Bilingual Babel: Cuneiform Texts in Two or More Languages from Ancient Mesopotamia and Beyond

Abstract

Ancient Mesopotamia was the birthplace of the earliest known writing system. It was also a land of ethno-linguistic diversity, that included Sumerians, who invented cuneiform writing, and an increasingly large number of speakers of Semitic languages. As cuneiform spread throughout Mesopotamia and into neighboring regions, it was adapted to write Semitic and other languages, and bilingual and even trilingual cuneiform tablets were produced, containing Sumerian texts and their translations, usually into Semitic Akkadian. Various formats were developed to set off the translation from the original, and the practice, which began around 2400 B.C., continued almost to the beginning of own own era.