Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Dictionary You've All Been Waiting For!

Relief from the N.W. palace of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C.)
showing anointing of the Tree of Life.
A winged god holds what appears to be a pinecone and a
pot with the anointing oil.
Above the Tree of Life is the royal signet of the god Ashur.
The god Ashur is depicted as a man with a bow inside a winged solar disk or as a winged solar disk.

Finally! After 90 years, plus or minus a few thousand, scholars have released a full Assyrian dictionary for all of us to enjoy.

Now you can research the language, learn it and read for yourself the "Epic of Gilgamesh" in it's original Babylonian/Assyrian glory.

Sick and tired of having to read someone else's translations of Hammurabi's famous Code? Rejoice! Now you can decipher it yourself.

Okay, we're being sarcastic for no obvious reason. We're actually very happy that this ancient language is being highlighted.

"This was the language that Sargon the Great, king of Akkad in the 24th century B.C., spoke to command what is reputed to be the world’s first empire, and that Hammurabi used around 1700 B.C. to proclaim the first known code of laws. It was the vocabulary of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first masterpiece of world literature. Nebuchadnezzar II presumably called on these words to soothe his wife, homesick for her native land, with the promise of cultivating the wondrous Hanging Gardens of Babylon."

Kudos the researchers who struggled for so long to compile this unbelievable dictionary and give us a glimpse into the past.

As "student's of history" we revel in this kind of thing.

The Assyrians are from the Mesopotamian region (Iraq/Iran) and came right after the Sumerians, from whom all things we consider to be civilized were handed down "from the gods".

Hammurabi's Code is considered to the world's oldest law book and gives such commands as not stealing from a widow and criminal prosecution for those who steal livestock. Among many, many others.

New York Times Article

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