Akkadian

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Akkadian

Akkadian (əkāˈdēən), extinct language belonging to the East Semitic subdivision of the Semitic subfamily of the Afroasiatic family of languages (see Afroasiatic languages). Also called Assyro-Babylonian, Akkadian (or Accadian) was current in ancient Mesopotamia (now Iraq) from about 3000 B.C. until the time of Jesus. The earliest surviving inscriptions in the language go back to about 2500 B.C. and are the oldest known written records in a Semitic tongue.

Old Akkadian is the earliest period of the language and can be dated from its appearance in Mesopotamia c.3000 B.C. to c.1950 B.C., when the 3d dynasty of Ur fell. Thereafter, Akkadian evolved into two dialects, Assyrian, the tongue of ancient Assyria, and Babylonian, the language of ancient Babylonia. The history of both Assyrian and Babylonian can be roughly divided into three successive periods designated as Old (beginning c.1950 B.C.), Middle (c.1500–c.1000 B.C.), and New or Late (after c.1000 B.C.). Around 1500 B.C., Babylonian began to be widely used, both in the Middle East and in international diplomacy. As time went on, Babylonian even replaced Assyrian to a large extent in the written records and literature of the Assyrian civilization. By the beginning of the Christian era, however, Babylonian had died out, and it remained a lost language until modern times, when it was deciphered during the first half of the 19th cent.

Unlike the other Semitic languages, which employed an alphabetic writing system, Akkadian and its later forms, Assyrian and Babylonian, were written in cuneiform. The Akkadians adopted cuneiform c.2500 B.C. from the Sumerians, a non-Semitic people who are believed to have invented it.

Bibliography

See I. J. Gelb, Old Akkadian Writing and Grammar (2d ed. 1961); E. Reiner, A Linguistic Analysis of Akkadian (1966); D. Marcus, A Manual of Addadian (1978).

References in periodicals archive ?

There was even less community of interest between the Sumerian city-states and their Akkadian neighbors than between the Sumerian city-states themselves.

2334-2279 B.C.) took over the rule of Agade, one of the Akkadian cities.

Empires

That article, as background, recounted how the Akkadian Empire created the world's first professional army, which it used to conquer the Sumerians and rule much of Iraq and half of Syria in the Third Millennium B.C.

U.S. Cuts Corners on Afghan Army Training

115), and the unknowing use of divergent Akkadian realizations of a single Sumerogram in the same context (urigallu and sesegallu, p.

Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia

The two essays in this part focus on the Sargonic or Akkadian period (Westenholz) and the Ur III period (Sallaberger).

With respect to the reasons for the Akkadian colonization of north Syria, agriculture seems most likely, as is now seen as a cornerstone of Assyrian poli cy in the Khabur region, for example (p.

Mesopotamien: Akkade-Zeit und Ur III-Zeit. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, vol. 160.3

This light, sustainable commando-army should be based on a mix of Akkadian and Mongol organizational concepts.

A New Persian Empire is Rising with U.S. Help

The Assyriologist can only feel gratified to see a major Akkadian poem read critically as a work of world literature, even if he finds the author's judgment that it is worth all the rest of Akkadian literature combined rather rash (p.

On the other hand, Ackerman has overlooked an interesting piece of Akkadian evidence to be considered in her portrayal of unequal sexual relations (pp.

65) and devotes a good three pages to seeking out erotic references to brotherhood in other languages and cultures, in the absence of any such in Akkadian. In fact, "brother," in the very period the Old Babylonian Epic was composed, was the Akkadian term par excellence for a male social equal.

When Heroes Love: The Ambiguity of Eros in the Stories of Gilgamesh and David

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