To Wake the Dead

Tag: Semitic Languages

  • Tools of the Trade, 7: Toolkit: Akkadian

    Some of my physical collection.

    Akkadian is a Semitic language written in the cuneiform script, with texts ranging from royal inscriptions and law codes to letters, contracts, and epics like Gilgamesh. This toolkit gathers the core resources I use to study the language, from mastering the sign list to parsing verbal forms. Whether you’re preparing for graduate study, brushing up for a seminar, or just drawn to the richness of Mesopotamian literature, these are the tools that ground my work with Akkadian.

    A quick note: some of these are in German and French, and of course not everyone reads those. However, Google Translate handles them very well if you upload a screenshot of a paragraph, and as my modern languages are not the strongest yet, I’ve found it invaluable. Use this link to access.

    Huehnergard – A Grammar of Akkadian
    The most widely used modern introduction to Akkadian, especially for Old Babylonian. Combines clear grammatical explanations with exercises, paradigms, and a reading sequence. Thorough and approachable.
    Read online

    Caplice – Introduction to Akkadian
    More compact and reference-oriented than Huehnergard, with streamlined grammar sections and bilingual text readings. Works well as a complement or for review.
    Read online

    Labat – Manuel d’épigraphie akkadienne: Signes cunéiformes, syllabaires, idéogrammes
    The definitive sign list for Akkadian cuneiform. Includes syllabic values, logograms, variant shapes, and transcription equivalents. Indispensable when reading from tablets or facsimiles.
    Read online

    Digital Tools

    ePSD2 (The Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary)
    Although primarily for Sumerian, ePSD2 is invaluable for logogram glosses and cross-referencing Akkadian readings of signs. Frequently cited in scholarly work.
    Access online

    ORACC (Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus)
    A massive and expanding corpus of annotated Akkadian texts in transliteration and translation, with tools for exploring morphology, genre, and metadata. Excellent for seeing how grammar functions in real texts.
    Access online

    Wiktionary
    There is no single definitive online Akkadian dictionary, but entries on Wiktionary can help with basic word lookup in transliteration.
    Access online

    Advanced Topics

    Von Soden – Grundriss der Akkadischen Grammatik
    The classic grammar of Akkadian, written in German. Highly detailed, especially in verbal system analysis and historical variants.
    Read online

    Goetze / Landsberger – Text Editions
    Once you’ve completed initial grammar work, reading annotated text editions from scholars like Goetze or Landsberger will help solidify your grasp of style, genre, and dialect variation.

    Conclusion

    This toolkit focuses on Old Babylonian and Standard Babylonian as the primary dialects, but the resources here will give you enough flexibility to branch into Assyrian, Middle Babylonian, and other variants. Akkadian is a richly inflected language with a complex writing system, and the path to fluency is best grounded in patient sign recognition, morphological fluency, and careful reading.

    These are the resources I’ve found most helpful in learning and returning to Akkadian. If you know of other tools or have advice from the field, I’d love to hear what’s missing.

    View other toolkits.

  • Tools of the Trade: Language Toolkits Incoming!

    The next portion of Tools of the Trade will focus on a series of “core toolkits” for a variety of languages. These will be linked here as they roll out over the next few days. The first five, in order, will be:

    1. Classical Greek,
    2. Homeric Greek,
    3. Mycenaean Greek,
    4. Classical Latin, and
    5. Akkadian.

    If any more are added, I’ll link them here as well. I’m planning on doing Phoenician and Middle Egyptian at some point, and maybe even posts on families, probably Semitic and Indo-European. After that, there will be two more posts on epigraphic tools, followed by a series of computational ones, and then probably some meta-tools (e.g., guides to digital organization, etc.). After that it’s anyone’s game, and I fully welcome suggestions. Feel free to email me here if there’s anything you’ve been wanting to get into but haven’t found good resources for.

  • Marginalia, 2: On Diaspora and Scholarship

    The Parthenon/Elgin Marbles as in the British Museum, London.

    Diaspora means a scattering—but not just away from. It’s also a scattering into: people of yours wherever you go. There’s dislocation in that, but also a strange kind of belonging. You’re never quite at home, but also never entirely foreign. We are at home wherever we are, as the Jewish Bundists say.

    I come from the Armenian diaspora. Much of the history I now hold came to me late, in fragments I had to gather myself. So much so that when my family went to Armenia for the 100th anniversary of the genocide, I misunderstood the purpose of our trip. I didn’t yet know what had been left unsaid. I learned the truth online months later. A strange inheritance: delayed, then all at once.

    That moment formed something in me—something about responsibility, memory, and the ethics of knowing. I now see myself as a banner-carrier of the diasporic experience—not just for Armenians, but in solidarity with all displaced and fragmented peoples. Diaspora isn’t a single story but a way of listening, noticing, and asking better questions.

