Minor: Language and Culture of the Ancient Near East

Have you ever wondered about the “Tower of Babel”  or the “Babylonian Confusion of Tongues”? Would you like to know the real story about the “Hanging Gardens”, or learn what is written on the oldest law code of the world?

By choosing the minor in ‘Language and culture of the Ancient Near East’ you can truly expand your horizon. You will explore a distant culture – yet it’s our past. It’s so different – but often so just like us.

The oldest written language in the world

Babylonian is a language, related to Hebrew and Arabic, that only very few people in the world can read. Although rare and exotic today it used to be ‘lingua franca’, the international language, for several hundred years in the second millennium BC. Even the pharaoh of Egypt used Babylonian to communicate with his neighbors. Written in wedge-shaped signs (‘cuneiform’, ‘spijkerschrift’) and impressed by a stylus into wet clay, Babylonian is one of the oldest written languages of the world. It has a history of three millennia: it was used in Mesopotamia from the end of the third to the end of the first millennium BC. All kinds of texts were written in it, from dry administrative records to lively letters of queens and commoners, from the inscriptions of heroic kings to love poetry. There are mathematical texts, horoscopes, omens, prophecies, rituals and prayers. Ancient court protocols tell us about murder cases or sad stories of desperate poor who were caught stealing a duck from a pond to enjoy a really good dinner once. With the Gilgamesh epic we have not only one of the most ancient tales of the world - it is so deep and philosophical that modern writers, playwrights and artists keep being inspired by it!

 

Is it hard to learn?

You may say: ‘Nice, but isn’t that a terribly difficult language?’ The good news is: it’s not. You can learn Babylonian too! Its grammar is easier than Ancient Greek. But it is also not ‘nothing’. You must know that languages always cost a lot of time and effort. There is a grammar, vocabulary... success is very much dependent on your regular work input. But you are rewarded by a new world that opens up for you. And you learn to think about language in a more structured way, as you do when you learn Latin. Babylonian is actually a dialect of a language called Akkadian, as there is also Assyrian (the other dialect of Akkadian). Babylonian language was written in cuneiform, and here comes the bad news: cuneiform is harder to memorize than the Greek alphabet because it has many more signs. The signs have more than one value, but there are different signs with the same value. Confused? No problem, we’ll solve that. If you do the major in Babylonian you are supposed to learn cuneiform within the first year. If you do the minor, you can do the ‘taster version’: must only learn a few signs and understand how the script works. So you can concentrate on the language, but if you find yourself enthralled, you are of course welcome to do more!

For whom?

The minor ‘Language and Culture of the Ancient Near East’ is an ideal choice for students who major in Ancient Studies, History, Theology, Linguistics or Law. There are no initial requirements to enroll. We welcome interested students from any faculty.

Supervisor of the minor: Dr. Kristin Kleber, Lecturer Languages and Cultures of the Ancient Near East.

For information mail to: k.kleber@vu.nl