Site Links Related to Mesopotamia or
Language
Ancient Mesopotamia Sites
ABZU - Mesopotamian Study Resources
Akkadian Language (Babylonian and Assyrian cuneiform texts)
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (site at UCLA)
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (mirror site in Berlin)
Current Description of the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
Mesopotamian Year Names
Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (PSD) project
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford
Sumerian Lexicon: A Dictionary Guide to the Ancient Sumerian Language
Sumerisches Glossar: Bearbeitung von Rechts- und Verwaltungsurkunden (DFGProjekt),
by Walther Sallaberger
Mesopotamian Mathematics
Babylonian Mathematics
History Topics in Babylonian Mathematics
Le calcul sexagésimal en Mésopotamie
Babylonian Astronomy/Astrology Software Program
Bibliography of Mesopotamian Astronomy and Astrology
The Development, Heyday, and Demise of Panbabylonism, article by Gary D. Thompson
Sumerian Constellations and Star Names?
Hope Anthony's Sumerian and Akkadian Star Catalogue, derived from Reiner and
Pingree
Hope Anthony's A Guide To Ancient Near Eastern Astronomy, salvaged by the Pomona
College Astronomy Dept.
On the Astronomical Records and Babylonian Chronology
Musical Theory in the Ancient World - the Mesopotamian Precursors of Pythagoras
The Invention of Music in the Orientalizing Period
History of Mesopotamian Measures, by Livio C. Stecchini - Introduction, Length,
Volume & Weight, Stereometric Texts, and Seeding Rates
Eisenbraun's - Source for Scholarly Books
Archaeologia - Booksellers of Used, Out of Print, Antiquarian Books on the Near East
Oriental Institute Bookstore
Oriental Institute on the WWW
Samuel Noah Kramer Institute of Assyriology and Ancient Near Eastern Studies
The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq
Vitas of Ancient Near Eastern Scholars on the Web
Names and Addresses of Scholars and Advanced Students Involved in Cuneiform Studies
and Near Eastern Archaeology
E-mail Addresses for Ancient Near Eastern Scholars
Who's Who in Cuneiform Studies - Biographies for Deceased Cuneiform Scholars
Resources for Ancient Near Eastern Studies - bibliographies of publications by
Assyriologists
Resources for Ancient Near Eastern Studies - bibliographies in certain subjects, such as
Music
Chroniques bibliographiques - compilation critique des publications assyriologiques
Chroniques assyriologiques - Le nouveau site des Chroniques - Néo-sumérien
Internet Researcher: Library Tools for Ancient Near Eastern Research, from Catholic
University of America
Gudea Cylinder transcription plates - see the ETCSL for transliterations
CDLI presentation of Sumerian Sign-Lists - from Late Uruk to Ur III
Old Sumerian Signs copied from Labat (Labyrinths - Part4)
Akkadian Cuneiform Signs - with Index to Borger and Labat
A survey of cuneiform signlists
The Diachronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature - appears at this time to be only a catalog
with no online texts
Database of Neo-Sumerian Texts (BDTNS)
Sources of Early Akkadian Literature (SEAL): A Text Corpus of Babylonian and
Assyrian Literary Texts from the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BCE
Old Babylonian Text Corpus - includes Old Babylonian-English dictionary and a sign list
with all variant forms
Late Old Babylonian Personal Names Index (LOB-PNI) - 13,573 names from 1683-1595
B.C.
ARCHIBAB - Archives babyloniennes (XXe-XVIIe siècles av. J.C.)
Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship (CAMS), includes astronomy texts such as
Mul-Apin 2
Introduction to the Babylonian Language, by Robert M. Whiting
Support page for the CDA - A Concise Dictionary of Akkadian - Addenda, corrigenda,
and supporting bibliography
Neo-Assyrian Glossary - a reliable Akkadian-English lexicon (the CDA is much more
complete, but not on-line)
Akkadian - English - French Dictionary
Descriptive catalog page for The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the
University of Chicago (CAD) - the university has now generously made all of the 25
available volumes of this premier Akkadian dictionary downloadable in pdf form
Proceedings of the 51st Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Held at the Oriental
Institute of the University of Chicago, July 18–22, 2005, articles on: 1) Lexicography,
Philology, and Textual Studies; 2) Iconography and Art History; and 3) Archaeology and
Stratigraphy
Phillips 13 - tablet with a detailed item inventory from the royal household of King
Shulgi of the Ur III dynasty, together with FAQ, glossary, and Ur III map
Dyke College Ur III Texts - photo, transliteration, & translation of 5 receipt tablets
Cuneiform Inscriptions of the University of Minnesota from Ur III Period - 16 Tablets
Babylonian Clay Tablets at South Georgia State Normal College (Valdosta State
University) - with research on background of Edgar J. Banks
Cuneiform Tablet Collection of Ripon College, Clark Collection, from Ur III Period - 7
Tablets
Tablets Relating to Sumerian History in the Schoyen Collection
Ashmolean Museum: The Weld-Blundell Prism: The Sumerian King-List
Sumerian temple records at the Australian Institute of Archaeology
Cuneiform Tablets at the Library of Congress
TEXTOS ELAMITAS: Dirección, transcripciones y traducción
Elam between Assyriology and Iranian Studies
Elam.net - Storia, lingua e cultura dell'antico Elam
Mesopotamian King List 2800 – 500 B.C., 199KB worth of material about each ruler of
ancient Mesopotamia
Political Change and Cultural Continuity in Eshnunna from the Ur III to the Old
Babylonian Period
Archiv für Orientforschung journal
Journal of Cuneiform Studies Home Page
BASOR - Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
Journal of Near Eastern Studies
Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Society (JANES) Cumulative Index
IRAQ, the journal of the British School of Archaeology in IRAQ (BSAI)
Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale
KASKAL, Rivista di Storia, ambiente e culture del Vicino Oriente antico, A Journal of
History, Environment, and Cultures of the Ancient Near East
Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie
Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie
Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale
Origins of Early Writing Systems, conference, October 5 to 7, 2007, Peking University,
Beijing
54e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Würzburg, July 21-25, 2008, theme:
"Organization, Representation and Symbols of Power in the Ancient Near East" - click on
flag for your preferred language (German, English, or French)
From the 21st Century BC to the 21st Century AD: The Present and Future of NeoSumerian
Studies - conference, Madrid, July 22-24, 2010
International Association for Assyriology
International Association for Assyriology: cooperation - listings of ongoing projects in
Assyriology
Sumerian Mythology FAQ
Sumerian Mythology, by Samuel Noah Kramer, [1944, 1961]
Samuel Noah Kramer biography
Sumerians on the Information Superhighway - magazine article about Steve Tinney's
transfer of the Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary (PSD) project to the Internet
Sumerian Myths from a class on World Mythology
Civilization Begins - 224 KB worth of facts and quotes about Sumer and Sumerians,
from C. McArver of the Porter-Gaud School
Mesopotamian Religion - Bibliography by Piotr Steinkeller
Magic and Divination in the Neo-Assyrian Period: A Selected Bibliography by Lorenzo
Verderame
The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria by Theophilus G. Pinches (Many Divine Names
Are Now Read Differently, But This Detailed 1906 Work Is a Classic)
Ancient Near Eastern Gods Enki and Ea: Diachronical Analysis of Texts and Images
from the Earliest Sources to the Neo-Sumerian Period - MA Thesis
The International Database of the Melammu Project - entries investigate the continuity,
transformation and diffusion of Mesopotamian culture throughout the ancient world from
the second millennium BC until Islamic times
