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and for Cortés’s in Spanish from the eyewitness account of his serving soldier, Bernal Díaz del Castilla, True History of the Conquest of New Spain (ch. lxxxix).

1 Themistocles’ Carpet

1. Sykes (2001, chs 7, 10); Weale et al. (2002). See Chapter 7, ‘Against the odds: The advent of English’, p. 310.

2. Anderson (1991) is a good guide to the short but fraught history of the concept of the nation, and its transplantation for use all over the world.

3. Sahagün, vi. 13.

4. Karttunen (1990: 291-4).

5. Quotations from three Nahuatl speakers, cited in King (1994: 136-7).

6. Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, xvii.17: Quintus Ennius tria corda habere sese dicebat, quod loqui Graece et Osce et Latine sciret.

2 What It Takes to Be a World Language; or, You Never Can Tell

1. e.g. in Lipiński (1997:46).

2. Firth (1964: 70-1). This is a reissue of works originally published in 1937 and 1930.

3. Whitfield (1999: 36).

3 The Desert Blooms: Language Innovation in the Middle East

1. Tablet II, II. 36-48; text from Lambert (1960: 40); trans. W. G. Lambert in Pritchard (1969: 596-600), slightly modified.

2. II. 70-8; text from Lambert (1960: 148); trans. W. G. Lambert in Pritchard (1969:601).

3. Lipiński (1997: 42-4).

4. The Words of Ahiqar, col. xiv, 208-23; text from Lindenberger (1983: 209), with vowels supplied by Peter T. Daniels; trans. from Pritchard (1969: 430).

5. The evidence is in the Elamite pronoun system, and some features of noun and verb morphology; Diakonoff (1985: 3); McAlpin (1981). But the attribution is still controversial.

6. Lancel (1997: 437).

7. Such colonies included Seleuceia on the Tigris, Seleuceia on the Eulaeus—none other than Susa, formerly the Elamite and Persian capital—and modern Aï Khanum in the Bactrian far east, i.e. modern Afghanistan (Wiesehöfer 2001: 111-12).

8. Pritchard (1969: 56): Inanna’s Descent to the Nether World (trans. S. N. Kramer).

9. Tsereteli (1959 [1912]).

10. Expounded in Schmandt-Besserat (1997).

11. Hallo (1974: 185-6); the Hymn to Inanna is translated in Pritchard (1969: 579-82).

12. Pritchard (1969: 496): Love Song to a King (trans. S. N. Kramer), slightly adapted.

13. Pritchard (1969: 652): Ua-aua, a Sumerian lullaby (trans. S. N. Kramer), slightly adapted; .

14. Thomsen (1984: 293-4), quoting from Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 107(4), pp. 1-12; (trans. S. N. Kramer), slightly adapted.

15. Pritchard (1969: 651): The Curse of Agade, vv. 279-81 (trans S. N. Kramer); .

16. McAlpin (1981:60).

17. Malbran-Labat (1996: 56).

18. Wiesehöfer (2001: 10).

19. Diakonoff (1985:24).

20. Hallo (1974: 184).

21. Kramer (1979: 39).

22. This is the analysis of Malbran-Labat (1996).

23. Roux (1992: 276).

24. Sawyer (1999: 14).

25. Oded (1979); Oded, quoted in Garelli (1982: 438); and Roux (1992: 308).

26. Pritchard (1969: 284): from a display inscription in Sargon II’s show capital of Khorsabad (Dŭr Sharrukîn).

27. Tadmor (1982: 451).

28. Parpola (1999) claims it was quite deliberate: ‘The Aramaization of Assyria was a calculated policy aimed at creating national unity and identity of a kind that could never have been achieved, had the Empire remained a loose conglomeration of a plethora of different nations and languages.’

29. Garelli (1982:442).

30. Kaufman (1997: 114-15).

31. Dietrich (1967: 87-90).

32. ibid.: 90, citing Dietrich (1979: item 10).

33. Kaufman (1974: 165-70). And Parpola (1999) notes a slip of the stylus in Ashurbanipal’s library copy of Gilgamesh (mid-seventh century), which could only have been made by an Aramaic speaker: the glyph for ‘lord’ (mara in Aramaic) in place of that for ‘son’ (mara in Akkadian).

34. Pritchard (1969: 317): Historical documents, 5. Antiochus Soter (trans. F. H. Weissbach).

35. ibid.: 136: Poems about Baal and Anath, f.C (trans. H. L. Ginsberg).

36. Genesis xxvii.28 and 39. See also Gordon (1971: 122).