The Assyrian Dictionary Project: A Cathedral of Scholarship

by Clay Burell · 2009-06-05 08:25:00 UTC
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The apartment move is in full swing, so a brief "wow" about this video interview with the director of University of Chicago's monumental Assyrian Dictionary Project. Call it the Oxford English Dictionary of cuneiform. I'm a huge fan of ancient Near Eastern studies, and how they shed light on things we never knew about the origins of - and influences on - Judaism and Christianity. The ADP is an awesome example of scholarship as a mental form of cathedral-building. It's taken over 80 years for this project to come to completion. (The vid goes dark after closing credits midway, but if you slide across the last half, you'll see a couple more interesting snippets about the process.)
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Now back to packing.

Clay Burell
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