Misplaced Pages

#447552

116-613: An Assyrian inscription from ca. 673 BC ( Prism of Esarhaddon ) refers to it as Tamesi , described as a city-state which paid tribute to the Neo-Assyrian Empire . As there were copper mines in the neighbourhood, it is very probably the Temese mentioned by Homer (Odyssey, I, 184), which was in his time the principal copper market of the island. Today the villages of Psimolofou , Episkopeio , Pera Orinis , Ergates , Politiko , Kampia , Analyontas , and Kapedes occupy

232-488: A James, brother of Jesus . However, most modern scholars tend to reject this line of reasoning, since the author himself does not indicate any familial relationship with Jesus . A similar problem presents itself with the Epistle of Jude (Ἰούδας Ioudas ): the writer names himself a brother of James (ἀδελφὸς δὲ Ἰακώβου adelphos de Iakóbou ), but it is not clear which James is meant. According to some Christian traditions, this

348-691: A lingua franca of the empire, rather than it being eclipsed by Akkadian. Texts written 'exclusively' in Neo-Assyrian disappear within 10 years of Nineveh 's destruction in 612 BC. Under the Achaemenids , Aramaic continued to prosper, but Assyrian continued its decline. The language's final demise came about during the Hellenistic period when it was further marginalized by Koine Greek , even though Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in literary tradition well into Parthian times. Similarly,

464-650: A voiced alveolar trill /r/ but its pattern of alternation with ⟨ ḫ ⟩ suggests it was a fricative (either uvular /ʁ/ or velar /ɣ/ ). In the Hellenistic period, Akkadian ⟨ r ⟩ was transcribed using the Greek ρ, indicating it was pronounced similarly as an alveolar sound (though Greeks may also have perceived a uvular trill as ρ). Several Proto-Semitic phonemes are lost in Akkadian. The Proto-Semitic glottal stop *ʔ , as well as

580-517: A comparison with other Semitic languages, and the resulting picture was gradually amended using internal linguistic evidence from Akkadian sources, especially deriving from so-called plene spellings (spellings with an extra vowel). According to this widely accepted system, the place of stress in Akkadian is completely predictable and sensitive to syllable weight . There are three syllable weights: light (ending in -V); heavy (ending in -V̄ or -VC), and superheavy (ending in -V̂, -V̄C or -V̂C). If

696-549: A detailed introduction presenting the supposed actual author, with Burroughs himself pretending to be no more than the literary editor. J.R.R. Tolkien in The Lord of the Rings presents that story and The Hobbit as translated from the fictional Red Book of Westmarch written by characters within the novels. The twelve books of The Flashman Papers series by George MacDonald Fraser similarly pretend to be transcriptions of

812-410: A human settlement and later as an important trade city . The area itself was in fact home to a number of small farmer settlements, which the city replaced after the discovery and exploitation of the copper that became the heart of the economy in the succeeding centuries. Studies of the archaeological artefacts suggest that the region was inhabited since prehistoric times, more specifically since

928-627: A later author's predictions of the coming fall of the Seleucid Empire . Christian scholars traditionally maintain that nothing known to be pseudepigraphical was admitted to the New Testament canon. The Catholic Encyclopedia notes, The first four historical books of the New Testament are supplied with titles, which however ancient, do not go back to the respective authors of those sacred texts. The Canon of Muratori , Clement of Alexandria , and St. Irenaeus bear distinct witness to

1044-468: A locative ending in -um in the singular and the resulting forms serve as adverbials . These forms are generally not productive, but in the Neo-Babylonian the um -locative replaces several constructions with the preposition ina . In the later stages of Akkadian, the mimation (word-final -m ) and nunation (dual final -n ) that occurred at the end of most case endings disappeared, except in

1160-687: A noted German humanist scholar and poet of the German Renaissance , collected numerous Greek and Latin manuscripts in his function as librarian of the Imperial Library in Vienna. In a 1504 letter to the Venetian publisher Aldus Manutius Celtes claimed to have discovered the missing books of Ovid 's Fasti . However, it turned out that the purported Ovid verses had actually been composed by an 11th-century monk and were known to

1276-403: A separate East Semitic language. Because Akkadian as a spoken language is extinct and no contemporary descriptions of the pronunciation are known, little can be said with certainty about the phonetics and phonology of Akkadian. Some conclusions can be made, however, due to the relationship to the other Semitic languages and variant spellings of Akkadian words. The following table presents

SECTION 10

#1732779571448

1392-555: A vast textual tradition of religious and mythological narrative, legal texts, scientific works, personal correspondence, political, civil and military events, economic tracts and many other examples. Centuries after the fall of the Akkadian Empire, Akkadian, in its Assyrian and Babylonian varieties, was the native language of the Mesopotamian empires ( Old Assyrian Empire , Babylonia , Middle Assyrian Empire ) throughout

1508-499: A written language, adapting Sumerian cuneiform orthography for the purpose. During the Middle Bronze Age (Old Assyrian and Old Babylonian period), the language virtually displaced Sumerian, which is assumed to have been extinct as a living language by the 18th century BC. Old Akkadian, which was used until the end of the 3rd millennium BC, differed from both Babylonian and Assyrian, and was displaced by these dialects. By

1624-609: Is PaRiStum (< *PaRiS-at-um ). Additionally there is a general tendency of syncope of short vowels in the later stages of Akkadian. Most roots of the Akkadian language consist of three consonants, called the radicals, but some roots are composed of four consonants, so-called quadriradicals. The radicals are occasionally represented in transcription in upper-case letters, for example PRS (to decide). Between and around these radicals various infixes , suffixes and prefixes , having word generating or grammatical functions, are inserted. The resulting consonant-vowel pattern differentiates