    Ironically, none of the languages I study are mine. I never learned Armenian. I was meant to attend an immersion program in Yerevan in 2020, but it didn’t happen for the obvious reasons. The language now feels like an island—real, reachable, and still far away. It’s typologically unusual and hard to access. And emotionally, I’ve kept it at a distance—not for lack of interest, but for fear of doing it harm.

    Still, the connection shows up. It’s in the care I bring to other people’s histories, in my reverence for displaced traditions, in my work with Semitic languages—speech communities so often marked by rupture. I haven’t yet studied heritage material from my own background, but I carry the stakes of diasporic scholarship into every archive. Distance doesn’t cancel care, it clarifies it.

    My sense of scholarly ethics—especially around archaeology and epigraphy—grows directly from this. I believe in repatriation, in collective self-determination and the right of communities to steward their past. Yes, nations are imagined, but so are all our systems of meaning. So long as national identity structures the world, its claims must be taken seriously.

    Museums, of course, complicate things. Scattering brings both access and erasure. Greek artifacts in London, Mesopotamian seals in New York—these too live in diaspora. There’s value in broader visibility, especially for those who can’t travel. But there’s loss, too: of voice, of sovereignty, of situated knowledge. I think about this often. I haven’t resolved it.

    I don’t just want a life in the library. I want antiquity to be for everyone. I want the past to feel shared, common, alive. I want to show people that our inheritance—linguistic, cultural, intellectual—is truly ours. The more we realize that, the more fully we can meet the present. That’s the gift of diaspora: a way of being scattered that still insists on connection.

    The Parthenon Marbles as in the Acropolis Museum in Athens. Every time I’ve visited, it’s struck me as a monument to loss.

  • Tablets and Tribulations, 1: Lapse and Return

    2023: Tablet replica I made from a drawing in Huehnergard’s grammar.

    I first took Akkadian a few years ago. Since then, the language has been sitting in a kind of suspended animation: just far enough away to feel unreachable, just close enough to make me feel guilty.

    This post kicks off Tablets and Tribulations, a new series chronicling my return to Akkadian. I’ll be using it to track my progress, share insights, and reflect on what it means to study something this complex, this demanding, and this strange.

    Why Akkadian?

    Akkadian sits at the intersection of my academic obsessions: Semitic linguistics, the history of writing systems, and the psycholinguistics of script. It’s a dead language, but not a fossilized one. The more you read it, the more it pulses: with bureaucracy, with poetry, with prayer. And the writing system—a sprawling, phonetically polyvalent syllabary riddled with ideograms—is completely unlike the tight alphabets I’m used to. It demands patience, pattern-recognition, and grit.

    There’s also no shortage of material, with estimates of the number of excavated Akkadian texts reaching as high two million—meaning it quite possibly has the most documents of any ancient language; in fact, according to my professor Ronald Wallenfels, more documents than all ancient languages combined. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

    I’m also drawn to it because I’m not naturally good at it. Greek and Latin came to me more intuitively, their logics familiar in a way I hadn’t expected. Akkadian doesn’t let me do that. It forces me to slow down, to wrestle with my perfectionism, to train my brain in new ways. And I love that. I want to get good at something hard. I want to overcome the mental blocks that have held me back before.

    What’s Changed

    Since that early study, I’ve broadened my exposure to Semitic linguistics and become more confident working with both the script and the medium. I’ve also made peace with how humbling this language is. Once, I even told a syntax class—confidently—that Akkadian had no demonstratives, only to moments later fact-check myself and discover that it had three distinct tiers of them. I then had to publicly correct myself and told them to pray for me… as I had a quiz on Akkadian pronominals the next period.

    I’m now studying with two grammars, Huehnergard and Caplice, using Labat’s sign list as my main reference. I’m also switching from just drawing signs to pressing them into clay, and my wax tablets—less sketchbook, more scribal. I’ll be posting more about that process (and my tablet replicas) soon.

    What to Expect from This Series

    Tablets and Tribulations will be part language log, part material exploration, and part meditation on what it means to study a language with no living speakers and a script that defies modern intuition. Future posts will likely include:

    • Syntax deep dives (word order, case, verb chains, etc.)
    • Close readings of texts (legal, literary, magical, bureaucratic)
    • Reflections on learning signs and navigating polyvalence
    • Notes on scribal training and cuneiform technique
    • My own experimental archaeology: pressing and firing tablets
    • Anecdotes from the museum and the classroom
    • Psycholinguistic musings on how syllabaries shape cognition
    • Occasional moments of crisis and triumph

    This is going to be hard. But I want that. I want to stretch, stumble, and get back up. That balance—rigor with joy—is what I’m working toward. Each week with Akkadian reminds me how study disciplines the self—not just the mind.

    So here’s to the first step. The tablets await.