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Learn to Read Ancient Sumerian: An Introduction for Complete Beginners. by [Joshua Bowen, Megan Lewis]

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Megan Hollie Caroline Lewis

Joshua Aaron Bowen

Learn to Read Ancient Sumerian: An Introduction for Complete Beginners. [Print Replica] Kindle Edition

by Joshua Bowen (Author), Megan Lewis (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Sumerian is the world's oldest written language, but the ability to read it is restricted to the lucky few - until now!
Learn to Read Ancient Sumerian: An Introduction for Complete Beginners is written specifically for people with no training in ancient languages, letting the reader learn Sumerian without having to learn grammatical jargon first. Any grammatical terms that are used are explained in clear language, and a handy index provides definitions just in case you need a reminder!

Each of the 11 chapters introduce and explain important grammatical features, building upon previous chapters to provide and in-depth understanding of the language without being overwhelming. Every chapter includes a list of vocabulary and cuneiform signs for the student to master, as well as exercises to help solidify the reader's understanding of grammatical concepts. Exercises written in cuneiform mean that you start reading authentic Sumerian right from the start, building up to translating ancient cuneiform inscriptions from drawings and photographs!

This book will:

Teach you the fundamentals of Sumerian grammar in language you can understand.
Give you exercises so you can test and consolidate your new-found knowledge.
Let you read actual cuneiform inscriptions from 4,000 years ago!

Unfortunately, the first printed copies contained errors. These have been subsequently corrected, and a list of corrections can be found on the Digital Hammurabi website: https://www.digitalhammurabi.com/publications-and-research

Print length

275 pages
Language

English
Publication date

December 29, 2019
Grade level

7 - 12
File size

5703 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Joshua Bowen graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2017, with a Ph.D. in Assyriology, specializing in the Sumerian language. He wrote his dissertation on the (unorthographic) Sumerian lamentational liturgies that were excavated from the Old Babylonian city of Kiš. Joshua completed a Th.M. in Old Testament studies from Capital Bible Seminary, where he wrote his thesis on the meaning of the divine title "El Shaddai." He also holds an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the Johns Hopkins University, and graduated with a B.S. in Religion from Liberty University.
Megan Lewis is an Assyriologist and YouTuber with a B.A. in Ancient History and an M.Phil. in Assyriology from the University of Birmingham (U.K.), and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from The Johns Hopkins University. She attained ABD status in the Ph.D. program at The Johns Hopkins University before deciding that her energy was better spent elsewhere, but hopes to achieve her doctorate at a later date.

Megan lives in Southern Maryland with her husband, Joshua Bowen, and their three children. She spends her time shepherding children, writing scripts for their YouTube channel, Digital Hammurabi, and animating videos for their children's channel, AniMesopotamia. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0839PTQR7
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Digital Hammurabi Press (December 29, 2019)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 29, 2019
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5703 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Not enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 275 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #263,631 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #48 in Miscellaneous Foreign Language Instruction eBooks
- #914 in Foreign Language Instruction (Books)
- #52,241 in Nonfiction (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
237 ratings

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About the authors

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Megan Hollie Caroline Lewis
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Megan Lewis is an Assyriologist and YouTuber with a B.A. in Ancient History and an M.Phil. in Assyriology from the University of Birmingham (U.K.), and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from The Johns Hopkins University. She attained ABD status in the Ph.D. program at The Johns Hopkins University before deciding that her energy was better spent elsewhere, but hopes to achieve her doctorate at a later date.
Megan lives in Southern Maryland with her husband, Joshua Bowen, and their three children. She spends her time shepherding children, writing scripts for their YouTube channel, Digital Hammurabi, and animating videos for their children's channel, AniMesopotamia.
See more on the author's page
Joshua Aaron Bowen
Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.
Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.
Dr. Joshua Bowen graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2017, with a Ph.D. in Assyriology. He wrote his dissertation on the lamentational liturgies of the city of Kiš, and specializes in the Sumerian language. Joshua was awarded the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (D.A.A.D.) and Fulbright scholarship during the 2014-2015 academic year, allowing him to spend the year in Tubingen, Germany, working with Dr. Konrad Volk on his dissertation project.
As well as his Ph.D., Josh holds a B.S. in Religion from Liberty University, a Th.M. in the Old Testament from Capital Bible Seminary, and a M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from the Johns Hopkins University. Prior to entering academia, Joshua was a chaplain in the U.S. Airforce where he also gained an A.A. in Avionics.
Joshua hosts the Hebrew Bible and Ancient Near East (HeBANE) podcast, and co-hosts the Digital Hammurabi podcast and YouTube channel with his wife, Megan Lewis.
See more on the author's page

