Posted on 06/04/2011 7:47:12 AM PDT by decimon
CHICAGO It was a monumental project with modest beginnings: a small group of scholars and some index cards. The plan was to explore a long-dead language that would reveal an ancient world of chariots and concubines, royal decrees and diaries and omens that came from the heavens and sheep livers.
The year: 1921. The place: The University of Chicago. The project: Assembling an Assyrian dictionary based on words recorded on clay or stone tablets unearthed from ruins in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, written in a language that hadn't been uttered for more than 2,000 years. The scholars knew the project would take a long time. No one quite expected how very long.
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Now that the dictionary is finished, Roth says there's a feeling of tremendous accomplishment and "a little bit of a sense of loss.... This has occupied my waking and sleeping moments for 32 years. You dream this stuff."
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(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Warren’s the word ping.
An amazing story about an amazing journey.
I wonder how much is online. It would be fascinating reading.
Sounds like an Obama wet dream for America
The editors of the Bavarian Dictionary say it will take 45 years. I bet their underestimating. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11095620
You deserve some applause if you can read it.
You are bairisch on their prospects?
Can you spell Grant Money??
¨A homina-homina....¨
just saw that a couple days ago.... thinking the same thing
I doubt it. If grant money had been involved, they would have hired a bunch of grad students and done it in 20 years.
It sounds more like a labor of real scholarship. It was started long before the era of multitudinous government grants. Before Franklin Roosevelt.
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It was a black and white world, and I’m glad. :’)
This project was started during the same year that Ray Chapman Andrews (the inspiration for Indiana Jones) was planning his expeditions into the Gobi desert in Mongolia. It was a golden age, after WWI and before the Great Depression. Calvin Coolidge, one of our greatest and most successful presidents, was in charge during most of this era.
Did a little googling...lotsa past grants and ongoing grants for this.
Ohhh! Nice one.
Thanks for your research.
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