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Sargon of Akkad
Founder of Akkadian Empire
This article is about the Akkadian king. For the Assyrian kings, see Sargon I and Sargon II. For the YouTuber, see Carl Benjamin. For other uses, see Sargon.
His empire, which he ruled from his archaeologically as yet unidentified capital, Akkad, is thought to have included most of Mesopotamia and parts of the Levant, Hurrian and Elamite territory.
Sargon appears as a legendary figure in Neo-Assyrian literature of the 8th to 7th centuries BC.
Tablets with fragments of a Sargon Birth Legend were found in the Library of Ashurbanipal.[7][8]
^"King of Akkad, Kish, and Sumer" is a translation of the Akkadian phrase "LUGAL Ag-ga-dèKI, LUGAL KIŠ, LUGAL KALAM.MAKI". See Peter Panitschek, Lugal – šarru – βασιλεύς: Formen der Monarchie im Alten Vorderasien von der Uruk-Zeik bis zum Hellenismus (2008), p. 138. KALAM.MA, meaning "land, country", is the old Sumerian name of the cultivated part of Mesopotamia (Sumer). See Esther Flückiger-Hawker, Urnamma of Ur in Sumerian Literary Tradition (1999), p. 138.
^ abThe date of the reign of Sargon is highly uncertain, depending entirely on the (conflicting) regnal years given in the various copies of the Sumerian King List, specifically the uncertain duration of the Gutian dynasty. The added regnal years of the Sargonic and the Gutian dynasties have to be subtracted from the accession of Ur-Nammu of the Third Dynasty of Ur, which is variously dated to either 2047 BC (Short Chronology) or 2112 BC (Middle Chronology). An accession date of Sargon of 2334 BC assumes: (1) a Sargonic dynasty of 180 years (fall of Akkad 2154 BC), (2) a Gutian interregnum of 42 years and (3) the Middle Chronology accession year of Ur-Nammu (2112 BC).
^also "Sargon the Elder", and in older literature Shargani-shar-ali and Shargina-Sharrukin. Gaston Maspero (ed. A. H. Sayce, trans. M. L. McClure), History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia and Assyria (1906?), p. 90.
^Westenholz, Joan Goodnick (January 1984). "Review of The Sargon Legend: A Study of the Akkadian Text and the Tale of the Hero Who Was Exposed at Birth. By Brian Lewis". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 43 (1): 73–79. doi:10.1086/373065. JSTOR545065.