The most comprehensive dictionary of the Akkadian language is available online. My research into the Akkadian language. research into the Akkadian language. summary leki fragment of Sumerian in the highlands of the Caucasus Akkadian language

My translation of an English article. Original.

The ancient Assyrian language is called Akkadian. It was the language of the Assyrians and Babylonians, written in cuneiform. To facilitate the administrative tasks of the Assyrian Empire, Aramaic was made the second state language in 752 BC.

Imperial officials adopted a simple standard form of Aramaic for business correspondence. In the heart of the Empire, "Aramaic inscriptions" were written on cuneiform tablets. Such inscriptions contain names, dates and other information necessary for merchants. Many Assyrian tablets with Aramaic inscriptions written on them have been found. Assyrian scribes are often depicted in pairs - one writing in Akkadian on cuneiform tablets, the other in Aramaic on a sheet of parchment or papyrus (see the picture in the title of the post).

Among the lion-shaped weights found in Nineveh, some are inscribed with both Akkadian and Aramaic text, inscribed with the names of Assyrian kings who reigned during the times when these weights were used, including Shalmaneser III (858 - 824), Sargon (721 - 705), Sennacherib (704 - 681). Official Aramaic was later adopted as the standard form of literary communication between Aramaic-speaking inhabitants of various parts of the Empire. It's named Assyrian Aramaic(less often Imperial Aramaic).

According to the Old Testament, in 701, when the envoys of the Assyrian king Sennacherib appeared before the walls of Jerusalem and Ribsak addressed the commanders of King Hezekiah's army in Hebrew, they asked him to speak better Aramaic, since they understood his official language and did not want the population to hear derogatory demands about submission in Hebrew.

17 And the king of Assyria sent Tartan and Rhabsaris and Rabshakeh from Lachish to king Hezekiah with a large army to Jerusalem. And they went and came to Jerusalem; and they went and came and stood at the water supply of the upper pond, which is on the road of the whitewash field.
18 And they called the king. And Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, the ruler of the palace, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the son of Asaph the recorder, went out to them.
19 And Rabshakeh said to them, Tell Hezekiah, Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: What is this hope in which you trust?
20 You spoke only empty words: for war you need advice and strength. Now in whom do you trust, that you have abandoned me?
21 Behold, you think to lean on Egypt, on this bruised reed, which, if anyone leans on it, will go into his hand and pierce it. Such is Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to all those who trust in him.
22 And if you say to me, “In the Lord our God we trust,” is it the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah abolished, and said to Judah and Jerusalem, “Before this altar alone shall you worship in Jerusalem”?
23 So enter into an alliance with my lord the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses; can you get yourself riders for them?
24 How can you defeat even one leader of the least of my lord’s servants? And do you trust in Egypt for chariots and horses?
25 Moreover, did I go to this place without the will of the Lord to destroy it? The Lord said to me: “Go to this land and destroy it.”
26 And Eliakim the son of Hilkiah and Shebna and Joah said to Rabshakeh, Speak to your servants in Aramaic, for we understand, and do not speak to us in Hebrew in the hearing of the people who are on the wall.

In later centuries, Aramaic replaced Hebrew even in Israel. During their time in Babylonian captivity, the Jews adopted the square Assyrian script known as Ketav Ashuri or Assyrian text. The law required that Torah scrolls be written in Ketav Ashuri.

Over time, Aramaic became the lingua franca of Mesopotamia, gradually replacing Akkadian. Such a transition was possible due to the similarity of languages. And also because the 22 letters of the Aramaic alphabet are more convenient for a scribe than the 600 or so characters of cuneiform.

The fact that both languages ​​still coexisted in the 4th century BC is confirmed by the Aramaic document available to researchers from Uruk, written in klipis. In Babylon, the Akkadian language fell out of use around 140 BC, remaining the property of a few priests who used it for religious purposes. However, Akkadian continued to be the language of astronomers and astrologers (which in those days was the same thing) until the time of Christ.

Most ancient languages ​​have undergone significant transformation over time for various reasons. For example, the English language has changed a lot from what it was, for example, in the 9th century. Modern English speakers will have difficulty reading and understanding the Jesus Prayer written in Old English (see text below):

"Feder Ure bu be eart on hefonum, si bin nama gehalgod. To prepare bin rice. Gewurbe Oin willa on Eoroan swa swa on heoronum..."

