Picking Your Words Carefully

Akkadian is amazing and nothing like any language I have tried to learn before (which are all Latin-based). Over the past few months my vocabulary has really begun to expand. In fact, to my great excitement, I have found that often authors of the Near Eastern history books I am studying will reference words that I have learnt. I am fascinated by how quickly the language and research components of this project are intertwining.

So here is an interesting tidbit about Akkadian:
Some words can have many translations which range in multiple ideas. For example: 'libbum' can translate as 'heart, mind, thought, wish, inside, center, town center,' and 'midst'.

Libbum is actually a really interesting word. Its ability to translate as 'heart' as well as 'mind, wish,' and 'thought' suggests a lot about what tasks the ancient Near East believed the heart performed.
The translation of libbum as 'center' is also something to pause over. Did the Mesopotamians connect these words because of location (the hearts central location in the body) or because of its significance (the heart as the center for mental activity)?

Translation in any language is tricky work and often I find myself translating an Akkadian sentence incorrectly because of the many options each word allows for. But it is also like putting together a jigsaw; translation is about combining sections to make a logical whole.

And, in the end, when it comes to a sentences like, "I walk to the libbum with my mule", it is fairly obvious that the writer prefers 'town center' over 'thought'.

Religious Prayer Texts (1 of 8)

I have spent a good amount of time in my past posts discussing the Akkadian side of my project so I have decided to dedicate this post to my research.
One of the really exciting aspects of my project is looking at a range of prayer texts from Mesopotamia (translated into English) and trying to gleam some insight into what they suggest about the relationship between the speaker and the recipient of the prayer.

Today I want to give a brief overview of the one of the eight prayers I am directly working with.

This prayer is called "Against Any Evil" and its purpose was to halt any evil foretold by an unfavorable omen. The speaker directs his plea to three of the most powerful Mesopotamian gods: Ea, Shamash, and Asalluhi (also known as Marduk).
I love this text because it is what I call a "fill-in-the-blank" prayer. A "fill-in-the-blank" prayer is a work in which the majority of the words remain constant but a few lines allow for personalization of the text. Here is an example in "Against Any Evil" of one section that requires adaptation by the speaker:

Wherever there are signs and portents,
         as many as there are,
I (insert name of speaker), son of (speaker's father),
Whose (personal) god is (name of god),
Whose (personal) goddess is (name of goddess),
Against whom evil signs keep occurring,
I am afraid, frightened, and terrified!


Mesopotamian prayers range from the extremely personalized to the completely pre-scripted. This will become clear as I post, throughout the year, detailed descriptions of the other texts I am studying according to when I begin to focus on them.

Akkadian Sentences

I have officially begun writing sentences in Akkadian!

Taking Latin for four years has been an incredible help for learning Akkadian. As I already learned about genitives and nominatives in Latin, I don't have to spend any time learning about what they are when they have come up in my Akkadian textbook. This means that I can quickly focus in on how the grammar is applied rather than on what the terms actually mean.

I am going to dissect a simple sentence in Akkadian to show what I have learned so far:

mārtum ša šarrim šī

mārtum - nominative, singular, feminine form of "mārtum" (daughter)

ša - determinative pronoun meaning "of" or "the one of", ša always takes goes with a genitive

šarrim - genitive, singular, masculine form of "šarrum" (king), it is genitive because it goes with ša and is possessive

šī - third person, nominative, feminine pronoun (she). It is at the end of a sentence because subjects of verb-less clauses (if they are pronouns) are placed at the end of the sentence. 

Akkadian has no verb "to be" - a "to be" clause (known as a verb-less clause) is expressed when you juxtapose the subject and the predicate.

So the translation of "mārtum ša šarrim šī" is "She is the daughter of the king".

Moving Forward

I purposely devoted the majority of the the past few weeks to my Akkadian studies. However, after getting in contact with my off-campus mentor, the research part of my Signature is finally moving forward.

I am researching the connection between gods and mortals in the ancient Near East. Over the coming months I will study this topic throughly and then dedicate second semester to writing a research paper which will act as a culmination of my findings.

