(Very) Old Friends

In beginning my travels in Akkadian, I’m happy to see my old friends the nominative, genitive and accusative cases in my grammar book.  The dual is/are there too.

Some words familiar from Hebrew:

• Abum, father, Hebrew abba.  Abra-ham means the father of nations.
• Ummum, mother, Heb. im, ima
• Sissû , horse, Heb. sus
• Bītum, house, Heb. bayit; from this word dervice synagogue names like “Beth Am,” House of the People.
• Alpum, ox. Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is derived from a symbol of an ox’s head, meaning strength.  

There is another nifty word, “mimation” which is the suffixing of a letter m.

I always find it comforting to read translation exercises like, “The army of the king was in the city,” and “the wife’s wool is in the house.” The simple declaratives speak to countless generations of scholars, brows knit, with ink (or clay) stained fingers. As we dutifully ponder the mysteries of case-gender-number, it’s hard not to wonder why the wife was so absent-minded and where she meant to take that wool in the first place.  

The Seven Kings of Rome - Ab Urbe Condita

Romulus founded the city of Rome,

Numa strengthened religion at home,

Tullus with Alba was hostilely warring,

Ancus, bridge builder, especially boring,

Tarquinius came from out of town,

Servius came from way low down,

Tarquin was the last of the kings

Tullia drove him to horrible things.

By A. Student & E. Bennett

On Learning Akkadian

Assyrian king from
the British Museum

For the past year or so, I've been trying to learn Biblical Hebrew. It's definitely worth the effort to be able to read the Bible in the original. Having mastered reading backwards and the aleph-bet, what is more natural than to want to learn Akkadian too?

Akkadian is the language of ancient Mesopotamia and the earliest-attested language of the Semitic family. Evidence of Akkadian is found in names as early as the 26^th century BCE.  It probably dropped out of spoken use around in the mid first millennium BCE, being replaced by Aramaic. It was still used as a written language until the first century CE. 

Classics students who rejoice in having read all of Sappho, or dodging the lost books of Livy, might be dismayed to learn that there are hundreds of thousands of extant Akkadian texts to be read.  Unlike papyrus,  baked clay is nearly indestructible. On the bright side, if you’re worried about the meaning of a mongoose running under the king’s chariot, you’re in luck.

Important Mongoose Update:  You'll have to go here: http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/corpus and go to page 2 to learn about A Mongoose Under the King's Chariot.  Thank you to the brilliant and talented Jennifer Nicole Roman!