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October 1, 2006
New to Me
Two items came to my attention this week that others may want to know about. First Charles Halton of Awilum linked to The Digital Orient. He noted the articles by Dominique Charpin that can be found there. Charles is correct that Charpin's paper on literacy in the ancient Near East is intriguing as are several others. But there is a lot more on the Digital Orient Blog worth looking at. If you are even slightly interested in the Mari you will find much to peak your interests.
Via ABZU, I learned that Jessie Payne Smith's (Margoliouth) 1903 abridgment of the Thesaurus Syriacus is now online. The formal bibliographic entry is Smith, Jessie Payne, A Compendius Syriac Dictionary, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1903. R. Payne Smith's mammoth Thesaurus Syriacus, which was actually completed by his daughter, Jessie Payne Smith-Margoliouth, was reprinted from the 1879-1901 edition in 2001. While serious scholars will need to consult the unabridged edition, in most cases, the Compendius provides enough information for the Semitist to decide if more details are required. I am always amazed at these great historic works that continue to be useful more than one hundred years after their publication. Sure, there are places where an update is needed, but only a very few works retain even limited usefulness for such a long period of time, much less remain the standard by which others works are judged and often fail.
I often find these scanned versions of classic works harder to navigate my way through than the bound versions. And why can't they ever get the pages straight? More than half of the pages on the scanned version of the Compendius are slanting one way or the other and one page looks like it is rotated more than 15ยบ counter clockwise. Even if it's hard to scan them straight the really bad ones could easily be fixed in Photoshop. If you prefer a bound version of the Compendius, Eisenbrauns has it.
Posted by Duane Smith at October 1, 2006 11:24 AM | Read more on |
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