Learn Akkadian

Akkadian is one of the most important languages of all time. For more than two thousand years, across a massive expanse of ancient Afroeurasia, it was used to record great works of literature; the chronicles and laws of the world’s first empires; the earliest known mathematical texts; treatises of healing, sorcery and divination; and contracts, receipts, and letters which comprise our most detailed archive of everyday people’s history from the ancient world.

Studying Akkadian means contributing to an exciting, dynamic, and young field of knowledge. Already forgotten by the time of the Roman Empire, Akkadian was only recently deciphered. Every year, new tablets are unearthed by archaeologists—in libraries and museums all over the world, hundreds of thousands of these documents are waiting for their first reader in three thousand years.

That could be you. In 2026, the University of Melbourne is teaching Akkadian: we’re the only university in Australasia to offer this subject. In just two semesters, you can learn to read cuneiform texts on the original monuments and tablets.

Who is Akkadian for?

  • 𒀭Readers

    Akkadian poetry is deep and rich. Since we only learned to read it about a hundred years ago, the field is wide open for young literary scholars. Imagine if we discovered the plays of Shakespeare today, and only a thousand people on earth knew how to read them: that’s the situation in Assyriology. Your work could set the agenda for decades to come.

  • 𒀭Programmers

    Cuneiform might be the most complex, versatile script ever developed. Learning to read it will teach you new ways to encode information. And we need programmers, to digitize texts, train neural nets to read cuneiform, and build the infrastructure that will shape the future of Assyriology. If you want a breadth subject that values and stretches your coding skills, Akkadian is for you.

  • 𒀭Mathematicians

    The astronomers of Babylon were the greatest mathematicians of antiquity. We need maths students to interpret their texts: it's one thing to read cuneiform, and another to show how a linear zigzag function models the velocity of the moon. If you can do both, you can make a huge impact in the field.

  • 𒀭Historians

    Every year, archaeologists dig up hundreds of new cuneiform tablets, from households, temples, businesses, and palaces. Most of this vast and constantly-expanding archive has not yet been edited, published, or even read by modern scholars. With a knowledge of Akkadian, you could trace the fortunes of an ancient family through five generations, study the Bronze Age economy using incomparably detailed quantitative records, or reconstruct the court intrigues of the world's earliest imperial powers.

  • 𒀭 YOU 𒀭

    No matter who you are or what you study, Akkadian will train your mind, expand your understanding, and enrich your life. You'll hear poets singing to you across forty centuries. You'll learn about the people who invented the wheel, the map, and the sail; who gave our hour its sixty minutes and named the stars of our night sky. The story of humanity is written in Akkadian—you can learn to read it.

  • 𒀭Scientists

    Whether you're a doctor, engineer, vet, or astrophysicist, your learning flows from the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The scholars of ancient Mesopotamia discovered how to predict the course of the planets, how to mix medicines, how to amputate limbs. They built the first zoos, and engineered marvels like the Etemenanki (inspiration for the 'Tower of Babel') and Sennacherib's irrigated palace gardens (the 'Hanging Gardens of Babylon'). With Akkadian, you can bring your modern expertise to bear on the richest scientific literature of antiquity.

  • 𒀭Linguists

    The oldest extant Semitic language, Akkadian is the only well-understood member of the East Semitic branch. If you're interested in Hebrew, Arabic, or Syriac, Akkadian is extremely valuable. Since we have two thousand years of Akkadian, written all over the ancient world, it's a perfect corpus for studying contact-induced change, long-term development, and the interaction of grapholects with speech.

  • 𒀭Bible scholars

    Many parts of the Hebrew Bible—the Flood, the birth of Moses, Job's trials—have earlier parallels in Akkadian texts. And key figures in Biblical history, like Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyrus the Great, used Akkadian in administering their empires. To understand the Bible, you need to know Akkadian!

  • 𒀭Classicists

    If you're a student of Greece and Rome, you know that the most exciting work in the field right now uses discoveries from the ancient Near East to revolutionize our understanding of the classics. Did the poet of the Iliad know the Epic of Gilgamesh? Did Alexander inherit the imperial structures of his Assyrian predecessors? These are open questions that you can answer.

What you’ll learn

Semester 1

We’ll start by getting a handle on the sounds and grammar of the language, and learning to write the beautiful, clear hand used by the scribes of the Neo-Assyrian court.

By Week 7, you'll have read your first genuine ancient texts: contracts drawn up and signed four thousand years ago.

At the end of the semester, you’ll be able to read the image at the top of this page: the Law-Code of Hammurabi, in the original Old Babylonian cuneiform.

Semester 2

The second half of the Akkadian sequence rounds out your understanding of the grammar, and introduces you to some more advanced elements of Old Babylonian and Neo-Assyrian cuneiform. But we’ll spend less time memorizing forms, and more time reading real texts.

By the final week, you’ll have read contracts, letters, poems, omen-series, and most of Hammurabi’s law-code in the original Akkadian. You’ll know how to sing hymns to Ishtar, punish a surgeon for medical malpractice, and predict eclipses like a Babylonian astronomer.

𒀭 Frequently asked questions 𒀭

  • Yes. Akkadian is an Ancient World Studies (ANCW) subject, but you can take it as a breadth in any degree or major. In fact, it's a great choice for a breadth, since (unlike many other languages) you can learn Akkadian to a high level in just two semesters.

  • Akkadian will run during the regular University of Melbourne teaching semesters, beginning in 2026. (We originally planned for a 2025 rollout, but the university delayed it by a year. Apologies to those who hoped to take it in the coming year!)

    Akkadian 1 will begin in early March and wrap up in late May; Akkadian 2 will resume in late July and conclude in mid-October.

  • ANCW 10008 and 10009 are both first-year subjects. In future years, we're hoping to offer the subject at the second- and third-year levels too, to make it easier to incorporate into your degree.

  • As a language subject, Akkadian is subsidized for domestic students enrolled at UniMelb--only ~$550 per semester, versus ~$2050 per semester for most other Arts subjects. (Taking two semesters of Akkadian could save you $3000!)

    Unfortunately this language subsidy is not available for international students, and the fees are the same as any other 12.5-point subject (~$4900).

    If you're not a student, you can enroll in Akkadian through the Community Access Program. The fee to take the subject with assessment is around $3800, or you can enroll without assessment for around $3000.

    Akkadian must reach a quota of fee-paying enrolments to run each year, but if these fees are beyond your reach, get in touch and we'll see what we can do.

  • You can! Akkadian is available through the Community Access Program. You can sign up to take it as a single subject: see the University's instructions here. CAP enrolments will open later in the year, and the deadline is likely to be in January 2025.

  • Not in 2025, sorry: Akkadian is in-person only. But in future years, we hope to offer a hybrid course for distance students and people all over Australasia. If you'd like to be kept in the loop, email thomas.davies1@unimelb.edu.au.