this post was submitted on 01 May 2026
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Yes but how many Sumerian or Akkadian grimoires survive today in their original language?
Nowhere as many as Latin. As far as ancient languages, Egyptian magical texts definitely outnumber Akkadian and Sumerian.
A large number of surviving Akkadian texts are commercial or official records. The most famous is probably the complaint against Ea Nasir.
Unfortunately we know what latin sounds like (though most of hollywood has only a vague concept), and nobody speaks ancient Egyptian of Akkadian.
From what I gather even reading either is a nightmare..
Yeah hieroglyphs don't record vowel sounds, so on many accounts we don't actually know how something was pronounced. There's good guesses made based on later phonetics, but there's unavoidably also stuff that's just forever lost. Latin is way easier because we can just use the church latin pronunciation that still survives, don't even need to go for the classical one. It's not like average people know the difference anyway
But does it really matter if we don't kmow what they sound like. It's not like audience will know either.
Unless Ea Nasir was carving scarabs and magic squares on his copper, I don't think that counts as a magical text.
I'm aware of the Chaldean Oracles, but they don't survive in their original language. I think the oldest surviving translations are in Greek or Arabic.