The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project
The Neo-Assyrian Empire - Knowledge and Power
The Babylonian Nineveh Texts, a descriptive database created by Jeanette C. Fincke
(2003) as part of The Ashurbanipal Library Project of the British Museum
Updates to The Prosopography of the Neo-Assyrian Empire
The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon
Ancient Mesopotamian Libraries, a Word document by Amanda K. Sprochi, Resident
Music Librarian, Kent State University
Keilschriftforschung - Universitaet Goettingen
Digitale Keilschriftbibliothek Lexikalischer Listen aus Assur
Archives of ANE Discussion List for the Study of the Ancient Near East (Oriental
Institute)
ANE 2 - a moderated academic discussion list that focuses on topics and issues of interest
in Ancient Near Eastern Studies
Mesopotamia links from the Quartz Hill School of Theology
Cuneiform Revealed: an introduction to cuneiform script and the Akkadian language
Cuneiform Writing @ University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and
Anthropology
Brown University Seniors 'Crack' Cuneiform Tablets
Historical decipherment of cuneiform, in 1857 the Royal Asiatic Society placed a test
case before Edward Hincks, Jules Oppert, Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, and William
Henry Fox Talbot
USC's Introduction to Cuneiform Tablets page
InscriptiFact: A Networked Database of Ancient Near Eastern Inscriptions - database of
over 30,000 high-resolution images
Animated evolution of cuneiform signs page
Frayne - Scribal Education in Ancient Babylonia
How to Recognize a Scribal School - Formal Scribal Training - what Sumerian lexical
texts did ANE schools utilize?
La Mésopotamie ancienne - Naissance de l'écriture
Écriture cunéiforme
Unwrapping and Visualizing Cuneiform Tablets - successful project at Stanford
University to digitize clay tablets
The Digital Classification of Ancient Near Eastern Cuneiform Data (Univ. of
Birmingham)
The Cuneiform Digital Palaeography Project (a joint project at the Univ. of Birmingham
and the British Museum)
Digital Hammurabi project at Johns Hopkins University
Cuneiform Signs, Lloyd Anderson's studies to support the Unicode encoding of the
Cuneiform writing system
n2786.pdf - Final Proposal to Encode Cuneiform Script in Unicode (Adobe pdf document
file from June 10, 2004)
Cuneiform Composite font, covers Unicode 5.0, with characters that range from Fara to
Neo-Assyrian - created by Steve Tinney with assistance from Michael Everson
Neo-Assyrian version of the Cuneiform Composite font, by Peter Bienstman
Set of 2 TrueType fonts supplying 450 of the most common Sumerian Ur III period
cuneiform signs - developed by Guillaume Malingue
A set of 4 TrueType fonts supplying 388 cuneiform signs in which the wedges have a 3
Dimensional appearance - by Carsten Peust (also with a Sumerian Grammar
bibliography)
Cuneiform fonts for TeX/LaTeX/PDFLaTeX - by Karel Piska
Fonts developed by Bendt Alster for Transliterating Sumerian and Akkadian - not
Cuneiform
Bendt Alster's updates to his Sumerian Proverbs publications
Home Page of Daniel A. Foxvog, with Introduction to Sumerian Grammar, Elementary
Sumerian Glossary, Timeline of Mesopotamian History, and Chief Figures of the
Mesopotamian Pantheon
Home Page of Pascal Attinger, with Sumerian literature translations into French and
Sumerian grammatical problems
Home Page of Christine Proust, publications on Mesopotamian mathematics, mainly in
French
In-Depth Information About Sumer, especially as it relates to the city of Nippur
Nippur, Sacred City of Enlil, Supreme God of Sumer and Akkad, by archaeologist
McGuire Gibson
Iraq Site Map - Univ. of Chicago Oriental Institute Map Series
AMAR: Archive of Mesopotamian Archaeological Site Reports
Photographs of Mesopotamian archaeological sites, provided by John C. Sanders &
Oriental Institute, University of Chicago
Archaeology Photos, with Images of Archaeological Sites in Mesopotamia (Iraq &
Syria), from Peter Langer - Associated Media Group (has 110 photos of Babylon, among
other sites)
Aerial views of ancient Uruk, huge, slow-loading page in Arabic
Database project to track archaeological sites in Iraq - funded by the NEH
Seafaring and the Arabian Neolithic - British Archaeological Expedition to Kuwait
(BAEK)
Inside a Sumerian Temple: The Ekishnugal at Ur, from The Temple in Time and Eternity,
by E. Jan Wilson
Architectural Marvels of Ancient Mesopotamia - informative, but graphics are slow to
load
Ships and Shipbuilding in Ancient Mesopotamia (ca. 300-200 B.C.)
