The Curse of Agade
Also known as: The Curse of Akkad, Naram-Sin and the Ekur, The Curse of Agade: The Ekur Avenged
A Sumerian poem recounting how Naram-Sin defied the god Enlil by attacking the Ekur temple at Nippur, bringing divine wrath upon Agade. The gods withdraw favor, the Gutians ravage the land, and Akkad falls under a sweeping curse.
Description
Framed as a moral exemplum against royal impiety, the poem narrates repeated omens refusing Naram-Sin permission to wage war. In frustration, he leads an assault on Enlil’s sanctuary, the Ekur, symbol of cosmic order. Enlil and the assembly of gods respond by removing prosperity from the land: trade ceases, rivers and fields fail, and chaos spreads. The Gutians—figured as feral invaders—overrun Sumer and Akkad, culminating in famine, depopulation, and the ruination of Agade. The composition contrasts kingly hubris with divine justice, presenting the sack of the Ekur as a cosmic crime that reorders the world. Its didactic thrust made it a staple in scribal curricula, shaping later Mesopotamian reflections on kingship, temple sanctity, and the precariousness of imperial power.
Historiography
Known from multiple Old Babylonian Sumerian tablets and fragments copied in scribal schools, the poem likely crystallized centuries after the Akkadian Dynasty it portrays. Its language and didactic agenda align with the Sumerian literary tradition cultivated in Nippur and other centers. Scholars read it alongside the city laments and Akkadian “naru” narratives as a retrospective moralization of history rather than a verbatim chronicle. The text circulated widely in antiquity and influenced later reflections on impiety, divine sanction, and political collapse.
Date Notes
Sumerian composition preserved in Old Babylonian school tablets; narrative set in the Akkadian Dynasty (reign of Naram-Sin, 23rd century BCE).
Major Characters
- Naram-Sin
- Enlil
- Inanna
- Sargon of Akkad
- The Gutians
Myths
- Naram-Sin’s Sacrilege against Enlil
- The Withdrawal of Divine Favor
- The Gutian Devastation of Akkad
Facts
- The poem is Sumerian, despite treating an Akkadian king and dynasty.
- It frames Naram-Sin’s impiety as the catalyst for Akkad’s downfall.
- Enlil’s Ekur temple at Nippur is the moral and cosmic center of the narrative.
- The Gutians are depicted as agents and symptoms of divine wrath.
- Old Babylonian school tablets preserve multiple copies and variants.
- The composition functions as a didactic warning to later kings and scribes.
- City prosperity is portrayed as contingent on divine sanction and temple respect.
- The narrative retrojects later theological ideas onto earlier Akkadian history.
- The poem is often grouped with city laments for its rhetoric of devastation.
- Its episodes circulated widely, shaping later Mesopotamian political theology.