User:SomeGuyWhoRandomlyEdits/Kishite

Kishite
Old Akkadian
Native to	Sumer and Akkad
Region	Upper Mesopotamia
Era	Early Bronze Age
Language family
Writing system	Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

The Sumerian King List (SKL) stated that Kish was the first city to have kings following a flood (beginning with Jushur); moreover, it indicated the existence of a Semitic population in the regions of the Diyala river and upper Mesopotamia. Jushur's successor is referred to as Kullassina-bel; additionally, this is an East Semitic sentence meaning all of them were lord. Thus, some scholars have suggested that this may have been intended to signify the absence of a central authority in Kish for a time. The names of the next ten kings of Kish (preceding Etana) are: Nangishlishma, En-tarah-ana, Babum, Puannum, Kalibum, Kalumum, Zuqaqip, Atab, Mashda, and Arwium. Most of these names are East Semitic words for animals (e.g. Zuqaqip means scorpion); in fact, most of the names of the first dynasty of Kish (aside from Enmebaragesi and Aga) may have been Kishite names.

The Semitic nature of their names revealed that the city's population may have had a strong Semitic component from the dawn of recorded history. A Bayesian analysis suggested an origin for all known Semitic languages with a population of ancient Semitic-speaking peoples migrating from the Levant c. 3750 BCE; furthermore, spreading into Mesopotamia and possibly contributing to the collapse of the Uruk period c. 3100 BCE. Kish has been identified as the center of the earliest known East Semitic culture—its own civilization. This early East Semitic culture is characterized by linguistic, literary, and orthographic similarities extending across settlements such as Tell Mardikh, Tell Hariri, Tell Abu Salabikh, and Tell Brak.

The similarities include the use of a writing system that contained non-Sumerian logograms, the use of the same system in naming the months of the year, dating by regnal years, and a measuring system (among many others). However, the existence of a single authority ruling those lands has not been assumed as each city had its own monarchical system, in addition to some linguistic differences for while the languages of Mari and Ebla were closely related, Kish represented an independent East Semitic linguistic entity that spoke a sort of dialect (Kishite), different from both pre-Sargonic Akkadian and Eblaite. The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the Semitic languages, and is attested by three distinct languages: Kishite, Akkadian, and Eblaite (all of which have been long extinct). Kishite is the oldest known Semitic language.

Throughout the third millennium BCE, an intimate cultural symbiosis developed between Sumerians and Semites (which included widespread bilingualism). The influence of the Sumerian and East Semitic languages on each other is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a substantial scale to syntactic, morphological, and phonological convergence. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and the East Semitic languages during the third millennium BCE as a sprachbund.

References

Sources

Bibliography

• Edwards, I.; Gadd, C.; Hammond, N. (1970). "II". Early history of the Middle East. The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. I (revised ed.). London; New York: CUP (published 1902–2005). ISBN 9780521070515. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Foster, B.; Foster, K. (2009). Civilizations of Ancient Iraq. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691137223. Retrieved 2021-05-28.
• Hansen, D.; Ehrenberg, E. (2002). Leaving No Stones Unturned: Essays on the Ancient Near East and Egypt in Honor of Donald P. Hansen. ISBN 9781575060552. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Jacobsen, T. (1939a). Sumerian King List (PDF) (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Oriental Institute (published 1939–1973). ISBN 978-0226622736. Archived from the original on 2015-04-20. Retrieved 2021-05-23.
• Katz, D. (1993). Gilgamesh and Akka (1st ed.). Groningen, the Netherlands: STYX Publications. ISBN 9789072371676.
• Hasselbach, R. (2005). Sargonic Akkadian: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts. Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. ISBN 9783447051729. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Maier, J. (2008-05-01). Gilgamesh: A Reader. University of Michigan: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers. ISBN 9780865163393.
• Ristvet, L. (2014). Ritual, Performance, and Politics in the Ancient Near East. ISBN 9781107065215.
• Sommerfeld, Walter (2021). Vita, Juan-Pablo (ed.). The "Kish Civilization". Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East. Vol. 1. BRILL. pp. 545–547. ISBN 9789004445215. Retrieved 23 February 2022. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Van De Mieroop, Marc (2002). Erica Ehrenberg (ed.). In Search of Prestige: Foreign Contacts and the Rise of an Elite in Early Dynastic Babylonia. p. 125-137 [133]. ISBN 9781575060552. Retrieved 23 February 2022. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)
• Wyatt, L. (2010-01-16). Approaching Chaos: Could an Ancient Archetype Save C21st Civilization?. ISBN 9781846942556.
• Zadok, R.; Zadok, A. (1988). The Pre-Hellenistic Israelite Anthroponymy and Prosopography. Uitgeverij Peeters.

Journals

• Hallo, W. (1963). "Beginning and End of the Sumerian King List in the Nippur Recension". Journal of Cuneiform Studies. 17 (2). doi:10.2307/1359064. Retrieved 2021-04-28.
• Kitchen, A.; Ehret, C.; Assefa, S.; Mulligan, C.J. (2009). "Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of Semitic languages identifies an Early Bronze Age origin of Semitic in the Near East". Proc Biol Sci. 276 (1668): 2703–10. doi:10.1098/rspb.2009.0408. PMC 2839953. PMID 19403539.

External links

• Jacobsen, T. (1939b) [c. 2025–165 BC]. Zólyomi, G.; Black, J.; Robson, E.; Cunningham, G.; Ebeling, J. (eds.). "Sumerian King List". ETCSL. Translated by Glassner, J.; Römer, W.; Zólyomi, G. (revised ed.). United Kingdom: Oxford. Retrieved 2021-05-23.

Further reading

Geography

Language

• Black, Jeremy Allen; Baines, John Robert; Dahl, Jacob L.; Van De Mieroop, Marc. Cunningham, Graham; Ebeling, Jarle; Flückiger-Hawker, Esther; Robson, Eleanor; Taylor, Jon; Zólyomi, Gábor (eds.). "ETCSL: The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature". Faculty of Oriental Studies (revised ed.). United Kingdom. Retrieved 2022-09-23. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), a project of the University of Oxford, comprises a selection of nearly 400 literary compositions recorded on sources which come from ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) and date to the late third and early second millennia BCE.
• Renn, Jürgen; Dahl, Jacob L.; Lafont, Bertrand; Pagé-Perron, Émilie (2022) [1998]. "CDLI: Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative" (published 1998–2022). Retrieved 2022-09-23. Images presented online by the research project Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) are for the non-commercial use of students, scholars, and the public. Support for the project has been generously provided by the Mellon Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (ILMS), and by the Max Planck Society (MPS), Oxford and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); network services are from UCLA's Center for Digital Humanities.
• Sjöberg, Åke Waldemar; Leichty, Erle; Tinney, Steve (2022) [2003]. "PSD: The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary" (published 2003–2022). Retrieved 2022-09-23. The Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Project (PSD) is carried out in the Babylonian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. It is funded by the NEH and private contributions. [They] work with several other projects in the development of tools and corpora. [Two] of these have useful websites: the CDLI and the ETCSL.