The earliest historical records of Anatolia stem from the south east of the region, and are from the Mesopotamian based Akkadian Empire during the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC.

The Akkadian Empire was an empire centered in the city of Akkad and its surrounding region in Mesopotamia.

Reputedly it was destroyed by invading Gutians with the fall of the Akkadian Empire.

Peter B. deMenocal, has shown there was an influence of the North Atlantic Oscillation on the stream flow of the Tigris and Euphrates at this time, which led to the collapse of the Akkadian Empire ".

The Sumerian King List, describing the Akkadian Empire after the death of Shar-kali-shari, states:

This collapse of rain-fed agriculture in the Upper Country meant the loss to southern Mesopotamia of the agrarian subsidies which had kept the Akkadian Empire solvent.

One strategy adopted by both Sargon and Naram-Sin, to maintain control of the country, was to install their daughters, Enheduanna and Emmenanna respectively, as high priestess to Sin, the Akkadian version of the Sumerian moon deity, Nanna, at Ur, in the extreme south of Sumer ; to install sons as provincial ensi governors in strategic locations ; and to marry their daughters to rulers of peripheral parts of the Empire ( Urkesh and Marhashe ).

The oldest known dictionaries were Akkadian Empire cuneiform tablets with bilingual Sumerian – Akkadian wordlists, discovered in Ebla ( modern Syria ) and dated roughly 2300 BCE .< ref name = " imlqdg ">

Classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Semitic Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC.

Along with the rest of Mesopotamia it was ruled by the Akkadian Empire from the late 24th to mid 22nd centuries BC, after which it once again became independent.

* Akkadian Empire period: c. 2334 – 2218 BC ( Sargon )

* Akkadian Empire

Some of the important historical Mesopotamian leaders were Ur-Nammu ( king of Ur ), Sargon ( who established the Akkadian Empire ), Hammurabi ( who established the Old Babylonian state ), Ashur-uballit II and Tiglath-Pileser I ( who established the Assyrian Empires ).

** Akkadian Empire (~ 2350 – 2100 BC )

Akkadian, came to be the dominant language during the Akkadian Empire and the Assyrian empires, but Sumerian was retained for administration, religious, literary, and scientific purposes.

The Akkadian Empire was the first successful empire to last beyond a generation and see the peaceful succession of kings.

Nineveh (; Akkadian: Ninwe ; ; Nīnewē ; Nineuē ; ; Naynuwa ; Nainavā ) was an ancient Assyrian city on the eastern bank of the Tigris River, and capital of the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Slavery was known in almost every ancient civilization, and society, including Sumer, Ancient Egypt, Ancient China, the Akkadian Empire, Assyria, Ancient India, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Islamic Caliphate, the Hebrews in Palestine, and the pre-Columbian civilizations of the Americas.

1696 – 1654 BC, short chronology ) created an empire out of the territories of the former Akkadian Empire.

Babylon was merely a religious and cultural centre at this point and not an independent state, and like the rest of Mesopotamia, it was subject to the Akkadian Empire which united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule.

Under Naram-Sin the Akkadian Empire reached its zenith.

Naram-Sin also recorded the Akkadian conquest of Ebla as well as Armanum and its king.

Southern Iraq during Akkadian period seems to have been approaching its modern rainfall level of less than per year, with the result that agriculture was totally dependent upon irrigation.

It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur ( Akkadian: ; Aramaic: ; Hebrew: ; Arabic: ).

In late periods both the Babylonian and Assyrian dialects of Akkadian ceased to be spoken, and Aramaic took its place across Mesopotamia, and remains the mother tongue of the Assyrian ( AKA Chaldo-Assyrian ) Christians of Iraq and its surrounds to this day.

It was named for its original capital, the ancient city of Assur ( Akkadian: ; Aramaic: ; Hebrew: ; Arabic: ).

Unique types of maces known as " Gada " were used extensively in ancient Indian warfare, and the enchanted talking mace Sharur made its first appearance in Sumerian / Akkadian mythology during the epic of Ninurta.

Babylonia retained the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use ( the language of its native populace ), despite its Amorite founders and Kassite successors not being native Akkadians.

When Sumerian cuneiform was adapted for writing Akkadian, this was ambiguous because both words were written with the same character ( conventionally transcribed KUR, after its Sumerian pronunciation ).

Following a brief Sumerian revival the empire broke up into two Akkadian states, Assyria in the north, and some time later Babylon in the south ( although Babylon was founded by invading Amorites, and was rarely ruled by native dynasties throughout its history ).

