The Akkadian Language in Its Semitic Context. Studies in the Akkadian Of

0993-8_BIOR_2008/1-2_01 21-04-2008 14:39 Pagina 77 149 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ASSYRIOLOGIE 150 accepted,2) but if proven to be correct, they will cause the scholars to discard the image of the homogeneous Akkadian language in the third millennium BC. It is fair to say that the Leiden conference brought together the leading authorities in the early history of Akkadian. The rest of the review will be devoted to a case-by-case discussion of their contributions. The paper by John Huehnergard “Proto-Semitic and Proto- Akkadian” serves as the appropriate introduction to the volume as a whole. The author rigorously applies the Stamm- ASSYRIOLOGIE baum model to the discussion of relationship between Akkadian, Eblaite, and the other Semitic languages. The most reliable criteria for genetic subgrouping, according to him, DEUTSCHER, G., and N.J.C. KOUWENBERG (Eds.) — are common morphological innovations, whereas shared The Akkadian Language in its Semitic Context. Studies sound laws are more likely to represent instances of parallel in the Akkadian of the Third and Second Millennium evolution. A handful of innovations present in Eblaite as BC. (PIHANS CVI). Nederlands Instituut voor het opposed to all the dialects of Akkadian ensures its status as Nabije Oosten, Leiden, 2006. (26,5 cm, XII, 298). ISBN a separate branch of East Semitic. A larger group of 90-6258-317-2. isoglosses separating Akkadian and Eblaite, on the one hand, The volume under review encompasses twelve papers first from West and South Semitic, on the other hand, bears wit- presented at a conference “The Akkadian Language in its ness to the primary split between East Semitic and the rest of Semitic Context”, which took place in Leiden in December the Semitic family. Huehnergard meticulously discriminates 2004. The goal of the symposium was to assess the progress between instances of archaisms and innovations in East made in the study of the Akkadian language in the last Semitic. Most of the isoglosses he addresses have been decades. Although Akkadian philology had been established already discussed in isolation in the previous literature, but de jure as a separate research discipline already in the nine- their systematic treatment within the Neo-Grammarian frame- teenth century, in practice it was too frequently perceived, work appears to be unprecedented, and indeed raises the dis- and sometimes is still perceived, as an appendix to Biblical cussion of the Semitic linguistic phyliation to a new level. Studies. The strict application of the comparative method has, Gene Gragg’s paper “The “weak” verb in Akkadian and however, enabled scholars to demonstrate that Akkadian rep- Beja” represents one of the few instances where Afroasiatic resents an outlier within the Semitic family. Therefore, mod- comparison is directly invoked for the explanation of Akka- ern Semitists have largely abandoned the attempts to squeeze dian grammar in the volume under review. The two lan- the Akkadian data into the procrustean bed of a Proto-Semitic guages, Akkadian and Beja (North Cushitic), apparently dis- reconstruction obtained through a comparison between play very similar patterns of adapting the original Hebrew and Arabic. One can draw a parallel with the situa- biconsonantal verbal roots to the dominant triconsonantal tion in the Indo-European studies, where the decipherment of template. The largest part of Gragg’s article is devoted to a Hittite and its close Anatolian relatives triggers the ongoing synchronic description of stem formation in Beja. Two other revision of the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, whose papers by the same author devoted to Beja verbal morphol- initial state was largely based on the comparison between ogy are in press, and one must hope that their publication will Greek and Sanskrit. shed further light on the relevance of Beja data for the recon- Another factor that boosted the interest toward the lin- struction of Proto-East-Semitic. guistic study of Akkadian is the discovery of the cuneiform Walter Sommerfeld devotes his contribution to sifting archive in the Early Bronze Age city of Ebla in Syria in through the evidence for early Akkadian borrowings into 1970s. Although some of the Italian scholars, who were the Sumerian. A lengthy methodological introduction to this first to work with the Eblaite texts, stressed their West paper contains the outline of criteria that are to be used in Semitic features, the communis opinio of the later years has discriminating between real borrowings and chance similar- endorsed the view that Eblaite is a language or dialect closely ities. It also features a mock list of some 75 lexical loan- related to Akkadian. Among the varieties of Akkadian proper, words from Sumerian into German, which was compiled Old Akkadian causes much discussion in the recent literature. without a strict adherence to the above criteria. The author While many scholars assumed on chronological grounds that proceeds to dissecting the evidence for Akkadian loanwords this third