Editing Proto-Semitic language (section)

==Dating==
The earliest attestations of any Semitic language are in [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]], dating to around the 24th to 23rd centuries BC (see [[Sargon of Akkad]]) and the [[Eblaite language]], but earlier evidence of Akkadian comes from personal names in [[Sumerian language|Sumerian]] texts from the first half of the third millennium BC.<ref name=Huehnergard_2019>{{cite book|last=Huehnergard|first=John|year=2019|chapter=Introduction to the Semitic languages and their history|editor=John Huehnergard and Na‘ama Pat-El|title=The Semitic Languages|edition=Second|place=New York|publisher=Routledge}}</ref> One of the earliest known Akkadian inscriptions was found on a bowl at [[Ur]], addressed to the very early pre-Sargonic king Meskiagnunna of Ur ({{Circa|2485}}–2450 BC) by his queen Gan-saman, who is thought to have been from Akkad.<ref name=Bertman_94>{{cite book|last1=Bertman|first1=Stephen|title=Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia|date=2003|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-019-518364-1|page=94|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1C4NKp4zgIQC&pg=PA94|access-date=16 May 2015}}</ref>
The earliest text fragments of West Semitic are snake spells in Egyptian pyramid texts, dated around the mid-third millennium BC.<ref>{{cite book |last=Steiner |first=Richard C. |year=2011 |title=Early Northwest Semitic Serpent Spells in the Pyramid Texts |place=Winona Lake |publisher=Eisenbrauns}}
</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Huehnergard |first=John |year=2020 |chapter=The Languages of the Ancient Near East |editor=Daniel C. Snell |title=A Companion to the Ancient Near East |edition=Second |place=Hoboken |publisher=John Wiley & Sons |pages=341–353 |chapter-url=https://www.academia.edu/43406908}}</ref>

Proto-Semitic itself must have been spoken before the emergence of its daughters, so some time before the earliest attestation of Akkadian, and sufficiently long so for the changes leading from it to Akkadian to have taken place, which would place it in the fourth millennium BC or earlier.<ref name=Huehnergard_2019 />

{{anchor|Homeland}}