Assyria about 654 B.C. -- Author: Anton Gutsunaev (CC)
This is an amazing accomplishment of persistence.
In 1921, scholars at the University of Chicago began work on compiling the words of the Assyrian language that had not been spoken for 2,000 years. They labored over clay and stone tablets discovered in Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Those who began the project passed away. Others emerged and spent their entire careers working at least partly on the project.
Finally, it is done. It took a worldwide effort of experts to compile 28,000 words into 10,000 pages that covered 21 volumes. Obviously, this is not a typical dictionary with a word and a definition. It describes a culture with deep information about Assyrian life. This was a task of detective work, deductive thinking and plain old-fashioned sweat labor.
Why, one might ask, spend so much time over a dead language of a dead civilization? The answer is remarkably important to understanding ourselves.
Gil Stein, director of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, where the dictionary was organized, explains:
“The Assyrian Dictionary gives us the key into the world’s first urban civilization,” he says. “Virtually everything that we take for granted … has its origins in Mesopotamia, whether it’s the origins of cities, of state societies, the invention of the wheel, the way we measure time, and most important the invention of writing.
“If we ever want to understand our roots,” Stein adds, “we have to understand this first great civilization.”
An impressive feat. Too bad those who envisioned what was to be a 10-year project never lived to see it completed.
