Customer Reviews

Hammurabi's Law: Text, Translation and Glossary (Biblical Seminar)

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This book contains the complete text of Hammurabi's Law code in transliteration and in translation, with the transliteration on the left page and the translation on the opposite page. There is also an excellent (and I mean excellent) dictionary in the back of the book. It was uncanny how many times I would be having trouble translating a law and would look up a word in the dictionary, only to find the exact passage I was struggling with quoted and explained in detail. This shows that the author put a lot of thought into the examples included in the dictionary. A list of roots and verbal forms are included also, and these two sections are very useful when you are trying to translate one of Akkadian's notoriously difficult weak verb forms.

This book is not beginner's grammer, in fact it is not a grammer at all. For someone who wants to learn Akkadian, I cannot recomend John Huehnergard's "A Grammer of Akkadian" enough. Once you have learned the basics of Akkadian you can then work through this book by translating the Akkadian transliterations of the laws and comparing your translation to those of the Dr. Richardson. I found this to be a great way to "take the next step" when I was learning Akkadian.