Cambridge, MA – A project led by professor Regina Barzilay of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology may be the first to show how ancient, lost or unknown languages can be decoded using a computer program, according to National Geographic.
Subscribe to our Daily Roundup Email
The MIT team was able to decode the “lost language” of Ugaritic, an ancient Semitic language used in Old Testament times, using no more computing power than that of a laptop. The program took no longer than a few hours to link most Ugaritic symbols to their Hebrew equivalents.
Ugaritic text was nothing more than a series of dots and wedge-shaped marks to linguists and scholars when it was first discovered on clay tablets in 1928, excavated from the rubble of the ancient city of Ugarit by French archaeologists. Even though the language is closely related to Hebrew, experts did not decipher it until 1932.
It took only hours to accomplish what took linguists years to complete, leading scholars to hope that the new computer program can be a prototype for a more powerful system to decode ancient languages that remain a mystery to scholars. In other words, it may not be long before computers become modern day versions of the Rosetta Stone.
“Traditionally, decipherment has been viewed as a sort of scholarly detective game, and computers weren’t thought to be of much use,” Barzilay said. “Our aim is to bring to bear the full power of modern machine learning and statistics to this problem.”
But some experts remain skeptical. Richard Sproat, an Oregon Health and Science University computational linguist, notes that “in the case [of Ugaritic], you’re dealing with a small and simple writing system, and there are closely related languages. It’s not always going to be the case that there are closely related languages that one can use.”
For example, a language like Etruscan, which was used by ancient Italians around 700 B.C.E., is known today from scant written examples and shares no relation to any other known language, except for a few words adopted by the Latin language (e.g., the name of the city of Rome comes from Etruscan). Deciphering Etruscan symbols could potentially give historians invaluable contextual clues about the region before Latin superseded the earlier language.
Barzilay thinks the MIT program can be upgraded to decode languages like Etruscan by scanning multiple languages at once and taking contextual information into account. At the very least, such a program could reveal new, obscure clues that scholars can use to learn more about ancient unknown languages.
Biblical? What’s Biblical about this language? The Biblical languages are the ones the Bible is written in: Hebrew, Aramaic, and (since the word “Bible” includes the “new testament”) Koine Greek. As far as I know, none of the Bible is written in Ugaritic, so how is it a Biblical language?
the torah was actually written in a different form of hebrew than we have today, just ask charlie hall and all the experts in VIN land
This isn’t the ‘ksav ivri’ at all, we know what it looks like and even I can read it.
This is another semitic language which was written in cuneiform, so it looks like sanskrit but it’s actually a semitic language entirely different, sort of like when we find russian or arabic written with hebrew letters.
I wouldn’t be able to read this, not only because of the lettering but because this, like the original hebrew, was written without any vowels at all, so it is very difficult.
It has similarities to the akkadian language, which was written in cuneiform and it marks the milestone in linguistic evolution from the use of glyphs symbolizing words and concepts to letters which are strung together based on the sound of the letter, which lead to a revolution in language where ideas could be spread much more easily.
Ugaritic was a tremendous find in the late 20’s in the ancient Syrian city of Ugarit, and it helps us to understand not only word history better, but even our own beliefs and texts.
BTW, Milhouse: I’m surprised at you…even chazal say that the Torah was given in 70 languages.
The Luchois were written in Ksav Ivri – which looks nothing like Ksav Ashuri or Ugarit. Ugarit predates Ksav Ivri.
there is not a single historian or expert who will agree that the language the torah is written in was the original language from 3500 years ago. The hebrew language as we know it in the torah did not exist back then, there is no disputing that. The torah has been translated numerous times over the years to the format that it is currently in, and yes that presents some major problems, but that is the truth
Is Ugaritic (named for where it was found) a language or a script?!
It appears to be a script, maybe used in a hybrid language of hebrew/????.
Either way, it obviously follows hebrew principles.
Ancient hebrew was written in various forms:
Words represented by pictures, shorthand (e.g. the word rav spelled reish beis, meaning rosh (reish) bayis (beis), a parent alphabet to hieroglyphics and some say ancient chinese)
Letters represented by pictures (following the same style as pictowords, with words spelled out)
Letters formed by notches (used for stone inscriptions)
Need i mention military codes. Is ugaritic a hebrew code??
And hebrew as we better know it, with traditional print-style block lettering.
It can be explained that proper lettering was used solely by scribes, to avoid commoners corrupting the detailed customs of it’s writing.
Common hebrew script followed either the short-hand or written style using pictographs pictorally depicting the meaning of each letter (e.g. Reish or Rosh = head, Beis or Bayis = house etc etc).
It can also be explained that the proper script was only used for Holy texts per se, and the pictographic and inscription script for all other texts.
There is lashon kodesh and ivrit. Maybe there was a separate script for writing chol.
Actually, “vavim” makes more sense if you look at a vav in k’tav ivri. Same for the word “tav” used in the Navi.
In any event, as this is cuneiform, it has nothing to do with k’tav ivri.
