This class is designed to provide an advanced grammar course focusing on syntactic topics for students who have intermediate or advanced knowledge of Akkadian. The class will read texts from different periods and genres to compare the treatment of certain syntactic structures.
Prerequisites: Intermediate Akkadian.
In this course, we will read Akkadian letters from the correspondence found at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt, that date to the 14th century BCE. We will read letters from various locations, including Babyonia, Assyria, Mitanni and Hatti, although the main focus of the class will be on the letters sent from Canaan. In all these corpora we will look at features that mark the language as different from core Babylonian and that reveal substrate influence from the native languages of the scribes.
Advanced knowledge of Akkadian. Knowledge of Hebrew or Aramaic would be an asset.
This course consists of readings in cuneiform texts on therapeutic prescriptions, incantations, and rituals, pharmacopoeia, the Diagnostic Handbook, medical commentaries, and medical astrology, along with scholarly articles on various ancient medical topics.
1 year of Akkadian (but allow for exceptions when permission is given)
Readings from the Code of Hammurapi, in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian.
AKKD 10102
This course consists of readings in cuneiform sources and scholarly literature on the classification of astronomical tablets, measurement of celestial time and space, invention of the zodiac, astronomical omen series and reports, the Mul-apin star compendium and astrolabes, astronomical diaries, goal year texts, horoscopes, and mathematical astronomy.
1 year of Akkadian (but allow for exceptions when permission is given)
The third quarter of the Elementary Akkadian sequence continues with the learning of the Akkadian language and the cuneiform script. As in the previous quarters, readings and exercises are from John Huehnergard, A Grammar of Akkadian (3rd edition), Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011.
AKKD 10102
The first two quarters of this sequence cover the elements of Babylonian grammar and the cuneiform writing system, with reading exercises in Old Babylonian texts (ca. 1900 to 1600 B.C.), such as the Laws of Hammurabi. The third quarter introduces Standard Babylonian, the literary language of ca. 1200 to 600 B.C., with readings in royal inscriptions and literary texts. Introduction to the grammar of Akkadian, specifically to the Old Babylonian dialect.
