I may never understand the deep inspiration and motivation these generation of scholars have to undertake such a feat, but it is clear to me that they deserve some praises for a job well done.
The once estimated decade-long project got extended and extended and extended and … you get the picture. In the end, it came down to 10, 000 pages containing around 28,000 ancient words compiled into 21 volumes.
It all started in the 1920s (can you imagine that!) in the University of Chicago where a small group of scholars came up with a brilliant idea of putting up a dictionary of a language no one bothers with. Now, try to figure out how that might look like in those times: they have no computer. That only means they do their grueling tasks manually and it took them years to analyze archeological stuff that has strange markings on them that can be read four different ways. Well, you bet scholars after scholars labored in that project from the beginning of their careers up to their retirements (covering only a handful of words, perhaps). One of them revealed having worked on a single word for 5 years! Such patience.
From what I’ve heard, it’s more like an encyclopedia than a dictionary because of the amount of information included in every word (like it’s uses in the ancient culture). A full set will cost a nerd $1,995 and individual volumes are $45-$150. Well, they have it all uploaded in nice little PDF files on their website so why bother carrying (and paying for) the hardbound versions.
Such a feat seems to be aiming at understanding the ancient civilizations through how they communicate and develop certain norms (which are not far from what we have today, actually).
And just a couple of days ago, I kept hearing that they might do the whole project again. Just for accuracy’s sake.
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