A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World

Abstract

A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages, edited by Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee (Associate Professor of Comparative Semitics at the University of Chicago) is one of the most useful handbooks on the ancient Near Eastern languages to emerge in recent years. This volume introduces the reader to the ancient Near Eastern languages and language families attested from roughly 3200 BC to the second century AD. It does so over the course of 28 chapters organized into five parts.Part 1, “Writing Systems,” outlines the decipherment of ancient Near Eastern languages and the development of their writing systems. As such, it recounts the fascinating processes by which ancient Near Eastern languages such as Egyptian were deciphered in modern times and also traces the development of the Mesopotamian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphic, and alphabetic scripts.Part 2, “Ancient Near Eastern Languages,” describes the major languages used throughout the ancient Near East. The following languages are represented: Sumerian, Egyptian, Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Amorite, Hurrian, Hittite, Luwian, Ugaritic, Ancient Hebrew, Phoenician and Punic, Old and Imperial Aramaic, and Ancient South Arabian. Each chapter in this part summarizes the textual evidence (including textual sources, various stages of the language, and text types) for the language it covers and presents a grammatical sketch of the language’s phonology, morphology, and syntax. As noted by Hasselbach-Andee in the preface, “the focus of this volume is not so much on the detailed representation of the grammatical features of these languages, but rather on their context within Ancient Near Eastern societies and cultures” (p. xix). Accordingly, many chapters in this part also contain valuable discussion of the language’s sociolinguistic context, especially as it pertains to language contact.The final three parts of the book likewise highlight sociolinguistic concerns. Part 3 is entitled “Ancient Near Eastern Languages Used as Administrative Languages or Linguae Francae.” It examines how Akkadian and Aramaic served as languages of wider communication in antiquity during the second and first millennia BC, respectively.Part 4, “Language Contact in the Ancient Near East” surveys language contact between Sumerian and Akkadian, between Egyptian and Semitic as well as other ancient Near Eastern languages, and between Hebrew and Aramaic. The final chapter in part 4 helpfully synthesizes this information as it relates to multilingualism and diglossia in the ancient Near East.Finally, part 5 is entitled “The Development of Literary Languages and Literary Contact.” It investigates the standardization of literary languages as well as the influence of various literary traditions. Attention is given to the standardization of Akkadian (in the form of Standard Babylonian) and Egyptian (in the forms of Middle or Classical Egyptian, Traditional Egyptian or égyptien de tradition, and Late Egyptian). Following this are examinations of the influence of Sumerian on Hittite literature and of ancient Near Eastern literary traditions on the Hebrew Bible.A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages is an important resource for scholars of the Hebrew Bible because it situates the OT within its ancient Near Eastern context. It helpfully surveys the linguistic landscape of the ancient Near East, particularly as that landscape was shaped by important historical, cultural, and social factors. Knowledge of this background illuminates the biblical text, so scholars of the Hebrew Bible will gain much useful information for exegesis even if their research area is not the linguistic world of the Bible. In this regard, Alttestamentler will especially benefit from the book’s chapters on Ancient Hebrew (which includes discussion of Hebrew’s phases, language affiliation, and historical-cultural context) and ancient Near Eastern literary influences on the Hebrew Bible.As already indicated, another significant strength of A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages is its focus on the sociolinguistic context of the ancient Near East’s languages and language families. The essays in this volume successfully analyze the variation that the languages of the ancient Near East exhibit as well as the historical, cultural, and social factors—especially language contact situations—that shaped that variation. Such an emphasis is especially welcome given the current attention to sociolinguistics within linguistics generally as well as the growing interest in sociolinguistics within ancient Near Eastern linguistic scholarship. Furthermore, this focus on sociolinguistics distinguishes A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages from otherwise comparable handbooks such as The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook, edited by Stefan Weninger in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, and Janet C. E. Watson (Handbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 36. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011).Unfortunately, A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages’s emphasis on sociolinguistics comes—as Hasselbach-Andee acknowledges in the preface—at the expense of grammatical description. Its presentation of grammar does not cover nearly as many Semitic languages and dialects as, nor in as much depth as, the aforementioned The Semitic Languages. Unlike The Semitic Languages it treats the non-Semitic languages Sumerian, Egyptian, Elamite, Hurrian, Hittite, and Luwian, but even here its presentation of non-Semitic languages is naturally selective and not as comprehensive as it could be. Notably absent is a chapter devoted to Old Persian, an important Old Iranian language for scholars of the ancient Near East as well as the Hebrew Bible; a chapter on ancient Greek would also have been helpful. For a more comprehensive grammatical presentation of the ancient Near East’s languages, the reader will therefore want to consult The Semitic Languages or a work such as The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World’s Ancient Languages, edited by Roger D. Woodard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), not to mention the standard reference grammars.To sum up, A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages deserves a place on every Hebrew Bible scholar’s shelf (or device) alongside other standard resources on the ancient Near Eastern world of the OT. It offers concise grammatical sketches of many of the ancient Near East’s languages and distinctively highlights the sociolinguistic setting of those languages. Scholars of the Hebrew Bible will find A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages especially valuable because it situates the OT within its ancient context, an important prerequisite to understanding the biblical text properly.