After talking on the phone about my goals, my off-campus mentor, a professor of the ancient Near East, suggested some reading materials that I should use to begin narrowing in on my topic.

These materials include:
Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization by A. Leo Oppenheim
Family Religion in Babylonia, Ugarit and Israel: Continuity and Changes in the Forms of Religious Life by K Van Der Toorn
Ancient Mesopotamian Religion: A Descriptive Introduction by Ivan Hrusa

These are all books, so my plan is to spend the month until Thanksgiving break working through them and taking notes.

Annotated Bibliography

This is an annotated bibliography of the resources I have used so far this year:

- Huehnergard, John. A Grammar of Akkadian, Third Edition. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011. Print.

This is the book I am using to self-study Akkadian. It is divided into thirty-eight chapters and each chapter ends with a list of new vocabulary and multiple exercises can that range from translation to declining nouns to writing out words in cuneiform.

- Huehnergard, John. Key To A Grammar of Akkadian, Third Edition. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2013. Print.

This is the key to the exercises found at the end of each chapter in A Grammar of Akkadian.

It gives clear answers to the questions, however, it does not provide any extra clarification or information concerning tricky translations.

- Finkle, Irving and Jonathan Taylor. Cuneiform. Los Angles: Getty Publications, 2015. Print.

This a very recently published book written by Irving Finkle and Jonathan Taylor, two cuneiform curators at the British Museum (which holds the largest collection of cuneiform tablets in the world).

It focuses on practical ideas concerning cuneiform by answering questions such as how it was written, why it died out, and how it was deciphered by modern historians.

The book supplements my study of Akkadian by allowing me to develop a greater depth of understanding of the stages cuneiform went through in order for me to be able to self-study it today.

- Foster, Benjamin R. From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. Bethesda: CDL Press, 1995. Print.

Foster, a well-known and highly praised Assyriologist, provides clear translations a vast assortment of ancient Near Eastern texts, ranging from hymns and prayers to magical spells and humorous stories, in his book.  Complete with a full-length introduction and many explanatory footnotes (both by Foster) his work gives a wealth of background information that offers clarity for the reader, no matter their previous knowledge.

Foster also includes snippets of information (ranging in length from a few sentences to full length paragraphs) for each individual translation. This information generally covers the background, author (if known), and purpose of the text and is extremely important information as it gives specific facts about the seven texts I have chosen to study.

- Van De Mieroop, Marc. A History of the Ancient Near East, ca. 3000-323 BC. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Print.

Marc Van De Mieroop provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking description of the ancient Near East as a whole between the years 3000 -323 BCE.

This book is especially important for the research aspect of my signature as it enhanced my basic knowledge of the ancient Near East which I will be need in order to provide crucial background details when I start studying specific texts.

Tongue-tied

There is something very powerful about speaking out loud words from a language that has not been used for over two thousand years.

The past week has marked the beginning of my journey into the study of Akkadian. Akkadian is an Ancient Near Eastern language which was spoken primarily by the Assyrians, Babylonians, and of course, the Akkadians. It is written in cuneiform (although, I will not begin to write in cuneiform for a number of chapters). The book I am using to self-study is "A Grammar of Akkadian" by John Huehnergard and I have just finished the first section which focuses on pronunciation and syllable recognition.

Since the Akkadian language has been out of use for millennia, it is impossible to know exactly how it was spoken. However, scholars have been able to make educated guesses about pronunciation by making comparisons with other languages such as Arabic, Amharic, and Hebrew. All three carry some relation to Akkadian.

It is remarkably tricky to get my head around pronunciation. Two words can look very similar but, because of a macron or circumflex, can have completely different meanings. This means careful pronunciation is key.

To give an example: "mutum" means husband, but "mūtum" means death. The only difference is that in "mūtum" the u sound is held longer.


Although I am still a complete beginner, I am loving my introduction to Akkadian. In the next chapter I will begin to study noun declension and independent personal pronouns and I am really excited!