Accadian

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Related to Accadian: Acadian, Akkadian

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Accadian

(from the city of Accad), the oldest of the known Semitic languages.

Accadian had two dialects, the Babylonian and the Assyrian, for which reason it is often called Babylono-Assyrian (or Assyro-Babylonian). In Accadian, as in other Semitic languages, the root of a word consists only of consonants, mostly three, and the vowels and some added non-root consonants indicate the grammatical relations and determine the meaning of the root. Its writing is based on the ideographic syllabic cuneiform script, borrowed from Sumerian, with its characteristic polyphony of characters, of which there are more than 500. The year 1857 is regarded as the date that the cuneiform script was finally deciphered.

REFERENCES

Lipin, L. A. Akkadskii iazyk, vols. 1–2. [Leningrad,] 1957.
Soden, W. von. Grundriss der akkadischen Grammatik. Rome, 1952.
Bezold, C. Babylonisch-Assyrisches Glossar. Heidelberg, 1926.
The Assyrian Dictionary, vols. 2–6. Chicago, 1956–60.
Gelb, I. J. Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar. Chicago, 1952.

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References in periodicals archive ?

He begins with Babylonia before the Babylonians came--the Old Accadian and neo-Sumerian periods--and proceeds through Hammurabi's empire, the fall of Babylon, and the neo-Babylonian period.

Who Were the Babylonians?

At the beginning of the text, Reyes cites the Accadians, the Hitites, Crete, Pre-Sudanese art, Toltec pyramids and the Zapotec tombs in Monte Alban to argue that these discoveries "vienen hacia nosotros para demostrarnos que nuestro cuadro de las civilizaciones era incompleto y que hay otras formas posibles de concebir la vida" (XXI, 135).

The age of Utopia: Alfonso Reyes, deep time and the critique of colonial modernity