The story about R’ Akiva has been interpreted many ways. Note that even k’tav ashuri in his time didn’t have crowns, at least not in the sense we think of them. Of course, the whole story is allegorical- it’s a vision shown to Moshe!
Millhouse, it obviously means “biblical era,” come on. But even so- there are many, many foreign words in Tanach that were incorporated in Hebrew. I mean, Esther is written in Hebrew. But “Achashdarpanim” is not a Hebrew word. Same with Ugaritic.
Not all of those names listed are necessarily Hebrew. Some may have been given a Hebrew meaning retroactively. For example, Paro’s daughter didn’t speak Hebrew. “Moshe” means “son” in Egyptian. Same for the meanings given to Yitzchak or Yaakov. Pinchas is an Egyptian name meaning “black.” (If anything, all those Egyptian names are a proof for the authenticity of the Torah.) But all these languages are related, some more closely than others, so it would make sense that names have similar meanings.
By the way, foreign influence is especially true in Iyov, but occcurs in all sefarim of Tanach. It happens in all languages. (Kimono and bagel in English are obvious examples, but all English words come from other languages.)
Most of you posting do not know what you are talking about.
I studied the Ugaritic texts.
So let me make it clear.
Yiddish is a Germanic language that can be written with Hebrew letters or with English letters.
Similarly, Hebrew can be written in Ksav Ivri (or its derivative: Ksav Shomroni), Ksav Ashuri (which is used by us today, but originally was meant only for Dvorim SheB’Kedusha), or Ksav Yseidos (which in Sefer Yeshayahu is called Cherret Enosh) – cuneiform.
Ugaritic is Hebrew written in Ksav Yseidos (Cuneiform). It is has a symbol for each of the Alef Beis plus two because there are three different Ayins (each with a more forceful grunt from the throat – the strongest is almost a Gimmel).
These Ugaritic texts are interesting because they contain texts of praise to the Avoda Zaras of the ancient Cnaanim and Tzidonim,
The give Shevach VeHoda’a and Tfillos to the male Baal, and the female Ashtoreth, Anath and the other Elilim of those times. They also contain mythological stories of these Avoda Zaras fighting with each other, being Mzaneh with each other and all sorts of other nonsense.
This was the ancient world.
BORUCH HU ELOKEINU SHEHIVDILONU MIN HATOYIM
First of all, the remark about Ugaritic used in the Old Testament times is weird because the Torah encompasses a broad range of timelines with the recording of over 2,000 years of history, and this remark makes it seem as if it was the only language in used in the “Old Testament times”.
I highly doubt kasav Ivri, that was very similiar to other Semitic scripts at the time was the script that the Torah was given in. Rather I think Ksav Ivri was used by the common folks and also not for kodesh, but for everyday matters, much like we use a different script today for writing and ksav Ashuri for kodesh.
to 18. I also heard that one opinion is that Ezra Hasofer introduced ksav Ashuri but what is the source for that? I think Ezra Hasofer simply abolished the using of ksav Ivri because it was becoming overused and people were neglecting to use ksav Ashuri for kodesh, so he felt Ksav Ivri’s use needed to be terminated and ksav Ashuri reintriduced as the exclusive Loshen Hakodesh script. I highly doubt that Ezra Hasofer simply created ksav Ashuri and all of klal Yisroel accepted on the drop of a hat a complete change of a script that went way back to Matan Torah.
I’m really curious about the origin and name of the script we use everday for writing Loshen Hakodesh or Yiddish , which is different than the script we use for sofros.
Does anyone know the origin and name of this script? I would really appeciate if someone can post the answer.
So many historians who have no clue of what they write, amazing. Although a few do seem to know something. Either that or they just googled it to find out. Truth is that we don’t know the truth. There seems to be many conflicting gemoras and midrashim and some actual historical artifacts. Anybody hear of eilu vo’eilu divrei Elokim Chaim? I venture to say there’s some truth in all these opinions. The fact is though that the clear accepted halacho now is ksav ashuri and loshon hakodesh as we have in Tanach. The yidden of the 2nd Beis Hamikdosh probably spoke an amalgam language of mainly aramaic with hebrew words. The language spoken by yidden over the last 2000 years has changed depending on where they lived.
Thank you for taking the time to answer.
I was talking about the script used for writing notes.
What is square Hebrew? Now I’m really confused!
Here’s what I know. There’s the Rashi script. Then there’s ksav Ashuri that’s used for sofros. And then there’s this other “writing notes” script that I would like to know the origin of and if it has a name.
But I have never heard of the square script. Is that the script that siddurim and seforim are printed in and it’s not called ksav Ashuri which is used for sofros? I always assumed that the script in seforim are ksav Ashuri because are extremely close in resemblence to the script in sofros . Was I erring in that assumption and the script used in seforim is called square Hebrew and not ksav Ashuri?
Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.
Thanks Shimon.
So the script used today for sofros is called “square script” as well or Ksav Ashuri?
Thank you Shimon. I very much appeciate your taking the time to answer my questions.
It’s not a language. It’s a design on a serving tray.