1740-872: Is also a category of modern pseudepigrapha . Examples of books labeled Old Testament pseudepigrapha from the Protestant point of view are the Book of Enoch , the Book of Jubilees (both of which are canonical in Orthodox Tewahedo Christianity and the Beta Israel branch of Judaism); the Life of Adam and Eve and " Pseudo-Philo ". The term pseudepigrapha is also commonly used to describe numerous works of Jewish religious literature written from about 300 BCE to 300 CE. Not all of these works are actually pseudepigraphical. It also refers to books of

1856-442: Is divided into several varieties based on geography and historical period : One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at Ur , addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ( c.  2485 –2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad. The Akkadian Empire , established by Sargon of Akkad , introduced the Akkadian language (the "language of Akkad ") as

1972-415: Is doubted. For example, the Book of Daniel is considered by some to have been written in the 2nd century BCE, 400 years after the prophet Daniel lived, and thus the work is pseudepigraphic. A New Testament example might be the book of 2 Peter , considered by some to be written approximately 80 years after Saint Peter 's death. Early Christians, such as Origen , harbored doubts as to the authenticity of

2088-456: Is found on a slope north-west of Politiko, where the "Agios Mnason" monastery once existed. Many shrines also seem to have existed around the ancient city of Tamassos. This can be proven by the presence of the Archaic earthen statue and the famous bronze statue of Apollo found in the area. Nowadays the two monasteries of St Herakleidios and St Mnason are believed to be important monuments of

2204-473: Is home to the villages of Psimolofou, Episkopeio, Pera Orinis, Ergates, Politiko, Kampia, Analyontas, and Kapedes are located. For the past few centuries, they have developed from being poor agricultural villages housing some 10 families, to populations of 1000 inhabitants. Pera Orinis and Politiko retain much of the older buildings of the older settlements at the centre of the villages, which are deemed to be of high cultural significance. Highlights of these include

2320-463: Is marked by the Kassite invasion of Babylonia around 1550 BC. The Kassites, who reigned for 300 years, gave up their own language in favor of Akkadian, but they had little influence on the language. At its apogee, Middle Babylonian was the written language of diplomacy of the entire Ancient Near East , including Egypt ( Amarna Period ). During this period, a large number of loan words were included in

2436-692: Is not John the Apostle, but there is no scholarly consensus for any particular historical figure. (see: Authorship of the Johannine works ). Two of the letters claim to have been written or issued by Simon Peter , one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Therefore, they have traditionally been called the Petrine epistles . However, most modern scholars agree the second epistle was probably not written by Peter, because it appears to have been written in

SECTION 20

#1732779571448

2552-507: Is preserved on clay tablets dating back to c.  2500 BC . It was written using cuneiform , a script adopted from the Sumerians using wedge-shaped symbols pressed in wet clay. As employed by Akkadian scribes, the adapted cuneiform script could represent either (a) Sumerian logograms ( i.e. , picture-based characters representing entire words), (b) Sumerian syllables, (c) Akkadian syllables, or (d) phonetic complements . In Akkadian

2668-458: Is referred to as a city of Cyprus until the 10th century AD, but by then it was already in decline. The mines were abandoned after their exhaustion, and the economy was destroyed. Much later on, the city was replaced by small settlements such as Politiko and Episkopeio. The name "Politiko" refers to the brilliant ancient city it has replaced, whereas the name "Episkopeio" is reminiscent of Tamassos's old diocese. "Ergates" has been thus named because it

2784-448: Is the area where the mine workers lived, while "Pera Orinis" is named because it is opposite Politiko ("pera" being Greek for "yonder"), and because it is located in a hilly area ("oreinis" being Greek for "of the mountains" as opposed to the village "Pera Chorio Nisou " which is in the lowlands). It is believed that these settlements are a continuation of ancient Tamassos and that the inhabitation of this region has thus been continuous from

2900-618: Is the same James as the author of the Epistle of James, who was allegedly a brother of Jesus; and so, this Jude should also be a brother of Jesus, despite the fact he does not indicate any such thing in his text. The Gospel of Peter and the attribution to Paul of the Epistle to the Laodiceans are both examples of pseudepigrapha that were not included in the New Testament canon. They are often referred to as New Testament apocrypha . Further examples of New Testament pseudepigrapha include

3016-501: Is then [awat+su] > /awatt͡su/ . In this vein, an alternative transcription of ⟨ š ⟩ is ⟨ s̱ ⟩, with the macron below indicating a soft (lenis) articulation in Semitic transcription. Other interpretations are possible. /ʃ/ could have been assimilated to the preceding /t/ , yielding /ts/ , which would later have been simplified to /ss/ . The rhotic ⟨ r ⟩ has traditionally been interpreted as

3132-562: The Pseudo-Apuleius (author of a fifth-century herbal ascribed to Apuleius), and the author traditionally referred to as the " Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite ", are classic examples of pseudepigraphy. In the fifth century the moralist Salvian published Contra avaritiam ("Against avarice") under the name of Timothy; the letter in which he explained to his former pupil, Bishop Salonius, his motives for so doing survives. There

3248-483: The Akkadian Empire ( c.  2334 –2154 BC). It was written using the cuneiform script , originally used for Sumerian , but also used to write multiple languages in the region including Eblaite , Hurrian , Elamite , Old Persian and Hittite . The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian went beyond just the cuneiform script; owing to their close proximity, a lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by

