Ancient Apocalypse: The Akkadian Empire | History Documentary

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NARRATOR: The apocalypse. When an entire people are destroyed... ..or destroy themselves. The end of civilisation. For us today, as we go about our daily lives, it's barely something we consider. We're so sure it couldn't happen to us. But for some civilisations... ..it already has. Empire, as a form of government it has shaped our lives for millennia. The Roman Empire. The Mongol empire. The British Empire. All have dominated lands and people... ..but none were the first. In the 24th century BCE, Mesopotamia was made up of many different city states. Each with their own king and patron god. It was largely inhabited by two distinct ethnic groups, the Sumerians in the south and the Semitic Akkadian people in the north. In 2334 BCE the Akkadians concur the Sumerian lands uniting the city state kingdoms here to create an entirely new form of political organisation. Empire. This is the first time that you had a multi cultural, multilingual group of city states all unified together under one banner. This represents a tectonic shift in government, this is a new state of political organisation that we've never seen before. The Akkadian Empire was the world's first empire and ruled from the Persian Gulf in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. All the way north into modern day Turkey. We see this empire coming seemingly from nowhere and suddenly the Akkadian language rises up to then become the language across this entire region. Under the Akkadians, life in Mesopotamia flourished. They used their power and geographical reach to create a period of great prosperity inside the empire. Their trade routes spanned vast distances, outside of the empire, so they were actually trading with people in India, with people in the Mediterranean who had beautiful artistry pouring into the empire. Pearls, ivory, both elephant and hippopotamus, even live animals like monkeys. Everything you could possibly imagine was all coming in, making the empire wealthier and more opulent. But after only 140 years, by 2193 BCE the Akkadian empire fractured. Entire regions were abandoned as the empire descended into chaos. The Akkadian empire's very existence was forgotten through the passage of time. What could cause the world's first empire to be erased from history? The Akkadian empire wouldn't resurface until a British archaeologist made an unrelated discovery. On the east bank of the Tigress River, Sir Austin Henry Layard uncovers something incredible. The king's palace of the biblical city of Nineveh. The capital of the Assyrian empire, the people who rose to power over 1,000 years after the disappearance of the Akkadians. Layard excavates for years but it's in the last days of the dig that he makes his greatest discovery. Layard's workers had uncovered a chamber containing 30,000 pieces of clay tablets. All marked with Cuneiform script, the ancient writing system of the Assyrians. What Layard had stumbled across were the remains of the greatest library ever known in the ancient world. The library of Ashurbanipal, the king of the Assyrians. What secrets might these tablets hold? For the 19th century archaeologists, these Cuneiform formed texts could hold an untold wealth of information about the history of ancient Mesopotamia. The problem is, no one can read them, they're written in an indecipherable form of Cuneiform script. To have any hope of unlocking the secrets of the ancient middle east, they need to crack the Cuneiform code. For the past 15 years, British archaeologist Sir Henry Rawlinson has been working on translating Cuneiform. Cuneiform isn't actually a language it's a writing system. A bit like in modern times the Latin alphabet can be used to write English, French, Spanish and German. Cuneiform systems could be used to write all manner of ancient languages. Rawlinson was obsessed with understanding how the ancient Cuneiform system of writing worked. Henry Rawlinson was a British Army officer and he was sent on a posting to an area in what is now modern day Iran. And he saw this huge mountain, Mount Behistun, which was along the ancient Silk Road and he saw about halfway up the cliff there was an ancient inscription. He can tell that it's written in Cuneiform script and he also realises that the script isn't all one language. It appears to be three different languages all written in cuneiform. He identifies one of them, old Persian, but what on earth are the other two? Rawlinson had already translated the old Persian cuneiform inscription. But the other languages still remained a mystery. When he was shown Layard's discovery he immediately saw that the cuneiform script on these tablets... ..was the same as one of the unknown languages, written in Cuneiform, found on the Behistun carving. If they could work out what this mystery language in the Behistun inscription said, they could use that as a Launchpad to start decoding what the clay tablets from the library said. Understanding this language could be key to unlocking the secrets of ancient Mesopotamia. He returned to the Behistun inscription. It was assumed that the three languages all inscribed using the cuneiform writing system said the same thing. Was the answer hidden here? Rawlinson already understood the old Persian inscription and if he could use that, by decoding the repetitive symbols and working out what some of the words might mean, he might be able to decode the other two mystery languages. If