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Why No One Can Understand Ancient Sumerian
A lost language that remains out of reach
When it comes to ancient languages, few are as cryptic or as frustrating as ancient Sumerian. While the world is littered with ancient languages, many of them are partially or wholly translated. Ancient Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, and even ancient Phoenician are all understood to a very confident degree by a large number of modern scholars. The same cannot be said of ancient Sumerian. Sumerian is the second oldest attested language in the world after Egyptian, and it is slightly older than Akkadian, another ancient language that is far better translated than Sumerian.
Sumerian was the language of the ancient region of Sumer which was made up of a collection of city states. Sumer was one of the first civilizations to appear in Mesopotamia and was one of the first established urban civilizations in human history. The Sumerians were instrumental in developing cuneiform which was a form of written language which was in use for nearly 3,000 years. (Cuneiform was adapted by other languages as a medium for writing but was not a vessel for preserving the Sumerian language itself.)
What makes Sumerian so interesting is the fact that it is a local language isolate meaning that it is not directly related to any other language from the same time period or the same…