Many readers will have heard of the Anunnaki — hopefully listening to me debunk nonsense about them and not from Ancient Aliens. One of the problems with getting quality information about the Anunnaki is that the best material was published decades ago in German...
Akkadian
Cuneiform Lexical Lists: Another Reason Sitchin Was Wrong
The Ancient History website just published this short essay on cuneiform lexical lists — basically, the ancient equivalent of bilingual (and otherwise) dictionaries for Sumerian and Akkadian produced by the ancient scribes. From the opening paragraph: Lexical...
Sachs, Velikovsky, and Sitchin
A short time ago I blogged about the work of C. Leroy Ellenberger, at one time a first-tier defender of Immanuel Velikovsky who later came to doubt and then refute that brand of catastrophism, sent me a link I thought I’d share with readers. Leroy’s link...
Sweet Assyriology Resources Online
The Ancient World Online (AWOL) blog recently posted about updates made to the CDLI (Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative) wiki site, now hosted at the University of Oxford. The CDLI wiki is a terrific website for Assyriology. By way of examples, you can find helpful...
For Those Who Want to Study Akkadian
Readers who have poked around my book recommendations would know that I think Huehnergard’s A Grammar of Akkadian (3rd ed.; with its companion answer key, Key to a Grammar of Akkadian) is the best around. The Ancient World Online blog notes that the vocabulary...
After 90 Years the CAD is "Finished" (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary)
Here’s the link to the recent announcement. I say “finished” because, having been begun in 1921, many volumes are now outdated. But it’s still a great achievement. The CAD is available for free in PDF (or you can buy all the volumes for $1400)....
Why Learn Akkadian?
I know. You're thinking I'll say "because it is there."Â Here is a more practical answer from a review of an important recent lexical resource. Editor's note:Â above link is annoying and hard to read on a screen with pop-ups, ads, and images, so reproducing the content...
Zecharia Sitchin and the Meaning of Sumerian and Akkadian Words
On my old website devoted to exposing the phony scholarship of Zecharia Sitchin’s ancient astronaut nonsense, I had occasion to note how the meanings of certain Sumero-Akkadian words or glyphs supplied by by Sitchin were not only nonsense, but the Sumerians...