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109-513: Edin ([ 𒀀𒇉𒂔 ] Error: {{Langx}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 56) ( help ) , "steppe" or "plain"; Akkadian : 𒉌𒋾𒈝 i 3 -ti-num 2 ) is a toponym featured on the Gudea cylinders as a watercourse from which plaster is taken to build a temple for Ningirsu : Clay plaster, harmoniously blended clay taken from the Edin canal, has been chosen by Lord Ningirsu with his holy heart, and

218-672: A lingua franca of the empire, rather than it being eclipsed by Akkadian. Texts written 'exclusively' in Neo-Assyrian disappear within 10 years of Nineveh 's destruction in 612 BC. Under the Achaemenids , Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek , even though Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times. Similarly,

327-635: A voiced alveolar trill /r/ but its pattern of alternation with ⟨ ḫ ⟩ suggests it was a fricative (either uvular /ʁ/ or velar /ɣ/ ). In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian ⟨ r ⟩ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar sound (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ). Several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop *ʔ , as well as

436-458: A "holy city" where any legitimate ruler of southern Mesopotamia had to be crowned, and the city was also revered by Assyria for these religious reasons. Hammurabi turned what had previously been a minor administrative town into a large, powerful and influential city, extended its rule over the entirety of southern Mesopotamia, and erected a number of buildings. The Amorite-ruled Babylonians, like their predecessor states, engaged in regular trade with

545-818: A bas-relief temple in Uruk and Kurigalzu I (1415–1390 BC) built a new capital Dur-Kurigalzu named after himself, transferring administrative rule from Babylon. Both of these kings continued to struggle unsuccessfully against the Sealand Dynasty. Karaindash also strengthened diplomatic ties with the Assyrian king Ashur-bel-nisheshu and the Egyptian Pharaoh Thutmose III and protected Babylonian borders with Elam. Kadašman-Ḫarbe I succeeded Karaindash, and briefly invaded Elam before being eventually defeated and ejected by its king Tepti Ahar. He then had to contend with

654-516: A comparison with other Semitic languages, and the resulting picture was gradually amended using internal linguistic evidence from Akkadian sources, especially deriving from so-called plene spellings (spellings with an extra vowel). According to this widely accepted system, the place of stress in Akkadian is completely predictable and sensitive to syllable weight . There are three syllable weights: light (ending in -V); heavy (ending in -V̄ or -VC), and superheavy (ending in -V̂, -V̄C or -V̂C). If

763-643: A family native to Middle East , Arabian Peninsula , parts of Anatolia , parts of the Horn of Africa , North Africa , Malta , Canary Islands and parts of West Africa ( Hausa ). Akkadian is only ever attested in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions in the Near East. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite and perhaps Dilmunite ). This group differs from

872-461: A locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as adverbials . These forms are generally not productive, but in the Neo-Babylonian the um -locative replaces several constructions with the preposition ina . In the later stages of Akkadian, the mimation (word-final -m ) and nunation (dual final -n ) that occurred at the end of most case endings disappeared, except in

981-529: A long history before the emergence of Babylon, with Sumerian civilization emerging in the region c.  5400 BC , and the Akkadian-speakers who would go on to form Akkad, Assyria and Babylonia appearing somewhere between the 35th and 30th century BC. During the 3rd millennium BC, an intimate cultural symbiosis occurred between Sumerian and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism . The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian and vice versa

1090-512: A matter of debate). From c.  5400 BC until the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 24th century BC, Mesopotamia had been dominated by largely Sumerian cities and city states, such as Ur , Lagash , Uruk , Kish , Isin , Larsa , Adab , Eridu , Gasur , Assur , Hamazi , Akshak , Arbela and Umma , although Semitic Akkadian names began to appear on the king lists of some of these states (such as Eshnunna and Assyria ) between

1199-420: A much reduced Babylon, Samshu-iluna's successor Abi-Eshuh made a vain attempt to recapture the Sealand Dynasty for Babylon, but met defeat at the hands of king Damqi-ilishu II . By the end of his reign Babylonia had shrunk to the small and relatively weak nation it had been upon its foundation, although the city itself was far larger and opulent than the small town it had been prior to the rise of Hammurabi. He

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1308-869: A protracted war with the Old Assyrian Empire for control of Mesopotamia and dominance of the Near East. Assyria had extended control over much of the Hurrian and Hattian parts of southeast Anatolia from the 21st century BC, and from the latter part of the 20th century BC had asserted itself over the northeast Levant and central Mesopotamia. After a protracted struggle over decades with the powerful Assyrian kings Shamshi-Adad I and Ishme-Dagan I , Hammurabi forced their successor Mut-Ashkur to pay tribute to Babylon c.  1751 BC , giving Babylonia control over Assyria's centuries-old Hattian and Hurrian colonies in Anatolia. One of Hammurabi's most important and lasting works