3364-614: The Chalcolithic Age. Villages such as Kampia , Margi , Kotsiatis , and Mathiatis in the wider region were densely populated from the Early Bronze Age . The population increased significantly following exploitation of the copper mines. Tombs and copper-processing installations discovered in the area date back to the Late Bronze Age. Writers such as Claudius Ptolemy and Stephanus of Byzantium mention

3480-928: The Christian Bible and are foundational for the Christian Church. Therefore, those letters which some think to be pseudepigraphic are not considered any less valuable to Christians. Some of these epistles are termed as "disputed" or "pseudepigraphical" letters because they do not appear to have been written by Paul. They instead appear to have come from followers writing in Paul's name, often using material from his surviving letters. Some choose to believe that these followers may have had access to letters written by Paul that no longer survive, although this theory still depends on someone other than Paul writing these books. Some theologians prefer to simply distinguish between "undisputed" and "disputed" letters, thus avoiding

3596-543: The Empire of Nicaea according to William of Rubruck . Even so, many contemporary scholars believed Celtes and continued to write about the existence of the missing books until well into the 17th century. Pseudepigraphy has been employed as a metafictional technique. Authors who have made notable use of this device include James Hogg ( The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner ), Thomas Carlyle ( Sartor Resartus ), Jorge Luis Borges (" An Examination of

Tamassos - Misplaced Pages Continue

3712-588: The Gospel of Barnabas and the Gospel of Judas , which begins by presenting itself as "the secret account of the revelation that Jesus spoke in conversation with Judas Iscariot". The Vision of Ezra is an ancient apocryphal text purportedly written by the biblical scribe Ezra . The earliest surviving manuscripts, composed in Latin , date to the 11th century CE, although textual peculiarities strongly suggest that

3828-542: The Northwest Semitic languages and South Semitic languages in its subject–object–verb word order, while the other Semitic languages usually have either a verb–subject–object or subject–verb–object order. Additionally Akkadian is the only Semitic language to use the prepositions ina and ana ( locative case , English in / on / with , and dative -locative case, for / to , respectively). Other Semitic languages like Arabic , Hebrew and Aramaic have

3944-465: The Old Babylonian period . The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Akkadian, Modern Standard Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew : The existence of a back mid-vowel /o/ has been proposed, but the cuneiform writing gives no good proof for this. There is limited contrast between different u-signs in lexical texts, but this scribal differentiation may reflect

4060-595: The Persian conquest of the Mesopotamian kingdoms contributed to the decline of Babylonian, from that point on known as Late Babylonian, as a popular language. However, the language was still used in its written form. Even after the Greek invasion under Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC, Akkadian was still a contender as a written language, but spoken Akkadian was likely extinct by this time, or at least rarely used. The last positively identified Akkadian text comes from

4176-598: The consonants of the Akkadian language, as distinguished in Akkadian cuneiform. The reconstructed phonetic value of a phoneme is given in IPA transcription, alongside its standard ( DMG-Umschrift ) transliteration in angle brackets ⟨ ⟩ . Evidence from borrowings from and to Sumerian has been interpreted as indicating that the Akkadian voiceless non-emphatic stops were originally unaspirated, but became aspirated around 2000 BCE. Akkadian emphatic consonants are typically reconstructed as ejectives , which are thought to be

4292-712: The deuterocanonical books (Catholic and Orthodox) or Apocrypha (Protestant), the books that appear in extant copies of the Septuagint in the fourth century or later and the Vulgate , but not in the Hebrew Bible or in Protestant Bibles . The Catholic Church distinguishes only between the deuterocanonical and all other books; the latter are called biblical apocrypha , which in Catholic usage includes

4408-657: The liturgy . An example of a text that is both apocryphal and pseudepigraphical is the Odes of Solomon . It is considered pseudepigraphical because it was not actually written by Solomon but instead is a collection of early Christian (first to second century) hymns and poems, originally written not in Hebrew, and apocryphal because they were not accepted in either the Tanakh or the New Testament . Protestants have also applied

4524-400: The status absolutus (the absolute state ) and the status constructus ( construct state ). The latter is found in all other Semitic languages, while the former appears only in Akkadian and some dialects of Aramaic. The status absolutus is characterised by the loss of a noun's case ending (e.g. awīl < awīlum , šar < šarrum ). It is relatively uncommon, and is used chiefly to mark

4640-607: The western part of the Roman Empire to the Pope . Composed probably in the 8th century, it was used, especially in the 13th century, in support of claims of political authority by the papacy . Lorenzo Valla , an Italian Catholic priest and Renaissance humanist , is credited with first exposing the forgery with solid philological arguments in 1439–1440, although the document's authenticity had been repeatedly contested since 1001. The Privilegium maius ('greater privilege')

4756-462: The " Homeric Hymns " was recognized as pseudepigraphical, that is, not actually written by Homer. The only surviving Ancient Roman book on cooking is pseudepigraphically attributed to a famous gourmet, Apicius , even though it is not clear who actually assembled the recipes. In secular literary studies, when works of antiquity have been demonstrated not to have been written by the authors to whom they have traditionally been ascribed, some writers apply

Tamassos - Misplaced Pages Continue

4872-526: The 10th century BC when the Assyrian kingdom became a major power with the Neo-Assyrian Empire . During the existence of that empire, however, Neo-Assyrian began to turn into a chancellery language, being marginalized by Old Aramaic . The dominance of the Neo-Assyrian Empire under Tiglath-Pileser III over Aram-Damascus in the middle of the 8th century led to the establishment of Aramaic as

