Akkadian is, after Sumerian, the second oldest language attested in the Ancient Near East, as well as the oldest known Semitic language. It is also a language with one of history’s longest written records. And yet, unlike other relevant languages written over a long period of time, there has been no volume dedicated to its own history. The aim of the present work is to fill that void. The outcome is presented in 26 chapters written by 25 leading authors and divided into two volumes, the first covering the linguistic background and early periods and the second covering the second and first millennia BCE as well as its afterlife.
Juan-Pablo Vita, Ph.D. (1995), is a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) in Madrid. His most recent monographs are Canaanite Scribes in the Amarna Letters (Ugarit-Verlag, 2015) and (in cooperation with Josef Tropper) Lehrbuch der ugaritischen Sprache (Zaphon, 2020).
Preface List of Figures and Tables Abbreviations: Bibliographical Other Abbreviations and Conventions Notes on Contributors
Part 1 Introduction
1 Research on the Akkadian Language Michael P. Streck
Part 2 Teaching and Writing Akkadian in the Ancient Near East
2 Teaching Akkadian in the Ancient Near East Alexandra Kleinerman
3 Akkadian and Cuneiform Michael P. Streck
4 Akkadian and Alphabetic Cuneiform Carole Roche-Hawley and Robert Hawley
5 Akkadian and the Greek Alphabet (Graeco-Babyloniaca) Martin Lang
Part 3 Akkadian: Some General Trends of Its Development
6 Classification of Akkadian within the Semitic Family Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee
7 Historical Morphology of Akkadian N.J.C. Kouwenberg
8 A Historical Overview of Akkadian Morphosyntax Ilya Arkhipov, Maksim Kalinin and Sergey Loesov
9 A History of the Akkadian Lexicon Leonid Kogan and Manfred Krebernik
10 A History of Akkadian Onomastics Regine Pruzsinszky
Part 4 Akkadian in the Fourth and Third Millennia BCE
11 Old Akkadian Walter Sommerfeld
12 Eblaite Leonid Kogan and Manfred Krebernik
Part 5 Akkadian in the Second Millennium BCE: Akkadian in Mesopotamia
13 Old Babylonian Michael P. Streck
14 Middle Babylonian Wilfred H. van Soldt
15 Old Assyrian N.J.C. Kouwenberg
16 Middle Assyrian Stefan Jakob
Part 6 Akkadian in the Second Millennium BCE: Peripheral Akkadian
17 Akkadian and the Amorites Dominique Charpin
18 Akkadian in Syria and Canaan Juan-Pablo Vita
19 Akkadian and the Hittites Gary Beckman
20 Akkadian in Egypt Matthias Müller
21 Akkadian in Elam Florence Malbran-Labat
Part 7 Akkadian in the First Millennium BCE
22 Neo-Assyrian Frederick M. Fales
23 (Early) Neo-Babylonian Christian W. Hess
24 Late Babylonian Johannes Hackl
25 The Death of Akkadian as a Written and Spoken Language Johannes Hackl
Part 8 Afterlife: Akkadian after Akkadian
26 The Legacy of Akkadian John Huehnergard
Index of Personal Names Index of Divine Names Index of Geographical Names Index of Texts Cited Index of Subjects
All interested in Assyriology, Semitic studies, Afro-Asiatic languages, language contact, Linguistics, and ancient Near Eastern history.