1417-403: A separate East Semitic language. Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words. The following table presents

1526-628: A series of small kingdoms, while the Assyrians reasserted their independence in the north. The states of the south were unable to stem the Amorite advance, and for a time may have relied on their fellow Akkadians in Assyria for protection. King Ilu-shuma ( c.  2008 –1975 BC) of the Old Assyrian period (2025–1750 BC) in a known inscription describes his exploits to the south as follows: The freedom of

1635-980: A short period of civil war in the Assyrian empire, in the years after the death of Tukulti-Ninurta. Meli-Shipak II (1188–1172 BC) seems to have had a peaceful reign. Despite not being able to regain northern Babylonia from Assyria, no further territory was lost, Elam did not threaten, and the Late Bronze Age collapse now affecting the Levant, Canaan , Egypt , the Caucasus , Anatolia, Mediterranean , North Africa , northern Iran and Balkans seemed (initially) to have little impact on Babylonia (or indeed Assyria and Elam). War resumed under subsequent kings such as Marduk-apla-iddina I (1171–1159 BC) and Zababa-shuma-iddin (1158 BC). The long reigning Assyrian king Ashur-dan I (1179–1133 BC) resumed expansionist policies and conquered further parts of northern Babylonia from both kings, and

1744-415: A small nation which controlled very little territory, and was overshadowed by neighbouring kingdoms that were both older, larger, and more powerful, such as; Isin, Larsa, Assyria to the north and Elam to the east in ancient Iran. The Elamites occupied huge swathes of southern Mesopotamia, and the early Amorite rulers were largely held in vassalage to Elam. Babylon remained a minor town in a small state until

1853-517: A specific Hittite king either, Trevor Bryce concludes that there is no doubt that both sources refer to Mursili I and Samsu-ditana . The Hittites, when sacking Babylon, removed the images of the gods Marduk and his consort Zarpanitu from the Esagil temple and they took them to their kingdom. The later inscription of Agum-kakrime , the Kassite king, claims he returned the images; and another later text,

1962-491: A written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BC. Old Akkadian, which was used until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, differed from both Babylonian and Assyrian, and was displaced by these dialects. By

2071-609: Is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um ). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian. Most roots of the Akkadian language consist of three consonants, called the radicals, but some roots are composed of four consonants, so-called quadriradicals. The radicals are occasionally represented in transcription in upper-case letters, for example PRS (to decide). Between and around these radicals various infixes , suffixes and prefixes , having word generating or grammatical functions, are inserted. The resulting consonant-vowel pattern differentiates

2180-570: Is a fusional language with grammatical case . Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots . The Kültepe texts , which were written in Old Assyrian , include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language . Akkadian belongs with the other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages ,

2289-442: Is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period : One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Akkadian Empire , established by Sargon of Akkad , introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad ") as

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2398-406: Is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a massive scale, to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the third millennium as a sprachbund . Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as the spoken language of Mesopotamia somewhere around the turn of the third and the second millennium BC (the precise timeframe being

2507-458: Is marked by the Kassite invasion of Babylonia around 1550 BC. The Kassites, who reigned for 300 years, gave up their own language in favor of Akkadian, but they had little influence on the language. At its apogee, Middle Babylonian was the written language of diplomacy of the entire Ancient Near East , including Egypt ( Amarna Period ). During this period, a large number of loan words were included in

2616-578: Is not clear precisely when Kassite rule of Babylon began, but the Indo-European Hittites from Anatolia did not remain in Babylonia for long after the sacking of the city, and it is likely the Kassites moved in soon afterwards. Agum II took the throne for the Kassites in 1595 BC, and ruled a state that extended from Iran to the middle Euphrates; The new king retained peaceful relations with Erishum III ,

2725-528: Is now in the Louvre . From before 3000 BC until the reign of Hammurabi, the major cultural and religious center of southern Mesopotamia had been the ancient city of Nippur, where the god Enlil was supreme. Hammurabi transferred this dominance to Babylon, making Marduk supreme in the pantheon of southern Mesopotamia (with the god Ashur , and to some degree Ishtar , remaining the long-dominant deity in northern Mesopotamian Assyria). The city of Babylon became known as

2834-502: Is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.  2500 BC . It was written using cuneiform , a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms ( i.e. , picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements . In Akkadian

