The Sumerians, who built human civilization over their thousand-year history, from 3000 BCE to 2000 BCE approximately, were not the only players on the Mesopotamian social and political stage. As we turn the pages of their history, we find that there is another ethnic group, of Semitic origin, living in the same territory at almost the same time, a people conventionally known as the Akkadians, who came to power and took control of the entire region in 2350 BCE under their king Sargon the Great, founder of a dynasty of the same name.

At least until the 1950s and 1960s, there was a lively debate amongst Assyriologists—on the one hand, those who believed that there was an ethnic link between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, almost a direct symbiosis, and on the other, those who, while not overemphasizing that they were different racial groups...