World’s Five Oldest Written Languages
World’s Five Oldest Written Languages
Sumerian
- Sumerian is the oldest attested written language. It was used by the people of Sumer in Southern Mesopotamia and is an isolate language, which means it’s not related to any other existing language. Sumerian continued to be used in written documents, usually in legal and administrative contexts, well after the spoken language was taken over by Akkadian, the date of which is still debated today.
Egyptian Hieroglyphics
- The symbols used in Hieroglyphics represented objects that actually existed in Ancient Egyptian life, with sentences for example composed from symbols for plants, body parts and birds. The key to their translation was the discovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799 (see the main image above) which has the same message inscribed in Hieroglyphics, Egyptian Demotic and Greek.
Akkadian
- Akkadian is a Semitic language, which originated in northern Mesopotamia and in time spread to encompass the whole country, finally taking over from Sumerian. The cuneiform script it uses was adapted from Sumerian script, resulting in many borrowed words and lexical merging. It developed into the lingu franca of the Ancient Near East but began to be replaced by Aramaic in the 8th century BC.
Eblaite
- Eblaite is very similar to Akkadian and also written using cuneiform script. Some scholars believe it may in fact be a dialect of Akkadian, whereas others argue it is a separate ‘sister’ language. In the past it has sometimes been defined as an archaic Akkadian dialect but is now widely agreed to be a stand-alone member of the East Semitic language group. It is known from 15, 000 tablets found mostly at the city of Ebla.
Elamite
- Elamite is also an isolate language and its interpretation is difficult. Its script was adapted from Akkadian and contains 130 symbols, fewer than most other scripts. The Elamite kingdom was the most influential kingdom to the east of Mesopotamia, until the arrival of the First Persian Empire in the 5th century BC.
https://digventures.com/2013/10/friday-five-five-oldest-written-languages/