An Annotated Sumerian Dictionary

This dictionary covers all the nuances of meaning for Sumerian terms found in historical inscriptions and literary, administrative, and lexical texts dating from about 2500 BCE to the first century BCE. The entries are organized by transcription and are accompanied by the transliteration and translation of passages in which the term occurs and, where relevant, a discussion of the word’s treatment in other publications. Main entries bring together all the parts of speech and compound forms for the Sumerian term and present each part of speech individually. All possible Akkadian equivalents and variant syllabic renderings are listed for lexical attestations of a word, and a meaningful sample of occurrences is given for literary and economic passages. Entries of homonyms with different orthographies and unrelated words with the same orthography are grouped together, each being assigned a unique identifier, and the dictionary treats the phoneme /dr/ as a separate consonant.

Written by one of the foremost scholars in the field, An Annotated Sumerian Dictionary is an essential reference for Sumerologists and Assyriologists and a practical help to students of ancient cultures.

Mark E. Cohen was Assistant Curator of the Babylonian Collection at Yale University and taught ancient history at the University of Maryland for more than twenty-five years. His many publications include New Treasures of Sumerian Literature, Festivals and Calendars of the Ancient Near East, and An English to Akkadian Companion to the Assyrian Dictionaries, which are distributed by Penn State University Press.

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Preface

A PDF copy of errata and additions is available for download.