an_unshakeable_faith.. - Holy Bible Institute

Egyptian in hieroglyphic and hieratic dates to about 3200 B.C.Akkadian dates to about 2500 B.C. and was a Semitic language akin to Hebrew. It was used inthe Babylonian and Assyrian empires. More than 40,000 tablet fragments in Akkadian wererecovered from the ancient city of Nippur alone.Hurrian dates to about 2300 B.C. and was spoken in northern Mesopotamia in the Mitanni andHittite empires.Eblaite, another Semitic language, dates to the third millennium B.C. It was the chief language ofthe city state of Ebla. 17,000 tablets were excavated from there in the 1970s.Hittite dates to about 2000 B.C. and was the chief language of the Hittite kingdom.Ugaritic dates to about 1400 B.C. A library was unearthed at the ancient city of Ugarit in the1930s.The keys to unlocking the ancient languagesPrior to the 19th century archaeologists and historians could not read the most ancient languages.The Egyptian language was written in hieroglyphic, which used word pictures and symbols, andin hieratic which was sort of a cursive form of hieroglyphic.The Mesopotamian languages were written in cuneiform, which was a wedge-shaped script.Hieroglyphic and cuneiform were not languages; they were types of script in which ancientlanguages were written.The Rosetta Stone: Unlocking EgyptianThe discovery of the Rosetta Stone in the late 18th century and its translation in the early 19thwas the key to unlocking Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. The stone was inscribed in the secondcentury B.C. with a decree by King Ptolemy V of Egypt. Since it was written in three languages--hieroglyphic, demotic (a cursive form of hieroglyphic), and Greek -- it allowed linguists todecipher the unknown hieroglyphic by means of the known Greek.The 4 x 2-foot stone, weighing 1,600 pounds, was found in the Nile Delta by a French armyofficer named P.F. Bouchard in 1799 while Napoleon Bonaparte was in control of Egypt. It gotits name from the town in which it was found. Napoleon’s expeditionary force numbering 40,000included many of France’s best scientists.In 1801 the British routed the French, confiscated the Rosetta Stone, and shipped it to the BritishMuseum, where it has been on display ever since.103