The invention of the dictionary: Sumerian lexical lists

30 January 2019

On 13 January 2019, the world of Assyriology was sad to learn of the death of Miguel Civil at the age of 92. Born at the same time as the discipline "Sumerology", he was one of its greatest scholars and the best connoisseur of Sumerian lexical lists[1]. Born in Catalonia, he trained in Paris and, through Jean Bottéro, met the great Sumerologist Samuel Noah Kramer, who recruited him as an assistant in Philadelphia in 1958. Five years later he moved to Chicago.

It was there that the idea of producing the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was born, the first volume of which, 'H', was published in 1956, and the last, 'U and W', in 2010. Each entry in this dictionary begins with a paragraph that presents the Sumerian equivalents of the Akkadian terms developed, with references to Sumerian-Akkadian lexical lists. What are these?

These lexical lists are enumerations of signs (syllabaries) or words (vocabularies), presented in columns and classified according to thematic, semantic or graphic criteria. Invented by the Sumerians in the second half of the 4th millennium BCE, they were intended to help learn Sumerian and cuneiform writing. The syllabaries provide the pronunciation of Sumerian words written logographically, while the vocabularies give their meaning. When Sumerian became a dead language at the very end of the 3rd millennium BCE, Akkadian scribes working in a scholarly setting continued to copy, complete and develop these lists, which were monolingual until the middle of the 2nd millennium, and then became bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian. Sumerian words are listed in the left-hand column while the Akkadian translation is given in the right-hand column.

There are many lexical lists copied by apprentice scribes up to the end of the 1st millennium BCE[2]. Some of these lists, which became bilingual, were organised into large catalogues in the second half of the 2nd millennium BCE. The most complete one is entitled, according to its incipit, URRA (Sumerian) = hubullu (Akkadian), "the debt". This collection contains 24 thematic tablets grouped around the realities of nature and society. After a collection of legal formulas, there is, for example, vocabulary relating to trees and wooden objects, reeds and reed objects, stones, plants, metals, fabrics, as well as domestic and wild animals, fish and birds, foodstuffs, vehicles and agricultural implements, weapons and tools, or parts of the body.

The Sumerian-Akkadian lexical lists were the very first dictionaries. This kind of text was disseminated far beyond Mesopotamia, and adapted to other languages, not only in bilingual but also in trilingual versions, adding to the right of the Akkadian column the equivalent words in Ugaritic (Ugarit, Syria), Hittite (Anatolia), or Hourrite (upper Mesopotamia and Anatolia). Thanks to these dictionaries, scholars at the beginning of the last century were able to decipher Sumerian and these other languages[3]. Assyriology is therefore greatly indebted to Miguel Civil who spent more than sixty years of his life publishing, editing and commenting on Sumerian lexical lists.

[1] He is the author or co-author of more than ten volumes devoted to Sumerian lexical texts in the collection Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon, cf. Rubio (eds.), The First Ninety Years. A Sumerian Celebration in Honor of Miguel Civil, Studies in Ancient Near Eastern Records 12, Berlin, 2017.

[2] A. Cavigneaux, "Lexikalische Listen" (article in French), Reallexikon der Assyriologie 6, 1980-1983, pp. 609-641; C. Michel, "Listes lexicales", in F. Joannès, assisted by C. Michel, Dictionnaire de la civilisation mésopotamienne, Paris: Robert Laffont, Coll. BOUQUINS, 2001, p. 475-476.

[3] B. Lion and C. Michel, Histoires de déchiffrements. Les écritures du Proche-Orient à l'Égée, Paris, 2009.