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The high land or [[Text:EBD:Mount|mountains]], a [[Text:EBD:City|city ]] in the land of [[Text:EBD:Shinar, The Land of|Shinar]]. It has been identified with the mounds of Akker Kuf, some 50 miles to the north of [[Text:EBD:Babylon|Babylon]]; but this is doubtful. It was one of the cities of [[Text:EBD:Nimrod|Nimrod]]'s kingdom (Ge 10:10). It stood close to the [[Text:EBD:Euphrates|Euphrates]], opposite Sippara Sippara. (See [[Text:EBD:Sepharvaim|SEPHARVAIM]].)

It is also the name of the country of which this city was the capital, namely, northern or upper Babylonia. The [[Text:EBD:wikipedia:Accadians |Accadians]] who came from the "mountains of the [[East|east]]," where the [[Text:EBD:Ark|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 [[Text:EBD:wikipedia:Semitic|Semitic ]] descent. They invented the form of writing in pictorial hieroglyphics, and also the [[Wikipedia:cuneiform|cuneiform ]] system, in which they wrote many books partly on [[Paper|papyrus ]] and partly on clay. The Semitic Babylonians ("the white race"), or, as some scholars think, first the [[Text:EBD:Cushite|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 [[Text:EBD:Nineveh|Ninevite ]] tablets brought to light by Oriental research consists of interlinear or parallel translations from Accadian into [[Text:EBD:Assyria|Assyrian]]; and thus that long-forgotten language has been recovered by scholars. It belongs to the class of languages called [[Text:EBD:wikipedia:agglutinative|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|Creation ]] which closely resembles that given in the book of [[Text:EBD:Genesis|Genesis]], of the [[Text:EBD:Sabbath|Sabbath ]] as a [[Text:EBD:Day|day ]] of [[Text:EBD:Rest|rest]], and of the [[Text:EBD:Deluge|Deluge ]] and its cause. (See BABYLON; [[Text:EBD:Chaldea|CHALDEA]].)

{{returnto}} [[Easton's Bible Dictionary]] | [[Accad]]