OldBabylonische

Old Babylonian refers to a historical stage of the Akkadian language used in southern Mesopotamia from roughly 2000 to 1600 BCE, during the rise and consolidation of the city of Babylon and its surrounding regions. This dialect is distinguished from earlier Akkadian varieties influenced by Sumerian and from later Babylonian forms. The period produced a large body of cuneiform texts reflecting administration, trade, law, literature, and scholarly activity, making it a key source for understanding ancient Mesopotamian society.

The language is part of the Semitic branch of the Afroasiatic family and is written in the Akkadian cuneiform script, adapted from the Sumerian writing system. Scribal tradition in Old Babylonian tablets often uses a mix of phonetic elements and logograms (Sumerograms) borrowed from Sumerian, requiring bilingual or multilingual knowledge. The orthography and grammar show characteristic Akkadian features, including verbal systems and noun declensions, with regional pronunciations and lexical differences compared to other Akkadian dialects.

The Old Babylonian corpus includes administrative records, legal contracts, economic transactions, literary and scholarly texts, and political correspondence. The Code of Hammurabi, although preserved in later copies, originates in this era and reflects the legal culture of Old Babylonian Babylonia. Other notable genres are royal inscriptions, lexical lists for education, and mathematical or astronomical tablets. The period laid the linguistic and administrative groundwork for Middle and Late Babylonian, influencing subsequent Mesopotamian scribal practice and continuing to shape the Akkadian language form used in Babylonia for centuries.