Ancient Languages

Sumerian emerged in the city-states of southern Mesopotamia and is one of the earliest languages ever committed to writing. Its speakers, the Sumerians, developed cuneiform — wedge-shaped marks pressed into wet clay — around 3100 BCE, first to keep accounts and later to record law, myth and poetry.

Named after the city of Akkad, Akkadian is the oldest attested Semitic language. It adopted the cuneiform script from Sumerian and rose to prominence under Sargon of Akkad, whose empire spread the language across Mesopotamia.

Ancient Egyptian is one of the longest-recorded languages in human history. Its earliest hieroglyphs appear around 3200 BCE. The word "hieroglyph" itself is Greek for "sacred carving", reflecting the script's use on temple and tomb walls.

Sanskrit means "refined" or "perfected". Its oldest form, Vedic Sanskrit, is the language of the Rigveda, composed around 1500 BCE and transmitted orally with astonishing precision for centuries before being written down.

The earliest Greek we can read is Mycenaean, written in the Linear B syllabary around 1400 BCE. After a "dark age", the Greeks adopted and adapted the Phoenician alphabet around 800 BCE, crucially adding letters for vowels — creating the first true alphabet.

Latin began as the local speech of Latium, the region around Rome. As Roman power expanded, so did the language, carried by soldiers, traders and administrators across an empire that stretched from Britain to the Middle East.

Aramaic arose among the Aramean peoples of Syria and spread rapidly thanks to trade and empire. Its simple, adaptable alphabet made it easy to learn, and it became the administrative language of the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian empires.

Phoenician was the language of the great seafaring merchants of the Levantine coast — cities like Tyre, Sidon and Byblos. A Canaanite tongue close to Hebrew, it is famous less for its literature than for the writing system it carried across the seas.

Old Chinese is the earliest reconstructable stage of the Chinese language. Its first written records are the oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang dynasty (c. 1250 BCE) — questions to the ancestors carved into turtle shells and ox bones for divination.

Old Norse was the language of the Vikings, descended from an earlier Proto-Norse written in runes. As Norse seafarers raided, traded and settled from Ireland to Russia, their language travelled with them across the North Atlantic.

Classical, or Biblical, Hebrew was the language of ancient Israel and the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). A Canaanite language closely related to Phoenician, it was written with an alphabet of consonants, with vowel marks added by later scholars called the Masoretes.

Gothic is the earliest Germanic language preserved in a substantial written text. It was spoken by the Goths, a people who migrated across Europe during the late Roman period. Its alphabet was devised in the 4th century by the bishop Wulfila (Ulfilas).