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John

useful

Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2022

Verified Purchase

At first I regretted buying this because it is dumbed down alot from what I wanted in a Sumerian grammar. I kept it because it was hardly worth the $ to return. I since bought a more expensive bigger better grammar. But I still refer to this one to check each other. It is useful but you will defintely want a more advanced grammar to accompany it. It cannot stand on its own. You must have another grammar to go along with it to be able to understand Sumerian texts.

Annoying things include

1. The signs for each chapter are not listed with their meanings at the end of each chapter. But this is likely because of the larger problem of a sign meaning more than 1 thing. All the various meanings of a sign are not listed. Transliteration of signs are listed with their meanings for each chapter but the sign for each transliteration is not shown side-by-side.

2. The font is too large. They could have packed more info in if they used a smaller font.

Good things include:
1 They explain terms used in more sophisticated grammars. The other grammars tend to start using these terms without explanation.

2 I did learn about the grammar of nouns and verbs.

3 The references in the Bibliography are useful.

The authors write they will be releasing an intermediate and advanced grammar. I wished they bundled all three books into one initially. But because only this intro was available, I had to go buy someone else's more advanced grammar. I couldn't wait. Because of the shipping cost to return this was big, I am glad I didn't return it. It does have value. The authors no doubt know the language. They need to publish their advanced grammar and package all three books as one.

Helpful

Amazon Customer

Great material to learn

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2022

Awesome

It's not as hard as it seems

Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2022

Verified Purchase

The authors of this book also have an exhaustive video series on YouTube that I would suggest as a companion to the book. The channel is Digital Hammurabi.
It will make it much easier to visualize and grasp the sound of Sumerian as well as the grammar.
I am nowhere near an expert but after just a couple chapters you can already look at chunks of ancient tablets and recognize things. The lessons are presented in a logical manner.
It does help to understand the terminology of grammar. Most people don't bother remembering all the parts of a sentence by name but it comes in handy when 'normalizing' a string of cuneiform.
Sumerian is easier for the western speaker to pronounce as well. It lacks the hard back of the throat sounds we are familiar with from languages like Arabic and Egyptian. Sumerian has lots of SH sounds instead.
This book (and the video series) are presented in a way that you will almost immediately be amazed at how much you can decipher. Most of the examples are lines taken from actual tablets and poems which shows that almost right away you are able to read actual ancient texts- not just super dumbed down 'beginner' versions. It's very motivating.

One person found this helpful

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HopingForTheBest

Easy to read. Very informative

Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2022

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Pro's Very informative and educational. Easy to read. Slow pace and i can follow their approach. Good examples. I think it should have more examples. Con's I was surprise went I read that this is the first book of three. That wasn't mention.

Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2021

Verified Purchase

Those interested in learning Sumerian, the world's first written language, quickly realize that the instructional material available to them is rather scant. This is even moreso for those at the very beginning of their study. Much of what little material is available seems designed for scholars in Assyriology or those who already know Akkadian. "Learn to Read Ancient Sumerian" does a magnificent job filling this gap. The book is truly adapted to real beginners whose knowledge of grammar (even English grammar) may not be what it should be, while those who are familiar with another language---especially a highly inflected language like Latin or Greek---will be encouraged by what they already know. The authors present the Sumerian language in digestible segments which allow the student to make steady progress without feeling overwhelmed. Not only is the spoken Sumerian taught (in romanized text with super- and subscripts necessary to avoid confusion of words which would otherwise sound identical), but the cuneiform text is introduced incrementally so that students can learn to actually read this ancient language. In addition, the authors have all the lessons (there are 11 of them in Book 1) taught on YouTube (digitalhammurabi.com). (NB: There are small differences between the material in the text and the material as presented on YouTube, but these are not really a problem since the basic concepts taught are the same.)

Students whose knowledge of grammar and/or linguistics is more solid will find the going even easier. Sumerian is (as far as we know) a language isolate, but the grammar is reflective of familiar language concepts common to all languages and is no more demanding than Latin. The cuneiform script, on the other hand, presents certain challenges, but it is introduced in manageable portions and actually is one of the most attractive parts of the text. A person who works through this text and its sequel (possibly coming out late this year or early 2022) should have a great beginning in Sumerian.

3 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Vincent Abbott

Using this book you will be able to read genuine Sumerian, written in cuneiform.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 5, 2020

Verified Purchase

If you want to learn the basics of Sumerian grammar then there is no other book that even comes anywhere close to this, that I know of. There is none better. Everything is explained clearly. The author makes it absolutely clear at the start that this is not meant to be a comprehensive academic grammar. There are enough of those already in print - which are completely useless to most absolute beginners, in my view, since such books assume you already know a lot of Sumerian - and also, usually, Babylonian. This book is much more akin to a “Teach Yourself Simplified Sumerian” book and does that very well.

However, I personally found the style irritatingly far too “chatty” and the author really over-labours most points. It came across as if he has simply transcribed his you-tube channel lectures (which are also extremely good) into the book. But that is just me. From the point of view of the authors I can see it must be difficult to know at what level to pitch such a book. If you pitch it too high you will drives one group of people away. If pitch it too low then you will irritate a different group of people. You will never please everyone.

There are one or two typos and errors, most trivial. But one particular one stands out; on page 241 it gives cuneiform character 312 to be the same as 176 as kala(g) which it is not. I also found 2 cuneiform sign in the body of the book that were not in the cuneiform sign list (pp 232-244) despite the claim that “This sign list contains all the cuneiform signs that appear in this book.”

It is one of my pet hates, which this book also does, when the vocab/sign lists of a chapters do not match up with those needed to do the exercises. This book is not unique is that. But this is not an insurmountable obstacle.

My criticisms are only minor and ultimately none of them detract from this being the best book I have found for the curious enquirer to just get the basics of Sumerian grammar without being drowned in all the minutiae, exceptions, uncertainties and so on that are listed ad nauseam in a formal comprehensive grammar - to the extent that you end up learning nothing.

At the end of this book you truly will be able to read genuine ancient Sumerian, written in cuneiform. Furthermore, if you have the time you can probably do it in about a week, as I did in the recent “lock down” when I had little else to do.

12 people found this helpful

Greg

For the terminally curious beginner

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 5, 2020

Verified Purchase

Inexpensive (as these things go) primer into this profoundly unfamiliar language system.
This book introduces both the phonetic and the cuneiform sign system to the reader.
Worth a punt for the intellectually curious with a few pounds to spare.

6 people found this helpful

TS

A fantastic resource

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 29, 2021

Verified Purchase

Don't forget to check out the accompanying video tutorials on YouTube.

This book is a great place to start learning ancient Sumerian, really easy to digest and the exercises are fun and rewarding.

One person found this helpful

G Rowlands

Doesn't work on my Kindle!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 6, 2020

Verified Purchase

Apparently it is not compatible with my Kindle Paperwhite so I've had to return it.

3 people found this helpful

Steve T W Rowley

Entertaining

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 29, 2020