Rawlinson could find similarities between old Persian cuneiform and the unknown cuneiform language, he could build an alphabet for deciphering the library of Nineveh. Old Persian uses about 43 different symbols and he realised that each of them corresponded to a letter or a number. However, the other two languages appear to have many, many more symbols. But this gives Rawlinson a clue. There are too many cuneiform symbols for each one to represent an individual letter. Instead, the language must be syllabic. Where each symbol represents a syllable. Rawlinson began trial and error, trying to relate symbols in the unknown cuneiform language with the symbols that he did understand in the old Persian. And you go, "Well, if this means king or god in old Persian, "maybe that's what this means in the mystery language, does that work?" And you try it out. It takes almost ten years but Rawlinson cracks the code. He can finally read the tablets from the library of Nineveh. And what riches it held. There were texts on medicine, there were texts on astrology and there was a huge section on history. It was extraordinary, the scribes had not just written a history of their own people, the Assyrians, they'd written about the people who'd come before them. There was an empire that we never knew had existed, that had been declared the greatest of all time. Here Rawlinson found references to the world's first empire, an empire that ruled over all of Mesopotamia. Rawlinson christens them the Akkadians. The archaeologists were dumbfounded, who were these people? How come we'd never heard of them? How could a whole civilisation be destroyed in such a way that they would be entirely lost to the sands of time? When did the Akkadians exist? When were they wiped out? And what caused their destruction? Rawlinson spends years translating cuneiform tablet, after cuneiform tablet, looking for any clues. But in 1867, nearly ten years after Rawlinson first deciphered Akkadian cuneiform, he came across a tablet. It was the legend of Sargon of Akkad, the first king of the Akkadian empire. Rawlinson had uncovered the first part of the Akkadian's history. In 2334 BCE Sargon came to power as the king of Kish. A city state in the Akkadian region of Mesopotamia. From the very beginning, Akkadian history is steeped in violence and conflict. Sargon fought war after war expanding his kingdom across Mesopotamia, conquering and subjugating Sumerian and Akkadian city states alike to form the Akkadian empire, the world's first empire. To fund the administration of this new empire, Sargon demanded each city state pay their share in taxes. Taxes are the price you pay for a civilised society. So, what Sargon did was he required every individual to produce X amount of grain and bring it to an administrative centre. These administrative centres were basically grain storage facilities. And Sargon needed a lot of grain, particularly to fund an innovation of his. The world's first standing army. Full time, well equipped, professional soldiers, always ready to fight. In the past, if they needed to go to war, if they needed to fight, they would bring in a conscripted army. You've got soldiers who might be farmers, they might be herders, they are not professional fighters, they're not necessarily all that good at it. But by the time you move over to this full time army, you've got people who know how to kill. But it's under the rule of the Akkadian king, Naram-Sin, in 2254 BCE that the empire reached its true height. Naram-Sin poured huge amounts of wealth into Akkadian construction projects. Glorifying their temples and cities. If you'd gone to one of these cities, your mind would've been blown, gold statues, you'd have seen copper statues, all shining brightly. Through conquest Naram-Sin controlled lands from the Persian Gulf in the east, bordering the Elamite Kingdom in modern day Iran, to the Mediterranean sea in the west and northwards into modern day Turkey. Lands that border the territory of nomadic mountain tribes known as the Gutians. Naram-Sin crowned himself the king of the four quarters. He ruled all the land known to the Akkadians, but even this wasn't enough. Naram-Sin makes himself a god. I mean, talk about the ego of the man. There are engravings of him where he's wearing this horned helmet that only the gods wear and he's about twice the size of his soldiers. He's so important he is a living god. The Akkadian empire achieved something truly astonishing... so why had archaeologists never heard about them until now? What could have caused the world's first empire to disappear? There must be some clue behind why the Akkadian's were erased from history. As they dig deeper into the cuneiform tablets, they uncover a disturbing legend. The curse of Akkad. The story goes that Naram-Sin attacks the city of Nippur and he destroys their temple, he commits this act of great sacrilege and as a result of that action he becomes cursed. The gods were so appalled by Naram-Sin's actions that they prayed for his empire's destruction. A snippet from the curse of Akkad reads, "May the grass grow long in your canal banked tow paths. "Built up with canal sediment. "In your planes, where fine grass grows, "may the reed of lamentation grow. Akkad, my brackish water flow "where fresh water once flowed for you." Because of Naram-Sin's hubris, the gods destroyed the Akkadian empire. Did the empire experience a large scale collapse? Archaeologists need to know when the Akkadian empire actually existed and when they were killed