4 ms·
I'd say it's probably Proto-Indo-European roots, although I seem to think the Assyrians were always classed as Semetic in my textbooks.
by thrower123 8y ago
I'd say it's probably Proto-Indo-European roots, although I seem to think the Assyrians were always classed as Semetic in my textbooks.
- Koshkin 8y agoYes, Assyrian was a dialect of Akkadian, an East-Semitic language.
- garmaine 8y agoIs. Assyrian is still spoken.
- Koshkin 8y agoRight, but the modern Assyrian is "Neo-Aramaic," not a dialect of Akkadian like the old one.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoGiving one language the same name as another language from which it doesn't descend isn't really a good reason to claim that the earlier language is "still" spoken.
- jhanschoo 8y agoNot really; Akkadian is East Semitic and Assyrian is Central Semitic.
- Koshkin 8y agoIt was (at the time).
- Scriptor 8y agoGilgamesh was written ~2000 years after PIE's theorized origins. It actually lines up well with the Rigveda, one of the oldest surviving Vedic Sanskrit texts.
- mcguire 8y agoI believe it was originally written in Sumerian, a language isolate originally found in southern Mesopotamia. I should check out the Rigveda.
- Scriptor 8y agoYep definitely true. I meant that the original author of Gilgamesh would have lived at a time when certain Sanskrit names may have been heard of in Mesopotamia.
- Amezarak 8y agoSumerian and the story of Gilgamesh predated Sanskrit.
- rtx 8y agoWe have a similar story in one of the older Sanskrit works. http://edition-open-access.de/proceedings/7/6/index.html http://edition-open-access.de/proceedings/7/6/index.html
- Amezarak 8y agoYour link suggests the Indian story is based on the Sumerian or Akkadian. That would be news to me. It’s certainly possible, but in my personal opinion people often go astray with these methods - there’s little reason to believe many examples couldn’t have evolved independently based on similar real world occurrences or common human archetypes.
- vram22 8y agoYou should. It is interesting. I've read it.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoIf you consider a gap of roughly 700 years to be "lining up well", then sure. But from a more conventional perspective, the epic of Gilgamesh is much, much, much older than the Rigveda.