Eblaite language

Eblaite
Eblaite inscriptions on tablet
Eblaite inscriptions found in Ebla
RegionEbla
Era3rd millennium BC[1]
Cuneiform
Language codes
ISO 639-3xeb
xeb
Glottologebla1238

Eblaite (/ˈɛblə.t, ˈblə-/,[2] also known as Eblan ISO 639-3), or Palaeosyrian,[3][4] is an extinct East Semitic language used during the 3rd millennium BC in Northern Syria.[5] It was named after the ancient city of Ebla, in modern western Syria.[5] Variants of the language were also spoken in Mari and Nagar.[5][6] According to Cyrus H. Gordon,[7] although scribes might have spoken it sometimes, Eblaite was probably not spoken much, being rather a written lingua franca with East and West Semitic features.

The language was discovered through cuneiform tablets found in Ebla.

  1. ^ Eblaite at MultiTree on the Linguist List
  2. ^ "Eblaite". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d.
  3. ^ Garbini 1981, p. 81.
  4. ^ Lipiński 2001, p. 51-52.
  5. ^ a b c Brown, Keith; Ogilvie, Sarah (2010). Concise Encyclopedia of Languages of the World. Elsevier. p. 313. ISBN 978-0-08-087775-4. Archived from the original on 2017-10-18.
  6. ^ Lipiński 2001, p. 52.
  7. ^ Gordon, Cyrus H. Amorite and Eblaite. p. 101.