GBPress- Gregorian Biblical Press

Sumerian and Akkadian in Sumer and Akkad

Author(s): Jerrold S. Cooper
Source: Orientalia, NOVA SERIES, Vol. 42 (1973), pp. 239-246
Published by: GBPress- Gregorian Biblical Press
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 239

Sumerian and Akkadian in Sumer and Akkad 1

Jerrold S. Cooper - Baltimore

Professor I. J. Gelb's major studies of language use in Karly Dynastic

and Sargonic Babylonia 2 led him to conclude that the north (Akkad and
beyond) was peopled by Akkadian speakers, and the south (Sumer) by Sumerian
speakers, with increasing Akkadian intrusions. Recent discoveries, notably
the Abu Salabikh tablets 3, have occasioned re-examination of Sumero- Akka-
dian language contact in early Babylonia4. The following discussion, which
will attempt to further this re-examination, owes much to the stimulating ideas
which Professor Gelb has expressed both in print and in his classroom.
The earliest unambiguous evidence for the presence of significant numbers
of Akkadian speakers in southern Mesopotamia is the scribal names from Abu
Salabikh, at the beginning of Early Dynastic III (ca. 2600) 6. The earliest in-
disputable attestation of the Sumerian language antedates this evidence by
little more than a century (end of BD I) 6, although arguments for the exist-
ence of Sumerian in the preceding archeological period ("Protoliterate") have
been widely accepted 7. If we assume that the Abu Salabikh scribes were not
recent immigrants, but rather represented a population group that had been
in the land long enough to have become involved in the production of rather
sophisticated literary texts in a language not their own, then Sumero- Akkadian

1 Abbreviations follow CAD K vi ff. Kraus = F. R. Kraus, Sumerer und

Akkader : Ein Problem der altmesopotamischen Geschichte (Amsterdam, 1970).
2 MAD 22 1 ff., and Genava 8 1960) 265 ff.
8 See R. D. Biggs, JCS 20 (1966) 73 ff., Or 36 (1967) 55 ff., 61 (1971)
193 ff.; R. D. Biggs and M. Civil, RA 60 (1966) 1 ff.
4 Especially the work of Kraus cited in footnote 1.
6 Biggs, Or 36 (1967) 55 ff. Note p. 56 fn. 3, where Biggs, following Gelb,
Genava 8 (1960) 265, rejects the attempt to characterize certain names from the
archaic Ur texts as Semitic. Despite Kraus' well-reasoned objections to using
the language of a personal name or document as evidence for labeling its bearer
or writer a Sumerian or Akkadian (Kraus 17 f.), it is difficult to avoid interpret-
ing incipient Akkadian personal names and texts as evidence for the presence
of Akkadian speakers. A language can be used for both personal names and
writing after it is no longer spoken, but it is unlikely that a language would
be used for such purposes before it was spoken. Thus, throughout this paper,
the incipience of Akkadian in areas of written language use and personal names
will be considered significant evidence for the use of Akkadian as a spoken lan-
guage, whereas the survival of Sumerian will not be considered significant for
the use of Sumerian as a spoken language.
The chronology used in this paper follows D. O. Edzard and J. Bottéro
in J. Bottéro et al., The Near East : The Early Civilizations (London, 1967), pp.
53 f., 94 f., and 152 f.
6 The archaic Ur texts. Cf. E. Burrows, UET 2 p. 22, and A. Falkenstein,
OLZ 40 (1937) 96 f.
7 A. Falkenstein, ATU 37 ff., and see now the contribution of Kraus 55.

