Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Project completed after 80 years' labour

Here's an illustration of the painstaking labour that is invested in researching ancient history:
The last volume of the CAD (Chicago Assyrian Dictionary) has gone to press. Wow! This project, a comprehensive lexical study of the the Akkadian language, has been going on now for more than 80 years, making anyone's seemingly endless research project look like a drop in the bucket.
I also got a chuckle out of the blogger's postscript:
Apparently the Hittite Dictionary project is moving in [to the vacated office] soon. (That made me laugh. I'm not exactly sure why.)
It's like washing the blasted dishes. No sooner do you dry the last dish, one of the kids is dropping another dirty dish into the sink.

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