Download PHYS2903 – Physics and the Imagination Essay 2

The Actual Academia of Akkad Akkadian
Matthew Tucciarone
100789008
PHYS2903
Essay 1: Physics and the Arts
October 31, 2011
The Actual Academia of Akkad Akkadian
The years following 2500BCE in our ancient history has very significant events, both
to the development of technology and societal advancements. Within 2500BCE,
Mesopotamia – the area between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, covering modern day
Iraq – developed weights and the measurement system and the Great Pyramid was
finished in Giza (specifically 2540BCE). By 2300BCE one of the first great military
dictator, Sargon the Great,
launched a campaign to conquer all
of Mesopotamia.
Historians can immediately tell you that Sargon the Great was an Akkadian ruler that
united the Sumerians into the world's first known empire, and it is in Akkad where we
will begin our story about an ancient writing and numeral system known as Akkadian.
Akkadian, a word derived from the state of Akkad in Mesopotamia, was a powerful
Semitic language spoken and written by the ancient people of Akkad. Akkadian is a
cuneiform – the Latin word that means “wedge” – script that was adapted from Sumerian
cuneiform shortly after Sargon the Great united the land. Many logograms (symbols)
were taken from the Sumerian language and transformed to fit the needs of the Akkadian
language. It has been observed by historians that “Akkadian, like Japanese, was
polysyllabic and used a range of inflections while Sumerian, like Chinese, had few
inflections”. Due to these similarities, the newly formed Akkadian language was easy for
neighboring civilizations to understand the dialect and written formalities of Akkad.
Akkadian's cuneiform script was a logophonetic text, where symbols could be recognized
as pictographic signs using the simple building blocks of the Akkadian root words. Since
the Akkadian language is Semitic, it follows that that Akkadian uses the “triconsonantal
root, which is a sequence of three consonants representing the most basic and abstract
form of a word. Inflections include added vowels between consonants of the root as well
as added prefixes and suffixes to the root.” Using a derivation of syllabary, the Akkadian
script was an extremely complex writing system. It is said that “the number of signs used
hover from 200 to 400 (although the total number of signs is between 700 and 800), and
homophony and polyvalency give Akkadian scribes multiple ways to spell the same
sequence of sounds.” This shows the similarities between the Asian languages such as
Chinese and Japanese with Akkadian. Due to the complexity of this written language, we
will avoid going in depth with forming sentences and putting together words. However,
it's important to note that there was Akkadian logograms that significantly displayed the
Akkadian appeal to religion and science.
According to ancient Akkadian texts, the people saw the universe as two or three layers
consisting of heaven, earth, and 'something else', which could either be described as the
'Netherworld' or the 'sky/atmosphere'. To record this information the Akkadian language
needed sophisticated logograms to represent their world and their religion and so a
syllable “an”,
was born. The logogram for “an” is described to be a representation of a
star, or a form in the celestial sky and can be translated to be the Akkadian deity Anum,
for the god of the sky. Using this syllable as a basis, the other gods contained “an” within
their characters such as Enlil, the god of air. The clear complexity of the Akkadian
language demonstrates that it requires a high level of training in the language, especially
if one is to record or decipher information on tablets. Despite this, the Akkadian writing
system can be seen as a form of art. Using five basic orientations – horizontal, two
diagonals, a hook and a vertical stroke – as a basis for their logograms, the Akkadians
were able to depict the nature around them using a type of pictographic representation.
Like modern art, these are rules that are applied in order to achieve a significant meaning
using simplistic tactics that can also convey a form of beauty, such as the symbol for
heaven, “an”. Does this also follow suit in the Akkadian numeral system?
The Babylonian civilization was known to have one of the greatest mathematical
systems, which ironically was inherited by the Akkadian numeral system. The Akkadian
numeral system was in positional base 60; the sexagesimal system. This may seem like a
lot of symbols to learn however the Akkadians only needed to remember two symbols; a
unit symbol and a ten symbol. From this, they built 59 symbols. In order to read the
Akkadian numeral system, it is built around the same right-to-left power system as that of
binary or base 10, which is our familiar decimal system. Thus, “the right most position is
for the units up to 59, the position one to the left is for 60 × n where 1 ≤ n ≤ 59, etc.” In
order to explain this, let us use the following example:
The sexagesimal number 3,34,24,40 can be interpreted as: and then can be written as
.