4988-617: The 1st century AD. The latest known text in cuneiform Babylonian is an astronomical almanac dated to 79/80 AD. However, the latest cuneiform texts are almost entirely written in Sumerian logograms. The Akkadian language began to be rediscovered when Carsten Niebuhr in 1767 was able to make extensive copies of cuneiform texts and published them in Denmark. The deciphering of the texts started immediately, and bilinguals, in particular Old Persian -Akkadian bilinguals, were of great help. Since

5104-524: The 21st century BC Babylonian and Assyrian, which were to become the primary dialects, were easily distinguishable. Old Babylonian, along with the closely related dialect Mariotic , is clearly more innovative than the Old Assyrian dialect and the more distantly related Eblaite language . For this reason, forms like lu-prus ('I will decide') were first encountered in Old Babylonian instead of

5220-555: The 25th century BC, texts fully written in Akkadian begin to appear. By the 20th century BC, two variant dialectic forms of the same language were in use in Assyria and Babylonia, known as Assyrian and Babylonian respectively. The bulk of preserved material is from this later period, corresponding to the Near Eastern Iron Age . In total, hundreds of thousands of texts and text fragments have been excavated, covering

5336-461: The Apostle , and Jesus's brothers James and Jude . Three of the seven letters are anonymous. These three have traditionally been attributed to John the Apostle , the son of Zebedee and one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. Consequently, these letters have been labelled the Johannine epistles , despite the fact that none of the epistles mentions any author. Most modern scholars believe the author

5452-546: The King of Salamina, as he had assisted him with the invasion and capture of Tyros . The temple of Aphrodite and perhaps other public buildings were rebuilt at the beginning of the Hellenistic period. It is assumed that there was an alteration to the city character and political structure, and new public buildings built. During the same period, Greeks from various places of the empire came to live in Tamassos. One of these people

5568-462: The New Testament canon whose authorship is misrepresented. Such works include the following: Various canonical works accepted as scripture have since been reexamined and considered by modern scholars in the 19th century onward as likely cases of pseudepigraphica. The Book of Daniel directly claims to be written by the prophet Daniel , yet there are strong reasons to believe it was not written until centuries after Daniel's death, such as references to

5684-877: The Old and New Testaments or by persons involved in Jewish or Christian religious study or history. These works can also be written about biblical matters, often in such a way that they appear to be as authoritative as works which have been included in the many versions of the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Eusebius indicates this usage dates back at least to Serapion of Antioch , whom Eusebius records as having said: "But those writings which are falsely inscribed with their name ( ta pseudepigrapha ), we as experienced persons reject...." Many such works were also referred to as Apocrypha , which originally connoted "private" or "non-public": those that were not endorsed for public reading in

5800-638: The Works of Herbert Quain "; " Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote "), Vladimir Nabokov ( Pale Fire ), Stanislaw Lem ( A Perfect Vacuum ; Imaginary Magnitude ) Roberto Bolaño ( Nazi Literature in the Americas ) and Stefan Heym ( The Lenz Papers ). Edgar Rice Burroughs also presented many of his works – including the most well-known, the Tarzan books – as pseudepigrapha, prefacing each book with

5916-595: The Zohar. This accords with the traditional claim by adherents that Kabbalah is the concealed part of the Oral Torah . Modern academic analysis of the Zohar, such as that by the 20th century religious historian Gershom Scholem , has theorized that de León was the actual author, as textual analysis points to a Medieval Spanish Jewish writer rather than one living in Roman-ruled Palestine. Conrad Celtes ,

SECTION 50

#1732779571448

6032-466: The ancient Prehistoric times until present times. The centre of the town, which is believed to have been the location of various public buildings and shrines , is thought to be under the village of Politiko and the nearby Greek Orthodox monastery of "Agios Herakleidios". This overlap of modern inhabited sites and ancient remains also means that large-scale archaeological excavations cannot be conducted. Sporadic excavations between 1970 and 1990 in

6148-404: The archaeological evidence is typical of Anatolia rather than of Assyria, but the use both of cuneiform and the dialect is the best indication of Assyrian presence. Old Babylonian was the language of king Hammurabi and his code , which is one of the oldest collections of laws in the world. (see Code of Ur-Nammu .) Old Assyrian developed as well during the second millennium BC, but because it

6264-503: The author to whom the work is falsely attributed is often prefixed with the particle " pseudo- ", such as for example " pseudo-Aristotle " or " pseudo-Dionysius ": these terms refer to the anonymous authors of works falsely attributed to Aristotle and Dionysius the Areopagite , respectively. In biblical studies , the term pseudepigrapha can refer to an assorted collection of Jewish religious works thought to be written c. 300 BCE to 300 CE. They are distinguished by Protestants from

6380-416: The authorship ascribed to them, but which stood outside both the biblical canons recognized by Protestants and Catholics. These works were also outside the particular set of books that Roman Catholics called deuterocanonical and to which Protestants had generally applied the term Apocryphal. Accordingly, the term pseudepigraphical , as now used often among both Protestants and Roman Catholics (allegedly for

6496-551: The book only appearing in the 2nd century BCE and onward. The book is an apocalypse wherein Daniel offers a series of predictions of the future, and is meant to reassure the Jews of the period that the tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes would soon be overthrown. By backdating the book to the 6th century BCE and providing a series of correct prophecies as to the history of the past 400 years, the authorship claim of Daniel would have strengthened

6612-580: The book's authorship. The term has also been used by some Muslims to describe hadiths ; who claim that most hadiths are fabrications created in the 8th and 9th century CE, and falsely attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad (see Quranism ). The word pseudepigrapha (from the Greek : ψευδής , pseudḗs , "false" and ἐπιγραφή , epigraphḗ , "name" or "inscription" or "ascription"; thus when taken together it means "false superscription or title"; see