2943-496: Is then [awat+su] > /awatt͡su/ . In this vein, an alternative transcription of ⟨ š ⟩ is ⟨ s̱ ⟩, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. /ʃ/ could have been assimilated to the preceding /t/ , yielding /ts/ , which would later have been simplified to /ss/ . The rhotic ⟨ r ⟩ has traditionally been interpreted as

3052-495: The Abrahamic term Eden traces back to this term. A few scholars of Judaism posit the word may originate from Aramaic. Akkadian language Akkadian ( / ə ˈ k eɪ d i ən / ə- KAY -dee-ən ; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝) , romanized:  Akkadû(m) ) is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad , Assyria , Isin , Larsa , Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun ) from

3161-621: The Dynasty IV of Babylon, from Isin , with the first native Akkadian-speaking south Mesopotamian dynasty to rule Babylonia, with Marduk-kabit-ahheshu becoming only the second native Mesopotamian to sit on the throne of Babylon, after the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I . His dynasty was to remain in power for some 125 years. The new king successfully drove out the Elamites and prevented any possible Kassite revival. Later in his reign he went to war with Assyria, and had some initial success, briefly capturing

3270-600: The Egyptian chronology . Possible dates for the sack of Babylon are: Mursili I , the Hittite king, first conquered Aleppo , capital of Yamhad kingdom to avenge the death of his father, but his main geopolitical target was Babylon. The Mesopotamian Chronicle 40 , written after 1500 BC, mentions briefly the sack of Babylon as: "During the time of Samsu-Ditana , the Hittites marched on Akkad." More details can be found in another source,

3379-557: The Marduk Prophesy , written long after the events, mentions that the image of Marduk was in exile around twenty-four years. After the conquest, Mursili I did not attempt to convert the whole region he had occupied from Aleppo to Babylon as a part of his kingdom; he instead made an alliance with the Kassites , and then a Kassite dynasty was established in Babylonia. The Kassite dynasty was founded by Gandash of Mari. The Kassites, like

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3488-534: The Northwest Semitic languages and South Semitic languages in its subject–object–verb word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana ( locative case , English in / on / with , and dative -locative case, for / to , respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic , Hebrew and Aramaic have

3597-458: The Old Babylonian period . The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Modern Standard Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew : The existence of a back mid-vowel /o/ has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect

3706-641: The Persian conquest of the Mesopotamian kingdoms contributed to the decline of Babylonian, from that point on known as Late Babylonian, as a popular language. However, the language was still used in its written form. Even after the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Akkadian was still a contender as a written language, but spoken Akkadian was likely extinct by this time, or at least rarely used. The last positively identified Akkadian text comes from

3815-558: The Sumerian language for religious use (as did Assyria which also shared the same Mesopotamian religion as Babylonia), but already by the time Babylon was founded, this was no longer a spoken language, having been wholly subsumed by Akkadian. The earlier Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in the descendant Babylonian and Assyrian culture, and the region would remain an important cultural center, even under its protracted periods of outside rule. Mesopotamia had already enjoyed

3924-461: The Suteans , ancient Semitic-speaking peoples from the southeastern Levant who invaded Babylonia and sacked Uruk. He describes having "annihilated their extensive forces", then constructed fortresses in a mountain region called Ḫiḫi , in the desert to the west (modern Syria ) as security outposts, and "he dug wells and settled people on fertile lands, to strengthen the guard". Kurigalzu I succeeded

4033-521: The Telepinu Proclamation , a Hittite text from around 1520 BC, which states: "And then he [Mursili I] marched to Aleppo, and he destroyed Aleppo and brought captives and possessions of Aleppo to Ḫattuša. Then, however, he marched to Babylon, and he destroyed Babylon, and he defeated the Hurrian troops, and he brought captives and possessions of Babylon to Ḫattuša ." The movement of Mursili's troops

4142-595: The consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard ( DMG-Umschrift ) transliteration in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . Evidence from borrowings from and to Sumerian has been interpreted as indicating that the Akkadian voiceless non-emphatic stops were originally unaspirated, but became aspirated around 2000 BCE. Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives , which are thought to be

4251-400: The status absolutus (the absolute state ) and the status constructus ( construct state ). The latter is found in all other Semitic languages, while the former appears only in Akkadian and some dialects of Aramaic. The status absolutus is characterised by the loss of a noun's case ending (e.g. awīl < awīlum , šar < šarrum ). It is relatively uncommon, and is used chiefly to mark

4360-528: The third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language , is named after the city of Akkad , a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during the Akkadian Empire ( c.  2334 –2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian , but also used to write multiple languages in