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 240 J. S. Cooper

language contact in Mesopotamia can be projected back literally to the dawn

of history. Our evidence is, of course, textual, and any statements about the
spoken languages of early Babylonia are necessarily extrapolations from writ-
ten sources. The case of Abu Salabikh is paradigmatic for the difficulties in-
volved: the scribes who wrote our earliest Sumerian literary texts had Akka-
dian names. Of the possible conclusions one might draw from this fact, the most
extreme, for so early a period in Mesopotamian history, is that the scribes re-
present an Akkadian speaking population group that uses Sumerian as its ve-
hicle for written expression 8. Yet, extreme though this position may be, much
of our evidence can be interpreted to support it, and little can be persuasively
marshalled against it.
Although Pre-Sargonic sources for Akkadian are indeed "scant" 9, the
abundant Sargonic material 10 represents a northern population with predomi-
nantly Semitic names writing in Akkadian, and a southern population with
predominantly Sumerian names writing exclusively in Sumerian 11 . That the
northerners with Akkadian names and writing in Akkadian spoke Akkadian
is an assumption that few will challenge, but did the Sumerian writing southern-
ers with Sumerian names actually speak Sumerian in BD III and the Sargonic
period? Again, few would object to the proposition that at some time, the in-
habitants of what we call Sumer spoke Sumerian. In an exhaustive and stim-
ulating study, which one hopes has decisively laid to rest several myths and
misconceptions, F. R. Kraus concludes that whereas the existence of the Sume-
rian and Akkadian languages makes it certain that Sumerians and Akkadians
did at one time exist as separate groups, our sources do not permit us to define
two distinct language groups in any period, and that a "highly developed sym-
biosis" possibly existed at the time of our earliest sources 12 . Nowhere do these
sources mention or even imply ethno-linguistic differences, and the historian
must interpret the evidence of written language and personal names with re-
gard to subsequent historical development and general linguistic theory, in
order to reconstruct the hypothetical language contact situation and the pro-
cess which led to the eventual replacement of Sumerian by Akkadian 13 .
This process was virtually complete by the early Old Babylonian period
(ca. 1900). Gelb's assertion that the fact that all known OB letters are written in
Akkadian 14 "is the best evidence that Akkadian became the commonly spoken

8 Kraus 98. But note the expression of the more conventional view on p.
91, where Nippur, just 12 miles south-east of Abu Salabikh, is considered "wohl
sicher" a Sumerian speaking area in the Sargonic period.
9 MAD 22 5; Kraus 83.
10 MAD 22 6ff.; additions in J.Roberts, The Earliest Semitic Pantheon
(Baltimore, 1972), p. 9 fn. 5.
11 MAD 22 11 ff.; Genava 8 (1960) 268 f.
12 Kraus 99.
13 The objections of Kraus (p. 20) to this type of hypothesizing, while un-
reasonably harsh, should be kept in mind.
14 The archive studied by S. Walters m YNER 4, from the time of Abisare
and Sumuel of Larsa (ca. 1900-1850), already manifests the Sumerian documents
- Akkadian letters syndrome. But from the preceding century there are at
least three Sumerian letter-orders datable to Ishbi-Erra, Ishme-Dagan, and
Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (see Hallo, BiOr 26 172 for references and discussion), as
well as one half- Akkadian letter-order from the same period ( BIN 9 475, edi-
ted by Hallo, op. cit., 175). Thus, Gelb's generalization may not hold true for the
reigns of the earliest Isin kings, who, in any case, are known for their conscious
preservation of Ur III forms (see e.g., Edzard in Bottéro, op. cit., p. 175).

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 Sumerian and Akkadian in Sumer and Akkad 241