off. Archaeologist and philanthropist Herbert Weld Blundell donates his collection of Middle Eastern artefacts and antiquities to Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum. For the curators, one of the items is of particular interest. A small prism covered in cuneiform inscriptions. It's a copy of the Sumerian king list. The Sumerian king list was written around 1800 BC, in the Sumerian language. It lists the kings and the cities they ruled over. It also tells us the length of each king's reign. The Akkadian's, they're mentioned on the king list. If you can work out when one king ruled, you can work out when all the other kings ruled too. So, if using the Sumerian king list we can get a date, then we can date the Akkadians, we will know for the first time in modern history when the Akkadians existed. But without a point of reference, a year to match it to, this information was useless. They look again to the library of Nineveh. Here were the ancient recordings of solar eclipses. Scholars realised that if they could find a solar eclipse recorded by astronomers using a calendar that we already understood, they could use that to sync up the calendars used in the Sumerian king list. And they found one. A eclipse recorded by the ancient Greeks on the 15 June 763 BCE. The rise of the Akkadian empire could finally be dated. We know that Sargon the Great began ruling in 2334 BC. But after the year 2193 the Sumerian king lists start to record what appears to be a chaotic breakdown of the Akkadian empire. They have this phrase that repeats, "Who was king, who was not king?" Kings reigned for merely a year or two years at most. It suggests that there was unrest, that there was chaos, that there was confusion and perhaps an empire that was in the midst of fracturing. The Sumerian King List hints that this great empire was imploding. But it doesn't tell us why. Archaeologist have a year for the collapse, a time of death for the Akkadian empire, but they're still no closer to knowing why the Akkadians died out. What could have triggered the sudden collapse of the world's first empire. They turned their attention to how the Akkadians managed to survive and thrive in the harsh climate of the Middle East. Maybe this would offer a clue. The Akkadians weren't the first civilisation to emerge in Mesopotamia. Over 5,000 years ago, in 3100 BCE, the first great Sumerian cities sprung from the desert. It's these separate city states that the Akkadians conquered and unified to create the world's first empire. These Sumerians were among the first people to use the wheel, the plough, brew beer and develop the world's first writing system. Early forms of cuneiform script. The Sumerians achieved all of this because they mastered farming. The surplus in food that farming gave, allowed them to go from nomadic hunger gatherers, to living in settlements, to then vast cities. And two natural features of Mesopotamia were essential for allowing the world's first civilisations to flourish. Mesopotamia is a beautiful Greek word and it means between the rivers. So, it can be broken down into meso which is between and potami which is rivers. And the two rivers that this word refers to are the Tigris and the Euphrates. Rivers, particularly in ancient times, were the givers of life. At the time of the Akkadian empire, the climate of Mesopotamia was similar to today's. Vast desert plains with pockets of fertile land straddling the banks of these two rivers. In a land where rainfall was scarce, the Sumerians found a way to use these rivers to turn a desert into an agricultural power house. By building vast irrigation canals. When the Akkadians captured and took control of the Sumerian lands, they knew just how important this irrigation network was for their survival. But also, for their plans of expansion. They installed a complex bureaucratic system to manage the flow of water. The entire system of ancient Mesopotamia, of Akkadia rested on the health of these irrigation canals. To be able to produce as much wheat as they did using irrigation they had to constantly maintain this really complex network of irrigation canals. One of the greatest contributions that the Akkadians have given us, is bureaucracy. Is administration, to maintain these irrigation canals, you had to have a strong centralised government and looking over the administration of this. The problem with the Akkadians is that as they get bigger, they all seem to become victims of their own success. As the empire is expanding, there's constantly need for more food. There's constantly more mouths to feed. With more and more pressure placed on Akkadian farming, how do they manage to feed an entire empire? Archaeologists turn to their records. Here they find evidence of Akkadian expansion into the Khabur Plains, in what is now north eastern Syria. As you move into northern Mesopotamia, the landscape actually changes fairly radically from arid desert to plains. What we see is, unlike the south, where there was irrigation, we find that here farming is actually primarily rain fed. Rain fed agriculture relies solely on rainfall to water crops. It isn't as efficient as irrigation farming, but on the Khabur Plains the Akkadians found a way to feed their empire. Grain production here became crucial for feeding their standing army. And Akkadian history is steeped in conflict. The north will be an ideal target for an enemy of theirs... ..and they had many. Archaeologists looked to the north for any evidence of the Akkadian empire's collapse. Renowned British