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[[File:1200px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg|thumbnail|370px|left|The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder]]

[[File:Cuneiform.jpeg|thumbnail|left|Cuneiform Tablet]]

As the Akkadian Empire and other Mesopotamia states spread their influence in the 3rd millennium BC, very likely the Akkadian language spread to different regions of the ancient Near East, including Anatolia, Western Syria, Western Iran, the Levantine coast, and even reached Egypt and Cyprus by the 2nd millennium BC. The apex of use for the Akkadian language came in the Late Bronze Age (1600-1200 BC), when widespread trade and interaction between states in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East became well established. <ref>For a discussion on the role of Akkadian during the Late Bronze Age, see: Bryce, Trevor. 2003. ''Letters of the Great Kings of the Ancient Near East: The Royal Correspondence of the Late Bronze Age''. London ; New York: Routledge.</ref>

Additionally, Akkadian began to be utilize in the Persian Gulf, such as in Bahrain and along the coastal regions, with the Kassites (from Babylon) controlling parts of this region and corresponding with it in Akkadian. <ref>For more information on the Kassite and their presence in the Persian Gulf, see: Potter, Lawrence G. 2010. ''The Persian Gulf in History''. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, page 35.</ref> By the late 2nd millennium BC, we see the language of Akkadian economically uniting a very wide area, while allowing common communication between very disparate people groups and states.

However, one fatal flaw of the Akkadian language was its complexity. Often the tablets at Amarna show mistakes in the utilization of the complex syllabic and logogramic writing system. It is likely very few people at court or withing different societies understood Akkadian or the written language of Akkadian. In addition, the cuneiform wedges are best suited for clay tablets, which required knowledge in how to create such tablets properly. Many tablets at Amarna, for instance, are not made very well. In summary, scribes who had to utilize Akkadian needed long periods of training, effectively making Akkadian limited in its usage given its complexity and time investment. Even within southern Mesopotamia, the homeland of the language, the number of people who would have written the language would have been very limited during the peak of the language.<ref>For ideas on literacy in Mesopotamia, see: Dalley, Stephanie. 2005. ''The Legacy of Mesopotamia''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</ref>

[[File:Incantation_bowl_in_Aramaic_language,_Nippur,_Sasanian_period,_240-641_AD_-_Oriental_Institute_Museum,_University_of_Chicago_-_DSC07285.jpg|thumbnail|left|Incantation Bowl in Aramaic, Sassanian Period 240]]

While Akkadian was, on the one hand, the first language to spread wide in a region and bridge the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, its limitations prevented it from being adopted by common people. With the arrival of the Sea Peoples (c. 1200 BC), we see a political and economic vacuum created in the eastern Mediterranean and Near East. New population groups and states arose after the arrival of the Sea Peoples.<ref>For a discussion on the Sea Peoples see: Sandars, Nancy K. 1985. <i>The Sea Peoples: Warriors of the Ancient Mediterranean 1250 - 1150 BC</i>. Rev. ed. Ancient Peoples and Places 89. London: Thames and Hudson.</ref> This enabled new languages to arise, particularly the newly established alphabetical languages, as the alphabetical script, nearly 1000 years after its invention, began to be adopted more significantly by languages. One language that adopted the alphabet was Aramaic.<ref>For a discussion on Aramaic and its history see: Gzella, Holger. 2015. ''A Cultural History of Aramaic: From the Beginnings to the Advent of Islam''. <i>Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 1 The Near and Middle East</i>, volume 111. Boston: Brill.</ref> This language was spoken by the Arameans in Syria, Anatolia, the Levant, and northern Mesopotamia (Figure 2).

Summary

What we see is that early on in the Bronze Age, by 2000 BC and later throughout the 2nd millennium BC, Akkadian began to be utilized more throughout the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. However, Akkadian was flawed in its complexity. The invention of the alphabet, nevertheless, alone was not enough to diminish the importance of Akkadian, as the alphabet was invented by around 1600 BC. Rather, we see the crisis created by the Sea Peoples at around 1200 BC created a vacuum for new populations to emerge in the Near East and adopt a new writing system in the form of the alphabet. With the rise of the Neo-Assyrians and particularly the Achaemenid Empire, we then see the spread of the alphabetical Aramaic language. Its relative ease of use among disparate populations and increasing commercial interactions ensured that many people began adopting this language. In many respects, we can say that Aramaic is truly one of if not the world’s first widespread and widely used common languages, as it was a language not just spoke and written by a limited elite but utilized by common people in many areas.

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