Customer Reviews

A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian (English and German Edition)

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This nifty "little blue book" (as it is known in Assyriology ciricles) is an indispensible tool for students of Akkadian (from Old Akkadian to the Late Babylonian), whether as a quick reference, or for translating long passages of Akkadian texts. It has the advantage of being light and handy, and many entries are furnished with references to semantic variations based on the different dialects.

However, in being concise, the dictionary chose to omit those lengthy lexical references which are presented in the bulky volumes of the CAD (in English) or AhW (in German, on which this dictionary is based), thus rendering an interpretation of texts based solely on this book somewhat unreliable. Yet this drawback has not prevented many aspiring Akkadian scholars from secretly using it whenever no one is looking!!

A favorite amongst students ever since its first publication - highly recommended for any Akkadian students beyond the beginner level!

It does not have etymology...it does not have epistemology...it does not have linguistic chronology, but it serves its purposes for beginners, and appear to be useful to all those who are searching for a direct and concise definition of Akkadian words. It is helpful in this sense, but again, seems to be limited. Since it covers a major historical and geographical era and area of the languages of the time, I expected a more detailed material. Nevertheless, it is a good dictionary.

I really enjoyed this book - it did take a bit of cross referencing to get through, but the material is covered evenly and thoroughly for anyone studying the transition from proto-Assyrian to Akkadian script in for and syntax. References to levels of occurance and variance are included along with lots of annotation and explanation. Mine is the english version and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the evolution of the writing system