancient Mesopotamia, which usually had a rectangular base and was built in a series of steps up to a flat platform upon which a temple was raised. The ziggurat was an artificial...