What is the difference between Sumerian and Akkadian?
Subsequently, one may also ask, are Samaritans and Sumerians the same?
Nope. Samaritans on the other hand are the followers of a religion similar, but separate from Judaism. In the late centuries of the 1st millennium BCE, they were contemporaries and often came into conflict with the Judeans.
Similarly one may ask, what are the Akkadians known for?
The Akkadian Empire was an ancient Semitic empire centered in the city of Akkad, which united all the indigenous Akkadian speaking Semites and Sumerian speakers under one rule. The Empire controlled Mesopotamia, the Levant, and parts of Iran. Akkad is sometimes regarded as the first empire in history.
The Sumerians called themselves “the black headed people” and their land, in cuneiform script, was simply “the land” or “the land of the black headed people”and, in the biblical Book of Genesis, Sumer is known as Shinar.