 The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age.In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering a vast textual tradition of mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, correspondence, political and military events, and many other examples.Akkadian (in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties) was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires (Akkadian Empire, Old Assyrian Empire, Babylonia, Middle Assyrian Empire) throughout the later Bronze Age, and Akkadian became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse.