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128-490: Tiglath-Pileser III ( Neo-Assyrian Akkadian : 𒆪𒋾𒀀𒂍𒈗𒊏 , romanized:  Tukultī-apil-Ešarra , meaning "my trust belongs to the son of Ešarra"; Biblical Hebrew : תִּגְלַת פִּלְאֶסֶר ‎ , romanized:  Tīglaṯ Pīlʾeser ) was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 745 BC to his death in 727. One of the most prominent and historically significant Assyrian kings , Tiglath-Pileser ended

256-691: 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,

384-610: A regnal name , adopted upon his accession to the throne, Tukultī-apil-Ešarra means "my trust belongs to the son of Ešarra". Ešarra was a temple dedicated to the god Ninurta (who was thus the "son of Ešarra"). By the time of Tiglath-Pileser's reign, Ninurta was viewed as the son of the Assyrian national deity Ashur . In some non-contemporary sources, such as the Ptolemaic Canon , the Babylonian King List ,

512-650: 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

640-517: 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

768-446: A few years by Sargon II , probably through being deposed and assassinated. Though Assyrian king lists connected Sargon to previous kings through claiming that he was the son of Tiglath-Pileser, this claim does not appear in most of his inscriptions, which instead stress that he was called upon and appointed as king by Ashur. Many historians accept Sargon's claim to have been a son of Tiglath-Pileser, but do not believe him to have been

896-561: A firm choice to side with Assyria and Tiglath-Pileser eagerly accepted the alliance since Iranzu's realm was ideally placed to protect Assyria from Urartian raids. These developments worried Sarduri II of Urartu, who intensified his efforts to oppose and overtake Assyrian hegemony. Later in 743, Sarduri arrived at the Euphrates river border of Assyria with his army, his forces bolstered by troops sent by various kingdoms and states in Syria. In

1024-582: A highly important trade route, the predecessor of the later Silk Road . The Assyrian successes in 744 and 743 demonstrated to the empire's neighbors that the time of Assyrian stagnation was over. Tiglath-Pileser's success inspired Iranzu , king of the Mannaeans , a people who lived in northwestern Iran, to personally meet with Tiglath-Pileser in 744 and forge an alliance. Iranzu's predecessors had usually maintained their kingdom's independence through changing allegiance between Urartu and Assyria, but Iranzu made

1152-687: A lengthy span of contact and the prestige held by 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

1280-468: 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

1408-481: A major centre of Mesopotamian civilization during 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,

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1536-435: A period of Assyrian stagnation, introduced numerous political and military reforms and more than doubled the lands under Assyrian control. Because of the massive expansion and centralization of Assyrian territory and establishment of a standing army , some researchers consider Tiglath-Pileser's reign to mark the true transition of Assyria into an empire . The reforms and methods of control introduced under Tiglath-Pileser laid

1664-403: A period of decline, becoming increasingly restricted to just the Assyrian heartland itself. Though the decline was at times halted by energetic warrior-kings, reconquests were not lasting until the time of Ashur-dan II ( r.   934–912 BC), who campaigned in the northeast and northwest. The accession of Ashur-dan's son Adad-nirari II ( r.   911–891 BC) traditionally marks

1792-403: 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

1920-687: A usurper. Pointing to this are the facts that there was a revolt in Nimrud , the capital of the Assyrian Empire, in 746/745 and that numerous officials and governors were replaced after 745. Ancient Assyrian sources give conflicting information in regards to Tiglath-Pileser's lineage. Tiglath-Pileser in inscriptions attributed his rise to the throne solely to divine selection, rather than the more typical practice of Assyrian kings ascribing their rise to both divine selection and his royal ancestry. The Assyrian King List , an ancient Assyrian document listing

2048-555: 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

2176-499: 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

2304-609: 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

2432-403: Is an extinct East Semitic language that 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 ,

2560-600: Is an error, since it occurs right after a note that records the end of Ashur-nirari's reign and its length. Both the Eponym Chronicle and the Assyrian King List gives Ashur-nirari a reign length of 10 years, only possible if he ruled until 744, and not 745. If Ashur-nirari did rule until 744, it is unlikely that there was a civil war, since Tiglath-Pileser is recorded to have gone on campaigns against Assyria's foreign enemies in this time, not possible if he

2688-442: 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

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2816-463: 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

2944-724: Is only possible to produce a broad outline. Tiglath-Pileser's first campaign was conducted already in 744, when he assaulted Babylonian lands on the east side of the Tigris river. This conflict was resolved swiftly, with the Assyro-Babylonian border shifted in Tiglath-Pileser's favor. In 743, Tiglath-Pileser campaigned in the region around the Zagros Mountains, where he created the two new provinces Bit‐Ḫamban and Parsua. The new Zagros provinces were founded along

3072-507: 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

3200-501: 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

3328-577: The Bible and the works of later Babylonian and Greco-Roman historians, Tiglath-Pileser is recorded under the name Pulu ( Pūlu , [REDACTED] [REDACTED] ), the etymology of which is uncertain. Though sometimes interpreted as a second regnal name, there are no contemporary Assyrian or Babylonian sources that refer to Tiglath-Pileser by this name and there is no evidence that it was ever used officially. No evidence exists of any Assyrian king ever using more than one regnal name in their lifetime. In 2007,

3456-531: The Incirli Trilingual inscription was published that gave contemporary confirmation that Pul (Pulu) and Tiglath-Pileser III were one and the same king. Only the Phoenician part of the inscription has been published so far, because of the monument’s poor state of preservation. Still, the identification of Tiglath-Pileser III as Pul is fairly certain, because this phrase is repeated more than once in

3584-542: 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

3712-465: 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

3840-595: 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

3968-577: The Qedarites to the south of Damascus, hoping to consolidate his control of southern Syria. The surprise attack caught the Qedarite queen Samsi off-guard and the Qedarites were easily defeated. Though Tiglath-Pileser was victorious, he realized that he would not be able to effectively govern the territories ruled by the Qedarites and thus allowed Samsi to remain in control of her domain, though under

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4096-729: The Syro-Hittite kingdoms of Gurgum and Kummuh , Carchemish and Quwê , some of which had previously sent forces to aid Sarduri, as well as from the Phoenician city of Tyre and the Aramean kingdom of Aram-Damascus . The annexation of Arpad put rulers throughout the Levant on the alert. In the period of Assyrian stagnation, many of the Levantine states had aspired to expand and become large kingdoms in their own right, something

4224-601: The Urartian king Sarduri II in battle near Arpad in 743. This victory was significant since Urartu had for a brief time equalled Assyrian power; Sarduri had eleven years earlier defeated Tiglath-Pileser's predecessor Ashur-nirari. After defeating Sarduri, Tiglath-Pileser turned his attention to the Levant . Over the course of several years, Tiglath-Pileser conquered most of the Levant, defeating and then either annexing or subjugating previously influential kingdoms, notably ending

4352-419: The ancient Near East . Ashurnasirpal's son Shalmaneser III ( r.   859–824 BC) further expanded Assyrian territory but his enlarged domain proved difficult to stabilize and his last few years initiated a renewed period of stagnation and decline, marked by both external and internal conflict. The most important problems facing Shalmaneser late in his reign were the rise of the kingdom of Urartu in

4480-598: 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

4608-400: 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

4736-470: 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

4864-561: 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

4992-524: 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

5120-555: 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

5248-740: The Assyrian kings. The imperialist expansionism undertaken by the kings of both Urartu and Assyria led to frequent military clashes between the two, despite being separated by the Taurus Mountains . For a brief time, the Urartian army equalled that of Assyria; though the Assyrians scored many victories against Urartu, notably plundering Urartu's heartland late in Shalmaneser's reign, the Urartians scored victories of their own. In 754,

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5376-494: The Assyrians might have perceived as an anti-Assyrian activity. In 738, Tiglath-Pileser continued his efforts in Syria, conquering some lands to the south of Arpad and establishing the three new provinces of Kullania, Ḫatarikka, and Ṣimirra. These lands had been under the rule of the Syro-Hittite kingdom of Hama , which he accused of plotting against him. The strategy employed by Tiglath-Pileser in his successful conquest of

5504-526: The Babylonians. Nabu-mukin-zeri lost Sapia in the same year but appears to have continued to resist Tiglath-Pileser until 728 since there are some documents ascribed to his fourth regnal year. As the new king, Tiglath-Pileser received tribute from the most powerful Chaldean tribes, the Bit-Dakkuri and Bit-Yakin . The Bit-Yakin at this time was under the leadership of Marduk-apla-iddina II , who in

5632-584: The Kingdom of Israel ( 2 Kings 15,29–31) and the events of his reign from the perspective of the southern Kingdom of Judah ( 2 Kings 15,32–16,20, 2 Chronicles 27,1–28,27, Isaiah , 7,1–25). Tiglath-Pileser greatly expanded Assyrian territory. By the time of his death, Tiglath-Pileser had more than doubled the amount of land ruled by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. His method of introducing direct Assyrian rule to foreign lands, dividing them into Assyrian provinces rather than creating vassal kingdoms, significantly altered

5760-430: The Levant was carefully thought out and prepared. Instead of attacking the strongholds of the larger states, he first subdued smaller kingdoms through fast and wide-ranging attacks. The early conquests brought coastal and flat lands under his rule, which meant that Assyrian troops in the later campaigns could march through the region fast and efficiently. During the campaign against Hama, Tiglath-Pileser conquered and annexed

5888-665: The Mu’na Arab tribe, all began paying tribute to Tiglath-Pileser. By extending his control throughout the Levant, Tiglath-Pileser formed a semi-circle of control around Israel and Aram-Damascus and cut them off from Egypt, which had at times offered support to the Levantine states. The Assyrian efforts resulted in Aram-Damascus becoming both geopolitically isolated and without a large enough food supply to feed its people. In 733, Tiglath-Pileser resolved to cement his conquest. In this year, he again campaigned against Aram-Damascus, still

6016-802: The National Committee of the CNRS. A Doctor of Letters (History) in 1963, he was a lecturer and professor at the Sorbonne from 1967 to 1986. He taught history of the peoples of the Semitic East. Paul Garelli was a member of the Société Asiatique (1972) and of the international committee of Ebla (Rome) (1977) and president of the François Thureau-Dangin group (1975). In 1982, he was elected ordinary member of

6144-465: The Syro-Hittite kingdom of Pattin . Hama was spared full annexation, with the kingdom being allowed to remain somewhat independent as a vassal state. The victory inspired more states in the region to pay tribute to the Assyrians, including the Phoenician city of Byblos , the Kingdom of Israel and various states in eastern Anatolia and some Arab tribes. Israel and Damascus had sent aid to Hama during

6272-519: The Urartian king Sarduri II defeated the Assyrian army under Ashur-nirari V at Arpad , an event that may have led to the Assyrian army not campaigning for several years. The Assyrian kings were unable to deal with external threats since the magnates had gradually become the dominant political actors and central authority had become very weak. The reigns of Tiglath-Pileser's three predecessors Shalmaneser IV ( r.   783–773 BC), Ashur-dan III ( r.   773–755 BC) and Ashur-nirari V

6400-404: 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

6528-465: The army was further increased throughout Tiglath-Pileser's reign through the recruitment of soldiers from the various lands the Assyrians conquered and through the recruitment of mercenaries from Babylonia , the Zagros Mountains and Anatolia . Though Tiglath-Pileser's conquests generated a massive amount of revenue, he appears to have invested little of it into the Assyrian heartland itself;

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6656-541: The beginning of an entirely new age of Assyrian imperialism. As the earliest Assyrian king to be mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and in the Babylonian Chronicles , Tiglath-Pileser is the first Assyrian king for whom there exist outside perspectives and accounts of his reign. All Mesopotamian history prior to Tiglath-Pileser is ignored in the Hebrew Bible. The Bible records both Tiglath-Pileser's impact on

6784-436: The beginning of frequent mass deportations, a policy which continued under his successors. There were two intended goals of this policy: firstly to reduce the local identities in conquered regions, to counteract the risk of revolt, and secondly to recruit and move laborers to where the Assyrian kings needed them, such as underdeveloped and underutilized provinces. Though the Assyrian resettlements were probably devastating both for

6912-410: The beginning of the Neo-Assyrian Empire . Under the early Neo-Assyrian kings, there was a gradual reconquest of former Assyrian lands. The success of this project was an extraordinary achievement given that the kings essentially had to rebuild the Assyrian Empire from scratch. Under Ashurnasirpal II ( r.   883–859 BC) the Neo-Assyrian Empire rose to become the dominant political power in

7040-553: The conflict. The Anatolian realms who began paying tribute to Assyria, five kingdoms in total, probably did so not out of fear of Assyrian conquest but rather in the hope of Assyrian aid against the expansionist kingdom of Phrygia , which threatened their existence. The Anatolians at times tried to play Assyria and Phrygia against each other, with disastrous consequences. In 730, Tiglath-Pileser attacked and removed king Wasusarma of Tabal from power after he stopped paying tribute, writing in his annals that Wasusarma "acted as if he were

7168-694: The degree of the École pratique des hautes études (historical and philological studies section). He would return to the EPHE in 1974 as director of studies at the IVth section. In 1958, Paul Garelli joined the Centre national de la recherche scientifique where he became a research fellow in 1967 at the head of the Archaeology and history section of the Assyrian-Babylonian countries. He was part of

7296-485: 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

7424-470: The dynasty of Mopsos '. Some Assyriologists, such as Eckart Frahm and Paul-Alain Beaulieu , have speculated that Pulu was Tiglath-Pileser's original name before he became king and assumed his regnal name or perhaps a nickname. According to Gertoux, Tiglath-Pileser III was the son of Adad-nīrārī III, and used the name Pulu as a young co-regent under previous kings. When he won the kingship of Babylon, for

7552-401: 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

7680-535: The economy of the Assyrian state. Whereas the Assyrians had previously relied on tribute from vassals, from Tiglath-Pileser's time they became increasingly dependent on taxes collected by provincial governors. This approach increased administrative costs but also reduced the risk of uprisings against Assyrian rule and reduced the need for military intervention. Neo-Assyrian Akkadian language Akkadian ( / ə ˈ k eɪ d i ən / ə- KAY -dee-ən ; Akkadian: 𒀝𒅗𒁺𒌑(𒌝) , romanized:  Akkadû(m) )

7808-422: The equal of Assyria". Tiglath-Pileser marched on the Levant for the fifth time in 734, reaching as far south as the border of Egypt . This campaign resulted in the conquest of Gaza and the submission of numerous states, effectively bringing the entire Levant under direct or indirect Assyrian rule; Assyria and Egypt shared a border for the first time in history. Asqaluna , Judah , Edom , Moab and Ammon , and

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7936-420: 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

8064-540: 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

8192-419: The groundwork for policies enacted not only by later Assyrian kings but also by later empires for millennia after his death. The circumstances of Tiglath-Pileser's rise to the throne are not clear. Because ancient Assyrian sources give conflicting accounts concerning Tiglath-Pileser's lineage and there are records of a revolt at around the time of his accession, many historians have concluded that Tiglath-Pileser

8320-412: The historian Stefan Zawadzki , writing in 1994, the eponyms also provide insight into how the transition from Ashur-nirari to Tiglath-Pileser might have happened. That Tiglath-Pileser took the throne the year after the uprising was interpreted by Zawadzki, and others, as firmly indicating that he took the throne as the result of a coup d'etat . Zawadzki believes the Eponym Chronicle further suggests that

8448-427: The historian Tracy Davenport advanced the theory that Tiglath-Pileser might have been entirely legitimate and that he could even have co-ruled with Ashur-nirari for some time. Supporting Garelli's idea that Tiglath-Pileser was not responsible for any rebellion and the idea that he was a member of the royal dynasty, Davenport examined the Eponym Chronicle. Notably, the eponyms for Tiglath-Pileser's early reign do not follow

8576-513: The king would grant them amnesty and tax privileges. The Babylonians refused the offer. Nabu-mukin-zeri was not in Babylon at this time and was instead probably directing the Babylonian war effort from his ancestral home city of Sapia. In 729, Tiglath-Pileser captured Babylon and proclaimed himself as both king of Assyria and king of Babylon , the first Assyrian king to be recognized as such by

8704-408: The king. Some historically prominent officials, such as the turtanu Shamshi-ilu, were subjected to damnatio memoriae , with their names being deliberately erased from inscriptions and documents. With these reforms, the power of the magnates to challenge the king was virtually eliminated. Tiglath-Pileser revitalized the Assyrian army, transforming it from a seasonally active army, only assembled in

8832-545: The kingdom of Aram-Damascus . Tiglath-Pileser's activities in the Levant were recorded in the Hebrew Bible . After a few years of conflict, Tiglath-Pileser conquered Babylonia in 729, becoming the first king to rule as both king of Assyria and king of Babylon . There is not enough surviving evidence to conclude how Tiglath-Pileser III came to the throne and the nature of his accession is thus unclear and disputed. Several pieces of evidence indicate that he might have been

8960-405: The kings of Assyria, states that Tiglath-Pileser's father was his immediate predecessor Ashur-nirari V . Tiglath-Pileser in his own inscriptions claimed that he was the son of Adad-nirari III , making him Ashur-nirari's brother. Assyriologists and other historians have overwhelmingly concluded that Tiglath-Pileser was a usurper. The Assyriologist Bradley J. Parker went as far as suggesting that he

9088-673: 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

9216-454: 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

9344-503: The last two years of his life, this again became his official name in Babylon. Gertoux explains the derivation of this name as a hypocoristic use of the word aplu “the heir”. Assyria first rose as a prominent state under the Middle Assyrian Empire in the 14th century BC, previously only having been a city-state centered on the city of Assur . From the 12th century BC onwards, the Middle Assyrian Empire entered into

9472-591: 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

9600-404: 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

9728-430: The legitimate heir to the throne as the next-in-line after the end of Shalmaneser's reign, i.e. assuming Shalmaneser had children. Even then, his claim to have been Tiglath-Pileser's son is generally treated with more caution than Tiglath-Pileser's own claims of royal ancestry. Some Assyriologists, such as J. A. Brinkman, believe that Sargon, at the very least, did not belong to the direct dynastic lineage. If Tiglath-Pileser

9856-434: 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

9984-402: The loss of independence of numerous ancient states in the region. After defeating Sarduri, Tiglath-Pileser resolved to conquer Arpad itself, both because of the city's strategic value and in order to punish the city for providing Sarduri access to the Assyrian frontier. After three campaigns over the course of three years and a lengthy siege, Arpad was captured in 740. During the fighting, Arpad

10112-420: The name Athaliah , borne by a Judean queen who ruled about a century earlier, and that the ending of the name Atalia ( i-a or ia-a ) could represent a theophoric element deriving from Yahweh . Dalley's arguments have met with both support and opposition. The idea that the names Iaba and Atalia were Hebrew has also been independently forwarded by Simo Parpola . In 2002, K. Lawson Younger pointed out that it

10240-425: The name include yph ("beautiful"), nby ("to name") and yhb ("to give"); Iaba might have been of Arab or West Semitic (Levantine or Aramean ) descent. In 1998, Stephanie Dalley proposed that Iaba was of Hebrew origin and speculated that she might have been a princess from the Kingdom of Judah. She based this argument on the name Atalia , a later queen speculated to have been related to Iaba, being similar to

10368-441: The north and the increasing political authority and influence of the "magnates", a set of influential Assyrian courtiers and officials. The rise of Urartu threatened Assyrian hegemony since submission to Urartu was viewed by many vassal states as a realistic alternative to Assyria. The Urartian administration, culture, writing system and religion closely followed those of Assyria. The Urartian kings were also autocrats highly similar to

10496-536: 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

10624-516: 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

10752-500: The only known building work conducted by him was a new palace in Nimrud. Instead, most of the money probably went into establishing the new army and into projects in the provinces. Tiglath-Pileser's conquests were marked by brutality, to emphasize the king's strength and power. Resettlements of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people were also a common practice. Though previous kings had resettled people, Tiglath-Pileser's reign saw

10880-464: 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

11008-877: 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

11136-401: The populace to the idea of Assyrian overlordship. He twice participated in the religiously important New Years' Akitu festival, which required the presence of the king, and also led campaigns against remaining Chaldean strongholds in the far south who resisted his rule. Tiglath-Pileser's queen was named Iaba ( Iabâ ), a name clearly not of Akkadian origin. Possible roots and etymologies of

11264-463: 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

11392-448: The possibility of him being Ashur-nirari's son cannot be fully ruled out. The historian Tracy Davenport holds that "we may never know" whether Tiglath-Pileser was Ashur-nirari's son or brother. There are ways to explain Tiglath-Pileser's inscriptions proclaiming him as the son of Adad-nirari despite the 38 years between their two reigns. It is possible that "son" in this context meant "grandson", meaning that Tiglath-Pileser would have been

11520-649: The predicate of a nominal sentence, in fixed adverbial expressions, and in expressions relating to measurements of length, weight, and the like. Paul Garelli Paul Garelli was born in Croydon, London . He spent his early years in Switzerland and Istanbul, where his father was director general of the Ottoman Bank . He did his graduate studies in Geneva and Paris. He obtained a BA in economics and in 1951

11648-461: 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

11776-454: The prominent southern cities, such as Babylon , Kish , Ur , Uruk , Borsippa and Nippur , but were not the only prominent group in the region. Chaldean tribes, led by chieftains who often squabbled with each other, dominated most of the southernmost land. Arameans also lived on the fringes of settled land and were notorious for plundering surrounding territories. Through his agents, Tiglath-Pileser throughout his reign kept tabs on events in

11904-427: The rebellion, while not necessarily led by Tiglath-Pileser himself, was started with his knowledge and consent. The chief piece of evidence Zawadzki presents for this is that the revolt of 746 began in Nimrud and the first official appointed as eponym holder by Tiglath-Pileser (in 744) was Bel-dan, the governor of Nimrud. Garelli believes the revolt in 746 was instigated by Shamshi-ilu , a prominent official throughout

12032-460: The reigns of Tiglath-Pileser's predecessors, and that the uprising was crushed by Tiglath-Pileser after he legitimately inherited the throne. Zawadzki believes Shamshi-ilu may have revolted, as he is no longer recorded in Tiglath-Pileser's reign, but that the uprising in Nimrud was a separate revolt from Shamshu-ilu's supposed uprising and that Tiglath-Pileser or his supporters would have fought both Shamshu-ilu and Ashur-nirari. In her 2016 PhD thesis,

12160-603: The resettled people and the regions they came from, resettled people were not harmed or killed. Deportees were highly valued for their labor and abilities. Their journeys and new settlements were designed to be as safe and comfortable as possible. In addition to his reforms, Tiglath-Pileser's reign is marked by a series of large-scale military campaigns in all directions. Though Tiglath-Pileser recorded his military exploits in great detail in his "annals", written on sculpted stone slabs decorating his palace in Nimrud, these are poorly preserved, meaning that for several of his campaigns it

12288-483: 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

12416-432: The same year, Tiglath-Pileser engaged Sarduri in battle near Arpad. Unlike the Assyrian defeat by Arpad eleven years earlier, Tiglath-Pileser won the battle, one of the greatest triumphs of his reign. Sarduri was forced to flee the battle and was pursued back to the Urartian capital of Tushpa . In the period from 743 to 732, Tiglath-Pileser led several campaigns in the Levant, which led to a great annexation of territory and

12544-404: 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

12672-406: The sole ruler of Assyria until 744. There are some strange features of the Eponym Chronicle that suggest that Ashur-nirari ruled until 744, together with Tiglath-Pileser 745–744. There are two horizonal lines in this part of the list, one beneath 746, possibly marking Tiglath-Pileser's rise to the throne, and one beneath 744, possibly marking Ashur-nirari's death. It is unlikely that the second line

12800-415: The son of Ashur-nirari or another of Adad-nirari's sons, or that Tiglath-Pileser actually was Adad-nirari's son, but came to the throne when he was already relatively old, possibly aged about 50. The Eponym Chronicle , a list of eponyms , names for the years, typically taken from influential officials, of Assyria confirms there was a revolt in Nimrud the year before Tiglath-Pileser became king. According to

12928-768: The south. In 731, the Chaldean chieftain Nabu-mukin-zeri , of the Bit-Amukkani tribe, seized power in Babylon as king. Tiglath-Pileser saw the accession of Nabu-mukin-zeri, who aspired to heal the divides in Babylonia, as a provocation and threat to Assyrian interests and hegemony. Tiglath-Pileser thus dedicated the next several years to defeating Nabu-mukin-zeri and his supporters. First, Assyrian armies blockaded Babylonia's eastern border to ensure that Nabu-mukin-zeri would not receive any support from Elam , which

13056-516: 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

13184-476: The southern portion as a vassal kingdom. The weakening and enormous reduction in size of Israel was seen by the Israelites as vindicating predictions of impending doom made by the prophet Amos a few decades prior. The massive western expansion of Assyria brought Tiglath-Pileser and his armies into direct contact with Arab tribes, several of whom began paying tribute. In 733, Tiglath-Pileser campaigned against

13312-412: The strongest remaining native state in the region, which was supported by the Assyrian tributaries Tyre and Asqaluna , as well as Israel. In 732, Damascus fell and Tiglath-Pileser annexed the lands of Aram-Damascus. In the same conflict, Tiglath-Pileser also captured Tyre and defeated Israel, which he divided in half, annexing the northern portion of the kingdom as the province Megiddo and subjugating

13440-422: The summer months, consisting only of conscripts, into a professional army. Under Tiglath-Pileser these conscripts were largely replaced with trained specialized soldiers. He introduced new and superior weapons, technologies and logistics. Among his major innovations were new forms of siege engines . The central standing army introduced under Tiglath-Pileser was dubbed the kiṣir šarri ("king's unit"). The size of

13568-407: 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),

13696-481: The supervision of an Assyrian official to guide her political actions. In his late reign, Tiglath-Pileser increasingly focused on Babylonia in the south. Babylonia had once been a large and hugely influential kingdom, competing with Assyria for centuries, but during the Neo-Assyrian period it was typically weaker than its northern neighbor. Babylonia suffered from both the lack of a well-organized army and from internal ethno-cultural divisions. Babylonians governed most of

13824-568: The text. The Phoenician spelling of this name is Puwal . The Phoenician inscription is narrated in the first person by king de:Awariku ( Awarikku , Warika , Urikki ) of Que ( Quwê , Adanawa, Adana), known from other ancient inscriptions. His stele was erected to mark the land that was gifted to Awariku by Tiglath-Pileser III. He is also known as the King of the Danunites ( Danaans ), or the "Danunean king". He also describes himself as 'the King of

13952-591: 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

14080-423: The traditional sequence used for Assyrian eponym holders. Typically, the king was eponym holder in his second regnal year, followed by important magnates and then provincial governors. If Tiglath-Pileser became king in 745, the eponym holder of his second regnal year was Bel-dan, not the king himself, who was the eponym holder in 743, his third regnal year. This could be explained by Tiglath-Pileser not having become

14208-434: 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

14336-467: The years following Tiglath-Pileser's reign would emerge as a staunch adversary of Assyria. Unlike many other Assyrian conquests, Babylonia was not divided into provinces but kept as a full kingdom, in personal union with Assyria. This was chiefly because the Assyrians greatly respected Babylonian culture and religion. Because of this respect and because Babylonia was showing signs of the beginning of an economic recovery, Tiglath-Pileser worked to conciliate

14464-476: 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

14592-469: Was Sargon's father, he also had a third son, Sin-ahu-usur . Sin-ahu-usur is attested as the younger brother of Sargon, in 714 granted the command of Sargon's royal cavalry guard. The Assyriologist Hayim Tadmor referred to Tiglath-Pileser's reign as a "watershed" in the history of the Middle East. Tiglath-Pileser left a legacy of enormous historical significance. His reign is generally seen as marking

