Due to their relations to those diachronic and geographic factors mentioned above, these components have led to the postulation of a division of Sumerian language into a Pre-Sumerian stratum (Proto-Euphra-tic for Benno Landsberger, and Proto-Iranic for Samuel Noah Kramer), a Sumerian one, and a later Akkadian contribution. Moreover, this division emphasises the north-eastern origin of the first two strata, and the north-western origin of the third one.
It is certain, however, that there was a complex mixture of languages, which was even stronger if one also takes into consideration the surrounding areas. The latter provided an Elamite contribution from the east, a Hurrian one from the north, and a non-Akkadian Semitic one (Eblaite, then Amorite) from the west. The Mesopotamians of the third millennium bc were strongly aware of the variety of languages available to them. This awareness is confirmed by the presence of professional interpreters and scribal tools such as vocabularies in more than one language. In order to explain this multitude of languages, Sumerian culture supported the mythical view of a common original language that existed in a distant past, which was then divided into several languages. In the Akkadian period, another view would be put forward, according to which Akkadian was the central language (since Akkad was at the centre of the known world), Sumerian was the southern one, Elamite the eastern one, Subartean the northern one, and Amorite the western one. In this way, the ethno-linguistic distribution of the Near East was modelled in such a way as to coincide with the Akkadian worldview.
World History
