The emergence of commercial scale, cross-cultural trade at the start of the Bronze Age required a common language to enable that trade. What gradually emerged was an alphabetic form of Akkadian inspired by the dominance of the Assyrian traders in Anatolia. Because temple complexes were a major Bronze Age economic engine they were the first non-commercial adopters. Significantly, the largest Alphabetic Akkadian texts are Pagan religious/philosophical debates. This is a new and developing field of research showing that the old assumptions about each political and ethnic group writing in their own language is false.