Agade

Agade, also rendered Agadé or Akkad, was the name of the ancient Mesopotamian city that served as the capital of the Akkadian Empire in the 3rd millennium BCE. The city gave its name to the empire itself, and to the Akkadian language and culture that spread across southern and central Mesopotamia under Sargon the Great and his successors (roughly 2334–2154 BCE).

Historically, Agade functioned as the administrative and ceremonial seat of power for a centralizing state that united Sumerian city-states and extended control into parts of the Levant and western Iran. The empire is known for its bureaucratic centralization, imperial ideology, and a dynasty that included Naram-Sin and others. The rapid expansion and subsequent tensions contributed to a collapse around the late 22nd to early 21st centuries BCE; the Gutian incursions and internal upheaval weakened the capital, and Agade did not retain its former status.

Geographic location: The precise archaeological site of Agade has not been established with certainty. Inscriptions refer to Akkad as a city whose site has not been securely identified; various candidates have been proposed in northern Mesopotamia and eastern Syria, but none has been universally accepted. The identification of Agade in archaeology remains unresolved.

Legacy: The term Akkad, and by extension Agade, came to symbolize the Akkadian Empire in later Mesopotamian literature, and the word Akkadian became the designation for the language and culture of that empire.