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Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218–280Huehnergard 2011: xxiiiGeorge (2007: 31) is an extinct language East Semitic language that is attested in ancient Mesopotamia (Akkad, Assyria, Isin, Larsa, Babylonia) from the mid-third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Mesopotamians by 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 (–2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script, originally used for Sumerian, but also used to write multiple languages in the region including Eblaite language, Hurrian language, Elamite language, Old Persian and Hittite language. 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 influenced Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe 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 .George (2007: 37) From about the 24th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the 20th century BC, two variant 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 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 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 . However, its decline began in the Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire, by about the 8th century BC (Tiglath-Pileser III), in favour of Old Aramaic. 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. Neo-Mandaic and Suret are two (Northwest Semitic) Neo-Aramaic languages that retain some Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasitische Archäologie 86 (1997): 43–95.
Akkadian is a fusional language with grammatical case. Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of Semitic root. The Kültepe texts, which were written in Old Assyrian, include Hittite language loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language.E. Bilgic and S. Bayram. Ankara Kultepe Tabletleri II. Turk Tarih Kurumu Basimevi, 1995. Calvert Watkins. "Hittite". In: The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor. Edited by Roger D. Woodard. Cambridge University Press. 2008. p. 6.
In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative: ḫ . Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian were exclusively affricated.
Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana (locative case, English in/ on/ with, and dative case-locative case, for/ to, respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic, Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic language have the prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown.
The Semitic languages are further grouped by most linguists into the Afroasiatic macrofamily of languages, meaning that Akkadian is distantly related to Ancient Egyptian, as well as many other languages spoken historically and currently across northern and western Africa and West Asia.
Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable , for example, is rendered by the sign , but also by the sign . Both of these are often used for 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 Triliteral (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels).
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 (–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 Akkadian Empire") as 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 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 the older la-prus.K. R. Veenhof, Ankara Kultepe Tabletleri V, Turk Tarih Kurumu, 2010,
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 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 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 is marked by the Kassites 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 the language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian language. 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 was used mostly in letters and administrative documents.
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 experienced an upswing in popularity in 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 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 Empire times.
Similarly, 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 the 1st century AD.John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, 2004 "Akkadian and Eblaite", The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages, pg. 218. 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. Iamblichus, a 2nd century Syrian novelist, may have been one of the last known people to know Babylonian.
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.
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 language, formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered a separate East Semitic language.
| + Akkadian consonants |
The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss, is that form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates , is a voiceless alveolar sibilant , and is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative . The assimilation is then awat+su > . In this vein, an alternative transcription of is , with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. could have been assimilated to the preceding , yielding , which would later have been simplified to .
The rhotic has traditionally been interpreted as a voiced alveolar trill but its pattern of alternation with suggests it was a fricative (either uvular or velar ). In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian 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).
| >+ Akkadian vowels ! !! [[Front | Back vowel]] |
| ! [[CloseClose vowel]] | |
| ! [[MidMid vowel]] | |
| ! [[OpenOpen vowel]] |
The existence of a back mid-vowel has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this.Sabatino Moscati et al. "An Introduction to Comparative Grammar of Semitic Languages Phonology and Morphology". (section on vowels and semi-vowels) There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect 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 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), the latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phoneme, and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided').
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 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. (2025). 9781575069227, Eisenbrauns. ISBN 9781575069227 It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as . The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which 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 is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian.
The consonants , , and are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms.
Akkadian, unlike Arabic language, has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing 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.
| + Noun and adjective paradigms |
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 a locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as . 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 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 Language contact throughout this period was Aramaic language, which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as Phonology phenomenon.
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 the predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like.
