The Polyglots of Ancient Near East
The ancient Near East – a vast territory spanning Mesopotamia, Anatolia, ancient Egypt and the Levant – was home to many early civilizations. The wheel and the first currency systems were invented here, as well as the foundations of astronomy, physics and mathematics. Though of different descent, and each with their own language and history, the inhabitants of this region developed a mutual understanding which enabled them to flourish and trade despite the highly limited natural resources. These people were the first polyglots, in one of the cradles of modern civilization.
Due to the limited materials available to researchers for the study of multilingualism in ancient times, it is difficult to specify the exact status of the many languages spoken in the ancient Near East. Some information, however, can be inferred from bilingual attestations discovered by archeologists. Though the extant sources of many languages are very scarce, there is a number of languages – such as Sumerian, Akkadian or Hittite – with a rich surviving textual tradition.
In this talk I will introduce you to the peoples populating the ancient Near East, as well as their languages and literary tradition. I will explore when and why the first writing systems emerged, and examine the contents of the earliest written records. By setting focus on bilingual attestations I will give an account of multilingualism in the ancient Near East.
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18 Comments
I really enjoyed your presentation, thank you!
So deeply researched, thank you!
Nice presentation. I also enjoyed your presentation on Lithuanian at the Polyglot Gathering.
Nice presentation. I also enjoyed your presentation on Lithuanian at the Polyglot Gathering.
Absolutely wonderful, the combination of enthusiasm, professionalism and beatifull as well as informative slides is amazing! Important to show, as you have done, that the development of cities, states and empires did not automatically lead to monolingualism, as many people believe! Congratulations.
This is a very unusual presentation, congratulations.
Hi Olga, your presentation was so informative and so interesting! I really enjoyed learning about the languages of the Ancient Near East. Thanks for this wonderful talk.
Hello Mus_Marian, I am very glad to hear that you enjoyed my presentation! More than ten thousand clay tablets in Hittite and Sumerian resepectively have been excavated . Very many of these are broken and have to be joined together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Then philologists have to analyse the texts. Since there are not particularly many Hittite or Sumerian experts, lots of work still has to be done. Numrous texts are yet to be translated and the old translations updated!
And then there are many smaller languages that were spoken in the Ancient Near East which are being intensively studied. Through comparison with these our understanding of major languages can be improved.
Most of the publications from 2020 try to explain the relationship between different languages, both smaller and larger.
A really fascinating look into languages of the Ancient Near East! Thank you so much for your talk. What kind of interaction does someone like you have with these languages? As you’ve said they are mostly all extinct. Is there still a lot of reading or decoding to be done for these languages?
Thank you for the presentation! I enjoy learning about ancient cultures very much.
It works again! Cool presentation! 😍
Hello again, now it works 🙂
Oh no, guys! I am not sure what went wrong here. I just contacted the PC team and sincerely hope that the problem will be fixed asap.
Can’t watch it
I’ve emailed help about it. Hopefully sorted soon.
Same, unfortunately
Agree with Sergio.
Hello,
I can,t reproduce this video but other videos I can.
Kind Regards,
Sergio