On Learning Akkadian
 |
| Assyrian king from the British Museum |
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 26th 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!
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!
I really enjoyed your post (Note to self: When you want to REALLY save something, skip backing it up and put in clay instead). The only thing was I couldn't get the mongoose link to work (first link leads me to a second one that I couldn't open. Could just be my IPad's bewitched again.). Until I read your post I was never bothered by mongoose activity, but now I need to know. =)
ReplyDeleteThank you for the comment, how exciting! I do need to fix the mongoose. The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus is a wonderful website, but clearly created by Guys Who Like Clay. If you go here:
ReplyDeletehttp://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/saa10/corpus
and either click to page 2 and go down about 7 entries, you'll find the mongoose. Or in the Search, you can change the dropdown from "transliterations" to "translations" and search on mongoose. Welcome to Time Kill Central.
If you don't see it, please let me know & I'll make screen shots.
My pleasure! Your instructions worked just fine (I will be avoiding mongoose for the forseeable future). And, I'll be honest, I'm not only a resident of Kill Time Central, I'm the current mayor. I'm looking forward to your next post! =)
DeleteThank you for the compliment (I blushed!)
ReplyDelete