Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

I think it was Tadmor. The idea is, that the use of Aramaic in imperial
administration spread after the Assyrian conquest of Damascus and other
Aramean kingdoms in the late 8th century. Deportations of Arameans would
have also contributed. My question is, at what stage did Aramaic replace
Akkadian as the common spoken language in southern Mesopotamia? It seems to
have done so by the 5th or 4th centuries, even though chronicles and other
offical inscriptions were still being written in Akkadian even as late as
the Roman Period.

Yigal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kevin P. Edgecomb" <kevino AT bombaxo.com>
To: "Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 12:03 AM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Aramaic in Babylonia


> Hi Yigal,
> Wasn't it Tadmor or Na'aman who suggested that the Assyrian reliefs
depicting paired scribes, one with stylus/tablet and one with stylus/scroll,
were making notations in both cuneiform Akkadian and alphabetic Aramaic?
It's been so long, I can't remember.  It's out of the time period you all
were just discussing, but still somewhat germane.
>
> Regards,
> Kevin P. Edgecomb
> Berkeley, California
>
>
> ---- Yigal Levin <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il> wrote:
> > As far as "spoken" Akkadian and Aramaic - we have very little evidence
of
> > "spoken" languages as is, but I think that it's reasonable to assume
that
> > any written language reflects the spoken language of at least some group
at
> > some time. At least in their written form (and I don't mean that one
used
> > cuneaform and the other used the 22 letter aleph-bet), Akkadian and
Aramaic
> > are very different, one being Eastern Semitic, the other Northwestern
> > Semitic.
> >
> > Yigal
>
>
>