language of the country" 16 is still valid. These Akkadian letters were written
for the same individuals represented by legal documents still composed, to
a great extent, in Sumerian. Unless we are willing to assume that some letters
were dictated in Sumerian and then translated into Akkadian and written
down by a scribe 16, we must conclude that Sumerian was not spoken by any-
one who sent letters, or at least, if they did speak Sumerian, they were bilingual.
The survival of Sumerian in legal contexts, where phraseology is highly formal-
ized, and not in epistolary contexts, which require greater flexibility of expres-
sion and hence greater linguistic competence, suggests that Sumerian was no
longer a living language 17 .
This extinction of Sumerian as a spoken language was the end result of
a process that began with the first contact between Akkadian and Sumerian
speakers 18 . Barring violent incidents, such as wholesale annihilation, deporta-
tion, or deliberate supression, language displacement is a slow process, and
occurs when the bilingual community expands to include all members of one
mother-tongue group, who then neglect to teach the mother tongue (here Su-
merian) to their children. If this process was substantially complete by early
OB, then it must have been well underway during the preceding Ur III period
(ca. 2100-2000). In reviewing the evidence for this period, Kraus observes that
"es scheint sich ein Staatsvolk, eine Nation akkadischer Sprach herauszubil-
den" 19 ; his review of the Akkadian loanwords in Sumerian during Ur III gives
the impression that Sumerian was a "tote Schriftsprache oder die absterbende
Sprache einer Minorität" 20. Kraus' reluctance to be decisive on this point
(p. 96) seems unwarranted in light of his own presentation. Sumerian as a spo-
ken language was in all probability dead or nearly so in Ur III.
The only counter-indication for this is the extraordinary amount of Sume-
rian literary composition in this period 21. While it is difficult to imagine this
kind of activity without roots in a mother-tongue community, it is not without
historical parallel, as the history of L,atin literature in Europe or the Hebrew
renaissance in Spain amply demonstrate. In any case, this composition of Su-
merian texts continues into OB and beyond, and cannot be used to justify
the existence of a Sumerian speaking population group. Nor do the overwhelm-
ing number of Sumerian administrative and legal documents 22 and the com-
paratively miniscule number of Akkadian texts found from the Ur III period
warrant the designation "Neo-Sumerian" for this period. The Ur III texts
come almost exclusively from southern sites, where such texts were written
in Sumerian prior to Ur III, and continue to be written in Sumerian in the Old

16 Genava 8 (1960) 271.

16 The reverse most probably did occur. Cf. Kraus 96 f.
17 It continued to be spoken in scribal schools (see below), but as such was
nobody's native language, but only an elite, acquired language without a
mother-tongue group.
18 Kraus 19.
19 Kraus 89.
20 Kraus 93.
21 See, e.g., Hallo, TAOS 83 (1963) 167 ff. and CRAI 17 (1970) 116 ff.
22 Whereas the absence of Sumerian letters in OB is taken to indicate that
Sumerian is extinct as a spoken language in that period (see above)., the pres-
ence of Sumerian letters in Ur III cannot be used as evidence that Sumerian
was still spoken then. There are numerous historical examples for letter writ-
ing in a tongue other than the vernacular; Akkadian itself was used to write
letters long after most, if not all, of the population spoke Aramaic.
Orientalia - 16

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 242 J. S. Cooper

Babylonian period. No Ur III texts have yet been published from northern sites,
which, based on evidence of previous and succeeding periods, one would expect
to yield Akkadian texts 23. Gelb's view that "the Sumerian renaissance affected
only the written language, while the country in general continued in the direc-
tion of total Semitization and elimination of Sumerian elements" 24 is valid,
albeit on the conservative side 25. By the end of the Ur III period, Akkadian
w7as so solidly entrenched as the spoken language in southern Mesopotamia
that it was able to resist the pressures of large numbers of Amorite speaking
settlers on the one hand, and absorb any remnants of the Sumerian mother-
tongue group on the other.
The question remains: how far back should the dominance of Akkadian
as a spoken language in Sumer be projected? If Sumerian could be used almost
exclusively for writing in Ur III, when spoken Akkadian was probably wide-
spread, then the use of Sumerian in Sumer for the same purposes in KD III
and the Sargonic period does not necessarily indicate that Sumerian was the
dominant spoken language during those periods. The same may be said of the
overwhelming number of Sumerian names found in southern documents 26 .
Naming customs "survive even a total displacement of the language in which
they originated" 27 , and the use of Sumerian names in the south continued into
Ur III 28, OB and beyond, although with a gradually increasing and eventually
superior number of Akkadian names.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it does not seem unreasonable
to posit a situation in which the displacement of Sumerian as a spoken language
in Sumer was in progress in ED III 29. The subsequent Akkadianization of