Modern Assyrians use thousands of words in conversation every day that are purely Akkadian.
Syriac, another name for the language of the Christian Assyrians, may have been used as a literary language in northern Mesopotamia, but only a few written pre-Christian texts dating from the 1st century AD have survived. Syriac developed as a literary language in Edessa, where there was a large scientific school, which was the heir of the pagan educational center. Syriac was gradually adopted as the language of the Church and culture by the Aramaic-speaking Christians of the region. There are two slightly different dialects of Syriac, called Eastern and Western, respectively. It should be noted that the modern spoken Assyrian language (Eastern or Western) is older than the written language of the Church (Edessa dialect). For example, in Akkadian the word weapon keke (keke)(literally tooth, since the weapon has cutting devices), in Syriac liturgical weapon is denoted by the word zaineh (zaineh), and in modern Eastern Assyrian checke (check)- almost the same as in Akkadian.

Some differences in the pronunciation of words between ancient and modern Assyrian may exist due to the inability of translators to accurately convey the sound of cuneiform characters. Some of the cuneiform characters may have different pronunciations. It should be pointed out that although all ancient Assyrian words ended in "U", in modern East Assyrian in its basic form the words end in "A". The vowel sound “A” of the Eastern dialect is pronounced “O” in all cases in the Western dialect.

The list below contains words that come from Akkadian. Without words, declensions, tenses, adjectives, adverbs, plural and gender forms derived from them. If all these vocabulary forms were added to the list, it would contain thousands of words.

Compiled by Peter BetBasoo and William Warda using glossaries contained in the following literature:

1. "State Archives of Assyria, Volume III: Court Poetry and Literary Miscellanea", by Alasdair Livingstone, Helsinki University Press.


2. Samuel A.B. Mercer, "Assyrian Grammar with Chrestomathy and Glossary" Frederick Ungar Publishing, New York, 1961


3. Samuel A.B. Mercer, "Assyrian Grammar" London 1921


4. Orhaham's Dictionary of the stabilized and enriched Assyrian Language and English, Chicago Ill. 1943

Notes:

1. Ribsak (Rab - Shakeh) - this was such a court position of the chief cupbearer, and the person who occupied it was not necessarily involved in serving the Assyrian king at meals. Compare with steward or bedside in the Moscow state.

2. The Russian language does not convey differences, but in English Syriac- in relation to modern Assyrians, and Syrian- in relation to the Syrian Arabs, whose self-name of the country is not Syria, but Sham.

3. The same Peter Bitbazu, who successfully debunks the myths about the “Arab-Islamic civilization”:

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Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa and Babylonia) from the 30th century BC until its gradual replacement by Eastern Aramaic around the 8th century BC. Its final disappearance occurred during the 1st-3rd centuries. ad. This article will tell you about this ancient eastern language.

History of development

It is the oldest written Semitic language using cuneiform, which was originally used to record the unrelated and also extinct Sumerian language. Akkadian was named after the city of the same name, a major center of civilization in Mesopotamia during the period of the Akkadian Kingdom (circa 2334-2154 BC). However, the language itself already existed before the founding of this state for many centuries. The first mention of it occurs in the 29th century BC.

The mutual influence between Sumerian and Akkadian has led scholars to combine them into a linguistic union. From the second half of the third millennium BC. e. (c. 2500 BC) texts written entirely in Akkadian begin to appear. This is evidenced by numerous finds. Hundreds of thousands of these texts and their fragments have been discovered by archaeologists to date. They cover extensive traditional mythological narratives, legal acts, scientific observations, correspondence, and reports of political and military events. By the second millennium BC. In Mesopotamia, two dialects of the Akkadian language were used: Assyrian and Babylonian.

Thanks to the power of various state formations of the Ancient East, such as the Assyrian and Babylonian empires, Akkadian became the native language for most of the population of this region.

The inevitable sunset

The Akkadian language began to lose its influence during the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the 8th century BC. It gave way to Aramaic in distribution during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III. By the Hellenistic period, the language was largely used only by scholars and priests officiating in the temples of Assyria and Babylon. The last known cuneiform document composed in Akkadian dates back to the 1st century AD.

