Posted on 05/12/2012 11:32:27 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
The archaeologists working at Ziyaret Tepe, the probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tushan, believe that this language may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, on the border of modern-day Iran and Iraq. In keeping with a policy widely practiced across the Assyrian Empire, these people may have been forcibly moved from their homeland and resettled in what is now south-east Turkey, where they would have been set to work building the new frontier city and farming its hinterland.
The evidence for the language they spoke comes from a single clay tablet, which was preserved after it was baked in a fire that destroyed the palace in Tushan at some point around the end of the 8th century BCE. Inscribed with cuneiform characters, the tablet is essentially a list of the names of women who were attached to the palace and the local Assyrian administration. A paper in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies reports the discovery.
"Altogether around 60 names are preserved," said Dr. John MacGinnis from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge. "One or two are actually Assyrian and a few more may belong to other known languages of the period, such as Luwian or Hurrian, but the great majority belong to a previously unidentified language."
(Excerpt) Read more at sci-news.com ...
It bears some resemblance to Akkadian.
Possibly, but probably not. Ever read Beowulf in Old English?
"Beowulf wæs breme --- blæd wide sprang--- Scyldes eafera Scedelandum in. "
Okay, possibly.
“deportees”
Nice word for being enslaved!
LOL!
"My Thing is my own, I'll keep it so still;
Yet all the young maidens may do as they will."
Early Google Maps?
It had an eerily resemblance to modern-day ebonics.
Pig Sumarian? Just drop the first letter, add it on the end, and complete it with a long “a” sound.
Authentic Frontier Gibberish?
It had an eerily resemblance to modern-day ebonics
I thought I could make out, “Yo yo yo, whazup homeslice”
what it says is: "Please Vote Obama 2012 or you'll be a RACIST Homophobic women hater". /s
Awesome stuff!
That was my first thought as well. Not that there wasn't male chattel too, but that it was probably deemed more expendable.
BTW, I've always enjoyed reading the comments on the GGG threads because I could learn from the intelligent discussion of topics that interest me, but are somewhat above my pay grade.
It's getting harder to find that type of discussion while navigating around the mostly unfunny attempts at one-line "humor." It's making me a little cranky these days. Anyway, thanks for your always interesting pings, SV.
I see it’s all uppercase ( lowercase fonts had not been invented by then):
“THIS DON’T MEAN NOTHING. LET THE SUCKERS WHO FIND IT SCRATCH THERE NOODLES”
Note the faulty FR type grammar - “DON’T” instead of “DOESN’T” and “THERE” instead of “THEY’RE”!
Some stud making of list of his conquests, no doubt.
Woman were likely chattel. Ergo, it is possibly an inventory of such property for the royal household?
Well, it's obvious even to the most casual observer. This is the first attempt at a universal language, following the collapse of the tower of Babel ... ;-)
“cuneiform texts can be pronounced”....... How is it possible to know how something is pronounced when no one has heard it spoken in thousands of years?
The Sound of Akkadian -- Listen to Ancient Babylonian online
Thanks for the post, Civ. Me likes.
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