4469-522: The 10th century BC when the Assyrian kingdom became a major power with the Neo-Assyrian Empire . During the existence of that empire, however, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic . The dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram-Damascus in the middle of the 8th century led to the establishment of Aramaic as

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4578-607: The 1st century AD. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical almanac dated to 79/80 AD. However, the latest cuneiform texts are almost entirely written in Sumerian logograms. The Akkadian language began to be rediscovered when Carsten Niebuhr in 1767 was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts and published them in Denmark. The deciphering of the texts started immediately, and bilinguals, in particular Old Persian -Akkadian bilinguals, were of great help. Since

4687-637: The 20th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age . In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering a vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples. Centuries after

4796-456: The 21st century BC Babylonian and Assyrian, which were to become the primary dialects, were easily distinguishable. Old Babylonian, along with the closely related dialect Mariotic , is clearly more innovative than the Old Assyrian dialect and the more distantly related Eblaite language . For this reason, forms like lu-prus ('I will decide') were first encountered in Old Babylonian instead of

4905-533: The 29th and 25th centuries BC. Traditionally, the major religious center of all Mesopotamia was the city of Nippur where the god Enlil was supreme, and it would remain so until replaced by Babylon during the reign of Hammurabi in the mid-18th century BC. The Akkadian Empire (2334–2154 BC) saw the Akkadian Semites and Sumerians of Mesopotamia unite under one rule, and the Akkadians fully attain ascendancy over

5014-489: The Akkadians and their children I established. I purified their copper. I established their freedom from the border of the marshes and Ur and Nippur, Awal , and Kish, Der of the goddess Ishtar , as far as the City of ( Ashur ). Past scholars originally extrapolated from this text that it means he defeated the invading Amorites to the south and Elamites to the east, but there is no explicit record of that, and some scholars believe

5123-613: The Amorite and Canaanite city-states to the west, with Babylonian officials or troops sometimes passing to the Levant and Canaan, and Amorite merchants operating freely throughout Mesopotamia. The Babylonian monarchy's western connections remained strong for quite some time. Ammi-Ditana , great-grandson of Hammurabi, still titled himself "king of the land of the Amorites". Ammi-Ditana's father and son also bore Amorite names: Abi-Eshuh and Ammi-Saduqa . Southern Mesopotamia had no natural, defensible boundaries, making it vulnerable to attack. After

5232-542: The Amorite rulers who had preceded them, were not originally native to Mesopotamia. Rather, they had first appeared in the Zagros Mountains of what is today northwestern Iran. The ethnic affiliation of the Kassites is unclear. Still, their language was not Semitic or Indo-European , and is thought to have been either a language isolate or possibly related to the Hurro-Urartian language family of Anatolia, although

5341-412: The Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta I (1243–1207 BC) routed his armies, sacked and burned Babylon and set himself up as king, ironically becoming the first native Mesopotamian to rule the Mesopotamian populated state, its previous rulers having all been non-Mesopotamian Amorites and Kassites. Kashtiliash himself was taken to Ashur as a prisoner of war. An Assyrian governor/king named Enlil-nadin-shumi

5450-542: The Assyrian king) in 1333 BC, a usurper named Nazi-Bugaš deposed him, enraging Ashur-uballit I , who invaded and sacked Babylon, slew Nazi-Bugaš, annexed Babylonian territory for the Middle Assyrian Empire, and installed Kurigalzu II (1345–1324 BC) as his vassal ruler of Babylonia. Soon after Arik-den-ili succeeded the throne of Assyria in 1327 BC, Kurigalzu II attacked Assyria in an attempt to reassert Babylonian power. After some impressive initial successes he

5559-477: The Assyrian kings were merely giving preferential trade agreements to the south. These policies, whether military, economic or both, were continued by his successors Erishum I and Ikunum . However, when Sargon I (1920–1881 BC) succeeded as king in Assyria in 1920 BC, he eventually withdrew Assyria from the region, preferring to concentrate on continuing the vigorous expansion of Assyrian colonies in Anatolia at

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5668-483: The Elamite capital, the city of Susa, which was sacked. After this a puppet ruler was placed on the Elamite throne, subject to Babylonia. Kurigalzu I maintained friendly relations with Assyria, Egypt and the Hittites throughout his reign. Kadashman-Enlil I (1374–1360 BC) succeeded him, and continued his diplomatic policies. Burna-Buriash II ascended to the throne in 1359 BC, he retained friendly relations with Egypt, but