14720-495: Was a usurper , who seized the throne from his predecessor Ashur-nirari V , who was either his brother or his father. Other historians postulate that the evidence could just as easily be interpreted as Tiglath-Pileser inheriting the throne through legitimate means and the debate remains unresolved. Tiglath-Pileser early on increased royal power and authority through curbing the influence of prominent officials and generals. After securing some minor victories in 744 and 743, he defeated

14848-461: 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

14976-426: Was assisted by both Urartian troops and by troops sent by other cities and minor states in Syria. After the city was captured, the Assyrian army did not simply plunder it and then leave, as they had dealt with cities in Syria in previous times. Instead, the lands controlled by Arpad were converted into two provinces and annexed into the Neo-Assyrian Empire. After his victory at Arpad, Tiglath-Pileser received tribute from

15104-444: Was far from certain that i-a or ia-a actually corresponded to Yahweh since there are few analogues in other Neo-Assyrian names and inscriptions. The identification of Atalia as a Hebrew name was also doubted by Nicholas Postgate in 2008, and in that year Ran Zadok alternatively suggested that Atalia was an Arabic name. Iaba's tomb was discovered at Nimrud in 1989. Tiglath-Pileser is believed to have died peacefully of old age. He

15232-532: 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 ,

15360-543: Was not part of the previous royal dynasty at all, but per the Assyriologist Karen Radner , his claims of royal descent were probably true, meaning that while he did usurp the throne, he was a legitimate contender for it, having been victorious in an intra-dynastic civil war. Tiglath-Pileser faced no known resistance or rebellions against his rule after taking the throne. If accepted as a royal dynast, uncertainties still exist in whether Tiglath-Pileser

15488-517: Was often opposed to Assyrian interests. Then, Tiglath-Pileser defeated and subdued a number of Aramean clans and Chaldean tribes, including the Bit-Shilani and the Bit-Sha'alli. The struggle for control of Babylonia began in earnest in 730. In this year, Assyrian envoys are recorded travelling to Babylon and urging the inhabitants to open their gates and surrender to Tiglath-Pileser, stating that

15616-416: Was reducing the influence of the magnates, thus increasing the authority of the king. The division of the large provinces previously governed by the magnates into smaller units, placed under royally appointed provincial governors, reduced the wealth and power of the magnates. The right to commission inscriptions concerning military and building activities was withdrawn from officials and henceforth restricted to

15744-635: Was simultaneously involved in internal conflict. Due to Assyria for centuries mainly being known through its appearances in the Hebrew Bible , the Assyrian kings who are mentioned in the Bible are generally known today by the Biblical forms of their names. The modern name Tiglath-Pileser thus derives from the Hebrew Tīglaṯ Pīl'eser (תִּגְלַת פִּלְאֶסֶר), a corrupted form of the original Akkadian name Tukultī-apil-Ešarra ( 𒆪𒋾𒀀𒂍𒈗𒊏 ). Presumably

15872-429: Was succeeded by his son Shalmaneser V . In Tiglath-Pileser's reign, Shalmaneser was known by his birth name Ululayu, "Shalmaneser" being a regnal name he assumed upon his accession to the throne in 727. Shalmaneser likely participated in some of his father's campaigns and several letters are known from him to his father, many of them reports on the status of the lands he governed. Shalmaneser was replaced as king after only

16000-463: Was the low point of Assyrian royal power. In Shalmaneser IV's reign, the turtanu (commander-in-chief) Shamshi-ilu was bold enough to credit military victories to himself rather than the king. Ashur-nirari V appears to have been relatively idle as a ruler. He campaigned only three times, staying in Assyria throughout the majority of his reign, and he is not known to have conducted any building projects. One of Tiglath-Pileser's important early reforms

16128-431: Was the son of Adad-nirari or Ashur-nirari. The Assyriologists Fei Chen, Albert Kirk Grayson and Shiego Yamada consider it more likely that he was Adad-nirari's son, with the Assyrian King List's identification of him as the son of Ashur-nirari possibly being a scribal error. The Assyriologist Paul Garelli considers this unlikely, given that 38 years separate the reign of Adad-nirari from that of Tiglath-Pileser, writing that

16256-441: 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

16384-505: 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

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