23 Cf. Kdzard in Bottéro, op. cit., 148, and Kraus 93 f.

24 MAD 22 18; cf. Genava 8 (1960) 270.
25 The term "renaissance" is misleading. We now know that many Sume-
rian compositions are very old, and there is evidence for vigorous literary activ-
ity in both the Karly Dynastic (see most recently Biggs, ZA 61 [1971] 193 fï.)
and Sargonic (see Hallo, YNER 3 1 ff.) periods. The tremendous number of
Sumerian administrative texts do not indicate a revival of the language, but
rather an enormous increase in bureaucratic documentation, using the language
that had always been used for such purposes in Sumer.
26 Note Biggs' suggestion in Or 36 (1967) 66, that the use of Sumerian and
Akkadian personal names in early KD III might correlate with differences in
socio-economic status.
27 K. Haugen, Bilingualism in the Americas (University of Alabama, 1956),
p. 104. One might argue that sentence names of the Sumerian type require some
knowledge of the Sumerian language on the part of the giver of the name. But
since Sumerian names were given in OB,, when the likelihood of a Sumerian
speech community is minimal, and Akkadian sentence names were given in
later periods, in what must have been Aramaic speech communities, it must
have been possible for such names to be given without the ostensible giver hav-
ing a speaking knowledge of the language. Simple names (e.g., lú-dnanna)
were doubtless known and understood by all; lexically and syntactically more
elaborate names may have been composed with the aid of a scribe or other per-
son with the requisite knowledge of Sumerian personal names and their
elements. In this respect, note that in his "Répertoire des termes entrant dans
la composition des anthr opony mes" (H. Lernet, L' anthroponymie Sumérienne
[Paris, 19681), Limet lists only 152 items.
28 Cf. the discussion of the distribution of Sumerian and Akkadian personal
names in Ur III by Limet, op. cit., 49 ff., who would insist on some ethno-lin-
guistic significance in the choice of language.
29 Cf. note 53, below, for the reflection of KD bilingualism in Sumer in a
literary text.

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 Sumerian and Akkadian in Sumer and Akkad 243

language use can be illustrated by the following table. The use of parentheses
indicates a significant , but smaller amount of usage of the language in question.

Language Use in Sumer

Speech Personal Names Letters Documents Literature

ED III Sum./Akk. 30 Sum. 31 Sum. Sum. Sum.

Sargonic Akk. (Sum.?) Sum. (Akk.) 32 Sum33 Sum. Sum.
Ur III Akk. Sum. (Akk. and Sum. Sum. Sum.
Amorite)
OB Akk. (Amo- Akk. (Sum. and Akk.35 Sum. (Akk.) Sum. (Akk.)
rite) 34 Amorite)

An assumed absence of language contact on the spoken level after ED

III would explain why there is relatively little non-lexical Sumerian interfer-
ence in Akkadian, and why what interference that has been postulated is
found already in Old Akkadian 36 . This kind of interference in a living language
is not imaginable without intensive contact between the affected language
and speakers of the language that is the source of the interference. The contact
produces a bilingual community through which the interference can pass from
one language to the other 37 . Because of the absence of comparative materials
for Sumerian, non-lexical Akkadian interference in early Sumerian is more dif-
ficult to detect 38 . Only with the adjustment of the case government of certain

