Николас Остлер - Empires of the Word - A language History of the World

As once had Sumerian, so now Akkadian fell victim to a new language brought by nomads and newcomers; unstable bilingualism followed, together with the death of the older language.

In such times, the only argument for an education in Akkadian was to maintain the link with the literature of the previous two thousand years, and the traditions of grandeur associated with the great cities of Mesopotamia. It lived on in Babylon as a classical language for six hundred years after its probable death: not only did the last dynasty of Babylon (625-539 BC) use it for chronicles of their rule, despite being of Chaldaean (i.e. Aramaic) extraction, but foreign conquerors, the Persians Cyrus (557-529 BC) and Xerxes (485-465 BC) and even the Greek Antiochus Soter (280-261 BC), all left inscriptions in the royal language glorifying their own reigns. There was certainly a new and, some would say, barbarous resonance when a Greek monarch could write: ‘I am An-ti- ’u-ku-us [Antiochus], the great king, the legitimate king, the king of the world, king of E [Babylon], king of all countries, the caretaker of the temples Esagila and Ezida, the first born of Si-lu-uk-ku [Seleucus], Ma-ak-ka-du-na-a-a [Macedonian], king of Babylon.’ [274] Pritchard (1969: 317): Historical documents, 5. Antiochus Soter (trans. F. H. Weissbach).

But there were few who could still understand them. [24] Hebrew and Phoenician include some of the complexities of their grammar in their spelling: most of the stop consonants are pronounced as fricatives in the middle of a word. In our romanisation, we represent this with an under- or overline: thus ḇ, ḏ, g, ḵ, p, ṯ are pronounced v , th (as in then ), gh (a gargling sound), ch (as in loch ), f , th (as in thin ). Dots under s, t and d in Phoenician, Hebrew and Arabic mean that they are pronounced ‘emphatically’, giving them a somewhat dull, throaty quality.

mī ḵə-ṣōr kə-ḏumāh bəṯōḵ hayyām

Who was ever silenced like Tyre, surrounded by the sea? [25] Agreement has never been reached on why the Greeks picked on phoinīkes as their word for these roaming Semitic traders. Literally it means ‘date palms’ (or indeed the mythical phoenix birds), but the association with phoinos or phoinios , ‘gory, blood red’, was always kept in mind, since the Phoenicians were the purveyors par excellence of purple-dyed fabrics, and farmed the dye’s raw material, murex shellfish, on an industrial scale. The association of the colour with this part of the world goes beyond Greek: the Akkadian word for ‘purple’ was kinaẖẖu , derived from the place name Kinaẖ (n)I , ‘Canaan’ (Black et al. 2000: s.v.). Although the Hebrews lived in Canaan themselves, they used the word kəna ‘aniy , as Greeks did phoinix , to refer indifferently to a Phoenician or a merchant; and this seems to be what the Phoenicians called themselves.

Ezekiel xxvii.32

The Canaan sisters grew up together, but then set out on very different paths in life.

Phoenicia (not her real name, but one that recalls the lustrous colour for which she was famous [26] This is known as the TaNaK(for Tôrāh Nḇi’îm wa-Ksṯūḇîm , ‘Law, Prophets and Scriptures’). But besides that there is the commentary on the Torah known as the Mishnah (200 BC-AD 200), the supplement known as Tosephta (AD 300), and a verse-by-verse commentary on the TaNaK, known as the Midrash (AD 200-600). These show that Hebrew continued to be written as well as read. ) chose the high life, and became associated with jewellery, fine clothing and every form of luxury. She travelled extensively, became known and admired in all the best social circles, and was widely imitated for her sophisticated skills in communication. She surrounded herself with all the most creative, intelligent and wealthy people of her era, and as a skilled hostess put them in contact with one another. She also had a daughter, Elissa, who was not perhaps as brilliant or as versatile as her mother, but who set up her own household, and went on to expand her mother’s network, when Phoenicia’s own energies were waning.

The other sister, Judith, had an obscure and perhaps disreputable youth, but then settled down to a quiet life at home. She never ventured outside her own neighbourhood, contenting herself with domestic duties. For all her homeliness, many thought she had far too high an opinion of herself, and she had considerable difficulties with local bullies: occasionally she was attacked in her own home and dragged off screaming; ultimately she lost her home altogether. All she could do was try to survive wherever she was led, in a dogged but non-assertive way, relying above all on her memories of her home as she had once kept it, and her unswerving religious devotion. She had no children of her own, but now and then she acted as a foster mother, undiscouraged though she received little gratitude or loyalty from her charges.

The world reversed the fortunes of these two sisters. Despite Phoenicia’s glittering career, her enterprising nature and all her popularity, she quite suddenly disappeared, and among the people she had frequented, stimulated and dazzled for so long, she left no memory at all. Her daughter did perpetuate her memory, but in the end she did no better: she was mortally wounded by a rival, lost all her looks and wealth, and then wasted away to nothing.

Now it is as if Phoenicia and her daughter had never been. Yet Judith is still with us, often derided and dishonoured—especially by her foster children, who have been strangely resentful of her—but apparently as sturdy as ever. She has even, just recently, returned to her old home, and seems thereby to have gained a fresh lease of life.

This little parable points out the strange irony in the fates of the languages of the land of Canaan. Hebrew (often self-named as [ yẖūdīth ], ‘she of Judah’) and Phoenician are two of the languages of ancient Canaan, the others being Ammonite, Moabite and Edomite, spoken east of the River Jordan. There was also Ugaritic, spoken on the coast north of Phoenicia. All may have begun as the languages of nomadic tribes in this area, marauding Habiru. But some settled on the coast of Lebanon. During the first millennium BC, their trading activities developed mightily, and their language, Phoenician, became much the most widely spoken of the group. Hebrew and the others, by contrast, never became major languages, being restricted to the south-west of Canaan, and that only in the first part of that millennium. In the sixth century BC, Hebrew was weakened, and probably finished as a vernacular, by virtue of the enforced exile of the Jews to Babylon, coinciding with the spread of Aramaic all over the Babylonian empire.

Phoenician appears to have gone on being spoken on the coast of Lebanon until the first century BC (where it was replaced by Aramaic), and in North Africa until at least the fifth century AD. But although Hebrew had ceased to be spoken many centuries before this, its written and ritual use by Jews as the sacred language of Judaism had never lapsed. This underground existence was protected by a tradition of teaching in schools, and persistent reading, exposition and copying of the Jewish texts, of which the Bible’s ‘Old Testament’ is quite a small part. [27] It was written on clay tablets; this is why it survived. But it was incised in an alphabet based on cuneiform, so graphically too it throws an interesting light on the Phoenicians, until then reputed to have been the first to use an alphabet. The simpler shapes of the Phoenician letters are due to their usually being written with ink on papyrus, rather than stamped with an angled stylus on clay.