King Sargon I of Akkad (now a lost city perhaps not far from present-day Baghdad) conquered most of Mesopotamia between 2390 and 2330 B.C.E. Sargon was later mythologized as a archetypal hero: it was said that he had been born of a virgin, hidden in a basket, released into the river, and adopted by a menial.

The Akkadians adapted their own Semitic language to the Sumerian cuneiform script and that language became the lingua franca of the whole region.