Two cuneiform tablets from 3,800 years ago bring to light the language of the biblical people of the Amorites

2023-04-22 02:20:16
“I destroyed before them the Amorites, whose height was as the height of the cedars, and strong as an oak; and I destroyed its fruit above and its roots below. And I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and I led you through the desert for forty years, so that you might enter into possession of the land of the Amorites”, says the Book of Amos, of the Old Testament. According to the Bible, God promised to give the descendants of Abraham the land of Canaan – the area now occupied by Syria, Israel and Jordan –, the origin of the nomadic population of the Amorites, also known as the Amorites. According to scant historical records, they infiltrated Mesopotamia and adopted its culture. After the collapse of the kingdom of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2000 BC), they founded several kingdoms, among them Babylon, whose most famous king was Hammurapi, precursor of the famous code of the same name, one of the oldest sets of laws that have been found to date that comes to be compared to the Torah. Added to this lack of documentation of its history is the little knowledge of its language, which was so demanding that some experts even doubted its existence. “Until now, only isolated Amorite words (mostly as elements of personal names appearing in Akkadian and other language texts) have been known, enough to show that Amorite is a member of the Northwest Semitic language family,” he explains to ABC Manfred Krebernik, from the German University of Jena. Unpublished But the seasoned eye of this specialist in Near Eastern studies, together with that of Andrew George, from the University of London, found their trail in two 3,800-year-old cuneiform tablets found in Iraq during the Gulf War. They have come to light thirty years after their discovery because they were obtained in illegal excavations and sold to private collections. “Probably, one of the reasons why they have remained unpublished is because the owners and the few specialists who saw them did not understand their unusual content,” Krebernik adds. Both scientists have analyzed them in depth and have published the results of their research in the scientific journal ‘Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale’. The tablets are articulated like the famous Rosetta Stone, the text of which appears in three languages: hieroglyphic, demotic, and ancient Greek. The fact that researchers at the time knew about the latter allowed the Egyptologist François Champollion to decipher the secrets of the language of one of the oldest civilizations in the world. In the case of the Iraqi pieces, the Amorite phrases are placed on the left, while on the right are their Akkadian translations, which can now be read by scholars. The latter was the language of the Mesopotamian city of Acadia from the third millennium BC. C., and spread to different cultures over the centuries, including Babylonian. The findings settle the question of the existence of the language of the Amorites, since, according to Krebernik, “they show that the language was articulated in a coherent and predictable way, and is totally different from Akkadian. The two tablets substantially expand our knowledge of Amorite, since they not only contain new words, but also complete sentences, so they show a lot of new vocabulary and grammar,” says the scientist. The other side, that of the Akkadian texts, has also brought benefits, since they “contribute to our knowledge of the scholarly literature of ancient Mesopotamia.” Language manual According to the study, the writing on the tablets is the cursive cuneiform of ancient Babylon, which was commonly used for educational purposes, and their calligraphy is similar enough to suggest that they could be the work of the same scribe. The texts resemble a language manual and are divided into two parts: those on the left are in Amorite and those on the right are in Akkadian. MORE INFORMATION The spell to eliminate lice from more than 3,000 years ago They do not include historical records, but rather reflect scenes of daily life. “Their content is less important than the fact that they document the Amorite language,” says this researcher. They appear from names of divinities and stars or constellations to food (three types of bread and two types of alcoholic drink) and three articles of clothing that include objects tied to the head, waist and feet, listed from top to bottom as is customary in Babylonian enumerations related to the human body. Then “vocabulary and practical phrases with translations into Akkadian are detailed, as a modern ‘language guide’,” Krebernik adds.
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