archaeologist, Max Mallowan, excavates at the ruins of Tell, Brak. It's a huge 7,000 year old settlement on the dry farming Khabur Plains. Surely such a large site must hold Akkadian remains. The problem is, where to begin digging. Sir Mallowan turns to a cutting edge piece of technology. Aerial photography. In the 1920s this area was extensively photographed from the air. This gives Mallowan a birds eye view of Tell Brak and allows him to identify much more clearly any human made features. When Mallowan broke ground, the aerial surveys paid dividends. What he finds is walls, and not just walls to anything. He realises very soon that this is a palace with a grain store attached and it's also a fortress. But this isn't all Mallowan finds. On the bricks is the stamp of the king Naram-Sin. So, this means that this was built at the height of the empire, but this palace, this great grain store, this fortress, is unfinished. They've stopped building it halfway through. What could make the Akkadians abandon the construction of a fort at such a strategically important site? Archaeologists need to know if this area is linked to the collapse. In the decades since, more and more Akkadian sites are uncovered across the Khabur Plains. Archaeologists are shocked by what they find. Site after site is abandoned by the Akkadians. At Tell Leilan, archaeologists have uncovered unused clay balls for pressing cuneiform tablets, left in situ on the floor of the Akkadian administrative building. Why would people leave useful artefacts? In addition, what's visible at this site is the foundations of a new building, but it hasn't been completed. Archaeologists even find unused bricks sat next to the unfinished building. It's evidence the site was rapidly abandoned. Why would the Akkadians abandon such an important region? Was this evidence they were under attack? If you're going to conquer an ancient empire, you have to first take out their ability to feed themselves. In a vast empire, one of the things that you can do, is start taking out their grain production cities. Could this explain how the Akkadians disappeared from history? Were they wiped out? Archaeologists need to work out if there is any evidence of war. Marie Agnes Courty is a geologist and a specialist in soil analysis. In 1990 she was brought in to examine sites across the Khabur Plains. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Courty had found evidence of large scale burning. Was Tell Brak destroyed by conflict? It would explain the discarded clay balls and unfinished construction project. If the fortress was under attack, the inhabitants may have been forced to flea and the site abandoned. Luckily the cuneiform records provide a lot of evidence for the Akkadians at war. Not everybody wants to be a part of the Akkadian empire. There are constant rebellions, there's constant unrest that has to be dealt with. And in the east, were the Gutians, nomadic mountain warriors continuously attacking the edges of the empire. But the Akkadians were very good at fighting. The Akkadians were able to be so powerful because they had a standing army. The other thing that the Akkadians were able to do, was to make incredible use of the bow and arrow. You didn't have to touch your opponent and by the time you actually engaged them hand to hand in combat, you've already won the war. The Akkadians could hold their own and closer analysis of the burned soil layer reveals something unusual. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) The burn layer couldn't have been caused by invaders. And a closer analysis of the soil, reveals something else unusual to Courty. Tel Brak was hit from above. Pummelled with debris, coming straight down. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Courty needed to know what could cause this kind of destruction during the third millennium BCE. Was it linked to the collapse of the Akkadian empire? She expanded her analysis to other Akkadian sites on the Khabur plains. Was the same pattern of destruction found across the region? It might help explain the collapse with the Akkadian empire. In 1991 Courty looked 50km northeast of Tell Brak to Tell Leilan. Here she made a startling discovery. The same flash thermal phenomenon burn layer and above this something else unusual, dust, lots of it. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Analysis showed a thin layer of coarse debris and then a large layer of fine dust. For Courty, it indicates the surface was hit with coarse debris, the impact through the local soil into the air to then settle as a layer of dust. Something pushed this coarse debris down onto Tell Leilan with an incredible force. But these aren't the only unexplained clues Courty found. Buried amongst the debris at each site was small pieces of plastic. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Courty began to look outside the Khabur Plains to see if there were any other archaeological sites that showed similar signatures. 300km from Tell Leilan is the palace ruin of Tell Amar. Here archaeologists have uncovered something incredible. