Proposed Outline Course in Beginners’ Akkadian

Beginners’ Akkadian

Ever been fascinated by the strange inscriptions on artefacts from ancient Assyria or Babylon? This course will provide a way in to enable you to read the script, and translate the text of short inscriptions and tablets. The course begins with the history of decipherment, moves to the script and basic grammar, and concludes with translation of tablets from Mari, some laws of Hammurapi, and a school text from Emar with some historical information. Click here for sample portions of the relevant Powerpoint presentation “Forgotten Scripts.”

Course Outline

Week 1

Day 1. Forgotten Scripts: the Story of Decipherment (PPt)

Day 2. Nouns: derivatives; plurals; construct

Day 3. Syllables, Logograms, and Determinatives; More on nouns

Day 4. Adjectives; Basic CV and VC signs

Week 2

Day 1. The G verb: Fientisch and Zustand; Preterite

Day 2. The Present and Perfect

Day 3. Stative; Imperative; Participles

Day 4. Exercise work

Week 3

Day 1. The G verb: ‘ta’ infix: Ventive

Day 2. The G verb: ‘tan’ infix; Verbal suffixes

Day 3. The N stem; G stem: Precative and Prohibitive

Day 4. Derived stems: D. Meaning and morphology

Week 4

Day 1. Sentence Structure I: Basic aspects: Reading of texts: Hammurapi

Day 2. Sentence Structure II: Co-ordinate and Subordinate Clauses; Hammurapi II

Day 3. Reading of texts: Hammurapi III; Mari Letters

Day 4. Reading of texts: Dream text; Emar text 42