6728-414: The books that Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants accept. The same is true of some Jewish religious movements . Many works that are "apocryphal" are otherwise considered genuine. There is a tendency not to use the word pseudepigrapha when describing works later than about 300 CE when referring to biblical matters. But the late-appearing Gospel of Barnabas , Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius ,

6844-604: The church of Panagia Odigitria , the Old Mill , the Parthenagogion and Arenagogion , as well as the recently restore chapel of St George of Pera Orinis, and the famous Tombs of the Kings of the village of Politiko. Akkadian language Akkadian ( / ə ˈ k eɪ d i ən / ə- KAY -dee-ən ; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝) , romanized:  Akkadû(m) ) is an extinct East Semitic language that

6960-452: The city. Stephanus describes the city as "mesogeia" (inland) with copper of excellent quality. Its inland location and lack of a port kept it from becoming a major trading post such as Salamis and Paphos . The city also lacked the cosmopolitan character of the island's coastal cities. It resembled an "industrial" city of mines and workshops, though it had without doubt also developed the agricultural and stock-breeding potentialities of

7076-422: The clarity it brings to the discussion), may make it difficult to discuss questions of pseudepigraphical authorship of canonical books dispassionately with a lay audience. To confuse the matter even more, Eastern Orthodox Christians accept books as canonical that Roman Catholics and most Protestant denominations consider pseudepigraphical or at best of much less authority. There exist also churches that reject some of

SECTION 60

#1732779571448

7192-498: The collection of the four Gospels was actually made. Besides as well pointed out by Prof. Bacon, "the historical books of the New Testament differ from its apocalyptic and epistolary literature, as those of the Old Testament differ from its prophecy, in being invariably anonymous, and for the same reason. Prophecies, whether in the earlier or in the later sense, and letters, to have authority, must be referable to some individual;

7308-469: The corpus of Paul's writings. They internally claim to have been written by Paul, but some biblical scholars present strong evidence that they could not have been written by Paul. Those known as the "Pastoral Epistles" (Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) are all so similar that they are thought to be written by the same unknown author in Paul's name. There are seven letters in the New Testament which are attributed to several apostles, such as Saint Peter , John

7424-485: The dialects of Akkadian identified with certainty so far. Some researchers (such as W. Sommerfeld 2003) believe that the Old Akkadian variant used in the older texts is not an ancestor of the later Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, but rather a separate dialect that was replaced by these two dialects and which died out early. Eblaite , formerly thought of as yet another Akkadian dialect, is now generally considered

7540-401: The earlier stages of the language, the dual number is vestigial, and its use is largely confined to natural pairs (eyes, ears, etc.). Adjectives are never found in the dual. In the dual and plural, the accusative and genitive are merged into a single oblique case . Akkadian, unlike Arabic , has only "sound" plurals formed by means of a plural ending. Broken plurals are not formed by changing

7656-487: The early 2nd century, long after Peter had died. Yet, opinions on the first epistle are more divided; many scholars do think this letter is authentic. (see: Authorship of the Petrine epistles ) In one epistle, the author only calls himself James (Ἰάκωβος Iákobos ). It is not known which James this is supposed to be. There are several different traditional Christian interpretations of other New Testament texts which mention

7772-402: The existence of those headings in the latter part of the second century of our era. Indeed, the manner in which Clement (Strom. I, xxi), and St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. III, xi, 7) employ them implies that, at that early date, our present titles to the gospels had been in current use for some considerable time. Hence, it may be inferred that they were prefixed to the evangelical narratives as early as

7888-420: The first one bears stress. A rule of Akkadian phonology is that certain short (and probably unstressed) vowels are dropped. The rule is that the last vowel of a succession of syllables that end in a short vowel is dropped, for example the declinational root of the verbal adjective of a root PRS is PaRiS- . Thus the masculine singular nominative is PaRS-um (< *PaRiS-um ) but the feminine singular nominative

8004-490: The first part of that same century. That however, they do not go back to the first century of the Christian era, or at least that they are not original, is a position generally held at the present day. It is felt that since they are similar for the four Gospels, although the same Gospels were composed at some interval from each other, those titles were not framed and consequently not prefixed to each individual narrative, before

8120-578: The former, Sumerian significantly impacted Akkadian phonology, vocabulary and syntax. This mutual influence of Akkadian and Sumerian has also led scholars to describe the languages as a Sprachbund . Akkadian proper names are first attested in Sumerian texts in the mid-3rd millennium BC, and inscriptions ostensibly written in Sumerian but whose character order reveals that they were intended to be read in East Semitic (presumably early Akkadian) date back to as early as c.  2600 BC . From about

8236-540: The fricatives *ʕ , *h , *ḥ are lost as consonants, either by sound change or orthographically, but they gave rise to the vowel quality e not exhibited in Proto-Semitic. The voiceless lateral fricatives ( *ś , *ṣ́ ) merged with the sibilants as in Canaanite , leaving 19 consonantal phonemes. Old Akkadian preserved the /*ś/ phoneme longest but it eventually merged with /*š/ , beginning in

8352-406: The greater his name, the better. But history was regarded as common possession. Its facts spoke for themselves. Only as the springs of common recollection began to dwindle, and marked differences to appear between the well-informed and accurate Gospels and the untrustworthy ... become worth while for the Christian teacher or apologist to specify whether the given representation of the current tradition

