Ancient world dictionary finished — after 90 years - Yahoo! News

Ancient world dictionary finished — after 90 years - Yahoo! News: "'The Assyrian Dictionary gives us the key into the world's first urban civilization,' he says. 'Virtually everything that we take for granted ... has its origins in Mesopotamia, whether it's the origins of cities, of state societies, the invention of the wheel, the way we measure time, and most important the invention of writing.
'If we ever want to understand our roots,' Stein adds, 'we have to understand this first great civilization.'"

"Like all people at all times, they wanted to try to find some way of controlling their world," says Martha Roth, the dictionary's editor-in-charge and dean of humanities. "It's very difficult to draw the line between actually believing and being superstitious."





But the tablets reached far beyond royalty. Biggs says they included everything from a disputed paternity case to agricultural loans to famine, where desperate people sold their children for cash. "Life was very fragile ... it was much more risky that it is now," he says.





"It's not such a word means king," Roth says. "It's a matter of understanding the thousands and thousands of references to the word king in every document in every period."




Now that the dictionary is finished, Roth says there's a feeling of tremendous accomplishment and "a little bit of a sense of loss.... This has occupied my waking and sleeping moments for 32 years. You dream this stuff."




The end also brings a realization as more tablets are unearthed, more discoveries will be made.



"It's like driving a Porsche off the lot and looking in the Blue Book (listing a car's worth) and seeing how much value it's lost," Stolper says. "The moment it's done, it's out of date."



Biggs says the scholars are satisfied with the final version, but there is that lingering temptation.



"It might be nice to start over," he says, "but no one has the courage to do it anymore."

LOL

They ain't kidding. 

LMAO
(maybe; maybe not!)