A new power had meanwhile appeared on the scene.  While the Sumerian princes were engaged in mutual war, the Semites were occupying northern Babylonia, and establishing their power in the city of Agade or Akkad, not far from Sippara.  Here, in B.C. 3800, arose the empire of Sargani-sar-ali, better known to posterity as “Sargon” of Akkad.  He became the hero of the Semitic race in Babylonia.  Legends told how he had been hidden by his royal mother in an ark of bulrushes daubed with pitch, and intrusted to the waters of the Euphrates, how he had been found and adopted as a son by Akki the irrigator, and how the goddess Istar had loved him and restored him to his kingly estate.  At all events, the career of Sargon was a career of victories.  Babylonia was united under his rule, Elam was subjugated, and three campaigns sufficed to make “the land of the Amorites,” Syria and Canaan, obedient to his sway.  He caused an image of himself to be carved on the shores of the Mediterranean, and demanded tribute from Cyprus, Uru-Malik or Urimelech being appointed governor of Syria, as we learn from a cadastral survey of the district of Lagas.  A revolt of the Sumerian states, however, called him home, and for a time fortune seemed against him.  He was besieged in Akkad, but a successful sally drove back the rebels, and they were soon utterly crushed.  Then Sargon marched into Suri or Mesopotamia, subduing that country as well as the future Assyria.  It was the last, however, of his exploits.  His son Naram-Sin succeeded him shortly afterwards (B.C. 3750), and continued the conquests of his father, Canaan was already a Babylonian province, and Naram-Sin now carried his arms against Magan, or the Sinaitic Peninsula, where he secured the precious mines of copper and turquoise.  Building stone from Magan had already been imported to Babylonia by Ur-Nina, a king of Lagas, and grandfather of E-ana-gin, but it must have been brought in the ships of Eridu.

Naram-Sin’s son was Bingani-sar-ali.  A queen, Ellat-Gula, seems to have sat on the throne not many years later, and with her the dynasty may have come to an end.  At any rate, the empire of Akkad is heard of no more.  But it left behind it a profound and abiding impression on western Asia.  Henceforward the culture and art of the west was Babylonian,—­Semitic Babylonian, however, and no longer Sumerian Babylonian as in the days of Lugal-zaggi-si.  Sargon was a patron of literature as well as a warrior.  Standard works on astronomy and astrology and the science of omens were compiled for the great library he established at Akkad, where numerous scribes were kept constantly at work.  Sumerian books were brought from the cities of the south and translated into Semitic; commentaries were written on the older literature of the country, and dictionaries and grammars compiled.  It was now that that mixed language arose, or at least was admitted into the literary dialect, which made Babylonian so much resemble modern English.  The lexicon was filled with Sumerian words which had put on a Semitic form, and Semitic lips expressed themselves in Sumerian idioms.