The book under review is an introduction to the grammar, writing, and textual material of the Old Akkadian period, or, more specifically the Sargonic period (2350–2112 bce). The book is divided into two main parts. The first contains a historical introduction to the Sargonic period including its sources and relevant secondary literature (pp. 1–7), a discussion of the period's language and its relationship to later Akkadian dialects (pp. 9–20), an overview of its writing system (pp. 21–9), and a sketch of Old Akkadian phonology and morphology (pp. 31–52). The second part consists of a sample of texts that represent all major genres attested during the Sargonic period, meaning dedicatory inscriptions, royal inscriptions, letters and administrative texts. A detailed discussion is given for the so-called Maništušu-Obelisk, a royal inscription that provides information about land transactions. Each of the texts has a grammatical and philological commentary, a short discussion concerning the historical and cultural background of the text, and a list of relevant secondary literature. Copies of the cuneiform and/or a sketch of the object on which the text is found are included for many of the texts. The author further provides an overview of neighbouring cultures, specifically those of Elam, Gutium, Subartu, the Hurrians, the Amorites, Magan, Dilmun and Meluḫḫa. For some of these, depending on the availability of written evidence, he includes a sample of texts. After the text samples, the author gives a brief overview of the art and archaeology of the Sargonic period, again with relevant secondary literature (pp.185–92). The book concludes with a glossary, a list of signs, a list of syllabic sign values, logograms and a brief bibliography.

The book is meant as an aid for students who wish to familiarize themselves with the language and textual material of the Sargonic period. As such, its aim is not to provide any new insights into Sargonic Akkadian history, writing or grammar. Instead, it provides a useful summary of previous studies on the period conducted by a variety of scholars and a representative sample of (sometimes shortened) texts. Although most background discussions are very brief, they nevertheless provide an introduction to the topics and problems dealt with in the study of the Sargonic period and a starting point for further study. As such, the book is a useful tool for students of Akkadian who wish to learn more about the Sargonic period and its language.

There are a few points, however, where the book could be improved. The description of Sargonic Akkadian grammar is written in list mode with very few examples. Unless the reader is familiar with Sargonic Akkadian grammar, it is difficult to follow the grammatical points discussed. Adding (more) examples would greatly increase the readability and accessibility of the grammatical sketch. The grammatical overview, besides exhibiting numerous typos, further contains several mistakes in content that are partly due to copying parts of other works incorrectly and partly due to a misunderstanding of the material. Wrong copying underlies the incorrect normalization of the demonstrative pronoun su ₄-a as /ta/ (p. 31), where the correct normalization should be /suˀa/. In this case, the author follows the description of vowels in Rebecca Hasselbach, Sargonic Akkadian: A Historical and Comparative Study of the Syllabic Texts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005, 102–3), where she gives the example ša DUB su ₄-a… /θa ṭuppam su'a…/. The mistake in the normalization in Breyer's book is caused by the incorrect copying of the example given in Hasselbach (2005). On the same page, the author claims that short vowels are not syncoptated according to the common Akkadian rule that the final short vowel in a sequence of two or more short vowels in open syllables is syncopated (parisum > parsum). This statement is incorrect since there are numerous examples in Sargonic Akkadian in which this vowel syncope took place (see Hasselbach 2005: 105). The statement on the same page that final short -u is lost except in the nominative construct has to be modified since the preservation of the nominative vowel in this position is a rare occurrence and not regular as it might seem from the description given. More serious mistakes occur in the description of the morphology. The author claims that Old Akkadian has five cases, a nominative, genitive, accusative, dative and locative (p. 36). The first three are accepted cases throughout Semitic. The presumed dative and locative, however, are not. The form that the author claims to be the dative already in Proto Semitic, -is (later Akkadian -iš), is an adverbial ending, not a case. The adverbial ending -is can accumulate morphemes and occur with the locative adverbial ending -um, as in kirīsum “into the garden” (Hasselbach 2005: 181). Cases cannot accumulate morphemes in this way in Semitic. Furthermore, the author claims that in Old Akkadian, -is functions as a postposition. That this is a grammatical impossibility in Akkadian has been convincingly shown by Orin D. Gensler, “Mari Akkadian IŠ ‘to, for’ and preposition-hopping in the light of comparative Semitic syntax”, Orientalia 66, 1997, 129–56. These are just a few examples of problems faced in the grammatical sketch.

The text samples are useful and nicely presented. It would have been helpful to indicate which royal inscriptions are original and which are Old Babylonian copies. Many of the inscriptions provided are Old Babylonian copies, a fact of which the reader should be aware. The philological commentary is mostly very basic and the normalizations exhibit numerous typos; especially sibilants are confused (such as ištum for istum and śunūti for sunūti, p.102; and others).

To summarize, the book under review is a useful tool for introducing students to Sargonic Akkadian and the Old Akkadian period. The reader, however, should be aware that some of the claims made about Sargonic Akkadian grammar are problematic.