2 millennia after the tongue died out, sound of Babylonian now streams from the Internet
By APFriday, October 1, 2010
Babylonian, dead for millennia, alive online
LONDON — The language of the Epic of Gilgamesh and King Hammurabi has found a new life online.
Academics across the world have uploaded audio of Babylonian epics, poems, and even a magic spell to the Internet in an effort to help scholars and laymen understand what the ancient Near East sounded like.
The answer? Cambridge University’s Martin Worthington tells The Associated Press it’s like a kind of compromise between Italian and Arabic.
Worthing said he got the idea for the project in part because people often ask him how Babylonians spoke and how it’s possible to tell when the language has long since died out.
He says the website helps answer that question — and give visitors an earful of the 2nd millennium B.C.