One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, which first appears in Akkadian during the Old Babylonian period as a circa 1, 000 line epic known by its incipit, šūtur eli šarrī, ‘‘ Surpassing all other kings ,’’ which incorporated some of the stories from the five earlier Sumerian Gilgamesh tales.

With the Akkadian conquest Lagash lost its independence, its ruler or ensi becoming a vassal of Sargon of Akkad and his successors ; but Lagash continued to be a city of much importance and above all, a centre of artistic development.

Likewise, Akkadian had a dual number, though its use was confined to standard phrases like " two hands ", " two eyes ", and " two arms ".

With the collapse of Akkad under Sargon's great great-grandson, Shar-kali-sharri, Elam declared independence under the last Avan king, Kutik-Inshushinak ( c. 2240 – 2220 BC ), and threw off the Akkadian language, promoting in its place the brief Linear Elamite script.

In addition, the grapheme transliterates cuneiform orthography of Sumerian and Akkadian or, and ( based on Akkadian orthography ) the Hittite phoneme, as well as the phoneme of Semitic languages, transliterating shin ( Phoenician and its descendants ), the direct predecessor of Cyrillic ш.

Asia is from the Greek language, but its etymology goes further into its roots in the Afro-Asiatic languages, which includes Akkadian and Phoenician, some of the earliest known languages.

The ( Akkadian Cuneiform: ) is the Babylonian creation myth ( named after its opening words ).

Settled since the early Bronze Age, Hatay was once of the Akkadian Empire, then the Amorite Kingdom of Yamhad and Mitannis, then a succession of Hittites, the Neo-Hittite " Hattena " people that later gave the modern province of Hatay its name, then the Assyrians ( except a brief occupation by Urartu ) and Persians.

Marduk ( Sumerian spelling in Akkadian: AMAR. UTU " solar calf "; perhaps from MERI. DUG ; Biblical Hebrew Merodach ; Greek, Mardochaios ) was the Babylonian name of a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon, who, when Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi ( 18th century BCE ), started to slowly rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he fully acquired by the second half of the second millennium BCE.

After the fall of the Akkadian empire in the mid 21st century BC, the Assyrians who were the northern branch of the Akkadian people, colonised parts of the region between the 21st and mid 18th centuries BC and claimed the resources, notably silver.

The “ standard ” Akkadian version included a long version of the flood story and was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC.

The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian had led scholars to describe the languages as a sprachbund.

During the third millennium BC, a close cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians ( who spoke a Language Isolate ) and the Semitic Akkadian speakers, which included widespread bilingualism.

Gradually there was increasing syncreticism between the Sumerian and Akkadian cultures and deities, with the Akkadians typically preferring to worship fewer deities but elevating them to greater positions of power.

In the Sumerian language, the gods were referred to as dingir, whilst in the Akkadian language they were known as ilu and it seems that there was syncreticism between the gods worshipped by the two groups, adopting one another's deities.

* the Zubi canal ( Izubi, Akkadian Izubitum ), a short-cut of the Tigris river between the locations of modern Samarra and Baghdad.

“ A Dialogue between Šūpê-amēli and His Father ” ( Šimâ milka ) is a piece of wisdom literature in the manner of a deathbed debate from the Akkadian hinterland.

The " standard " Akkadian version, consisting of 12 tablets, was edited by Sin-liqe-unninni sometime between 1300 and 1000 BC and was found in the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh.

In 200 BC, the ' Big House ' ( Cuneiform: E < sub > 2 </ sub >. IRI < sub > 12 </ sub >. GAL, Sumerian: iri-gal, Akkadian: ešgal ) of Ishtar was added between the Anu and Eanna districts.

He began to transcribe the Old Persian portion of the trilingual inscriptions in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian ( a later form of Akkadian ) written by Darius the Great sometime between his coronation as king of the Persian Empire in the summer of 522 BC and his death in autumn of 486 BC.

There is both literary and archaeological evidence of trade between Ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilization ( probably correctly identified with the land called Meluhha in Akkadian ).

The fact that Puabi, herself a Semitic Akkadian, was an important figure among Sumerians, indicates a high degree of cultural exchange and influence between the ancient Sumerians and their Semitic neighbors.

As the table shows, the stops and the sibilants all display a three-way distinction between voiced, voiceless and " emphatic " consonants, but it cannot be ascertained what was special about the third groups of consonants, which were rendered with the Akkadian cuneiform signs for the Semitic emphatics.

The latter was also referred to as Ṣidqu and additionally the West Semitic name Ammi-ṣaduqa is translated into Akkadian as Kimtum-kittum showing an equivalence of meaning between the West Semitic ṣ-d-q and the Akkadian kittu.