______ unified mesopotamia and founded the akkadian empire
Under the rule of Sargon I, the city state of Agade (which was the Sumerian name for the city in the region of Akkad, known in the Bible as Accad) rose for a brief time to be a powerful empire, becoming one of the first to unify the entire south-central Mesopotamian region. Born c.2370. Sargon, 'whose [probable] father, La'ibum (or Itti-Bel), was a gardener, the cupbearer of Ur-Zababa of Kish, founded Agade,' claims to be the first king to unite Mesopotamia (Sumer and Akkad), although Enshakushanna of Uruk had already achieved that. Mesopotamia became a battleground between the Romans and Parthians, with parts of Mesopotamia coming under ephemeral Roman control. In AD 226, it fell to the Sassanid Persians and remained under Persian rule until the 7th century Muslim conquest of Persia of the Sasanian Empire. Sargon created an Akkadian empire which truly unified Sumer and Akkad administratively for the first time ever. However, there were problems, not least because each of the former independent city states inside the empire resented the imposition of outside control, and revolts were common. Sargon of Akkad gradually conquered the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers around 2300 BC. The Akkadians spoke a Semitic language, like the Amorites. Sargon, according to Sumerian literature, was born to an Akkadian high priestess and a poor father, maybe a gardener. Situated to the immediate north of Sumer, the Akkadians were of Semitic origin. The people of Mari a little to the north were probably of the same stock. Their language is first attested in about 2800 BC, and it survived alongside Sumerian until about 1800 BC, when the latter died out from everyday use. When Sargon grew up, he built himself a new city at Akkad, and made himself the king of it. Then he gradually conquered all the land around him. In this way he built the first empire that we know of: the Akkadian Empire. The Akkadian Empire /əˈkeɪdiən/ was the first ancient Semitic-speaking empire of Mesopotamia, centered in the city of Akkad /ˈækæd/ and its surrounding region, also called Akkad in ancient Mesopotamia. The empire united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speakers for the first time under one rule. Widely considered to be one of the cradles of civilization by the Western world, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires, all native to the territory of modern-day Iraq. In the Iron Age, it was controlled by the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Empires. The Sumerians and Akkadians (including Assyrians and Babylonians) dominated Mesopotamia from the beginning of written history (c. 3100 BC) to the fall of Babylon in 539 BC, when it was conquered by the Achaemenid Empire. Down to the Persian conquest of the area. Find Out About Mesopotamia: What Life Was Like in Ancient Sumer, Babylon and Assyria, by Lorna Oakes (2004). Ancient Mesopotamians, by Elena Gambino (2000). Retellings of Mesopotamian stories and lots of context. Ancient Near Eastern History and Culture, by William H. Stiebing (2002).
Sargon