Joaquin Sanmartín – författare

In July, 2010, the International Association for Assyriology met in Barcelona, Spain, for 5 days to deliver and listen to papers on the theme “Time and History in the Ancient Near East.” This volume, the proceedings of the conference, contains 70 of the papers read at the 56th annual Rencontre, including the papers from several workshop sessions on “architecture and archaeology,” “early Akkadian and its Semitic context,” “ Hurrian language,” “law in the ancient Near East,” “Middle Assyrian texts and studies,” and a variety of additional papers not directly related to the conference theme. The photo on the back cover shows only a representative portion of the attendees, who were warmly hosted by faculty and students from the University of Barcelona.

A Glossary of Old Syrian: ʔ – ḳ is the first of two volumes aimed at the completion of a lexicographical index of the Old Syrian linguistical continuum. This glossary gives a picture, or map, of the Old Syrian lexicon as it can be extracted and reconstructed from the available sources, from the (Old Akkadian-)Eblatic through the Old and Middle Babylonian corpora.Old Syrian can be defined most appropriately as a diachronically conservative, geographically pluricentric, and pragmatically multilayered linguistic cluster. Therefore, the present work pays special attention to the distribution of lexical data along diatopic and diastratic criteria. In view of the enormous amount of material and the dispersion of the data, this glossary focuses on the most representative textual corpora of the Old Syrian linguistic landscape. The bibliographical references are kept deliberately succinct and as a rule, restricted to the classic works that may be easily found in every Assyriological or Semitic library, public or private, and that will redirect the users to their sources. Since the Old Syrian lexicography remains uncertain, the leading interpretative opinions are included alongside the most relevant comparative Semitic material. A Glossary of Old Syrian offers a clear picture of the current state of this field and is intended to serve as a reference work in support of future study.

A Glossary of Old Syrian: l–z is the second of two volumes that aim to map the lexicon of Old Syrian as it can be extracted and reconstructed from the (Old Akkadian) Eblaite through the Old and Middle Babylonian corpora.Referring to a continuum of dialects spoken in the Syrian-Levantine and Syrian-Mesopotamian regions through the third and second millennia BCE, “Old Syrian” is a diachronically conservative, geographically pluricentric, and pragmatically multilayered linguistic cluster. As such, the Glossary pays special attention to the distribution of lexical data along diachronic, diatopic, and diastratic criteria. Given the extent and widely dispersed nature of this data, entries are supported by the most representative corpora of the Old Syrian linguistic landscape. Each entry is headed by an etymon, a kind of prelinguistic consonantal skeleton, and further information about different lexemes, their roots, and their derivations is provided in subentries. As the lexicography of Old Syrian remains uncertain, the Glossary includes leading interpretative opinions alongside the most relevant Semitic material to corroborate the lexical choices it adopts. Bibliographical references are succinct and restricted, as a rule, to texts easily found in any Assyriological or Semitic library.Intended as a reference work in support of future study, A Glossary of Old Syrian offers a clear view of the state of the field.