Posted on 10/01/2010 7:06:36 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Almost 2,000 years after its last native speakers disappeared... [t]he recordings include excerpts from some of the earliest known works of world literature, dating back to the first years of the second millennium BC... readings of Babylonian poems, myths and other texts in the original tongue... -- available online for free at www.speechisfire.com -- are given by Dr. Worthington's fellow Assyriologists. Babylonian is one of two variants (or dialects) of Akkadian, the other being Assyrian. Akkadian became the 'lingua franca' of the Near East around, until its use began to decline around the 8th century BC. The last Akkadian cuneiform document dates to the 1st century AD. Dr Worthington's hope is that having heard the sound of the extinct language -- the earliest attested Semitic language, some listeners will be sufficiently intrigued to investigate further, and perhaps end up studying the history, language or culture of the period... The existing collection focuses on poetry in particular. Most of this is known from cuneiform inscriptions found on clay tablets in the area that was once Mesopotamia... Beyond literature and poetry, the site has also contains other important documents from the period. Part of the Codex Hammurabi, for example, the ancient law code from 1790 BC, can be both read and heard -- although you are (not yet) treated to all 281 of the laws and parallel punishments Hammurabi had listed... Thirty recordings have been released so far and more are currently being prepared.
(Excerpt) Read more at heritage-key.com ...
Oh, I believe you that they cracked the general sounds of the language, but how French sounds by even a GOOD American student, by a Parisian, and by a Canadian sounds so different.
You ain't heard different until you hear Cajun French in South Louisiana ;^)
An illustrated lecture which presents two Old Babylonian incantations in comparative perspective. The language and emotions of new love and sexual attraction are shared in compositions as diverse as Akkadian and Sumerian love incantations and popular music from nearly four thousand years later. The incantations are on tablets newly published in the speaker’s Mesopotamian Incantations and Related Texts. One is completely new, the other strangely familiar.
Note: The Roy Orbison song, "Oh Pretty Woman," which plays for several seconds during the lecture has been edited out owing to copyright laws.
Be My Baby in Babylonia | The Oriental Institute | Published on April 20, 2017 | Presented by Andrew George, Professor of Babylonian, University of London, SOAS
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