AC'CAD. One of the chief cities of the land of Shinar (i.e., Babylonia), mentioned in Genesis x : 10. Originally applied to a city only. the name was afterward extended to the district of which Aecad (or Akkad) was at one time the centre, and among the titles of the kings of Babylonia and Assyria we find, from about 3000 B.C. on, the phrase "King of the land of Shunter (the biblical Shinar) and Akkad" used as a designation for all Babylonia. If the identi fication of Acead with the city of Agade. men tioned in the inscriptions of Sargon I. and of his son, Naram-sin. were certain, we could place this ancient city of Akkad about fifteen miles west of Bagdad. According to the testimony of Nabonidus. the last ruler of Babylonia, Sargon I., whose seat was at Agade, ruled about 3S00 we., but the statement of Nalamidus is open to suspicion as overstating the length of time be tween him and Sargon, and the identification of Akkad with Agade is not certain. The city of
Acead was still in existence in the (lays of Ne buchadnezzar I. (circa 1135 a.c.), who makes mention of it in an inscription. The Accadians belonged to the white race, and were probably Semites. the theory of all Aeeadian-Sumerian language of Turanian, or Uralo-Allaic, affinities having been abandoned by the best authorities. Whether they weri the first inhabitants of the country, in which they are found so early, may be doubted; hut their predecessors, if any, were of the white rave. possibly Aryans, or. it may be, peoples akin to the tribes of the Caucasus. In deed. the Aceadians themselves may have been in part Aryan. Consult Robert William Rogers, History of Babylonia and .Issyria (2 vols., New York, 1900). See the articles AsSYRIA ; BABY LONIA ; SUMERIAN LANGUAGE.