Accad: 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
(Genesis 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.