5777-438: The Elamite ruler Shutruk-Nakhunte eventually conquered most of eastern Babylonia. Enlil-nadin-ahhe (1157–1155 BC) was finally overthrown and the Kassite dynasty ended after Ashur-dan I conquered yet more of northern and central Babylonia, and the equally powerful Shutruk-Nahhunte pushed deep into the heart of Babylonia itself, sacking the city and slaying the king. Poetical works have been found lamenting this disaster. Despite

5886-408: The Elamites from southern Mesopotamia entirely, invading Elam itself. He then systematically conquered southern Mesopotamia, including the cities of Isin, Larsa, Eshnunna, Kish, Lagash , Nippur, Borsippa , Ur, Uruk, Umma, Adab, Sippar , Rapiqum , and Eridu. His conquests gave the region stability after turbulent times, and coalesced the patchwork of small states into a single nation; it is only from

5995-458: The Hittites under king Mursili I is considered crucial to the various calculations of the early chronology of the ancient Near East , as it is taken as a fixed point in the discussion. Suggestions for its precise date vary by as much as 230 years, corresponding to the uncertainty regarding the length of the "Dark Age" of the much later Late Bronze Age collapse , resulting in the shift of the entire Bronze Age chronology of Mesopotamia with regard to

6104-481: The Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period , the language was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD. Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and

6213-658: The Sumerians and indeed come to dominate much of the ancient Near East . The empire eventually disintegrated due to economic decline, climate change, and civil war, followed by attacks by the language isolate speaking Gutians from the Zagros Mountains to the northeast. Sumer rose up again with the Third Dynasty of Ur ( Neo-Sumerian Empire ) in the late 22nd century BC, and ejected the Gutians from southern Mesopotamia in 2161 BC as suggested by surviving tablets and astronomy simulations. They also seem to have gained ascendancy over much of

6322-404: The archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use both of cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence. Old Babylonian was the language of king Hammurabi and his code , which is one of the oldest collections of laws in the world. (see Code of Ur-Nammu .) Old Assyrian developed as well during the second millennium BC, but because it

6431-540: The death of Hammurabi, his empire began to disintegrate rapidly. Under his successor Samsu-iluna (1749–1712 BC) the far south of Mesopotamia was lost to a native Akkadian-speaking king Ilum-ma-ili who ejected the Amorite-ruled Babylonians. The south became the native Sealand Dynasty , remaining free of Babylon for the next 272 years. Both the Babylonians and their Amorite rulers were driven from Assyria to

6540-479: The dialects of Akkadian identified with certainty so far. Some researchers (such as W. Sommerfeld 2003) believe that the Old Akkadian variant used in the older texts is not an ancestor of the later Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, but rather a separate dialect that was replaced by these two dialects and which died out early. Eblaite , formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered

6649-452: The dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians ( Suret ) are three extant Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq , southeast Turkey , northeast Syria , northwest Iran , the southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora . Akkadian

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6758-401: The earlier stages of the language, the dual number is vestigial, and its use is largely confined to natural pairs (eyes, ears, etc.). Adjectives are never found in the dual. In the dual and plural, the accusative and genitive are merged into a single oblique case . Akkadian, unlike Arabic , has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing

6867-520: The evidence for its genetic affiliation is meager due to the scarcity of extant texts. That said, several Kassite leaders may have borne Indo-European names , and they may have had an Indo-European elite similar to the Mitanni elite that later ruled over the Hurrians of central and eastern Anatolia, while others had Semitic names. The Kassites renamed Babylon Karduniaš and their rule lasted for 576 years,

6976-525: The expense of the Hurrians and Hattians and the Amorite inhabited Levant , and eventually southern Mesopotamia fell to the Amorites. During the first centuries of what is called the "Amorite period", the most powerful city-states in the south were Isin , Eshnunna and Larsa , together with Assyria in the north. Around 1894 BC, an Amorite chieftain named Sumu-abum appropriated a tract of land which included

7085-513: The fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian, in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties, was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires ( Old Assyrian Empire , Babylonia , Middle Assyrian Empire ) throughout the later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c.  1150 BC . However, its gradual decline began in

7194-420: The first one bears stress. A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is PaRiS- . Thus the masculine singular nominative is PaRS-um (< *PaRiS-um ) but the feminine singular nominative

7303-528: The fricatives *ʕ , *h , *ḥ are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The voiceless lateral fricatives ( *ś , *ṣ́ ) merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite , leaving 19 consonantal phonemes. Old Akkadian preserved the /*ś/ phoneme longest but it eventually merged with /*š/ , beginning in

