2025/12/12 by Tom Hercules Davies
Arts and Humanities · Earth and Planetary Sciences · #Ancient Near East History #Archaeology and ancient environmental studies #Linguistics and language evolution
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s000983882400106x
openalex created_date 2025/12/12 · openalex publication_date 2025/12/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25
Abstract A motif in the Cypria is sometimes explained as borrowed in the seventh century from the Akkadian epic Atra-ḫasīs , sometimes as inherited from a third-millennium Indo-European poetic tradition surviving also in the Sanskrit Mahābhārata . These explanations seem incompatible, but they are not. Narrative traditions often cross linguistic boundaries through multilinguals, and linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that some speakers of Proto-Indo-European were also speakers of Semitic languages. Indo-European and Ancient Near Eastern comparative approaches are therefore halves of a single enterprise: the Cypria , Mahābhārata and Atra-ḫasīs belong to a Eurasian-Steppe tradition, and must be read together.