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Decades of analysis indicate to Courty that the destruction was caused by a shockwave. The evidence points to a great explosive force that devastated sites across northern Mesopotamia. But Courty has no idea what it is. Could it explain why these Akkadian sites were abandoned? (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) In Perpignan, France, at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, Courty and a team of physicists analyse the destruction pattern. Because the debris impacted the sites from above, they look to the sky for natural phenomena. But what could deliver such a rapid blast of high-intensity heat? Courty gets a clue, an accident report from emergency services who have been investigating the death of someone struck by lightning. Incredibly, at the accident scene, the emergency workers uncovered a familiar material. The same plastic polymers Courty found across the Khabur Plains. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Industrial plastic is formed by combining and processing the by-products of crude oil. It has a unique molecular structure, but the plastic polymers recorded at the accident scene are different. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) The plastic polymers found on the body of the person struck by lightning were the same as the ones Courty found in the Akkadian archaeological excavations. Her analysis has shown that the plastic she uncovered wasn't pollution after all. But a naturally occurring plastic polymer created by lightning. Courty has a hunch that lightning was responsible for the destruction of the Akkadian sites across the Khabur Plains. But how could such a large lightning storm actually form? After decades of analysis, Courty has developed a theory that she believes explains it. A dust bomb. It requires a massive injection of dust, high into the atmosphere, likely from a volcanic eruption. As this large amount of dust moves between the troposphere and the stratosphere it creates friction and the air becomes charged with static electricity. The electric field becomes so great that it rips atoms apart and creates plasma channels. When these channels connect, they allow the electricity to flow and lightning is formed. As this huge amount of dust falls to earth it generates an incredibly powerful but localised lightning storm. When it touches down the energy release is massive. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) The heightened dust needed for the phenomenon to occur, could explain the thick dust layer found at Tell Leilan. Courty's analysis shows it was deposited over only a number of days. It would also explain the soot layer found across the region. Intense heat caused by lightning. But it has proved impossible for Courty to date the destruction layers across each site for certain to the Akkadian period. And without a date range connecting the sites, there's no way of linking Courty's theory to the collapse of the Akkadian empire. But it was clear that a large amount of dust accumulated at Tell Leilan. What else could cause this level of dust and could it be possible to date it to the collapse of the Akkadian empire? Doctor Frank Sirocko is an ocean floor sediment specialist. He's approached by archaeologists investigating the sudden end of the Akkadian Empire. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) The dust particles sink down through the water and build up in layers in the ocean floor. Sirocko suggested they look at samples taken from the Gulf of Oman. If there was a dust event in Mesopotamia, it would show up here. Crucially, they might be able to date it to the Akkadian period. Doctor Sirocko analysed the sample, looking specifically for dolomite. A mineral signature for dust found in Mesopotamia. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) Incredibly the increase in dust lasted for 300 years. Courty believes her dust bomb event occurred in the space of a few days. But Sirocko's dusty period is much longer. What could cause such a lengthy spike in the sediment core history? (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) A 300-year long drought could certainly account for the collapse of the Akkadian empire. As soon as drought takes away that agricultural base, as soon as you have too many hungry mouths to feed, your empire crumbles. But it seems they weren't the only civilisation to experience upheaval at this point in history. From the Egyptian old kingdom, across the region to the Indus Valley Civilisation in modern day Pakistan, civilisations collapsed and entire cities were abandoned. A severe region-wide drought was beginning to make sense. But did the Akkadian's leave any evidence to back up the theory? Archaeologists turn again to the Sumerian King List. After the year 2193, the Sumerian King List holds this very ominous phrase, "Who was king, who was not king?" Which suggests a huge depth of confusion perhaps chaos, rulers were on the throne for just a short period of time. The dust spike in the sediment samples taken from the Gulf of Oman show a spike around 2200 BC, which tallies perfectly with this chaotic breakdown described by the Sumerian Kings List. Drought is looking more and more likely the cause for the collapse of the Akkadian empire. But there's an issue with Doctor Sirocko's Oman results. These ocean core samples can't be analysed at a high enough resolution for dating to be done exactly. There's an inbuilt error range of 300 years. The drought could miss the rise and fall of the Akkadian Empire entirely, without an accurate date, it's impossible to prove the drought coincided with the collapse of the world's first empire. But then, a stroke of fortune. In 2018, Oxford Universities paleoclimate research laboratory, collected samples of stalagmites from caves just outside Tiran in Iran. The lab studies geology around the world and what it can tell us about ancient climate. Stalagmites are