30 No estimate of the relative size of the mother-tongue groups is implied.

31 For Akkadian names, see Kraus 83 ff.
32 For the Akkadian names, cf. Kraus 88.
33 For some Akkadian letters, see Gelb, MAD 22 12.
34 The question of Amorite as a spoken language in OB cannot be discus-
sed here. Cf. CAD A s.v. amnânû ; J. Renger ZA 61 (1971) 26 f.
36 For Sumerian letters, see note 14, above.
36 On the phonological level, the reduction of Semitic laryngals and pha-
ryngals, supposedly under Sumerian influence (e.g. W. von Soden, GAG, p. 2
and A. Falkenstein, Genava 8 [1960] 303 f.; cf. B. Reiner, A Linguistic Analysis
of Akkadian [The Hague, 1966], 33 f.), was already underway in Old Akkadian
(MAD 22 119 f.). Morphological interference resulting in the creation of the
Akkadian "t-perfect" and ventive has been suggested by W. von Soden, AS
16 (1965) 103 ff., and W. Eilers, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft
14 (1968) 241 ff., has suggested that Sumerian influence may have led to the
development of the Akkadian subjunctive. Sumerian interference on the syn-
tactic level may have led to the placement of the Akkadian verb at the end of
the sentence (von Soden, GAG , pp. 2 and 183; cf. Kraus 98 f.). While most of
these suggested examples are plausible, the argument for Sumerian interference
rather than strictly internal development is in no case conclusive.
37 For the passage of interference from the speech of bilingual individuals
into the language of an entire mother-tongue community, see U. Weinreich,
Languages in Contact (The Hague, 1966), 11. For phonological and grammati-
cal interference arising from bilingual contact situations, see ibid,. 14 ff., and
M. Emeneau, PAPS 106 (1962) 430 ff. (this last reference supplied by
K. Reiner) .
38 For the possibility of Akkadian interference in early Sumerian, see the
remarks of W. von Soden, A S 16 (1965) 105. Intensive study of the forthcoming
Abu Salabikh tablets may shed light on this problem.

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 244 J. S. Cooper

Sumerian verbs on the model of their Akkadian counterparts and the use of
the Akkadian conjunction u in the inscriptions of Gudea and his predecessors39,
does the structural influence of Akkadian on Sumerian become apparent 40 .
This begins after we assume Sumerian to be dead, for all intents and pur-
poses, as a spoken language, and thus highly vulnerable to interference from
the mother tongue (Akkadian) of the scribes who wrote it. Akkadian
interference continues and increases in the Sumerian of the Ur III and Old
Babylonian periods, although the amount of interference varies considerably,
depending on the provenience, genre and date of any given text.
It is in the Old Babylonian period that the scribal schools begin to treat
Sumerian as a foreign language41. Lexical texts, originally intended as aids
in learning the writing system, were eventually transformed into language
learning aids by the addition of an Akkadian translation column42. Similarly,
the first explications of Sumerian grammar were composed43. Occasionally,
Akkadian glosses are found in OB Sumerian literary texts, but their infrequency
testifies to the high quality of Sumerian education in the OB schools, as does
the paucity of bilinguals dating from this period. In contrast to subsequent
periods, when Sumerian texts had relatively fixed Akkadian translations that
often, if not always, appeared together with them on the same tablet, the rare
bilinguals of the Old Babylonian period were school exercises or the work of
individual and apparently less competent scribes44. This kind of "pony" was
not needed by the great majority of literary scribes, who not only composed
in and understood Sumerian, but spoke it in the schools as well 45, much as their
analogues spoke Latin in the academies of medieval Kur ope. There is, however,
no evidence at all for spoken Sumerian in Post- Old Babylonian schools, and we
may suppose that Sumerian as a spoken language died out completely in its
last bastion, the scribal school, a thousand or more years after it had begun
to be displaced by Akkadian. It continued to be studied and written for another
millennium and a half.

