Accad

Accad, one of the cities in Nimrod's kingdom, likely the Akkadian city of Akkad.

Accad is mentioned in Genesis 10:10 as one of the four cities that formed the core of Nimrod's kingdom in Shinar (Babylonia). The other cities were Babel, Erech, and Calneh. Accad is generally identified with the ancient city of Akkad, which was the capital of the Akkadian Empire founded by Sargon the Great around 2334 BC. The exact location of Akkad is unknown, but it was likely situated somewhere in northern Babylonia. The reference to Accad in Genesis 10 is part of the "Table of Nations" which describes the spread of Noah's descendants after the Flood. It shows that Nimrod, a descendant of Ham, established a powerful kingdom in Mesopotamia in the generations following the Flood.

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.

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.