Facts on File: Mesopotamian canals and aqueducts
Housing and Plumbing in Mesopotamia
Women in Mesopotamia (Women in World History Curriculum)
The En-hedu-Ana Research Pages - Unearthing the First Known Author
Enheduanna's Writings
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Score transliterations of the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablets I-XII,
Andrew George, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London
Official Site for Gilgamesh, The Motion Picture (the IMDB page has disappeared)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art - The Collection: Ancient Near Eastern Art (page
highlights 50 objects from 4,000 years)
Overview of "Treasures of the Royal Tombs of Ur" @ University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology
Treasures from the Royal Tombs of Ur, McClung Museum's Special Exhibition
The Morgan Library Collections | Ancient Near Eastern Seals & Tablets
The British Museum, The Middle East
British Museum - Search the British Museum collection database online
Field Museum 'reuniting' scattered collections from ancient Iraq site
Lost Treasures From Iraq, Objects From The Iraq Museum Database, hosted by Oriental
Institute, Univ. of Chicago
The Iraq National Museum , historical reconstruction on Polish 'Adam Mickiewicz
Institute' site
Antiquities of Mesopotamia at the Vatican Museums
The Centrality of the Date Palm and its Sex Life to Sumerians
Ancient Flowers, Trees, Herbs, Fruits, Vegetables and Shrubs
History of Horticulture - Herbals: The Connection Between Horticulture and Medicine
Bibliography of Archaeobotanical Reports from Iraq and Related Items
Medicinal, Culinary and Aromatic Plants in the Near East
27 University Level Essays on Third Millenium Mesopotamia (University of Manchester,
Faculty of Arts)
The Development of Ancient Mesopotamian Law, paper by Dan King
Financing Civilization, book chapter by William N. Goetzmann
Land Markets in the Ancient Near East, by Morris Silver
The Early Evolution of Interest-Bearing Debt, by Michael Hudson
Mesopotamian Worldview Expressions
For six other papers on Ancient Mesopotamian subjects, click for the Fall 2002 class on
Race and Ethnicity in Ancient Mesopotamia
Bibliography for the Formation of Early States in the Near East (4,000-2,000BC)
Bibliography for Mesopotamian Urbanism
Bibliography for Mesopotamian Architecture, Construction Materials and Techniques
Iraqi History Page, by Ali al-Sammawy
Iraq - Ancient Mesopotamia - Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, and Assyria, from Library of
Congress country study
Genesis in Sumer - book chapter on Sumerian civilization by Frank E. Smitha
Ethics of Sumer, Babylon, and Hittites by Sanderson Beck
Anthropologist Mike Shupp Summarizes Archaeological Evidence Relating to Origins of
Sumerian Civilization
Anthropologist Mike Shupp Examines Evidence for an Uruk Period Prosperity Zone
School of American Research Advanced Seminar: Mesopotamia in the Era of State
Formation - a reliable source covering the fourth millenium Uruk Period
Book Review of Guillermo Algaze, The Uruk World System: The Dynamics of Expansion
of Early Mesopotamian Civilization
The Life and Death of the Sumerian Language in Comparative Perspective - Piotr
Michalowski
Sumerian Epics, Hymns, and Letters - Piotr Michalowski
The Adaptation of Cuneiform to Akkadian - Piotr Michalowski
Elementary Education at Nippur. The Lists of Trees and Wooden Objects - Niek
Veldhuis, all of his publications here
Papers on Ancient Mesopotamia - Ian Lawton
Tracing Assyrian Scholarship, Lecture by Stefan Maul
Ninurta as the God of Wisdom, 2001 paper by Amar Annus
Protohistory in Mesopotamia