8468-789: The language from Northwest Semitic languages and Hurrian . However, the use of these words was confined to the fringes of the Akkadian-speaking territory. From 1500 BC onwards, the Assyrian language is termed Middle Assyrian. It was the language of the Middle Assyrian Empire . However, the Babylonian cultural influence was strong and the Assyrians wrote royal inscriptions, religious and most scholarly texts in Middle Babylonian, whereas Middle Assyrian

8584-454: The last syllable is superheavy, it is stressed, otherwise the rightmost heavy non-final syllable is stressed. If a word contains only light syllables, the first syllable is stressed. It has also been argued that monosyllabic words generally are not stressed but rather function as clitics . The special behaviour of /V̂/ syllables is explained by their functioning, in accordance with their historical origin, as sequences of two syllables, of which

8700-591: The later Bronze Age, and became the lingua franca of much of the Ancient Near East by the time of the Bronze Age collapse c.  1150 BC . However, its gradual decline began in the Iron Age, during the Neo-Assyrian Empire when in the mid-eighth century BC Tiglath-Pileser III introduced Imperial Aramaic as a lingua franca of the Assyrian empire. By the Hellenistic period , the language

8816-404: The latter being used for long vowels arising from the contraction of vowels in hiatus. The distinction between long and short is phonemic , and is used in the grammar; for example, iprusu ('that he decided') versus iprusū ('they decided'). There is broad agreement among most Assyriologists about Akkadian stress patterns. The rules of Akkadian stress were originally reconstructed by means of

8932-554: The latter part of the Bronze Age was excavated south-east of the monastery, in the region between the present-day nunnery and the Lambertes barrow. The Archaic era cemetery is located south-west of the village, between the region's two rivers, of which one is the torrential Pediaios, which waters most of Nicosia District and particularly the fertile area of Mesaoria (now part of North Cyprus ). The Hellenistic/Roman cemetery

9048-647: The literature of Jewish mystical thought known as Kabbalah , first appeared in Spain in the 13th century, and was published by a Jewish writer named Moses de León . De León ascribed the work to Shimon bar Yochai ("Rashbi"), a rabbi of the 2nd century during the Roman persecution who, according to Jewish legend, hid in a cave for thirteen years studying the Torah and was inspired by the Prophet Elijah to write

9164-434: The locative. Later, the nominative and accusative singular of masculine nouns collapsed to -u and in Neo-Babylonian most word-final short vowels were dropped. As a result, case differentiation disappeared from all forms except masculine plural nouns. However, many texts continued the practice of writing the case endings, although often sporadically and incorrectly. As the most important contact language throughout this period

9280-536: The older la-prus . While generally more archaic, Assyrian developed certain innovations as well, such as the "Assyrian vowel harmony ". Eblaite was even more so, retaining a productive dual and a relative pronoun declined in case, number and gender. Both of these had already disappeared in Old Akkadian. Over 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Old Assyrian have been recovered from the Kültepe site in Anatolia . Most of

9396-516: The oldest realization of emphatics across the Semitic languages. One piece of evidence for this is that Akkadian shows a development known as Geers's law , where one of two emphatic consonants dissimilates to the corresponding non-emphatic consonant. For the sibilants, traditionally ⟨ š ⟩ has been held to be postalveolar /ʃ/ , and ⟨ s ⟩, ⟨ z ⟩, ⟨ ṣ ⟩ analyzed as fricatives; but attested assimilations in Akkadian suggest otherwise. For example, when

9512-464: The original meaning of the root. The middle radical can be geminated, which is represented by a doubled consonant in transcription, and sometimes in the cuneiform writing itself. The consonants ʔ , w , j and n are termed "weak radicals" and roots containing these radicals give rise to irregular forms. Formally, Akkadian has three numbers (singular, dual and plural) and three cases ( nominative , accusative and genitive ). However, even in

9628-877: The other Semitic languages in the Near Eastern branch of the Afroasiatic languages , a family native to Middle East , Arabian Peninsula , parts of Anatolia , parts of the Horn of Africa , North Africa , Malta , Canary Islands and parts of West Africa ( Hausa ). Akkadian is only ever attested in Mesopotamia and neighboring regions in the Near East. Within the Near Eastern Semitic languages, Akkadian forms an East Semitic subgroup (with Eblaite and perhaps Dilmunite ). This group differs from

9744-639: The outer area resulted in the discovery of many artifacts as well as parts of the original city dating from the Archaic , Classical , and Hellenistic eras . The visible sections of this large and important archaeological site also include the site of the temple of Aphrodite, the two majestic royal tombs, and other graves. Fortifications which surrounded the city during the Archaic period have also been unearthed, as well as, copper-processing installations, clay and stone statuettes, and various oblation vessels , censers , and oil lamps . A limestone altar

9860-463: The possessive suffix -šu is added to the root awat ('word'), it is written awassu ('his word') even though šš would be expected. The most straightforward interpretation of this shift from tš to ss , is that ⟨ s, ṣ ⟩ form a pair of voiceless alveolar affricates /t͡s/ /t͡sʼ/ , ⟨ š ⟩ is a voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/ , and ⟨ z ⟩ is a voiced alveolar affricate or fricative /d͡z/~/z/ . The assimilation

9976-414: The predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like. Pseudepigraphy Pseudepigrapha (also anglicized as "pseudepigraph" or "pseudepigraphs") are falsely attributed works, texts whose claimed author is not the true author, or a work whose real author attributed it to a figure of the past. The name of

