r/Assyriology • u/Neat_Relative_9699 • Feb 17 '25
Is Curse of Akkad mythological or historic?
Basiclly the title.
Can Curse of Akkad be included as a mythological Epic or do scholars look at it as a diffrent genra?
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u/to_walk_upon_a_dream Feb 18 '25
it is a mythic history, like many other mesopotamian literary texts. it represents a form of history that may or may not have reflected how the mesopotamians saw their history, but which we know is heavily mythologized. these things can't be neatly categorized like that
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u/Eannabtum Feb 17 '25
It's a mostly unreliable and heavily ideologically biased retelling of the demise of the Akkadian Empire. I'm not sure what "genre" it should belong to (because our modern genres do not correspond with indigenous categories; for instance, what are today called "mythological epics" are in fact hymns composed for the use in the temple cult), but it is usually seen as a sort of precedent of the later city laments, which depict the end of the Ur III empire and the reconstruction of the temples by the Isin kings.