The Origins of Writing as a Problem of Historical Epistemology, article by Peter
Damerow
Linguistics 201: The Invention of Writing
Numerical notation and abstraction of concepts, Origins of Writing conf. paper by
Pettersson
Ancient Mesopotamian Accounting and Human Cognitive Evolution, article by Tom
Mouck
Who Began Writing? Many Theories, Few Answers (NY Times Science article)
Accounting with Tokens in the Ancient Near East, article by Denise Schmandt-Besserat
More Articles by Denise Schmandt-Besserat in Table of Contents at 'Ain Ghazal
Excavation Reports
Animal Figurines, including Animal symbolism in the ancient Near East (Schmandt-
Besserat)
Mesopotamia Life and Teaching Materials
Ancient Mesopotamia: Classroom & Museum Lesson Plans (from the Oriental Institute
in Chicago)
Sargon I of Akkad
The Ancient World Web: A very ambitious collection of links
Mythology's Mythinglinks: the Tigris-Euphrates Region of the Ancient Near East - An
Annotated & Illustrated Collection of Worldwide Links to Mythologies, Fairy Tales &
Folklore, Sacred Arts & Traditions
Gateways To Babylon - Extensive Links
Archaeology on the Internet - a collection of links
All Empires History Forum - an active site for postings on many ancient and languagerelated
topics
Guide to Universities that Teach Sumerian
U.Chi. Dept. of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
UCLA, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures
News items about UCLA's Near Eastern Languages and Cultures Dept.
Univ. Of Michigan, Department of Near Eastern Studies
Univ. of Michigan, Near Eastern Studies Library Resources
Near East specialists at Oxford
Yale, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, Babylonian Collection
Highlights from the Garshana Collection | Cuneiform Library at Cornell University
Sumerian greeting on Voyager spacecraft record: silim-ma he2-me-en = Welcome! [May
you be healthy!]
Translating Elvis into Sumerian
Sumerian - Ural-Altaic Comparisons
Magyar Comparisons - even more ambitious than the preceding link - compares "AfroAsiatic,
Altaic, Austro-Asiatic, Basque, Caucasian, Dravidian, Etruscan, Sino-Tibetan,
Sumerian and even some Indo-European links."
LexiLine - Sumerian and Indo-European Similarities A to K - Archaic Baltic Latvian
LexiLine - Sumerian and Indo-European Similarities L to Z - Archaic Baltic Latvian
Lithuanian
Austric Relationship of Sumerian Language
About Hungarian and Sumerian
Turkish and Sumerian
Sumerian-Ural-Altaic Affinities, Current Anthropology short article with scholarly
responses
Medicine in Ancient Mesopotamia
Mesopotamian Disease and Medicine (CDLI project with bibliography)
History of Mesopotamian Medicine, a collection of links
History of Dentistry - Ancient Mesopotamia
Archaeology of Grains and Beer-Making
The Goddess Ninkasi Hymn as a Guide to Beer-Making
The Origins and Ancient History of Wine
Commodity Prices in Babylon 385 - 61 BC
Mesopotamian Chronology, and click here for a list of historical chronicles
A Chronology of the Ancient Near East
A Timeline of Climate History around 3000 BC
Language or Research Sites
The LINGUIST List
BL Online - The bibliographical database of linguistics
Numbers in over 5000 Languages
Proto-World and the Language Instinct, by Mark Rosenfelder, investigates and finds that
"evidence for the language instinct is weak"
A Brief Introduction to the History of Names
A Bibliography of Semitic Linguistics
Linguistic Exploration - links to on-line language projects and dictionaries
Academy of Ancient Languages
Search the Card Catalog of the New York Public Library
WorldCat, a worldwide library catalog created and maintained collectively by more than
