原标题：Ancient Amorite Language Discovered
The Amorites and especially their language have long puzzled scholars. Indeed, many have wondered whether an Amorite language even existed. While the Amorites—first attested during the third millennium BCE as a nomadic people from Syria and the Levant—eventually became one of the most powerful groups to rule over Mesopotamia, very little evidence of their language has ever been found.
That changed, however, with the publication of an article in the journal Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale, which presented two tablets the authors believe were at least partially written in Amorite. While the content of the tablets themselves is not terribly groundbreaking, the discovery has significant implications for our understanding of Amorite and its relationship to other Bronze Age languages. The tablets, however, are unprovenanced objects, having likely been illegally removed from Iraq about 30 years ago in the wake of the First Gulf War and subsequently stored in various collections in the United States.
Two Amorite-Akkadian Bilingual Texts
Both tablets contain two-column bilingual lists, a format often used in pedagogical and scholastic contexts in Mesopotamia. While written in the normal cuneiform script, the content of the writing is far less standard. Most bilingual lists contain one column written in Sumerian and a second column that contains an Akkadian translation. In the two new tablets, however, the language in the left column was not the expected Sumerian but rather the never-before-seen Northwest Semitic language Amorite.
The Amorites and especially their language have long puzzled scholars. Indeed, many have wondered whether an Amorite language even existed. While the Amorites—first attested during the third millennium BCE as a nomadic people from Syria and the Levant—eventually became one of the most powerful groups to rule over Mesopotamia, very little evidence of their language has ever been found.
That changed, however, with the publication of an article in the journal Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale, which presented two tablets the authors believe were at least partially written in Amorite. While the content of the tablets themselves is not terribly groundbreaking, the discovery has significant implications for our understanding of Amorite and its relationship to other Bronze Age languages. The tablets, however, are unprovenanced objects, having likely been illegally removed from Iraq about 30 years ago in the wake of the First Gulf War and subsequently stored in various collections in the United States.
Two Amorite-Akkadian Bilingual Texts
Both tablets contain two-column bilingual lists, a format often used in pedagogical and scholastic contexts in Mesopotamia. While written in the normal cuneiform script, the content of the writing is far less standard. Most bilingual lists contain one column written in Sumerian and a second column that contains an Akkadian translation. In the two new tablets, however, the language in the left column was not the expected Sumerian but rather the never-before-seen Northwest Semitic language Amorite.