7412-700: The language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian . However, the use of these words was confined to the fringes of the Akkadian-speaking territory. From 1500 BC onwards, the Assyrian language is termed Middle Assyrian. It was the language of the Middle Assyrian Empire . However, the Babylonian cultural influence was strong and the Assyrians wrote royal inscriptions, religious and most scholarly texts in Middle Babylonian, whereas Middle Assyrian

7521-476: The languages as a Sprachbund . Akkadian proper names are first attested in Sumerian texts in the mid-3rd millennium BC, and inscriptions ostensibly written in Sumerian but whose character order reveals that they were intended to be read in East Semitic (presumably early Akkadian) date back to as early as c.  2600 BC . From about the 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By

7630-454: The last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed. It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as clitics . The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which

7739-404: The latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic , and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided'). There is broad agreement among most Assyriologists about Akkadian stress patterns. The rules of Akkadian stress were originally reconstructed by means of

7848-434: The locative. Later, the nominative and accusative singular of masculine nouns collapsed to -u and in Neo-Babylonian most word-final short vowels were dropped. As a result, case differentiation disappeared from all forms except masculine plural nouns. However, many texts continued the practice of writing the case endings, although often sporadically and incorrectly. As the most important contact language throughout this period

7957-482: The longest dynasty in Babylonian history. This new foreign dominion offers a striking analogy to the roughly contemporary rule of the Semitic Hyksos in ancient Egypt . Most divine attributes ascribed to the Amorite kings of Babylonia disappeared at this time; the title "god" was never given to a Kassite sovereign. Babylon continued to be the capital of the kingdom and one of the holy cities of western Asia, where

8066-586: The loss of territory, general military weakness, and evident reduction in literacy and culture, the Kassite dynasty was the longest-lived dynasty of Babylon, lasting until 1155 BC, when Babylon was conquered by Shutruk-Nakhunte of Elam, and reconquered a few years later by the Nebuchadnezzar I , part of the larger Late Bronze Age collapse. The Elamites did not remain in control of Babylonia long, instead entering into an ultimately unsuccessful war with Assyria, allowing Marduk-kabit-ahheshu (1155–1139 BC) to establish

8175-467: The mountains of what is today northwest Iran. Babylon was then attacked by the Indo-European-speaking , Anatolia-based Hittites in 1595 BC. Shamshu-Ditana was overthrown following the "sack of Babylon" by the Hittite king Mursili I . The Hittites did not remain for long, but the destruction wrought by them finally enabled their Kassite allies to gain control. The date of the sack of Babylon by

8284-586: The native Mesopotamian king of Assyria, but successfully went to war with the Hittite Empire , and twenty-four years after, the Hittites took the sacred statue of Marduk , he recovered it and declared the god equal to the Kassite deity Shuqamuna . Burnaburiash I succeeded him and drew up a peace treaty with the Assyrian king Puzur-Ashur III , and had a largely uneventful reign, as did his successor Kashtiliash III . The Sealand Dynasty of southern Mesopotamia remained independent of Babylonia and like Assyria

8393-428: The north by an Assyrian-Akkadian governor named Puzur-Sin c.  1740 BC , who regarded king Mut-Ashkur as both a foreign Amorite and a former lackey of Babylon. After six years of civil war in Assyria, a native king named Adasi seized power c.  1735 BC , and went on to appropriate former Babylonian and Amorite territory in central Mesopotamia, as did his successor Bel-bani . Amorite rule survived in

8502-476: The older la-prus . While generally more archaic, Assyrian developed certain innovations as well, such as the "Assyrian vowel harmony ". Eblaite was even more so, retaining a productive dual and a relative pronoun declined in case, number and gender. Both of these had already disappeared in Old Akkadian. Over 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Old Assyrian have been recovered from the Kültepe site in Anatolia . Most of

8611-516: The oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers's law , where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally ⟨ š ⟩ has been held to be postalveolar /ʃ/ , and ⟨ s ⟩, ⟨ z ⟩, ⟨ ṣ ⟩ analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when

8720-464: The original meaning of the root. The middle radical can be geminated, which is represented by a doubled consonant in transcription, and sometimes in the cuneiform writing itself. The consonants ʔ , w , j and n are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms. Formally, Akkadian has three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three cases ( nominative , accusative and genitive ). However, even in

8829-462: The possessive suffix -šu is added to the root awat ('word'), it is written awassu ('his word') even though šš would be expected. The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss , is that ⟨ s, ṣ ⟩ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates /t͡s/ /t͡sʼ/ , ⟨ š ⟩ is a voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ , and ⟨ z ⟩ is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative /d͡z/~/z/ . The assimilation

