Ancient world dictionary finished — after 90 years

Ancient world dictionary finished — after 90 years

news.yahoo.com

"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."

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The year: 1921. The place: The University of Chicago. The project: Assembling an Assyrian dictionary based on words recorded on clay or stone tablets unearthed from ruins in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, written in a language that hadn't been uttered for more than 2,000 years. The scholars knew the project would take a long time. No one quite expected how very long.

A monumental project for sure, is it worth the trouble? If we want to understand ourselves and how civilization conducted itself 3500 years ago it is. We have unearthed libraries full of this cuneiform writing on clay tablets telling us life was not entirely different then as now, in the situations depicted in these writings is very much like the lives we live today.

The translated cuneiform texts — originally written with wedged-shaped characters — reveal a culture where people expressed joy, anxiety and disappointment about the same events they do today: a child's birth, bad harvests, money troubles, boastful leaders.

"A lot of what you see is absolutely recognizable — people expressing fear and anger, expressing love, asking for love," says Matthew Stolper, a University of Chicago professor who worked on the project on and off over three decades. "There are inscriptions from kings that tell you how great they are, and inscriptions from others who tell you those guys weren't so great. ... There's also lot of ancient versions of `your check is in the mail.' And there's a common phrase in old Babylonian letters that literally means `don't worry about a thing.'"

That is just the first great part of it, seeing ourselves as in a mirror. There is surely much more to be discovered in more excavations, and more to be discovered now that we have this tool, this key to understanding it all. And what about our beliefs, our philosophies? There is a great exploration of our ancient religious and belief systems, the superstitions, the sciences of those times, the philosophies, and perhaps an up close and personal encounter with their true origins contained in the writings this dictionary addresses.

I also have to wonder if contained herein are truths The Powers would rather we don't know about. I recall in the earliest days of our raid against Iraq some of the top news was that the museums were getting raided of their antiquities. If that was remotely the motive for those raids there is just too much there already and too much more yet to be discovered than it would be possible to hide. Were there angels and gods walking about among us thousands of years ago? If we believe the Bible the answer is YES! And this should shed much more light on those tales.

The Bible's Genesis is not like a "Reader's Digest condensed version of the stories told in these discovered writings, it is more like the cover notes. And with this dictionary all of us can read and study these ancient writings, we can see for ouselves how close those like Zecharia Sitchin's fantastic or amazing versions of these tablets actually are.

Has it all been unearthed and studied? Not by a longshot, there is much more yet to discover. There are millions more eyes that need to read over these texts that have been discovered so far.

90 years of work behind this dictionary, thousands of years of civilization contained in this work, millions of discoveries yet to be made perhaps, and billions of lives that this can all have an effect on.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Thank you for posting this very interesting information.

At school I was only taught about the Egyptians and Greeks, as far as ancient civilizations were concerned, and discovered the Mesopotamian civilizations later in life.

I've found them fascinating and there's always been something strangely familiar about them, to me.

Strange to think that throughout all our lifetimes this project has been going on.

reply to post by berenike


Thank you for your post. It has since come to my attention there exists another thread on this topic in Ancient and Lost Civilizations forum www.abovetopsecret.com...

I am just glad I could pass news of this important achievement along for more exposure here in BAN and add some of my own commentary.