39 A. Falkenstein, AnOr 29 (1950) pp. 42 fn. 3 and 81 ff.

40 Note that the assumed phonetic shift m Sumerian at the end of Ur III
(A. Falkenstein, Das Sumerische [Leiden, 1959], p. 25) can be more plausibly
explained in terms of innovations in the Akkadian syllabary (J. Renger, ZA
[1971] 61 31 ff.). Cf. also H. Sauren, ZA 59 (1969) 63 f.
41 Note the exhortation to a scribe in the fictitious Sumerian letter in Letter
Collection B 20:3 (F. A. Ali, Sumerian Letters [Ann Arbor, 1964], 153): eme-gi7-šé
gú-zu na-ab-šub-bé-en "Don't neglect your Sumerian!" Other OB references
to learning or proficiency in Sumerian can be found in Gordon, Sumerian Prov-
erbs, 2.47, 49 and 55, and the commentaries thereto. Additional references
will be available in M. Civil's forthcoming Sumerian Dialogues and Debates.
42 For a sketch of the development of the lexical texts, see A. L. Oppen-
heim, Ancient Mesopotamia (Chicago, 1964), 244 ff.
43 Published in MSL 4.
44 Cf. ZA 61 (1971) 7. The bilingual literary texts, which first appear m
OB, did not necessarily develop from glossed texts (so e.g., Oppenheim, op.
cit., 249), since there is a full-fledged bilingual among the earliest OB Sumerian
literary texts yet descovered (Cros, Tello , 212 [AO 4322]; for the age of the text,
see Thureau-Dangin in Cros, Tello, 198 and 201, and J. Krecher, ZA 58 [1967]
19). Rather, glossed texts and bilinguals were two separate methods developed
by some OB scribes to aid their comprehension of Sumerian literary texts.
I hope to deal with this problem in greater detail elsewhere.
46 References to speaking Sumerian will be found m the forthcoming work
of Civil mentioned in note 41, above.

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 Sumerian and Akkadian in Sumer and Akkad 245

Linguists who study bilingualism recognize that numerous variables are

involved in any contact situation, and that facile explanations for the eventual
dominance of one language and the extinction of another are inadequate46.
Because of our ignorance of the socio-economic distribution of the Sumerian
and Akkadian language communities 47 , and our inability to estimate the rel-
ative size of the two groups at any point in history, we are hardly in a posi-
tion to offer an explanation for the displacement of Sumerian by Akkadian.
"Prestige" was hardly a factor here, since Sumerian was and remained a "pres-
tige" language long after it had ceased to be spoken. Sheer numbers may have
made the difference, though the only evidence for an assumed "inundation" 48
of Akkadians would be the eventual dominance of the language, and such cir-
cularity is not enlightening. One also reads that Akkadian eventually pre-
vailed, or at least that the rise of Agade was made possible, because of the large-
scale influx of other Semitic groups, notably "Old Amorites", into Mesopotamia
during ED III 49 . The evidence for this influx has never really been presented,
and in any case, it is difficult to imagine that massive immigration of Amorite
speakers into a predominantly Sumerian speaking area would result in Akka-
dian dominance, any more than Swedish settlement in Belgium would strength-
en the position of Flemish in Walloon strongholds, or the immigration of
large numbers of Brazilians into Canada would result in the increased use of
French in traditionally English speaking areas 60 . The underlying premise of
such explanations of Akkadian dominance is "all Semites stick together", which
any casual observer of the contemporary, or, for that matter, ancient Near
East knows is absurd51.
Kraus, in summarizing the textual evidence for Sumerians and Akkadians,
correctly insists that the difficulty in even finding designations for Sumerians
and Akkadians in Pre-Ur III texts, and the vague usage of these terms from
Ur III on, make the existence of competing or antagonistic ethno-linguistic

