Protoeuphratic

The protoeuphratic language is considered by some Assyriologists (for example Samuel Noah Kramer ) as a hypothetical substrate language of the people who introduced agriculture in the area of southern Iraq in the early Obed period (5300-4700 BC).

Benno Landsberger and other Assyriologists argue that by examining the structure of Sumerian designations of occupations, place names, and hydronyms, one can surmise that there was once an earlier group of people in the region who spoke a completely different language - often called a protoeuphratic language labeled -: Terms for "Bauer", "Meier", "Tischler" and "Dattel" do not seem to have any Sumerian or Semitic origin.

In (post-) Soviet linguistics this substrate is called “banana language” due to the characteristic trait of some personal names in Sumerian texts , i.e. reduplication of syllables (as in the English word banana): Inanna , Zababa, Chuwawa / Humbaba , Bunene etc. This hypothesis was presented by Igor Michailowitsch Djakonow and Wladislaw Ardsinba , who connect this hypothetical language with the Samarra culture .

Rubio criticized the substratum hypothesis with the argument that there was evidence of borrowing from more than one language. This view is now the predominant one in the field (Piotr Michalowski, Gerd Steiner et al.).

Individual evidence

↑ История древнего Востока, т.2. М. 1988, глава 3. (in Russian: History of the Ancient Orient, Part 2, Moscow 1988. Published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Chapter III.)

bibliography

Rubio, Gonzalo "On the alleged pre-Sumerian substratum," in Journal of Cuneiform Studies 51 (1999): 1-16

[1] История древнего Востока, т.2. М. 1988, глава 3. (in Russian: History of the Ancient Orient, Part 2, Moscow 1988. Published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Chapter III.)