I was just reading the Wikipedia entry on the Epic of Gilgamesh. One of the sources cited states that “According to a long-standing Assyriological convention, the legendary ruler of Uruk had two names: Bilgames in Sumerian and Gilgames in Akkadian.”
How can we know that?
Sumerian is a language isolate, and it hasn’t been spoken for thousands of years. It wasn’t until the 19th century that people began deciphering Sumerian cuneiform inscriptions on excavated tablets. How can we know the phonology of such languages?
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I can give an example on how researchers found out how Ancient Egyptian sounded. That was due to Egyptian Coptic Christians keeping their language alive in their liturgical texts. In daily life they might speak French or Arabic but in their religious lives they spoke Coptic. It’s the only place this language could be found.
What’s special about the Coptic language is that it’s the last of the languages that descended from Ancient Egyptian. Due to that they could piece sounds together and while it might not be 100% correct it is as close an approximation as we’re likely to get.
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