Afro-Asiatic, East Semitic · Cuneiform

Akkadian

𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑 akkadû, “Akkadian, of Akkad”

Spoken: c. 2500–500 BC
Written: until c. AD 80
Where: Mesopotamia, today Iraq and parts of Syria

Akkadian is the language of Hammurabi's laws, the Epic of Gilgamesh in its famous Babylonian version, and the boasts of Assyrian kings carved into palace walls. It is the oldest Semitic language we can read, a distant cousin of Hebrew and Arabic. For centuries it was also the diplomatic lingua franca of the Near East: when a pharaoh wrote to a king in Babylon or a mayor in Canaan, he wrote in Akkadian, in cuneiform, on clay.

Where and when

Akkadian takes its name from Akkad, the capital of Sargon's empire around 2300 BC, a city that has still not been found. Over two millennia it split into two great dialects: Babylonian in the south, around Babylon, and Assyrian in the north, around Assur and Nineveh. Each went through Old, Middle and Neo stages.

Its range was wider than its homeland. Akkadian was written in Elam, in Hittite Anatolia, in Ugarit on the Syrian coast and in Egypt, where the Amarna letters of the fourteenth century BC preserve a pharaoh's foreign correspondence. A literary form, Standard Babylonian, became the language of scholarship, omens, medicine and epic poetry.

The area where Akkadian was spoken, laid in red and gold.

2500 BC500 BC

How it fell silent

Akkadian lost to an alphabet. From the ninth century BC the Assyrian empire absorbed huge numbers of Aramaic speakers, often by deporting conquered peoples. Aramaic had a 22-letter script written in ink on leather or papyrus, far easier than hundreds of cuneiform signs. Assyrian palace reliefs even show pairs of scribes, one with a stylus and tablet, one with a pen. After Nineveh fell in 612 BC and the Persians took Babylon in 539 BC, Aramaic became the everyday language.

By around 500 BC few people still spoke Akkadian at home, though nobody can date the last speaker. Writing went on in temple circles in Babylon and Uruk, who kept astronomy, ritual and omen literature alive. The last datable cuneiform tablet, an astronomical almanac, is usually placed around AD 79–80. After that the script, and the language with it, fell silent for almost eighteen centuries.

How it may have sounded

šumma awīlum awīlam ubbirma

Say it roughly SHOOM-ma a-WEE-loom a-WEE-lam oob-BEER-ma/ʃumma awiːlum awiːlam ubbirma/

“If a man has accused a man…”

The opening of law §1 of Hammurabi's Code; scholars still debate whether Akkadian š really sounded like English sh, and some argue it was closer to a plain s.
𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠

KA₂.DINGIR.RA^ki = Bāb-ili

Say it roughly BAHB-ee-lee/baːb iliː/

“Gate of the god: Babylon”

Written with Sumerian word-signs (gate, god, a genitive marker and a silent 'place' sign) but read aloud in Akkadian; Greek Babylōn and Hebrew Bavel echo the sound, and the 'gate of god' reading may itself be an old folk etymology.

Your name, set in stone

Cuneiform spells your name in syllables: CV and VC signs, with e and i often sharing a sign and o written as u. A consonant with no vowel after it gets an echo vowel or a VC sign, so 'Mark' becomes something like ma-ar-ku.

A playful transcription, not a scholarly one: the people who used this script never heard your name, and would have spelled it in more than one way.

Three things

The Amarna letters show Egyptian pharaohs and Canaanite vassals corresponding in Akkadian, a foreign language for all of them.
The Jewish calendar's month names, such as Nisan, Tammuz and Tishri, were borrowed from Babylonian.
Akkadian cuneiform was first deciphered in the 1850s, partly through a test where four scholars translated one text independently.