Mandaean, spoken by the Mandaean people of Iraq and Iran, and New Aramaic, spoken today in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria and northwestern Iran, are two of the few modern Semitic languages ​​that retain some Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features.

general characteristics

According to its characteristics, Akkadian is one that has a developed system of case endings.

It belongs to the Semitic group of the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic language family. It is distributed in the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, parts of Asia Minor, North Africa, Malta, the Canary Islands and the Horn of Africa.

Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (together with Eblaitic). It differs from the Northwestern and South Semitic groups in its word order in sentences. For example, its grammatical structure looks like this: subject-object-verb, while in other Semitic dialects the following order is usually observed: verb-subject-object or subject-verb-object. This phenomenon in the grammar of the Akkadian language is due to the influence of the Sumerian dialect, which had exactly this order. Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian had a large presence of words with three consonants in its roots.

Research

The Akkadian language began to be studied again when Carsten Niebuhr was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts in 1767 and published them in Denmark. Their decipherment began immediately, and bilingual residents of the Middle East, in particular speakers of the ancient Persian-Akkadian dialect, provided great assistance in this matter. Since the texts contained several royal names, isolated characters could be identified. The research results were published in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend. By this time it was already obvious that this language was Semitic. The final breakthrough in decoding texts is associated with the names of Edward Hincks, Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert (mid-19th century). The Institute of Oriental Studies of the University of Chicago recently completed a dictionary of the Akkadian language (21 volumes).

Cuneiform writing system

Ancient Akkadian writing is preserved on clay tablets dating back to 2500 BC. The inscriptions were created using cuneiform, a method adopted by the Sumerians, using wedge-shaped symbols. All records were kept on tablets made of pressed wet clay. The adapted cuneiform script used by Akkadian scribes contained Sumerian logograms (that is, symbol-based images representing whole words), Sumerian syllables, Akkadian syllables, and phonetic additions. Akkadian language textbooks published today contain many of the grammatical features of this ancient dialect, once widespread in the Middle East.

AKkadianlanguage.

To record the Akkadian language in writing, verbal-syllabic cuneiform was used, borrowed from the Sumerians and representing groups of wedge-shaped signs squeezed onto clay tablets, which were then fired.

The cuneiform system consists of:

simple and complex ideograms;

signs with phonetic reading, indicating syllables.

The same group of signs often has several ideographic and - at the same time - phonetic meanings. The rendering of syllables is ambiguous: different signs can be used for the same thing. There are no separating marks or spaces between words, as was common in all ancient writing systems. Reading is facilitated by the presence of determiners - signs indicating that a word belongs to a certain class in meaning (for example, “mātu” - country - before the names of countries, “ilu” (god) - before the names of gods).

Sumerianwriting.

Sumerian writing is verbal and syllabic in nature. It is based on pictorial signs (pictograms), which are ideograms that convey not a word, but a concept (concept), and most often not one, but a number of associatively related concepts. Initially, the number of characters in the Sumerian language reached a thousand. Gradually their number was reduced to 600. Almost half of them were used as logograms and at the same time as syllabograms, which was facilitated by the monosyllabic nature of most Sumerian words, the rest were only logograms. When read in each individual context, the ideogram sign reproduced one specific word, and the ideogram became a logogram, that is, a sign for a word with its specific sound. A pictorial sign most often expressed not one concept, but several conceptually related verbal meanings. The presence of signs expressing more than one word created polyphony. On the other hand, Sumerian had a large number of homonymous words - homophones, apparently differing only in musical tones, which were not specifically reflected in the graphics. As a result, it turns out that to convey the same sequence of consonants and vowels there can be up to a dozen different signs, differing not depending on the sound of the word, but on its semantics. In Sumerology (the most convenient Deimel system is used here), when transliterating such ‘homophones’, the following notations are accepted: du, du2, du3, du4, du5, du6, etc., in order of approximate frequency.

