The Akkadian language died out around 2000 years ago. Why is it important to create a new dictionary for this language?
Michael Streck: Akkadian is the most important language of the Ancient Near East, an epoch of human history in the Middle East from the 4th millennium BC to the emergence of Islam in the 7th century AD. Akkadian was spoken and written primarily in the kingdoms of Babylonia and Assyria, collectively known as Mesopotamia, today the countries of Iraq and Syria; the language is therefore also known as Babylonian-Assyrian. At that time, cuneiform script was used for writing, which was imprinted on small clay tablets.
What hardly anyone knows: Akkadian written records are more numerous than those of ancient Latin. Akkadian is the second most common language of antiquity after Ancient Greek!
The existing Akkadian dictionaries are outdated; many words are missing or have not been interpreted correctly. Many cuneiform texts were not even known when these books were compiled. Scholars therefore need a new dictionary in order to be able to translate Akkadian texts up to date, as they are our main source for researching the history and cultures of the Ancient Near East.
What modern methods and technologies do you use that were not available for previous Akkadian dictionaries?
The dictionaries previously used in ancient Near Eastern studies consisted of many printed volumes. Their editors still worked with index cards and card indexes. The disadvantages of these books are numerous: cumbersome to use, difficult to update, expensive. It therefore makes sense to make use of modern information technology.
The Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary will be created as a freely accessible online database. Anyone will be able to use it free of charge. Search functions will make it possible to find a word, its translation and its occurrence in various texts in a matter of seconds. Links will connect the dictionary with digital and online collections of cuneiform texts. Last but not least, it will always be easy to incorporate corrections and additions, as our knowledge is constantly improving.
Incidentally, the older printed dictionaries will be digitized and integrated into the Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary.
With a duration of 17 years, the "Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary" is a real long-term project. What makes this research so time-consuming?
In the last few decades, tens of thousands of new cuneiform texts have become known to science that were previously stored untranslated in museum cellars or found during archaeological excavations in the Middle East and were not included in any dictionary.
The main task of the small dictionary team will be to read and translate these many texts and to search for new words like a detective, to recognize new meanings of already known words and to trace the history of each word in the cuneiform texts. From a simple receipt to the story of the Flood, this can involve all kinds of texts that are sometimes difficult to understand.
The Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary will be a reference dictionary: The Akkadian words will not only be translated into several languages (English, German, French and Arabic are planned), but it will also show in which texts and contexts they occur. Such a dictionary is a major scientific undertaking.
The "Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary" is a project of the Saxon Academy of Sciences (SAW) in Leipzig as part of the Academies’ Program, the largest long-term research program in the humanities and cultural sciences in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is funded with around 5.8 million euros. Michael Streck has been a full member of the Philological-Historical Class of the SAW since 2020.
