Is Sumerian the Oldest Language? What the Evidence Says
Sumerian is the oldest written language we know of, recorded in cuneiform from about 3200 BC in southern Mesopotamia. It is not the oldest language. People spoke for tens of thousands of years before anyone wrote, and those earlier languages left no trace. The honest answer is that Sumerian shares the title of “oldest written language” with Egyptian, and it is certainly the oldest language whose literature we can read at length.
Oldest spoken vs oldest written
Modern humans have probably had fully developed language for at least 100,000 years. Writing is only about 5,000 years old. So no living or recorded language can be “the oldest language” in an absolute sense: every language descends from earlier speech, changing a little with each generation. What we can compare is how far back each language is documented.
Sumerian vs Egyptian: who wrote first?
The earliest proto-cuneiform tablets from Uruk date to about 3300–3200 BC. They are mostly accounts, written with number signs and word signs, and it is debated how much of the Sumerian language they actually record. In Egypt, labels from tomb U-j at Abydos, dated to around 3250 BC, carry early hieroglyphic signs that some scholars read as sounds. Full sentences appear in both languages a few centuries later, around 2600 BC. In practice the two are close enough that most historians simply say writing appeared in Mesopotamia and Egypt at nearly the same time.
What makes Sumerian special
- It is a language isolate. Sumerian is not related to any known language. It is not Semitic like Akkadian, Hebrew and Arabic, and it is not Indo-European.
- It has the first literature. The Instructions of Shuruppak and the Kesh Temple Hymn date to about 2600 BC, and Enheduanna, a priestess of Ur around 2300 BC, is the first author known by name.
- It outlived its speakers. Sumerian died out as an everyday language around 2000–1800 BC, but scribes studied and copied it for nearly 2,000 more years, as Europeans later used Latin.
Other contenders for “oldest language”
People often ask about other famous old languages. Here is how they compare by their earliest written records:
| Language | Earliest written records | Still spoken? |
|---|---|---|
| Sumerian | c. 3200–2600 BC | No |
| Egyptian | c. 3250–2600 BC | Only as Coptic in church use |
| Akkadian | c. 2500 BC | No |
| Elamite | c. 2300 BC | No |
| Hittite | c. 1650 BC (oldest Indo-European) | No |
| Greek | c. 1450 BC (Linear B) | Yes |
| Chinese | c. 1250 BC | Yes |
| Sanskrit | Rigveda composed c. 1500–1200 BC, written much later | As a liturgical and scholarly language |
| Tamil | c. 3rd–2nd century BC | Yes |
Greek and Chinese have the longest written histories of any languages still spoken as mother tongues. Egyptian has the longest recorded history overall, from the hieroglyphs to Coptic, which you can try with the Coptic Translator.
Can we hear Sumerian?
Only approximately. Sumerian sounds are reconstructed from how Akkadian scribes wrote Sumerian words and from loanwords. It probably had four vowels (a, e, i, u) and sounds such as ĝ (the “ng” in “sing”). Words were built by stringing prefixes and suffixes onto a root, and the verb came last. Our Sumerian Translator gives Sumerian words in cuneiform with their transliteration, and you can read more about the script in How Cuneiform Works: Word Signs, Syllables and Determinatives or spell a name with the Cuneiform Translator.
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Sumerian language“.
- University of Oxford, Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
- Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
- Dietz Otto Edzard, Sumerian Grammar (Brill, 2003).
- Christopher Woods, ed., Visible Language (Oriental Institute, 2010).