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[[File:1200px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-_The_Tower_of_Babel_(Vienna)_-_Google_Art_Project_-_edited.jpg|thumbnail|300px370px|left|The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder]]Common languages are an integral part of linguistic development in the ancient world, as often such . Common languages influence subsequent languages and help unify or unified economically and politically integrate diverse populations over a wide territoryand influenced the development of subsequent languages. The ancient Near East displays some of the world’s earliest common languages shared by several states and population groups. The earliest lingua franca is perhaps most likely Akkadian.<ref>For a further discussion on lingua franca languages and Akkadian see: Chew, Phyllis Ghim Lian. 2009. ''Emergent Lingua Francas and World Orders: The Politics and Place of English as a World Language''. <i>Routledge Studies in Sociolinguistics </i> 1. New York: Routledge.</ref> However, it is not clear if this language was spoken and written very widely, as it may have been more utilized by the elites from different regions, such as the political establishments.
====The Rise of Akkadian====[[File:Cuneiform.jpeg|thumbnail|left|Cuneiform Tablet]] Akkadian was one of the first written languages, along with Sumerian, Elamite, and ancient Egyptian. <ref> For a discussion on Akkadian, see: Deutscher, Guy. 2000. ''Syntactic Change in Akkadian the Evolution of Sentential Complementation''. New York: Oxford University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10229911.</ref> However, unlike these other languages, Akkadian spread in use throughout the Near East, Egypt, and even reached Cyprus by the 2nd millennium BC. Written Akkadian utilized cuneiform writing, a system of wedge-shaped writing (Figure 1), that was primarily a syllabic and logogramic written language.
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 within different societies understood Akkadian or the written language of Akkadian. In additionAlso, 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, the scribes who had to utilize used Akkadian needed long periods of extensive training, effectively making Akkadian limited in its usage given its complexity and time investmentdifficulty. 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 its peak of the language.<ref>For ideas on literacy in Mesopotamia, see: Dalley, Stephanie. 2005. ''The Legacy of Mesopotamia''. Oxford: Oxford University Press.</ref>
====The Rise of Aramaic====[[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 be spread across a diverse 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>
Summary
====Conclusion====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.
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Updated December 28, 2018.
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