The Journal of the American Oriental Society, October 1st, 2004
It has become a truism that Akkadian, the principal Semitic language of ancient Mesopotamia, was the lingua franca of the Near East during the second millennium B.C.E. This is stated, more or less in so many words, in any number of works on the ancient Near East, which usually offer the Amarna letters, the trove of correspondence between Egypt and other states that was found at the site of Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna), as the parade example of Akkadian as lingua franca. (1) But is the truism true?
The idea that Akkadian was in common use as a written language throughout the ancient Near East,...
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