10092-708: The prefix pseudo- to their names. Thus the encyclopedic compilation of Greek myth called the Bibliotheca is often now attributed, not to Apollodorus of Athens , but to "pseudo-Apollodorus" and the Catasterismi , recounting the translations of mythic figure into asterisms and constellations, not to the serious astronomer Eratosthenes , but to a "pseudo-Eratosthenes". The prefix may be abbreviated, as in "ps-Apollodorus" or "ps-Eratosthenes". In biblical studies , pseudepigrapha refers particularly to works which purport to be written by noted authorities in either

10208-461: The prepositions bi/bə and li/lə (locative and dative, respectively). The origin of the Akkadian spatial prepositions is unknown. In contrast to most other Semitic languages, Akkadian has only one non-sibilant fricative : ḫ [x] . Akkadian lost both the glottal and pharyngeal fricatives, which are characteristic of the other Semitic languages. Until the Old Babylonian period, the Akkadian sibilants were exclusively affricated . Old Akkadian

10324-487: The pseudepigrapha. In addition, two books considered canonical in the Orthodox Tewahedo churches, the Book of Enoch and Book of Jubilees , are categorized as pseudepigrapha from the point of view of Chalcedonian Christianity . In addition to the sets of generally agreed to be non-canonical works, scholars will also apply the term to canonical works who make a direct claim of authorship, yet this authorship

10440-430: The region. The two royal tombs discovered are proof of the city's wealth during the Archaic era, due to their fine construction. Recently, six unique life-size, limestone , undamaged sculptures were discovered in the royal necropolis, of which two represented sphinxes and four represented lions in a crouching position. The exquisite sculptures date from the 6th century BC. The area where Tamassos once stood now

10556-537: The region. One dates back to the Bronze Age / Copper , another to the Archaic period, whilst the third belongs to the Hellenistic era and the times of Roman rule . Most of the Bronze Age cemetery is probably close to the Lambertes barrow (south-east of the Politiko village). South-west of the "Agios Herakleidios" monastery, a tomb belonging to the Middle Bronze era was dug up in 1963. Yet another tomb from

10672-471: The related epigraphy ) is the plural of "pseudepigraphon" (sometimes Latinized as "pseudepigraphum"). There have probably been pseudepigrapha almost from the invention of full writing . For example, ancient Greek authors often refer to texts which claimed to be by Orpheus or his pupil Musaeus of Athens but which attributions were generally disregarded. Already in Antiquity the collection known as

10788-483: The same syllable in the same text. Cuneiform was in many ways unsuited to Akkadian: among its flaws was its inability to represent important phonemes in Semitic, including a glottal stop , pharyngeals , and emphatic consonants . In addition, cuneiform was a syllabary writing system—i.e., a consonant plus vowel comprised one writing unit—frequently inappropriate for a Semitic language made up of triconsonantal roots (i.e., three consonants plus any vowels). Akkadian

10904-404: The script practically became a fully fledged syllabic script , and the original logographic nature of cuneiform became secondary , though logograms for frequent words such as 'god' and 'temple' continued to be used. For this reason, the sign AN can on the one hand be a logogram for the word ilum ('god') and on the other signify the god Anu or even the syllable -an- . Additionally, this sign

11020-406: The site of the city. The city-state prospered mainly because of its mines, from which metals (mostly copper, Cyprus 's chief export in the ancient world) were extracted. However, it managed to survive despite exhaustion of its copper deposits. Unlike other city-states on the island, there is no precise information from either history or tradition concerning the establishment of the city as

11136-516: The southern Caucasus and by communities in the Assyrian diaspora . Akkadian is a fusional language with grammatical case . Like all Semitic languages, Akkadian uses the system of consonantal roots . The Kültepe texts , which were written in Old Assyrian , include Hittite loanwords and names, which constitute the oldest record of any Indo-European language . Akkadian belongs with

11252-407: The superimposition of the Sumerian phonological system (for which an /o/ phoneme has also been proposed), rather than a separate phoneme in Akkadian. All consonants and vowels appear in long and short forms. Long consonants are transliterated as double consonants, and inconsistently written as such in cuneiform. Long vowels are transliterated with a macron (ā, ē, ī, ū) or a circumflex (â, ê, î, û),

11368-693: The supposed approval by the Patriarch added weight. The Anaphorae of Mar Nestorius , employed in the Eastern Churches , is attributed to Nestorius but its earliest manuscripts are in Syriac which question its Greek-authorship. Scholars have identified seven levels of authenticity which they have organized in a hierarchy ranging from literal authorship, meaning written in the author's own hand, to outright forgery: The Zohar ( Hebrew : זֹהַר , lit. Splendor or Radiance), foundational work in

11484-602: The surrounding fertile land, enriched by one of the most important rivers of Cyprus, the Pediaios , and its tributaries. The King of Tamassos, Pasikypros, is said to have sold his kingdom to the Phoenicians of Kition for a price of 50 talents . Having received this amount of money, the King went to spend his last days in Amathus Athenaeus claims that Alexander the Great gave the same city to Pnytagoras,

11600-687: The term "pseudepigraphical". Authorship of 6 out of the 13 canonical epistles of Paul has been questioned by both Christian and non-Christian biblical scholars. These include the Epistle to the Ephesians , Epistle to the Colossians , Second Epistle to the Thessalonians , First Epistle to Timothy , Second Epistle to Timothy , and Epistle to Titus . These six books are referred to as "deutero-Pauline letters", meaning "secondary" standing in

11716-524: The text was originally written in Greek . Like the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra , the work is clearly Christian, and features several apostles being seen in heaven . However, the text is significantly shorter than the Apocalypse. The Donation of Constantine is a forged Roman imperial decree by which the 4th-century emperor Constantine the Great supposedly transferred authority over Rome and

