Ancient Civilization Archives

Published On - December 7, 2012

Richard Brooks Language BlogTags: Ancient Civilization

What Killed The Sumerian Language?

It’s a puzzle that’s long vexed archaeologists, historians and linguists alike. What caused the decline the of the ancient Sumerian civilization and the language they spoke? The ancient Sumerians were the first civilization to invent a system of writing. Cuneiform tablets that describe t...

Published On - October 7, 2012

Richard Brooks Language BlogTags: Ancient Civilization

Dictionary Translates Language of the Everyday Ancient Egyptian

After almost four decades, scholars at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute have finally finished their magnum opus: a dictionary of demotic Egyptian, the script used by commoners in ancient Egypt. The elaborate hieroglyphs that adorn the tombs of the pharaohs were much too complicat...

Published On - August 28, 2012

Richard Brooks Language BlogTags: Ancient Civilization

Anatolia: The Birthplace of Indo-European Language?

The Indo-European language family is one of the world’s largest, encompassing languages as diverse as English and Hindi. Linguists have managed to reconstruct quite a bit of Proto-Indo-European , but the origins of the language family remain shrouded in mystery. Who spoke it, and how did it sp...

Published On - May 26, 2012

Richard Brooks Language BlogTags: Ancient Civilization, Latin

Ancient Roman Curses, Translated

What do you do when you come home from a bad day at work, furious at someone? Do you pour yourself a drink? Blow off steam playing video games? If you lived in a time when people commonly believed in black magic, you might have used a different coping mechanism: casting a curse at the […]...

Published On - May 10, 2012

Richard Brooks Language BlogTags: Ancient Civilization

Forgotten Language Rediscovered

In the ruins of an ancient palace in the Middle East, an archaeologist from Cambridge recently discovered an amazing artifact. No, it wasn’t the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail. Sorry, Indiana Jones. Instead, it’s the remains of a forgotten language, long extinct, that scholars w...

Translation Reveals Depth of Egyptian Medical Knowledge

Published On - February 22, 2012

K International Language Blog, Medical TranslationTags: Ancient Civilization

Translation Reveals Depth of Egyptian Medical Knowledge

Hippocrates may be revered as the “father of medicine,” but the ancient Egyptians deserve much of the credit. After assisting in the translation of a 16th-17th Dynasty Egyptian papyrus, Dr. Gonzalo M. Sanchez was “blown away” by how modern much of the content seemed. As he to...

Published On - August 7, 2009

K International Language BlogTags: Ancient Civilization, Technology, Translation

The Meaning of an Ancient Hieroglyphic Script

Translating ancient scripts is difficult, especially when the civilization they belonged to is long gone. We lucked out with the ancient Egyptians when we found the Rosetta Stone, which had the same passage translated into three different scripts: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, demotic Egyptian and...