The status constructus is more common by far, and has a much wider range of applications. It is employed when a noun is followed by another noun in the genitive, a pronominal suffix, or a verbal clause in the subjunctive, and typically takes the shortest form of the noun which is phonetically possible. In general, this amounts to the loss of case endings with short vowels, with the exception of the genitive -i in nouns preceding a pronominal suffix, hence:
but
There are numerous exceptions to this general rule, usually involving potential violations of the language's phonological limitations. Most obviously, Akkadian does not tolerate word-final consonant clusters, so nouns like kalbum (dog) and maḫrum (front) would have illegal construct state forms *kalb and *maḫr unless modified. In many of these instances, the first vowel of the word is simply repeated (e.g. kalab, maḫar). This rule, however, does not always hold true, especially in nouns where a short vowel has historically been elided (e.g. šaknum < *šakinum "governor"). In these cases, the lost vowel is restored in the construct state (so šaknum yields šakin).
A genitive relation can also be expressed with the relative preposition ša, and the noun that the genitive phrase depends on appears in status rectus.
The same preposition is also used to introduce true relative clauses, in which case the verb is placed in the subjunctive mood.
The infinitive of the Akkadian verb is a verbal noun, and in contrast to some other languages the Akkadian infinitive can be declined in grammatical case. The verbal adjective is an adjectival form and designates the state or the result of the action of the verb, and consequently the exact meaning of the verbal adjective is determined by the semantics of the verb itself. The participle, which can be active or passive, is another verbal adjective and its meaning is similar to the English gerund.
The following table shows the conjugation of the Derived stem verbs derived from the root PRS ("to decide") in the various verb aspects of Akkadian:
The table below shows the different attached to the preterite aspect of the verb root PRS "to decide"; and as can be seen, the grammatical genders differ only in the second person singular and third person plural.
The following table demonstrates the verb moods of verbs derived from the root PRS ("to decide", "to separate"):
reflexive verb and iterative verbal stems can be derived from each of the basic stems. The reflexive stem is formed with an infix -ta, and the derived stems are therefore called Gt, Dt, Št and Nt, and the preterite forms of the Xt-stem are identical to the perfects of the X-stem. Iteratives are formed with the infix -tan-, giving the Gtn, Dtn, Štn and Ntn. Because of the assimilation of n, the /n/ is only seen in the present forms, and the Xtn preterite is identical to the Xt Dynamic verb.
The final stem is the ŠD-stem, a form mostly attested only in poetic texts, and whose meaning is usually identical to either the Š-stem or the D-stem of the same verb. It is formed with the Š prefix (like the Š-stem) in addition to a doubled-middle radical (like the D-stem).
An alternative to this naming system is a numerical system. The basic stems are numbered using so that G, D, Š and N become I, II, III and IV, respectively. The are numbered using ; 1 for the forms without an infix, 2 for the Xt, and 3 for the Xtn. The two numbers are separated using a solidus. As an example, the Štn-stem is called III/3. The most important user of this system is the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary.
There is mandatory congruence between the subject of the sentence and the verb. This is expressed by and . There are two different sets of affixes, a primary set used for the forms of the G and N-stems, and a secondary set for the D and Š-stems.
The stems, their nomenclature and examples of the third-person masculine singular stative of the verb parāsum (root PRS: 'to decide, distinguish, separate') is shown below:
| Arabic stem I ( fa'ala) and Hebrew pa'al |
| Arabic stem II ( faʿʿala) and Hebrew pi'el |
| Arabic stem IV ( 'af'ala) and Hebrew hiph'il |
| Arabic stem VII ( infa'ala) and Hebrew niph'al |
| Arabic stem VIII ( ifta'ala) and Aramaic 'ithpe'al (tG) |
| Arabic stem V ( tafaʿʿala) and Hebrew hithpa'el (tD) |
| Arabic stem X ( istaf'ala) and Aramaic 'ittaph'al (tC) |
| doubled second radical preceded by tan-infix |
| š-preformative with tan-infix |
| n-preformative with tan-infix |
| š-preformative with doubled second radical |
Thus, the stative in Akkadian is used to convert simple stems into effective sentences, so that the form šarr-āta is equivalent to: "you were king", "you are king" and "you will be king". Hence, the stative is independent of time forms.
A very similar formation is the maPRaSt form. The noun derived from this nominal formation is grammatically feminine. The same rules as for the maPRaS form apply, for example maškattum (deposit) from ŠKN (set, place, put), narkabtum (carriage) from RKB (ride, drive, mount).
