<div class="hl"><h1>Tablet in Turkey contains unknown language</h1></div>

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                <div class="img_in" style="text-align:center"><img src="http://www.upi.com/r/m/st/13366945656420/Tablet-in-Turkey-contains-unknown-language.jpg" title="Ancient tablet from Turkey" id="m_img"></div>
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                                Ancient tablet unearthed in Turkey. Credit: John MacGinnis/Cambridge University                         </div>
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                Published: May 10, 2012 at 8:21 PM            </div>


         
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<p><span class="story_dl">CAMBRIDGE, England, May 10 (UPI) -- </span>Archaeologists
 working in Turkey say they've found evidence of a forgotten language 
dating back more than 2,500 years to the time of the Assyrian Empire.</p>
<p>Researchers from Cambridge University in Britain, working at the 
probable site of the ancient Assyrian city of Tushan, said the language 
may have been spoken by deportees originally from the Zagros Mountains, 
on the border of modern-day Iran and Iraq.</p>
<p>Under a policy widely practiced across the Assyrian Empire, those 
people may have been forcibly moved from their homeland and resettled in
 what is now southeast Turkey, the researchers said.</p>
<p>"It was an approach which helped [Assyrians] to consolidate power by 
breaking the control of the ruling elite in newly-conquered areas," 
Cambridge researcher John MacGinnis said. "If people were deported to a 
new location, they were entirely dependent on the Assyrian 
administration for their well-being."</p>
<p>The evidence for the language they spoke comes from a single clay 
tablet that survived the fire that destroyed a palace in Tushan, 
inscribed with cuneiform characters that list the names of women who 
were attached to the palace and the local Assyrian administration.</p>
<p>"Altogether around 60 names are preserved," MacGinnis said. "One or 
two are actually Assyrian and a few more may belong to other known 
languages of the period, such as Luwian or Hurrian, but the great 
majority belong to a previously unidentified language.</p>
<p>"We know from existing texts that the Assyrians did conquer people 
from that region [western Iran.] Now we know that there is another 
language, perhaps from the same area, and maybe more evidence of its 
existence waiting to be discovered."</p></div><br>Read more: <a style="color:#003399" href="http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/05/10/Tablet-in-Turkey-contains-unknown-language/UPI-54491336695709/#ixzz1uZmSYnCd">http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2012/05/10/Tablet-in-Turkey-contains-unknown-language/UPI-54491336695709/#ixzz1uZmSYnCd</a><br>
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