Dictionaries
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary | Chicago Hittite Dictionary | Demotic Dictionary Project | Oriental Institute Philology Projects
We stick out our necks, and then somebody comes along ten years later and corrects the guess. I don't think corrections will come out unless we say something. One writes a dictionary against something-against an accepted opinion.
Erica Reiner, Editor-in-Charge (1973-96), The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Quoted in Israel Shenker, Harmless Drudges: Wizards of Language-Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (Bronxville, N.Y. : Barnhart Books, 1979).
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary
Book cover of the Letter P, published in 2005, Martha Roth, Editor-in-Charge, The Assyrian Dictionary, and Professor, Oriental Institute
Initiated in 1921 by James Henry Breasted, founding director of the Oriental Institute, The Assyrian Dictionary is compiling a comprehensive dictionary of the various dialects of Akkadian, the earliest known Semitic language. Akkadian was recorded on cuneiform texts dating from c. 2400 B.C. to A.D. 100 that were recovered from archaeological excavations of ancient Near Eastern sites. The Assyrian Dictionary is in every sense a joint undertaking of resident and non-resident scholars from around the world who have contributed their time and labor over a period of seventy years to the collection of the source materials and to its publication.
Chicago Hittite Dictionary
The Chicago Hittite Dictionary Project officially started in 1975. It was conceived in answer to a recognized need for a Hittite-English lexical tool, a concordance for lexicographical research for all parts of the corpus of Hittite texts. The Hittite language is the earliest preserved member of the Indo-European family of languages. It was written on clay tablets in central Asia Minor over a five hundred year span (c. 1650-1180 B.C.). The vast majority of Hittite tablets were excavated from the ruins of the ancient Hittite capital Hattusa located near the modern Turkish town of Boghazköy about 210 kilometers east of Ankara.
Demotic Dictionary Project
"Don't neglect to serve your god!" P. 'Onchsheshonqy,' 7/14, Ptolemaic period.
Courtesy of the Oriental Institute.
The Demotic Dictionary is a lexicographic tool for reading texts written in a late stage of the ancient Egyptian language and in a highly cursive script known as Demotic, in use from ca. 650 B.C. until the middle of the fifth century A.D. Demotic texts not only provide important witnesses for the development of ancient Egyptian linguistic and paleographical traditions but also constitute an indispensable source for reconstructing the social, political, and cultural life of ancient Egypt during a fascinating period of its history.
Oriental Institute Philology Projects
EGYPT: Luxor - Nubian dignitaries in the Tomb of Huy, ca. 1320 B.C.
Courtesy of the Oriental Institute
Together with the compilation of the massive dictionaries described above, the Oriental Institute conducts other philological projects with broad geographical and chronological reach such as the Epigraphic Survey based at Chicago House in Luxor, Egypt, and the Achaemenid Royal Inscriptions project, which aims to create an electronic study edition of the inscriptions of the Achaemenid Persian kings.