There were many monosyllabic words in the Sumerian language, so it turned out to be possible to use logograms that convey such words for purely phonetic transmission of words or grammatical indicators that could not be reproduced directly in the form of a pictorial ideogram sign. Thus, logograms begin to be used as syllabograms. At the end of the first half of the 3rd millennium BC. e. Determinatives appeared, denoting the category of a concept, for example, determinatives of wooden, reed, stone objects, animals, birds, fish, etc.

The rules for transliterating Sumerian texts should be noted. Each character is transliterated in lowercase Roman letters, separated from the transliteration of another character within the same word by a hyphen. Determinatives are written above the line. If the correct choice of one or another reading of a sign in a given context cannot be made, then the sign is transliterated in capital Latin letters in its most common reading. There are no doubled consonants in Sumerian, so spellings like gub-ba are purely orthographic and should be read /guba/.

Chineseletteŕ

The Chinese script has been the only generally accepted way of writing the Chinese language for several thousand years. Chinese characters are also widely used in Japanese and Korean writing (where they are called kanji and hanja). Until 1945, Chinese script was also used to write Vietnamese (Han Tu).

The age of Chinese writing is constantly being clarified. Recently discovered inscriptions on turtle shells, reminiscent of ancient Chinese characters in style, date back to the 6th millennium BC. e., which is even older than Sumerian writing.

Chinese writing is usually called hieroglyphic or ideographic. It is radically different from the alphabetical one in that each character is assigned some meaning (not just phonetic), and the number of characters is very large (tens of thousands).

According to legend, hieroglyphs were invented by Cang Jie, the court historiographer of the mythical emperor Huang Di. Before this, the Chinese used knot writing. The oldest Chinese records were made on tortoise shells and ox bones, and recorded the results of fortune telling. Such texts are called jiaguwen. The first examples of Chinese writing date back to the last period of the Shang Dynasty (the most ancient - to the 17th century BC).

Later, the technology of bronze casting arose, and inscriptions appeared on bronze vessels. These texts were called jinwen. The inscriptions on bronze vessels were previously extruded onto a clay mold, the hieroglyphs were standardized, and they began to fit into a square.

Etruscanalphabet- a set of characters characteristic of the written Etruscan language. Related to the Greek and early Latin alphabet.

The most famous monuments of Etruscan writing are tombstones and ceramics. Currently, about nine thousand inscriptions made using the Etruscan alphabet are known - found on tombstones, vases, statues, mirrors and jewelry. Fragments of the Etruscan linen book Liber Linteus were also found.

The problem with deciphering is that the Etruscans did not have a writing system, that is, they wrote both from left to right and from right to left. In addition, boustrophedon is also found: one line is written from left to right, the second line from right to left, the third from left to right, etc. The second difficulty is that the words were not always separated from each other.

Etruscan inscriptions were already incomprehensible to the Romans, who had a proverb “hetruscum non ligatur” (“Etruscan is not readable”). All later attempts to read Etruscan inscriptions on the basis of any of the known languages ​​were unsuccessful; The prevailing point of view is that the Etruscan language is not related to the known European languages ​​and is isolated.

Since the Etruscan language has not been deciphered, and the ordered set of characters used by the Etruscans themselves (the alphabet in the proper sense of the word) is unknown, the Etruscan alphabet is a reconstruction. This applies to both the number of letters and their shape, as well as the sound of the corresponding sounds. The basis for reading is the few Latin-Etruscan bilinguals and Etruscan recordings of proper names.

About 90 Etruscan characters are known to appear in Etruscan writing. They are reduced to 27 basic characters, the rest are considered graphic variations.

Dateś yskayapí shifts- one of the first phonetic writing systems recorded in human history. Appeared around the 13th century BC. e. and became the ancestor of most modern writing systems.

The Phoenician script is one of the first alphabetic scripts in the world, however, it was the Phoenician script that gave rise to several branches of alphabetic scripts, and, today, almost all alphabetic scripts in the world (with the exception of Japanese Kana and Korean script) have roots in the Phoenician script. Other writing systems with an alphabetical structure - Old Persian cuneiform and Meroitic writing - did not take root.

Alphabeticalwriting is a writing where one character conveys one sound, in contrast to logographic and ideographic writing, where each character corresponds to a specific concept or morpheme. Syllabic writing also cannot be considered an alphabetic writing, since each character corresponds to a separate syllable, but not a sound.

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