8938-458: The predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like. Babylonia Like Assyria , the Babylonian state retained the written Akkadian language (the language of its native populace) for official use, despite its Northwest Semitic -speaking Amorite founders and Kassite successors, who spoke a language isolate , not being native Mesopotamians. It retained

9047-461: The prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown. In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative : ḫ [x] . Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated . Old Akkadian

9156-407: The priests of the ancient Mesopotamian religion were all-powerful, and the only place where the right to inheritance of the short lived old Babylonian empire could be conferred. Babylonia experienced short periods of relative power, but in general proved to be relatively weak under the long rule of the Kassites, and spent long periods under Assyrian and Elamite domination and interference. It

9265-413: The region including Eblaite , Hurrian , Elamite , Old Persian and Hittite . The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just the cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity, a lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by the former, Sumerian significantly impacted Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe

9374-456: The reign of its sixth Amorite ruler, Hammurabi , during 1792–1750 BC (or c.  1728 –1686 BC in the short chronology ). He conducted major building work in Babylon, expanding it from a small town into a great city worthy of kingship. A very efficient ruler, he established a bureaucracy, with taxation and centralized government. Hammurabi freed Babylon from Elamite dominance, and indeed drove

9483-408: The resurgent Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC) to the north was now encroaching into northern Babylonia, and as a symbol of peace, the Babylonian king took the daughter of the powerful Assyrian king Ashur-uballit I in marriage. He also maintained friendly relations with Suppiluliuma I , ruler of the Hittite Empire . He was succeeded by Kara-ḫardaš (who was half Assyrian, and the grandson of

9592-483: The same syllable in the same text. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop , pharyngeals , and emphatic consonants . In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels). Akkadian

9701-404: The script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script , and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary , though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum ('god') and on the other signify the god Anu or even the syllable -an- . Additionally, this sign

9810-407: The superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian. All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û),

9919-522: The territory of the Akkadian speaking kings of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia for a time. Followed by the collapse of the Sumerian "Ur-III" dynasty at the hands of the Elamites in 2002 BC, the Amorites ("Westerners"), a foreign Northwest Semitic-speaking people, began to migrate into southern Mesopotamia from the northern Levant , gradually gaining control over most of southern Mesopotamia, where they formed

10028-591: The texts contained several royal names, isolated signs could be identified, and were presented in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . By this time it was already evident that Akkadian was a Semitic language, and the final breakthrough in deciphering the language came from Edward Hincks , Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert in the middle of the 19th century. In the early 21st century it was shown that automatic high-quality translation of Akkadian can be achieved using natural language processing methods such as convolutional neural networks . The following table summarises

10137-452: The then relatively small city of Babylon from the neighbouring minor city-state of Kazallu , of which it had initially been a territory, turning his newly acquired lands into a state in its own right. His reign was concerned with establishing statehood amongst a sea of other minor city-states and kingdoms in the region. However, Sumu-abum appears never to have bothered to give himself the title of King of Babylon , suggesting that Babylon itself

10246-428: The throne, and soon came into conflict with Elam, to the east. When Ḫur-batila , the successor of Tepti Ahar took the throne of Elam, he began raiding the Babylonia, taunting Kurigalzu to do battle with him at Dūr-Šulgi . Kurigalzu launched a campaign which resulted in the abject defeat and capture of Ḫur-batila, who appears in no other inscriptions. He went on to conquer the eastern lands of Elam. This took his army to

10355-439: The time of Hammurabi that southern Mesopotamia acquired the name Babylonia . Hammurabi turned his disciplined armies eastwards and invaded the region which a thousand years later became Iran , conquering Elam , Gutium , Lullubi , Turukku and Kassites . To the west, he conquered the Amorite states of the Levant (modern Syria and Jordan ) including the powerful kingdoms of Mari and Yamhad . Hammurabi then entered into

10464-434: The word stem. As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending ( -āt ). The nouns šarrum (king) and šarratum (queen) and the adjective dannum (strong) will serve to illustrate the case system of Akkadian. As is clear from the above table, the adjective and noun endings differ only in the masculine plural. Certain nouns, primarily those referring to geography, can also form

10573-476: Was Aramaic , which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as phonological phenomenon. As is also the case in other Semitic languages, Akkadian nouns may appear in a variety of "states" depending on their grammatical function in a sentence. The basic form of the noun is the status rectus (the governed state), which is the form as described above, complete with case endings. In addition to this, Akkadian has

10682-403: Was a purely popular language — kings wrote in Babylonian — few long texts are preserved. It was, however, notably used in the correspondence of Assyrian traders in Anatolia in the 20th-18th centuries BC and that even led to its temporary adoption as a diplomatic language by various local Anatolian polities during that time. The Middle Babylonian period started in the 16th century BC. The division