millennium dialect represented an ancestor of Baby- in the Sumerian of Late Uruk and Jemdet-Nasr periods, argu- lonian and Assyrian dialects of the later period, Sommerfeld ing that the words belonging to this group are approximately defines it as “the mother tongue of the rulers of Akkade and as likely to have been borrowed as the German words cited their elites” and hypothesizes that its ultimate origin is to be in his list. Besides fortuitous resemblances, he mentions a sought in a peripheral region of Mesopotamia.1) On the other group of forms that, in his view, may represent Sumerian hand, he claims that there is certain grammatical continuity borrowings into Akkadian. The first tangible evidence for between Pre-Sargonic Akkadian, Akkadian of the Ur III the Akkadian lexical material in Sumerian texts can be dated period, and Old Babylonian. These views are not universally back to the Fara period (Early Dynastic IIIa). From the Semitological viewpoint, the main positive result of the 1) W. Sommerfeld, “Bemerkungen zur Dialektgliederung Altakkadisch, 2) For a different view, see R. Hasselbach, “The Affiliation of Sargonic Assyrisch und Babylonisch”, in: G.J. Selz (ed.), Festschrift für Burkhart Akkadian with Babylonian and Assyrian: New Insights concerning the Kienast, AOAT 274, Münster, 2003, p. 585. Internal Sub-Grouping of Akkadian”, JSS 52 (2007), p. 21-43. 0993-8_BIOR_2008/1-2_01 21-04-2008 14:39 Pagina 78 151 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXV N° 1-2, januari-april 2008 152 paper under discussion is the more precise definition of the therein range from the comparative analysis of the syllabaries Pre-Sargonic Akkadian corpus, whose dialectal position con- used in Pre-Sargonic Mesopotamia vs. Ebla to the discussion stitutes the topic of Sommerfeld’s current work. of the origin of the Akkadian durative stem iparras and its Dietz Otto Edzard passed away before he could attend the Semitic cognates. The author addresses in some detail the Leiden colloquium, and the task of preparing his preliminary common archaisms of East Semitic and South Semitic, which notes for publication fell to Walther Sallaberger. The most he explains through the peripheral status of both subgroups. useful part of Edzard’s contribution, entitled “das Ebla- Regrettably, Rubio’s treatment of the phonetic differences Akkadische als Teil des altakkadischen Dialektkontinuums”, between Eblaite and the East Semitic dialects of are the carefully prepared tables illustrating the pronominal Mesopotamia is rather confusing. The claim that “in Sargonic declension and the verbal conjugation of Eblaite. As for the Akkadian the spelling suggests that *q merged with *s and author’s claim that Eblaite represents a dialect of Akkadian *s” (p. 119) is demonstrably false,4) while the graphic ambi- and not a separate language, there is no way to either verify guity between *∂ and *z in Mesopotamia no more needs to or falsify this contention. The distinction between “language” correspond to phonetic reality than the graphic ambiguity and “dialect” has less to do with the mutual intelligibility of between *q and *∂ in Ebla or between *s (shin) and *s (sin) the two forms of speech or the lack thereof than with the in Epigraphic Hebrew. social attitudes of the respective groups of speakers. We sim- David Testen discusses a number of Akkadian nouns with ply do not know whether the denizens of Ebla identified unproductive vocalic templates, which represent perfect coun- themselves as members of the same ethnic group with their terparts to the Arabic stem-based diminutives. Thus Akk. close linguistic relatives in Mesopotamia, or whether they uniqum ‘young female goat’ corresponds to Arab. ‘unayy- distanced themselves from their West Semitic neighbors. iqun, a regular stem-based diminutive of ‘anaqun. It is rather Manfred Krebernik uses the Eblaite data in order to estab- unlucky for the author that many of his conclusions have lish the chronology of several specific phonetic and gram- already been anticipated by Wolfram von Soden.5) matical developments in Akkadian. In particular, he argues Bert Kouwenberg argues against the commonly held that the change Sem. *CaCaCV > Akk. CiCCV was not assumption that five of the six “guttural” (i.e. post-velar) caused by penultima stress, as hypothesized by Dolgopol- consonants merged into a glottal stop in Akkadian. He justly sky,3) but rather reflects vowel fronting next to a particular remarks that the change *h>’ or *Ì>‘ represents a fortition, set of consonants. Most of the forms where the change did whose context-free application would be typologically very occur contain the etymological Semitic interdentals of the tra- unusual. One can only hope that the Indo-Europeanists, who ditional reconstruction, which are reinterpreted as palatalized frequently assume that the three Indo-European “laryngeals” affricates within Diakonoff’s version of the Affricate Theory. merged into the glottal stop in Proto-Indo-Iranian,6) pay atten- This fragment of Diakonoff’s reconstruction was, however, tion to this simple observation.

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