|
|
MESOPOTAMIA TIME
LINE
Chronology
Two cultural groups formed the principle elements in the population of
Mesopotamia before the beginning of history and in the millennium thereafter
(the 3rd millennium BCE - c.2350-2200 BCE). These are the Sumerians and the
Akkadians. They lived peacefully together and created in mutual fertilization,
by symbiosis and osmosis, the conditions for a common high civilization. Mesopotamian
sources in all periods seem to be free of strong racial ideologies or ethnic
stereotypes. Enemies, both groups and individuals, may be cursed and reviled
heavily, but this applies more strongly to the ruler of a nearby city than to
one of a remote territory.
Akkadians were
semi-nomads in the Near East. Even at the time that a large part of the
population in Mesopotamia had a sedentary (non-migratory) life in settlements,
large groups of people (nomads) at the same time are migrating. Nomads roam
from place to place in search for pasture and moving with the season. Semi-nomads
graze their small live stock near the fields of the settlements, often trading
for goods obtained elsewhere and having all kinds of other interactions. This
characteristic is still present in the Near East today. Nomads leave little
archeological trace and are illiterate, so not much is known about them by
direct means.
However, some
description does appear in written form: recorded by the Sumerians and later by
the Akkadians. Some of the (semi-)nomads, either as individuals or as groups,
mix with the sedentary population and become sedentary themselves. In times of
political or economical crisis they may do so by force, but they adapt quickly
to the current civilization and even to the dominant language. Their increased
influence on the society is manifested by a change in type of personal names. Sometimes
the names are the only remains of their original language. In their new
positions, they often stimulate further cultural development.
A few centuries later
the first Akkadian king Sargon of Akkad ruled over an empire that included a
large part of Mesopotamia. Apparently Semitic speaking people have lived for
centuries amidst the Sumerians and gradually became an integral part of the
Sumerian culture. We don't hear much about them in the first part of the 3rd
millennium, because the (scholarly) language used in writing is Sumerian.
First excavations in the
Near East. During excavations in 1843 and 1845 AD large collections of clay
tablets were found carrying cuneiform signs. They pointed to a forgotten
Assyrian civilization which was hinted at in the bible and in Greek scripts
(Herodotus). The decipherment of the language was in essence completed in 1851
and the language was first called Assyrian. Nowadays Assyrian is considered a
dialect of Akkadian. The branch of science dealing with the language and the civilization
was called Assyriology. The name now applies to a much wider field: the study
of all the civilizations in Mesopotamia and all related questions. Assyriology
rests on information from archeological excavations on the one hand and on the
study of written documents.
Language
Akkadian, the oldest known member of the family of Semitic languages,
succeeded Sumerian as the vernacular tongue of Mesopotamia and was spoken by
the Babylonians and Assyrians over a period of nearly two thousand years.
It was written in the
cuneiform script invented by the Sumerians, and the surviving documentation
covers the period from 2350 BC to the first century AD.
Deciphered in the 1850s,
Akkadian is the medium of innumerable documents from daily life as well as a
vast literature, including the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, the quest of a man for
eternal life.
Clay Tablets
On Sumerian clay tablets dated around 2900-2800 BCE found in Fara,
Semitic (Akkadian) names are attested for the first time. It concerns the names
of kings in the city Kish. Kish is in the north of Babylonia where according to
the Sumerian King Lists `kingship descended again from heaven' after the great
Flood. The proper names often contain animal names like zuqiqïpum `scorpion'
and kalbum `dog'. Kings with Semitic names are the first postdiluvial kings to
rule Kish. They started the first historical period called the Early Dynastic
Period.
Akkadian period, reign of Naram-Sin
