Strata: A Gargantuan Dictionary

Move over Webster’s! There’s a new dictionary in town—that is, if you want to learn Akkadian, an ancient Semitic language that was the lingua franca in the ancient Near East for around two millennia.

With 28,000 entries—filling 9,700 pages—the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is finally complete! This colossal undertaking is the product of 88 scholars who researched and wrote entries for the dictionary for nearly a century. It has been 94 years since the project was begun by James Henry Breasted of the University of Chicago in 1921.

Breasted, the first American to receive a Ph.D. in Egyptology, completed his doctoral work at the University of Berlin. He taught at the University of Chicago and participated in numerous excavations in Egypt. The University of Chicago created a new chair for him—the professor of Egyptology and Oriental History, which was the first of its kind in the U.S.—and appointed him director of the Haskell Oriental Museum. With a vision to study the “rise and development of civilization,” he transformed this museum into the impressive Oriental Institute and traveled throughout the Middle East and Egypt to locate items for the museum, as well as to recommend sites that warranted excavation. Breasted was the first archaeologist elected to the National Academy of Sciences. A hallmark figure in the field of archaeology, he drastically shaped and influenced the discipline.