The suffix – ūt is used to derive abstract nouns. The nouns which are formed with this suffix are grammatically feminine. The suffix can be attached to nouns, adjectives and verbs, e.g. abūtum (paternity) from abum (father), rabûtum (size) from rabûm (large), waṣûtum (leaving) from WṢY (leave).
Also derivatives of verbs from nouns, adjectives and numerals are numerous. For the most part, a D-stem is derived from the root of the noun or adjective. The derived verb then has the meaning of "make X do something" or "becoming X", for example: duššûm (let sprout) from dīšum (grass), šullušum (to do something for the third time ) from šalāš (three).
| + Proximal Demonstrative ("this", "these") |
| + Distal Demonstrative ("that", "those") |
Unlike plural relative pronouns, singular relative pronouns in Akkadian exhibit full declension for case. Only the form ša (originally accusative masculine singular) survived, while the other forms disappeared in time.
| who? |
| what? |
| which? |
Examples: ina bītim (in the house, from the house), ana dummuqim (to do good), itti šarrim (with the king), ana ṣēr mārīšu (up to his son).
This polarity is typical of the and appears, for example, in classical Arabic. The numerals 60, 100, and 1,000 do not change according to the gender of the counted noun. Counted nouns more than two appear in the plural form. Body parts that occur in pairs appear in the dual form in Akkadian; e.g., šēpum (foot) becomes šēpān (two feet).
The ordinal number are formed (with few exceptions) by adding a case ending to the nominal form PaRuS. The P, R and S must be substituted with the suitable consonants of the numeral. It is noted, that in the case of the numeral "one", the ordinal (masculine) and the cardinal number are the same. A metathesis occurs in the numeral "four".
| +Akkadian numbersHuehnergard, 3rd ed., §23.2 !rowspan=3 | # !colspan=4 | Cardinal !Congruence !colspan=2 | Ordinal |
| pānītum maḫrītum ( ištītum) išteat | |||
| šanītum | |||
| šaluštum | |||
| rebūtum | |||
| ḫamuštum | |||
| šeduštum | |||
| sebūtum | |||
| samuntum | |||
| tešūtum | |||
| ešurtum | |||
| ištēššerītum | |||
| šinšerītum | |||
| šalāššerītum | |||
| erbēšerītum | |||
| ḫamiššerītum | |||
| šeššerītum? | |||
| sebēšerītum | |||
| samāššerītum | |||
| tišēšerītum | |||
| ešrītum? | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
| (as with 20?) | |||
Examples: erbē aššātum (four wives) (masculine numeral), meat ālānū (100 towns).
| Numeral |
| Noun (Subject) |
| Adjective |
| Relative clause |
| accusative singular |
| 3rd person masculine plural |
| Apposition |
Due to extensive contact with Sumerian and Aramaic, the Akkadian vocabulary contains many from these languages. Aramaic loan words were limited to the 1st centuries of the 1st millennium BC and primarily in the north and middle parts of Mesopotamia. Sumerian loan words were spread in the whole linguistic area. Beside the previous languages, some nouns were borrowed from Hurrian, Kassite language, Ugaritic and other ancient languages.
Since Sumerian and Hurrian, two non-Semitic languages, differ from Akkadian in word structure, only nouns and some adjectives (not many verbs) were borrowed from these languages. Some verbs were borrowed, along with many nouns, from Aramaic and Ugaritic, both of which are Semitic languages.
The following table contains examples of loan words in Akkadian:
| du |
| ʿRQ (Triliteral) |
| gada lá |
| ezen |
| kasulatḫ- |
| kisal |
| LQḤ (Triliteral) |
| paraššann- |
| bur-gul |
| QṬL (Triliteral) |
| uriḫull- |
In 2011, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago completed a 21-volume dictionary, the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, of the Akkadian language. The dictionary took 90 years to develop, beginning in 1921, with the first volume published in 1956. The completion of this work was hailed as a significant milestone for the study of the language by prominent academic Irving Finkel of the British Museum.
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