The Search for Agade, Lost Capital of the Akkadian Empire

By Dig Labs Contributors

Source: Dig Labs Project

Somewhere beneath the silt layers of Iraq lies the world’s first imperial capital: Agade.

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Introduction

Somewhere beneath the silt layers of Iraq lies the world’s first imperial capital: Agade. As the beating heart of Sargon the Great’s Akkadian Empire, it was a city of unparalleled wealth that controlled the flow of trade from the Persian Gulf to the mountains of Anatolia. Despite its historical dominance between 2350 and 2150 B.C., Agade vanished from the map, leaving archaeologists with a 4,000-year-old "missing person" case on a civilizational scale.

Our investigation follows the trail of ancient cuneiform records and satellite imagery to narrow down the search area. Was the city's location swallowed by the shifting path of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, or does it sit directly beneath a modern Iraqi metropolis? We examine the dramatic collapse of the empire—from climate-driven megadroughts to the invasion of the Gutian Highlanders—to understand why such a massive power center was abandoned so completely.