46 Weinreich, op. cit., 106 ff.; Emeneau, op. cit., 432 ff.; Iv. Bloomfield,
Language (New York, 1933), 463 ff.
47 But cf. the remarks of Biggs, referred to in note 26, above.
48 In view of the universality of the flood motif, one must be highly skepti-
cal of the attempt to interpret that motif in Mesopotamia as a metaphor for
hordes of invading Semites (A. Falkenstein in Bottéro, op. cit., 51, followed,
but modified by Van Dijk in S. Hartman, Syncretism [Stockholm, 1969],
p. 179).
49 W. von Soden, WZKM 56 (1960) 185 ff. and Iraq 28 (1966) 144. Kraus,
p. 21, is also inclined toward this view.
50 Moving from hypothetical examples to fact, the recent expansion of
speakers of one Germanic language (German) into Eastern Europe led to the
virtual extinction there of another Germanic language (Yiddish) and its
mother-tongue community of many millions.
61 The relative closeness of two Semitic languages and their remoteness
from Sumerian would play little or no role here. An immigrant group would
learn the language that would be most useful to it; that is to say, language use
would be determined by socio-economic rather than linguistic criteria. In any
case, it is not certain that languages close to one's own are more easily learned
that those that are more remote (V. Vildomec, Multilingualism [Leiden, 1963],
19 ff.), and for children learning Sumerian in a contact situation, it would be
irrelevant. Turkish, a language frequently compared to Sumerian, was learned
as a second language by many speakers of both Semitic and Indo-European
languages during the Ottoman period.

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 246 J. S. Cooper

groups in early Mesopotamia highly unlikely 52 . The historical memory of that

land reached back to the days of Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh, and
nowhere in the literature concerning the Pre-Ur III history of their land did
the Mesopotamians reveal even a trace of ethno-linguistic conflict 63 . Certain
aspects of this problem, notably the interpretation of the Curse of Agade, will
be discussed elsewhere. Let it suffice here to indicate that "Gilgamesh and Ag-
ga" M, the only Sumerian text dealing with the Karly Dynastic north-south
political division and conflict, never suggests any ethno-linguistic differences
between the protagonists or their followers. And it is not unthinkable that in
their confrontation beneath the walls of Uruk, Gilgamesh and Agga addressed
each other in an earlier form of the Old Akkadian language that we know
through the masterly works of Professor Gelb.

52 Thus vindicating and extending the conclusions reached by Jacobsen

in his seminal article in J AOS 59 (1939) 485-95, now reprinted in Toward the
Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 1970), 187-192.
53 Consciousness of language difference is manifest m the famous passage
in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta 141 ff. (S. N. Kramer, Enmerkar and the
Lord of Aratta [Philadelphia, 1952], p. 14; new texts courtesy Sol Cohen):
u4-ba kur šuburki ha-ma-ziki
eme-ha-mun ke-en-gi kur gal me nam-nun-na-kam
ki-uri kur me-te gal-la
kur mar-tu ú-sal-la ná-a
an-ki nigin-na un sag-sì-ga
den-líl-ra eme-as-àm hé-en-na-da-ab-dulx
"In those days, the mountain lands Šubur and Hamazi,
. . . -tongued Sumer, great mountain of princely me' s
Akkad, the mountain that has all that is befitting,
The mountain land of Martu, reposing securely,
The whole world, the tended people,
Spoke together to Enlil in one language".
If eme-ha-mun , whether translated "discordant tongued" or "harmonious
tongued" (see the bibliography given by A. Sjöberg, TC S 3 83), is understood
as referring to two languages, not simply to Sumerian alone, then it would re-
flect Sumero- Akkadian bilingualism in Sumer proper in ED II (see already
W. von Soden, BiOr 16 [1959] 132; for another possibility, see Sjöberg, loc.
cit.) If this later reflection of Sumer's "heroic age" is accurate, it would support
the position taken in this paper that Akkadian began to displace Sumerian in
ED III.
64 S. N. Kramer, A JA 53 (1949) 1 ff. Add TuM NF 4 5 and 6, 3NT 487,
CBS 15164, and N 1250 (unpublished texts courtesy M. Civil). Most relevant
literature is quoted by A. Falkenstein, AfO 21 (1966) 47 ff. A new edition is
being prepared by A. Shaffer.

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