Akkadian literature is the ancient literature written in the Akkadian language (Assyrian and Babylonian dialects) in Mesopotamia (Assyria and Babylonia) during the period spanning the Middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age (roughly the 23rd to 6th centuries BC).
Drawing on the traditions of Sumerian literature, the Babylonians compiled a substantial textual tradition of mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, letters and other literary forms.
Literature in Akkadian society
Most of what we have from the Babylonians was inscribed in cuneiform with a metal stylus on tablets of clay, called laterculae coctiles by Pliny the Elder; papyrus seems to have been also employed, but it has perished.
There were libraries in most towns and temples; an old Sumerian proverb averred that "he who would excel in the school of the scribes must rise with the dawn." Women as well as men learned to read and write, and in Semitic times, this involved a knowledge of the extinct Sumerian language, and a complicated and extensive syllabary. The Babylonians' very advanced systems of writing, science and mathematics contributed greatly to their literary output.
Many works of Akkadian literature were commissioned by kings that had scribes and scholars in their service. Some of these works served to celebrate the king or the divine, while others recorded information for religious practices or medicine. Poetry, proverbs, folktales, love lyrics, and accounts of disputes were all incorporated into Akkadian literature.
Relation to other ancient literatures
A considerable amount of Babylonian literature was translated from Sumerian originals, and the language of religion and law long continued to be the old agglutinative language of Sumer. Vocabularies, grammars, and interlinear translations were compiled for the use of students, as well as commentaries on the older texts and explanations of obscure words and phrases. The characters of the syllabary were all arranged and named, and elaborate lists of them were drawn up.
Assyrian culture and literature came from Babylonia, but even here there was a difference between the two countries. There was little in Assyrian literature that was original, and education, general in Babylonia, was mostly restricted to a single class in the northern kingdom. In Babylonia, it was of very old standing. Under the second Assyrian empire, when Nineveh had become a great centre of trade, Aramaic — the language of commerce and diplomacy — was added to the number of subjects that the educated class was required to learn.
Under the Seleucids, Greek was introduced into Babylon, and fragments of tablets have been found with Sumerian and Assyrian (i.e. Semitic Babylonian) words transcribed into Greek letters.
Notable works
According to A. Leo Oppenheim, the corpus of cuneiform literature amounted to around 1,500 texts at any one time or place, approximately half of which, at least from the first millennium, is extant in fragmentary form, and the most common genres included (in order of predominance) are omen texts, lexical lists, ritual incantations, cathartic and apotropaic conjurations, historical and mythological epics, fables and proverbs.
Annals, chronicles and historical epics
The Assyrian dialect of Akkadian is particularly rich in royal inscriptions from the end of the 14th century BC onward, for example the epics of Adad-nārārī, Tukulti-Ninurta, and Šulmānu-ašarēdu III and the annals which catalogued the campaigns of the neo-Assyrian monarchs. The earliest historical royal epic is, however, that of Zimri-Lim (–1698 BC short) of Mari. Similar literature of the middle Babylonian period is rather poorly preserved with a fragmentary epic of the Kassite period, that of Adad-šuma-uṣur and of Nabû-kudurrī-uṣur I and Marduk.
The chronicle traditional is first attested in the compositions of the early Iron Age which hark back to earlier times, such as the Chronicle of Early Kings, the Dynastic Chronicle, Chronicle P and the Assyrian Synchronistic History. A series of fifteen neo to late Babylonian Chronicles have been recovered which narrate the period spanning Nabû-nasir (747–734 BC) to Seleucus III Ceraunus (243–223 BC) and were derived from the political events described in Babylonian astronomical diaries.