Assyria and Babylon speak to us anew

I'm fascinated to read about a project to record Babylonian and Assyrian poetry and literature, read aloud by scholars who've figured out how to pronounce the languages concerned. Given that neither language has been spoken for a couple of millennia, that's quite an achievement! The project's Web site informs us:

This website collects recordings of modern Assyriologists reading ancient Babylonian and Assyrian poetry and literature aloud in the original language. It is the first undertaking of its kind, and accordingly some explanation of its aims is called for.

It is intended to serve several purposes, some for Assyriologists, and some for the wider public. First, it aims to foster interest among students of Babylonia and Assyria in how these civilisations’ works of verbal art were read aloud in the past, and how they should be read aloud today.

Second, it provides a forum in which scholars who have theories about Babylonian and Assyrian pronunciation, metre, etc. can present a concrete example of how their theories sound in practice. (In this function the archive does not of course aim to replace scholarly discussion in established channels, but rather to provide a useful complement to written publications).

Third, as a record of the ways in which contemporary scholars read Babylonian and Assyrian, it will some day serve a historical function. Many great Assyriologists, including some who had influential theories of Babylonian metre and phonology, passed into history without leaving a single recording of how they read Babylonian and Assyrian. This archive will provide at least some record of how scholars read Babylonian and Assyrian in the twenty-first century.

Finally, but not least, the questions which students of ancient languages most frequently hear from laymen are: "How did they sound? And how do you know?". This website is meant to serve as an introduction to these issues, providing the public with some idea of how modern Assyriologists think Babylonian and Assyrian were pronounced.

There's more information at the link, particularly in the FAQ section. The archive of recordings is here, with both audio and visual presentations of numerous poems and historical documents.

It's pretty amazing to hear excerpts from the Epic of Gilgamesh, which was composed many centuries before Christ (the earliest surviving written copy dates back to the 7th century BC, but it was already ancient at that time - Gilgamesh is believed to have reigned almost two thousand years earlier, or almost five millennia before our time). Somewhere back in our dim and distant past, these are the same sounds that some of our ancestors would have learned as children, and taught to their children and their children's children.

Call me silly if you wish, but it's a humbling concept to think that my great-great-many-times-great-ancestors heard this, listening around the fire at night while the same stars that I see today twinkled over their heads, and passed it on in their turn. I wonder if I'll meet any of them in the hereafter, one day, and be able to tell them that their tales live still?

Peter