11832-591: The texts contained several royal names, isolated signs could be identified, and were presented in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend . By this time it was already evident that Akkadian was a Semitic language, and the final breakthrough in deciphering the language came from Edward Hincks , Henry Rawlinson and Jules Oppert in the middle of the 19th century. In the early 21st century it was shown that automatic high-quality translation of Akkadian can be achieved using natural language processing methods such as convolutional neural networks . The following table summarises

11948-584: The title of Tsar . This, too, turned out to be false. While earlier Russian Monarchs had on some occasions used the title "Tsar", Ivan the Terrible previously known as "Grand Prince of all the Russias" was the first to be formally crowned as Tsar of All Rus ( Russian : Царь Всея Руси ). This was related to Russia's growing ambitions to become an Orthodox " Third Rome ", after the Fall of Constantinople – for which

12064-473: The well-known biblical figures to whom the early Christian leaders originally attributed authorship. The earliest and best manuscripts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were all written anonymously. Furthermore, the books of Acts, Hebrews, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John were also written anonymously. There are thirteen letters in the New Testament which are attributed to Paul and are still considered by Christians to carry Paul's authority. These letters are part of

12180-501: The word Apocrypha to texts found in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox scriptures which were found in the Septuagint but not found in the Masoretic Text Hebrew manuscripts. Catholics call those " deuterocanonical books ". Furthermore, there arose in some Protestant biblical scholarship an extended use of the term pseudepigrapha for works that appeared as though they ought to be part of the biblical canon, because of

12296-434: The word stem. As in all Semitic languages, some masculine nouns take the prototypically feminine plural ending ( -āt ). The nouns šarrum (king) and šarratum (queen) and the adjective dannum (strong) will serve to illustrate the case system of Akkadian. As is clear from the above table, the adjective and noun endings differ only in the masculine plural. Certain nouns, primarily those referring to geography, can also form

12412-476: Was Aramaic , which itself lacks case distinctions, it is possible that Akkadian's loss of cases was an areal as well as phonological phenomenon. As is also the case in other Semitic languages, Akkadian nouns may appear in a variety of "states" depending on their grammatical function in a sentence. The basic form of the noun is the status rectus (the governed state), which is the form as described above, complete with case endings. In addition to this, Akkadian has

12528-531: Was 'according to' this or that special compiler, and to state his qualifications". It thus appears that the present titles of the Gospels are not traceable to the Evangelists themselves. However, agnostic biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrman holds that only seven of Paul's epistles are convincingly genuine, and that all of the other 20 books in the New Testament appear to be written by unknown people who were not

12644-460: Was Aspendios from Asia Minor. With the spread of Christianity throughout southern Europe , Tamasos became one of the first Greek Orthodox dioceses in Cyprus. The presence of its two first bishops , Saint Herakleidios and Saint Mnason, was prominent. The pseudepigraphical Acts of Barnabas mention Tamasus as the meeting point of Barnabas and Heraclide, made bishop by Barnabas. Tamassos

12760-572: Was a document composed in 1358 or 1359 – but purporting to be much older. Its text elevated the Duchy of Austria into an Archduchy of Austria , thus greatly increasing the prestige of Rudolf IV of Austria (1358–65) of the House of Habsburg . In Russian history, in 1561 Muscovites supposedly received a letter from the Patriarch of Constantinople which asserted the right of Ivan the Terrible to claim

12876-461: Was a purely popular language — kings wrote in Babylonian — few long texts are preserved. It was, however, notably used in the correspondence of Assyrian traders in Anatolia in the 20th-18th centuries BC and that even led to its temporary adoption as a diplomatic language by various local Anatolian polities during that time. The Middle Babylonian period started in the 16th century BC. The division

12992-477: Was found nearby Aphrodite 's temple as well as a temple devoted to Kiveli (the Mother of Gods). The latter was discovered alongside an epigraphic testimony regarding the goddess' worship. In addition, there are various literary references proving the worshipping of Apollo , Aesculap , and Dionysus . North-east of Aphrodite's temple lies the necropolis of Tamassos. In addition, three cemeteries are located in

13108-532: Was largely confined to scholars and priests working in temples in Assyria and Babylonia. The last known Akkadian cuneiform document dates from the 1st century AD. Mandaic spoken by Mandean Gnostics and the dialects spoken by the extant Assyrians ( Suret ) are three extant Neo-Aramaic languages that retain Akkadian vocabulary and grammatical features, as well as personal and family names. These are spoken by Assyrians and Mandeans mainly in northern Iraq , southeast Turkey , northeast Syria , northwest Iran ,

13224-409: Was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia ( Akkad , Assyria , Isin , Larsa , Babylonia and perhaps Dilmun ) from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC. Akkadian, which is the earliest documented Semitic language , is named after the city of Akkad , a major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during

13340-441: Was used as a determinative for divine names. Another peculiarity of Akkadian cuneiform is that many signs do not have a well defined phonetic value. Certain signs, such as AḪ , do not distinguish between the different vowel qualities. Nor is there any coordination in the other direction; the syllable -ša- , for example, is rendered by the sign ŠA , but also by the sign NĪĜ . Both of these are often used for

13456-505: Was used mostly in letters and administrative documents. During the first millennium BC, Akkadian progressively lost its status as a lingua franca . In the beginning, from around 1000 BC, Akkadian and Aramaic were of equal status, as can be seen in the number of copied texts: clay tablets were written in Akkadian, while scribes writing on papyrus and leather used Aramaic. From this period on, one speaks of Neo-Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian . Neo-Assyrian received an upswing in popularity in

#447552