Tom Metcalfe is a freelance journalist and regular Live Science contributor who is based in London in the United Kingdom. Tom writes mainly about science, space, archaeology, the Earth and the oceans. He has also written for the BBC, NBC News, National Geographic, Scientific American, Air & Space, and many others.\n
Two ancient clay tablets discovered in Iraq and covered from top to bottom in cuneiform writing contain details of a"lost" Canaanite language that has remarkable similarities with ancient Hebrew.
"Our knowledge of Amorite was so pitiful that some experts doubted whether there was such a language at all," researchers Manfred Krebernik and Andrew R. George told Live Science in an email. But"the tablets settle that question by showing the language to be coherently and predictably articulated, and fully distinct from Akkadian."
The account of the Amorite language given in the tablets is surprisingly comprehensive."The two tablets increase our knowledge of Amorite substantially, since they contain not only new words but also complete sentences, and so exhibit much new vocabulary and grammar," the researchers said. The writing on the tablets may have been done by an Akkadian-speaking Babylonian scribe or scribal apprentice, as an"impromptu exercise born of intellectual curiosity," the authors added.
"There are phrases about setting up a common meal, about doing a sacrifice, about blessing a king," Cohen said."There is even what may be a love song. … It really encompasses the entire sphere of life."
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