The completion of a one-hundred-year-old project: the encyclopaedia of the cultures of the Ancient Near East

31 July 2017

The fifteenth and final volume of the Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (RIA, The Encyclopaedia of the Cultures of the Ancient Near East Employing Cuneiform Script) was despatched to the publisher in 2017: this long-term undertaking lasted almost a hundred years! In fact, it was in 1922 that Br. Meissner, already the author of numerous works on the Assyrians and Babylonians, proposed launching a project for the creation of an encyclopaedia on Assyria, a discipline which was still in its infancy at the time. In 1922, 65 years had passed since Akkadian cuneiform had been deciphered, 15 since F. Thureau-Dangin had published his work on the Sumerian royal inscriptions, and a little over five years since B. Hrozný had succeeded in reading Hittite texts. Br. Meissner, who collaborated with E. Ebeling, a colleague in Berlin, had as models to follow the classical encyclopaedias initiated by A. Pauly in 1839, and G. Wissowa in 1890. Walter de Gruyter, who had served as the trade editor of Zeitschrift für Assyriologie (one of the discipline’s oldest journals) since 1886, agreed to embark on the venture.

Originally, the project consisted in the publication of two volumes totalling 1,600 pages to cover entries ranging from A to Z. The first two volumes of the RIA were published 1928 and 1938 and totalled 974 pages. The articles were contributed by 35 German-speaking authors, and covered only the first five letters of the alphabet. While Br. Meissner only wrote just one article, dedicated to agriculture, E. Ebeling wrote 2,119 contributions for the first two volumes alone![1]

Interrupted during World War II, the project was re-started when the first sessions of the International Assyriological Meeting took place in Paris in 1950 and 1951, and in Leiden in 1952. An international commission was created; the commission decided to pursue the encyclopaedia project under a title that was widened to include more generally the archaeology of the ancient Near East. The first instalment of volume III appeared in 1957 and was edited by E. Weidner, the author of a total of 63 articles. When W. von Soden took the publishing of the RIA back to Münster in 1966, he formed an international editorial committee. Written by 73 authors originating from 14 different countries, the articles included in volume III (1971) henceforth appeared in three languages: German, English and French, albeit with their titles written in German. The first article in French focuses on law and was written by the historian of jurisprudence G. Cardascia. In 1972, D. O. Edzard took the Chair of the editorial committee in Munich. He directed the committee up until his death in 2004, and published seven volumes (4,000 pages) covering the letters H to P; he himself wrote some 422 entries. The expansion of the project provides evidence of a discipline in full growth. In 2004, the project was transferred to Leipzig, where M. Streck (the author of 150 entries) assumed its directorship.

When the final instalment was sent to the publisher,[2] this almost one-hundred-year-old encyclopaedia compilation project totalled 15 volumes comprising 7, 700 pages and nine, 500 entries written by 585 different contributors. The articles are dedicated to geographical locations, gods, proper names, cultural concepts and ideas, works of art and literature, the history of the discipline, law, the sciences, flora and fauna, etc. Among the lengthiest articles are ‘Assyrian’ (75 pages), ‘Chronological Lists’ (65 pages), and ‘Weights and Measures’ (63 pages).

The long duration of this encyclopaedia project which has now been completed has not been matched elsewhere in the discipline; indeed, the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD), which comprises 26 published volumes (accessible free of charge online), only took 55 years to complete (from 1956 up to 2010). To be sure, the first volumes of the RIA are now entirely obsolete, and a project has been submitted to rewrite them from scratch for an online version. Such an undertaking could only be envisaged as a long-term project and could not be carried out in the context of time-limited projects proposed for French researchers. Conversely, in Germany the regional academies of science offer to fund such long-term projects (sometimes lasting for more than 20 years).

[1] One can determine the number of entries written by each of the authors whose works appear in the 15 volumes published in the RIA. 

[2] The history of this encyclopaedia was the subject of a presentation made by its Editor in Chief, Michael Streck, as part of the 63rd International Assyriological Meeting held at Marburg (Germany) from 24 to 26 July 2017.