really good climate proxies, that means they tell us something about the climate of which they're growing. As the researchers analysed the sediment deposit history of the stalagmite samples, they came across something unexpected. There's a spike in dust around 2200 years BC. That lasts for about 300 years. Where is that dust coming from? Well if you look at the paleoenvironmental analysis, the main area that dust is travelling from is from Mesopotamia. And because the tests were done at a high resolution, it's possible to date the dusty period accurately. It matches the Oman samples perfectly. What this is showing is likely drought in that region. But what caused this drought in the first place? A phenomenon being studied as a strong cause for drought across the world is El Nino. Could it be responsible for a drought occurring at 2200 BCE? El Nino occurs when tropical water in the eastern Pacific Ocean becomes unusually warm. The effects of El Nino are unpredictable, but often cause drought around the globe. Doctor Frank Sirocko has a hunch El Nino is responsible for the drought at 2200 BCE, but how can you work out when El Nino occurred throughout history? Sirocko turns to what we know now. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) When they dated the sample, incredibly they see a spike in sediment from 2500 to 2000 BCE. For Sirocko it indicates an intensification of El Nino activity around the period that drought hit Mesopotamia. (SPEAKS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE) For Sirocko, El Nino is the most likely cause for drought striking the Akkadian empire, but was there any on the ground archaeological evidence linking the drought to their collapse? Archaeologists look again to the soil layers at Tell Leilan. If there was drought, then surely there would be evidence. Here they make a startling discovery. Usually what you find in the soil at archaeological sites are the patterns of marks of activity of earthworms. What we find at Tell Leilan is that the soil is dead, there's no evidence of earthworm activity. The soil at Tell Leilan has become dust. Unlike further south, where the land was watered by irrigation, the Khabur Plains were watered by rainfall. If the rain stopped, then it would cause the soil to die. Drought would make sense why there was such a large dust layer. It would also make sense why the archaeologists found discarded clay balls for pressing cuneiform tablets and unfinished buildings. Evidence that the inhabitants of Tell Leilan had left their home. At it's most basic, drought is a really devastating event because really you need it to do incredibly fundamental things. You need water to water your animals, you need water to water your crops. So, if you don't have any water, how do you survive? If the people of Tell Leilan were unable to feed themselves and there was no longer water to drink, it would explain why the site was abandoned. When the archaeologists radio carbon dated the abandonment layer of the settlement they got the date back 2200 BC. People only start coming back to the site around 1900 BC. So there's a 300-year gap where people don't live there. The hiatus dates seem to fit perfectly with the Oman and Iran samples. The evidence points towards a 300-year drought, striking the Akkadian empire right at the point they collapse. And it's believed the north of the empire, which relied on rainfall to survive, was hit particularly hard. The taxes on grain grown on the Khabur Plains were crucial for supporting the Akkadian empire. Particularly funding their standing army. The city-states that resented being under Akkadian control took their chances and rose up against them. When you can't feed your people, people start to think that perhaps you're not the right king. The Akkadian Empire maintained power through having a standing professional army. As soon as the taxes aren't coming in to pay your soldiers, what hope do you have of maintaining their loyalty and therefore what hope do you have of keeping control over this vast and varied empire that you reign over. And it's thought the Akkadians weren't the only people hit by the drought. As the rain dries up, the Gutian tribes move in, chasing water down into Mesopotamia. Over time, as the Akkadian Empire becomes more and more difficult to maintain, the Gutians become more and more of a threat, until eventually the whole thing is weakened from the inside and the Gutians come swarming out of the mountains and take over the Akkadian Empire. But they rule in Empire in name only. With the Akkadian Empire severely weakened, it soon broke up into city-states. Like Mesopotamia had been just 140 years before. The world's first empire, the Akkadian Empire, was gone.
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Channel: Get.factual
Views: 840,072
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: Documentary, Documentary series, Full Documentary, Nature, science, history, biography, biographical documentary, historical documentary, wildlife, wildlife film, wildlife documentary, science documentary, nature documentary, Documentaries, get factual, get.factual, getfactual, get factual documentary, documentary, history documentary, documentaries, Akkadian Empire, Mesopotamia, Ancient Civilizations, Archaeology, Middle East History, Historical Mystery, Syria History, Turkey History
Id: PPh5ZnST-uA
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Length: 50min 14sec (3014 seconds)
Published: Mon Aug 07 2023
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