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Various texts from Ur during the Early Dynastic I–II period (c. 2800 BC) show syllabic elements with clear signs of the Sumerian language. [9] c. 2600 BC: Akkadian: A hymn to the sun-god Šamaš found at Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ. [10] Some proper names attested in Sumerian texts at Tell Harmal from about 2800 BC. [11]
Akkadian, a Semitic language, gradually replaced Sumerian as the primary spoken language in the area c. 2000 BC (the exact date is debated), [5] but Sumerian continued to be used as a sacred, ceremonial, literary, and scientific language in Akkadian-speaking Mesopotamian states such as Assyria and Babylonia until the 1st century AD.
This is a list of ancestor languages of modern and ancient languages, detailed for each modern language or its phylogenetic ancestor disappeared. For each language, the list is generally limited to the four or five immediate predecessors.
The pre-and protohistory of southern Mesopotamia is divided into the Ubaid (c. 6500–3800 BC), Uruk (c. 4000 to 3100 BC) and Jemdet Nasr (c. 3100 to 2900 BC) periods. There is scholarly disagreement as to when the Sumerian presence began in the region, although it is generally assumed that the Sumerian language was used in southern Mesopotamia by the late Uruk period.
The Sumerian language is generally regarded as a language isolate in linguistics, because it belongs to no known language family. Akkadian, by contrast, belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic languages. There have been many failed attempts to connect Sumerian to other language families. It is an agglutinative language.
Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system [6] [7] and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian.
Proto-cuneiform tablet recording the allocation of beer. There is a longstanding debate in the academic community regarding when the Sumerian people arrived in Mesopotamia.
Sumerian was the last and most ancient language to be deciphered. Sale of a number of fields, probably from Isin, c. 2600 BC. The first known Sumerian-Akkadian bilingual tablet dates from the reign of Rimush. Louvre Museum AO 5477. The top column is in Sumerian, the bottom column is its translation in Akkadian. [44] [45]