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April 29, 2008
The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary Online
Excepting Volume 20, U/W which is in preparation, the complete set of The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago (aka The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, CAD) is online, ready to download and free. I take this as a very good thing. But I am not without worries.
While I dabble in Assyriology and try to make sense of Akkadian texts, I am far from an assyriologist. In addition, I'm a little lazy. So if I run across an Akkadian word or phrase I don't understand, and this happens often, I tend to look in Black, George and Postgate's A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian. I can reach it without getting out of my chair. If Black et al doesn't satisfy me or, as is often the case, I'd like to see some context or further discussion, I take four or five steps and look at von Soden's Akkadisches Handwörterbuch. Up until this morning, if I wanted to learn more or something else about an Akkadian word that didn't begin with the four or five letters of volumes already online, I got in my car and drove a mile of so to the library to look at the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary. Now I am afraid that I will just stop looking at von Soden. von Soden's dictionary is, as you might guess, in German, a language that often induces obnoxious bouts of involuntary swearing. Seeking to live an upright life, I naturally avoid undue exposure to such risks. But there is another risk in not looking at von Soden. Akkadisches Handwörterbuch often has things that the CAD does not. A couple examples where one should look at both major references and perhaps further are the Akkadian words pillû/billû and šalāṭu II. But there are many examples where these two wonderful tools differ in abnormally interesting ways.
Some may wonder if checking two, occasionally conflicting, tools is a little like the problem faced by the man who has two watches. He's never sure what time it is. But no, an amateur not being sure, when professionals disagree is a good thing.
Pete Bekins at balshanut concisely describes the technology of the online version and one of the main issues.
The volumes are in PDF format and all but the newest are scanned images with a hidden OCR-ed text that allows searching. It is unfortunate that the dictionary will not move the next step to become a true electronic dictionary.
I think what he means by "will not move" is "has no plans or funding to move" and that is indeed unfortunate. But still its very good to be able to access the CAD without getting out of my chair. And because I will likely now go to it ahead of von Soden the overall moral environment of our abnormal household may well improve.
Posted by Duane Smith at April 29, 2008 1:04 PM | Read more on Akkadian |
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