9,000 member institutions
article on Sumerian Language in the Wikipedia free encyclopedia
article that is especially informative about Sumerian grammar in the German version of
Wikipedia, based on an article by Ernst Kausen, Die sumerische Sprache
The Yoshikawa Database of Materials for a Sumerian Lexicon - search for a word or
word compound and get handwritten references to publications where the word occurs
Lexical Freenet Connected Thesaurus
searchable Lexicon of Linguistics
The World Atlas of Language Structures Online
CogPrints: Cognitive Sciences EPrint Archive
The sci.lang Newsgroup FAQ
Google Groups - search the contents of the Usenet discussion forums
Ancient Scripts of the World, with Historical Linguistics Links
Ancient Languages and Scripts
How the Alphabet Was Born from Hieroglyphs - article in Biblical Archaeology Review
magazine
Ancient Indus Valley Script
Religion Reflected in the Indus Valley Script, Article by Asko Parpola
Dr. Steve Farmer's evidence that the so-called Indus script was not part of a true writing
system nor was the Harappan civilization literate
Old Europe 'Writing' Bibliographic Rererences
Proto-Semitic Language and Culture - excellent article by John Huehnergard
web site of the late L.O. Schuman - the 103 Kb salient.pdf essay explores The Semitic
Languages and Hamito-Semitic, Salient Features of Renewed Etymology, being an
abstract of an unpublished manuscript on Semitic etymology, historical linguistics, and
general linguistics
The Early History of Indo-European Languages - by Thomas V. Gamkrelidze and V. V.
Ivanov
Examining the Farming/Language Dispersal Hypothesis - edited by Peter Bellwood and
Colin Renfrew
Phylogenetic network method puts origin of Proto-Indo-European language at 8100 BC ±
1,900 years
Early Date for the Birth of Indo-European Languages
The Indo-European Etymological Dictionary (IED)
The Ergativic Stage of Early Proto-Indoeuropean
A History of the English Language
A History of the Hindi Language
A History of the Arabic Language
About the Hungarian Language
The Chinese Language and its Development
The Chinese Language: Myths and Facts
Logographic Writing Systems
Babel's Dawn- A blog about the evolution of speech from primate vocalizations to
meaningful exchanges
Historical Linguistics links by the Open Directory Project
Language Origins Society
Evolution of Language - Program of a comprehensive April, 2000 conference
Margaret Magnus's sound symbolism links
Archives of SOUNDSYMBOL List
one-page Hebrew dictionary - of Semitic phememes
The memetic origin of language: modern humans as musical primates
Whistled Speech
Deaf children create new sign language
American Scientist - The Gestural Origins of Language
Gesture Language in Naples - see 4th paragraph in particular
Dan Moonhawk Alford's Home Page
Essays on thinking and language by Yuri Tarnopolsky
Henry Drummond on The Evolution of Language, chapter 5 of The Lowell Lectures on
the Ascent of Man, 1904
The real explanation of the FOXP2 "Language Gene", by Alec MacAndrew
Localizing recent adaptive evolution in the human genome
Wave model (linguistics)
Genes and language, by Luigi Luca Cavalli Sforza, Stanford University - a 607 Kb pdf
file, but it loads fast
Speaking in Tongues:Theories on the Origins of Language
Language evolved in a leap - article by Ferrer i Cancho, R. & Solé, R. V. "Least effort
and the origins of scaling in human language."
Report on a new computer program that uses language structure, not vocabulary, to
analyze the degree of relatedness between languages
Language Evolution and Computation Bibliography
Julian Jaynes Revisited, including summary of Nicholas Humphrey on cave paintings and
language