Several questions arise with this representation, such as if “two is represented by two
characters each representing one unit, and 61 is represented by the one character for a
unit in the first place and a second identical character for a unit in the second place then
the Babylonian sexagesimal numbers 1,1 and 2 have essentially the same representation.”
This was overcome by using a significant space between the numbers. Now let us
consider doing mathematical operations such addiction, subtraction, multiplication, and
division. Before we continue notice that the Akkadian numeral system is designed so
intuitively that because the system is written in base 60, the operations follow the same
instructions as those like the base 10. If we were to follow the base 10 instructions, we
can conclude that in order to add two numbers, you add the symbols on the far right
normally and provide the symbol for that number. If the ending number is greater than 60,
then the symbol for how over you are of 60, you add that symbol to the symbol next on
the left. Such operations are the same for current day strategies, which shows that the
Akkadian numeral system is as powerful as today's current system and easy to understand.
Once an individual has learned the basic principal to the numeral system, they are able to
perform complex operations and even solve problems involving finding the area of a
rectangle. It should not be a surprise that in fact the Akkadian system was the biggest
achievement in mathematics, which was later adopted by the Babylonian civilization. But
can this numeral system be considered an art, like the Akkadian written language? Indeed
it can be for several reasons. Firstly, the Akkadian written language contains the numeral
system embedded inside it, such as story telling and recording of information. Secondly,
because the numeral system is based off two simple rules and expands on the
characteristics of these two rules, the numeral system can be written in an elegant way
alongside words and sentences which also make use of the same sorts of logograms.
Combined, the Akkadian language is not only sophisticated through its complex syllabary,
but also powerful with its unique numerical properties, together making an elegant art on
tablets and scrolls. These facts evidently show that the Akkadian writing and numeral
system must have survived for centuries before that particular society invented a new
way of recording information and communicating.
Akkadian succeeded in being the primary language for close to two thousands years,
even founding a place in one histories most significant finds during King Hammurabi's
uniting of Mesopotamia. Hammurabi was the first ruler to lay out specific societal laws
known as Code of Hammurabi, dating around 1700BCE. The uniqueness of this large
diorite stele code is that it was written in Akkadian. This significantly demonstrates how
well the language was used for society's benefits. As one scholar states, Akkadian
“remained as one of the great writing systems of the ancient Middle East, preserving the
history, literature, and science of the ancient Mesopotamians for the modern world.”This
language was so heavily distributed that there were traces of Akkadian in the Bible and in
Greek civilization. “During the 2nd millenium BC the Akkadian language developed into
two variants, Assyrian and Babylonian, in Assyria and Babylon”. The Babylonians
themselves had a large impact on the world for several reasons such as studying
astronomy, inventing the 60 minute hour or even their high wealth and power, where the
Assyrian language can still be heard even till this day from Iraq. The original Akkadian
language was eventually drowned out by Aramaic by the 8th century BCE, but continued
to linger around the Middle East provinces until the 1st century AD. Although the
Akkadian language can be seen as extinct, the most predominant feature is that it was
transformed and then adapted by more sophisticated societies such as the Assyrians and
the Babylonians. This shows the level of influence the language had on neighbors and
growing cultures around Mesopotamia and modern day Middle East. The influence was
so great that societies were able to accurately record all kinds of information, such as
science, religion, conquests, and much more. This makes this particular ancient writing
and numeral system unique.
Near 2500BCE the dawn of a new language was quick to be seen over the horizon.
Military rulers scourged the land and united its people. Sargon the Great who heralded
from Akkad brought together a province and while under his rule scholars, priests, and
the educated formed the ancient language known as Akkadian. This cuneiform script used
simple symbols in order to create a vast written languagegot
and a more powerful numeral system. The language was a beautiful art that was
transformed over thousands of years and influenced several cultures. The Akkadian
language was so important that the Babylonians adopted its techniques and now has
traces of its writing and numeral system in today's modern Assyrian language. Even great
artifacts such as the Code of Hammurabi or the Bible were written in ancient Akkadian.
With that said, we should take at least a minute or two out of our time to absorb the
significance of The Actual Academia of Akkad Akkadian.