10791-515: Was around 800 km from the conquered Aleppo to reach the Euphrates, located to the east, skirting around Assyria, and then to the south along the course of the river to reach finally Babylon. His conquest of Babylon brought to an end the dynasty of Hammurabi, and although the Hittite text, Telipinu Proclamation, does not mention Samsu-ditana, and the Babylonian Chronicle 20 does not mention

10900-442: Was followed by Ammi-Ditana and then Ammi-Saduqa , both of whom were in too weak a position to make any attempt to regain the many territories lost after the death of Hammurabi, contenting themselves with peaceful building projects in Babylon itself. Samsu-Ditana was to be the last Amorite ruler of Babylon. Early in his reign he came under pressure from the Kassites , a people speaking an apparent language isolate originating in

11009-466: Was in native Akkadian-speaking hands. Ulamburiash managed to attack it and conquered parts of the land from Ea-gamil , a king with a distinctly Sumerian name, around 1450 BC, whereupon Ea-Gamil fled to his allies in Elam. The Sealand Dynasty region still remained independent, and the Kassite king seems to have been unable to finally conquer it. Ulamburiash began making treaties with ancient Egypt , which then

11118-419: Was painted by Gudea with the splendors of heaven, as if kohl were being poured all over it. Thorkild Jacobsen suggested this "Idedin" canal was an as yet unidentified "Desert Canal", which "probably refers to an abandoned canal bed that had filled with the characteristic purplish dune sand still seen in southern Iraq ". Friedrich Delitzsch and numerous other scholars of linguistics and Assyriology believe

11227-538: Was placed on the throne to rule as viceroy to Tukulti-Ninurta I, and Kadashman-Harbe II and Adad-shuma-iddina succeeded as Assyrian governor/kings,also subject to Tukulti-Ninurta I until 1216 BC. Babylon did not begin to recover until late in the reign of Adad-shuma-usur (1216–1189 BC), as he too remained a vassal of Assyria until 1193 BC. However, he was able to prevent the Assyrian king Enlil-kudurri-usur from retaking Babylonia, which, apart from its northern reaches, had mostly shrugged off Assyrian domination during

11336-518: Was ruling southern Canaan , and Assyria to the north. Agum III also campaigned against the Sealand Dynasty, finally wholly conquering the far south of Mesopotamia for Babylon, destroying its capital Dur-Enlil in the process. From there Agum III extended farther south still, invading what was many centuries later to be called the Arabian Peninsula or Arabia , and conquering the pre-Arab state of Dilmun (in modern Bahrain ). Karaindash built

11445-463: Was still only a minor town or city, and not worthy of kingship. He was followed by Sumu-la-El , Sabium , and Apil-Sin , each of whom ruled in the same vague manner as Sumu-abum, with no reference to kingship of Babylon itself being made in any written records of the time. Sin-Muballit was the first of these Amorite rulers to be regarded officially as a king of Babylon , and then on only one single clay tablet. Under these kings, Babylonia remained

11554-517: Was the compilation of the Babylonian law code , which improved the much earlier codes of Sumer , Akkad and Assyria. This was made by order of Hammurabi after the expulsion of the Elamites and the settlement of his kingdom. In 1901, a copy of the Code of Hammurabi was discovered on a stele by Jacques de Morgan and Jean-Vincent Scheil at Susa in Elam, where it had later been taken as plunder. That copy

11663-518: Was ultimately defeated, and lost yet more territory to Assyria. Between 1307 BC and 1232 BC his successors, such as Nazi-Maruttash , Kadashman-Turgu , Kadashman-Enlil II , Kudur-Enlil and Shagarakti-Shuriash , allied with the empires of the Hittites and the Mitanni (who were both also losing swathes of territory to the resurgent Assyrians), in a failed attempt to stop Assyrian expansion. This expansion, nevertheless, continued unchecked. Kashtiliash IV 's (1242–1235 BC) reign ended catastrophically as

11772-441: Was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable -ša- , for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA , but also by the sign NĪĜ . Both of these are often used for

11881-504: Was used mostly in letters and administrative documents. During the first millennium BC, Akkadian progressively lost its status as a lingua franca . In the beginning, from around 1000 BC, Akkadian and Aramaic were of equal status, as can be seen in the number of copied texts: clay tablets were written in Akkadian, while scribes writing on papyrus and leather used Aramaic. From this period on, one speaks of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian . Neo-Assyrian received an upswing in popularity in

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