Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Tables xi

Notes on Contributors xv

Preface xix

Part I Writing Systems 1

1 The Decipherment of Ancient Near Eastern Languages 3
Peter T. Daniels

2 The Emergence of Cuneiform Writing 27
Christopher Woods

3 The Development of Egyptian Writing in the Fourth and Early Third Millennium bce 47
Ludwig Morenz

4 The Emergence of Alphabetic Scripts 65
Christopher Rollston

Part II Ancient Near Eastern Languages 83

5 Sumerian 85
Piotr Michalowski

6 Egyptian 107
Matthias Muller

7 Akkadian 129
Rebecca Hasselbach‐Andee

8 Eblaite 149
Amalia Catagnoti

9 Elamite 163
Jan Tavernier

10 Amorite 185
Viktor Golinets

11 Hurrian 203
Dennis R.M. Campbell

12 Hittite 221
Ilya Yakubovich

13 Luwian 239
Craig Melchert

14 Ugaritic 257
Robert Hawley

15 Ancient Hebrew 279
Seth Sanders

16 Phoenician and Punic 297
Francoise Briquel Chatonnet and Robert Hawley

17 Old and Imperial Aramaic 319
Christian Stadel

18 Ancient South Arabian 337
Peter Stein

Part III Ancient Near Eastern Languages Used as Administrative Languages or Linguae Francae 355

19 Akkadian as a Lingua Franca 357
Juan Pablo Vita

20 Aramaic as Lingua Franca 373
Margaretha Folmer

Part IV Language Contact in the Ancient Near East 401

21 Sumerian and Akkadian Language Contact 403
C. Jay Crisostomo

22 Language Contact of Ancient Egyptian with Semitic and Other Near Eastern Languages 421
Thomas Schneider

23 Hebrew and Aramaic in Contact 439
Aaron Koller

24 Multilingualism and Diglossia in the Ancient Near East 457
Rebecca Hasselbach‐Andee

Part V The Development of Literary Languages and Literary Contact 471

25 Standard Babylonian 473
Christian W. Hess

26 Standardization in Egyptian 489
Antonio Loprieno

27 The “Influence” of Sumerian on Hittite Literature 505
Mark Weeden

28 Ancient Near Eastern Literary Influences on Hebrew Literature and the Hebrew Bible 521
Michael Wingert

Index 537

About the Author

Rebecca Hasselbach-Andee, PhD, received her PhD in Semitic Philology from Harvard University in 2004. After working as a preceptor for Semitic languages at Harvard, she was hired as Professor for Comparative Semitics at the University of Chicago. Hasselbach-Andee's research interests lie in the comparative study of Semitic languages. The main methodologies she applies are those of Historical Linguistics, Typology, and Sociolinguistics. Some of her publications include Sargonic Akkadian: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts and Case in Semitic: Roles, Relations, and Reconstruction.

Reviews

"To sum up, A Companion to Ancient Near Eastern Languages deserves a place on every Hebrew Bible scholar's shelf (or device) alongside other standard resources on the ancient Near Eastern world of the OT." – Bulletin for Biblical Research, Vol. 31, No. 2, 2021