Jerrold S. Cooper

The Akkad (or Agade) people had everything. Their gods loved them, cities and farms flourished, and all was well. Then a king destroyed the "house"--presumably a temple, the house of the lead god of their pantheon. Then you get the ancient Mesopotamia version of your favorite disaster movies. This story is what the Sumerians believed led to the mysterious end of the Akkadians around 2100 B.C.E.

The story isn't the clearest read even by ancient literature standards, but it still ranks high in comparative entertainment.… (mais)

This is one of the oldest more or less narrative texts ever recovered. The “curse of Akkad” goes back to figures and events from the Sumerian-Akkadian period in Mesopotamia, about 2100-1800 BCE and was written in cuneiform form (i.e. with impressions on a clay tablet). It is a very short text, but a very powerful one. It describes how the supreme god Enlil becomes angry with the city of Akkad. Akkad had become very wealthy under the cult of the moon goddess Inana, but that was disrupted by the unwise conduct of King Naram-sin, son of the first known great monarch in history, Sargon, who after some strange prophecies destroys the temple of Enlil. Both the wealth and subsequent plagues of Akkad are described in detail, followed by a long series of laments and curses. The “curse of Akkad” apparently belongs to a genre that was very popular at the time and illustrates how fickle human destiny is when the existing cult of the gods (in this case that of Enlil) is dishonored. Reading these kinds of texts is not easy, because occasionally words or phrases are missing, and the style seems excessively dramatic. But it is striking how 'rich' both the material and intangible culture already were in that early civilization, and how the focus was already on urban life in these early days. At the very least, this indicates that this text must be situated in a cultural tradition that may go back thousands of years.… (mais)