Kassite language

Formerly spoken in

• Language isolate Kassitisch

The Kassite Language - formerly kossäische language - spoken by the Kassites in Northern Mesopotamia from the 18th to the 4th century BC. From the 16th to the 12th century ruled Kassite kings of Babylon, before they were conquered by the Elamites.

The Kassites, whose area of ​​origin was probably the Zagros Mountains, reached by the end of the first Babylonian dynasty (1594 BC) for supremacy in southern Mesopotamia. The Kassite period lasted until 1155 BC, several kings of this dynasty Kurigalzu called themselves (see Kurigalzu I and II Kurigalzu ). They renewed the ancient Mesopotamian temple towers in many places ( ziggurats or ziggurats ), particularly well preserved ziggurat of the Kassite capital major Kurigalzu is (now Aqar Quf west of Baghdad ). The name comes from the Akkadian name Kassites Kassu that might as Koσσαιoι ( Kossaioi ) in Strabo finds.

The assimilation of the Kassites to the culture of the Babylonians and thus the adaptation of the Babylonian culture language must be vonstattengegangen very quickly and thoroughly. Most Cassite building inscriptions are - Sumerian written while the Akkadian ( Babylonian ) was used for correspondence, business and legal documents - such as the Babylonians. Thus, because the traditional Cassite language material is also in spite of the four hundred years of domination extremely poor: a Cassite gods and persons name list with the Babylonian equivalents, a kassitisch - Akkadian vocabulary and so-called horses texts with Cassite proper names and color names.

A Cassite grammar can not be reconstructed because of the paucity of material at the time, but the Cassite seems to have been an agglutinative language.

The kinship of the Kassite are unclear, at least the Cassite is neither Indo-European nor Semitic, also relations with the Elamite and Sumerian can be excluded. On the basis of a few words, a membership has been suggested to also extinct hurro - Urartian languages ​​( T. Schneider, see the references). Furthermore, some words in the so-called horse texts seem to point to areal contact with the Indo-Iranian languages. Until further notice, the Cassite should be cautious as well regarded as a language isolate.