In spite of the immense progress of Akkadian and Semitic linguistics in recent decades, no systematic diachronic treatment of the the Akkadian vocabulary has been carried out. The Akkadian vocabulary itself has been relatively well disclosed in two major dictionaries, but the Akkadian language has not been been sufficiently studied and analysed as a linguistic reservoir. The Etymological Dictionary of Akkadian presents a comparative and historical analysis of the entire Akkadian vocabulary in a systematic and comprehensive manner.

Akkadian is the oldest transmitted Semitic language (from ca. 2600 BCE till the end of the first millennium BCE) and with an extant textual corpus of ca. 10 million words it is one of the best documented languages of the ancient world, comparable to the Latin record until the 3rd century CE. Akkadian was the main language of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires and the lingua franca of the ancient Near East used, for example, by the Hittites and Egyptians in international correspondence. The Akkadian language is therefore crucial in reconstructing early Semitic historical grammar, and, due to its central role in a vast geographical and culturally diverse are over a long period of time, Akkadian is unequivocally important as the origin, receptor, and transmitter of both Semitic and non-Semitic loan and foreign words whose traces can, for example, be found in modern languages.

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