accad Summary and Overview

the high land or mountains, a city in the land of Shinar. It has been identified with the mounds of Akker Kuf, some 50 miles to the north of Babylon; but this is doubtful. It was one of the cities of Nimrod's kingdom (Ge 10:10). It stood close to the Euphrates, opposite Sippara. (See SEPHARVAIM T0003277.) It is also the name of the country of which this city was the capital, namely, northern or upper Babylonia. The Accadians who came from the "mountains of the east," where the ark rested, attained to a high degree of civilization. In the Babylonian inscriptions they are called "the black heads" and "the black faces," in contrast to "the white race" of Semitic descent. They invented the form of writing in pictorial hieroglyphics, and also the cuneiform system, in which they wrote many books partly on papyrus and partly on clay. The Semitic Babylonians ("the white race"), or, as some scholars think, first the Cushites, and afterwards, as a second immigration, the Semites, invaded and conquered this country; and then the Accadian language ceased to be a spoken language, although for the sake of its literary treasures it continued to be studied by the educated classes of Babylonia. A large portion of the Ninevite tablets brought to light by Oriental research consists of interlinear or parallel translations from Accadian into Assyrian; and thus that long-forgotten language has been recovered by scholars. It belongs to the class of languages called agglutinative, common to the Tauranian race; i.e., it consists of words "glued together," without declension of conjugation. These tablets in a remarkable manner illustrate ancient history. Among other notable records, they contain an account of the Creation which closely resembles that given in the book of Genesis, of the Sabbath as a day of rest, and of the Deluge and its cause. (See BABYLON T0000409; CHALDEA T0000758.)

one of the cities in the land of Shinar. #Ge 10:10| Its position is quite uncertain.

AC'CAD (fortress), one of the four cities in the kingdom of Nimrod. Gen 10:10. It was in the land of Shinar, and George Smith locates it at Ayudi, on the Euphrates, north of Babylon. Rawlinson places it at Aker-Kuf, 10 miles west by north of Bagdad. Others had regarded it as identical with Celeriphon.

One of the cities in the land of Shinar, with Babel, Erech, and Calneh, the beginning of Nimrod's kingdom (Genesis 10:10). Jerome (Onomasticon) testifies that the Jews then believed Nisibis was Accad, a city on the river Khabour, in the N.E. of Mesopotamia, midway between Orfa and Nineveh. So the Targum of Jerusalem. Nisibis' ancient name was Acar, which the Syriac Peschito version has here. Akkad was the name of the "great primitive Hamite race who inhabited Babylonia from the earliest time, and who originated the arts and sciences. In the inscriptions of Sargon the name is applied to the Armenian mountains instead of the vernacular Ararat" (Rawlinson, Herodotus, 1:319, note). The form Kinzi Akkad is found in the inscriptions. Agadi was the great city of the earlier Sargon (G. Smith). Bechart fixes on a site nearer the other three cities in the ancient Sittacene: Akker-koof, or Akker-i-Nimrond, a curious pile of ancient buildings. The Babylonian Talmud mentions the site under the name Aggada. A tract N. of Babylon was called Aceere (Knobel)