Editing Sumerian language (section)

==Historiography==
{{more citations needed section|date=December 2023}}
{{multiple image|perrow=2|total_width=400|caption_align=center
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| header=Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform syllabary
| image1   = Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform syllabary.jpg
| image2   = Inscription of Naram-Sin.jpg
| footer=Left: Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform syllabary, used by early Akkadian rulers.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Krejci |first1=Jaroslav |title=Before the European Challenge: The Great Civilizations of Asia and the Middle East |date=1990 |publisher=SUNY Press |isbn=978-0-7914-0168-2 |page=34 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M88CVW8RkCcC&pg=PA34 |language=en}}</ref> Right: Seal of [[Akkadian Empire]] ruler [[Naram-Sin of Akkad|Naram-Sin]] (reversed for readability), {{circa|2250&nbsp;BC}}. The name of Naram-Sin ({{langx|akk|𒀭𒈾𒊏𒄠𒀭𒂗𒍪}}: ''<sup>[[dingir|D]]</sup>Na-ra-am <sup>[[dingir|D]]</sup>[[Sin (mythology)|Sîn]]'', ''Sîn'' being written 𒂗𒍪 EN.ZU), appears vertically in the right column.<ref>{{cite book |title=Mémoires |date=1900 |publisher=Mission archéologique en Iran |page=53 |url=https://archive.org/details/mmoires02franuoft/page/53}}</ref> British Museum.
}}
The key to reading [[logosyllabic]] [[cuneiform script|cuneiform]] came from the [[Behistun inscription]], a trilingual cuneiform inscription written in [[Old Persian]], [[Elamite]] and [[Akkadian language|Akkadian]]. (In a similar manner, the key to understanding [[Egyptian hieroglyphs]] was the bilingual [Greek and Egyptian with the Egyptian text in two scripts] [[Rosetta stone]] and [[Jean-François Champollion]]'s transcription in 1822.)

In 1838 [[Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet|Henry Rawlinson]], building on the 1802 work of [[Georg Friedrich Grotefend]], was able to [[Decipherment|decipher]] the Old Persian section of the Behistun inscriptions, using his knowledge of modern Persian. When he recovered the rest of the text in 1843, he and others were gradually able to translate the Elamite and Akkadian sections of it, starting with the 37 signs he had deciphered for the Old Persian. Meanwhile, many more cuneiform texts were coming to light from [[archaeological]] excavations, mostly in the [[Semitic languages|Semitic]] [[Akkadian language]], which were duly deciphered.

By 1850, however, [[Edward Hincks]] came to suspect a non-Semitic origin for cuneiform. Semitic languages are structured according to [[triconsonantal root|consonantal forms]], whereas cuneiform, when functioning phonetically, was a [[syllabary]], binding consonants to particular vowels. Furthermore, no Semitic words could be found to explain the syllabic values given to particular signs.<ref>Kevin J. Cathcart, "[http://cdli.ucla.edu/pubs/cdlj/2011/cdlj2011_001.html The Earliest Contributions to the Decipherment of Sumerian and Akkadian]", Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, 2011</ref> [[Julius Oppert]] suggested that a non-Semitic language had preceded Akkadian in Mesopotamia, and that speakers of this language had developed the cuneiform script.

In 1855 Rawlinson announced the discovery of non-Semitic inscriptions at the southern Babylonian sites of [[Nippur]], [[Larsa]], and [[Uruk]].

In 1856, Hincks argued that the untranslated language was [[agglutinative language|agglutinative]] in character. The language was called "Scythic" by some, and, confusingly, "Akkadian" by others. In 1869, Oppert proposed the name "Sumerian", based on the known title "King of Sumer and Akkad", reasoning that if [[Akkadian Empire|Akkad]] signified the Semitic portion of the kingdom, [[Sumer]] might describe the non-Semitic annex.

Credit for being first to scientifically treat a bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian text belongs to [[Paul Haupt]], who published ''Die sumerischen Familiengesetze'' (The Sumerian family laws) in 1879.<ref>In ''Keilschrift, Transcription und Übersetzung : nebst ausführlichem Commentar und zahlreichen Excursen : eine assyriologische Studie'' (Leipzig : J.C. Hinrichs, 1879)</ref>

[[Ernest de Sarzec]] began excavating the Sumerian site of [[Girsu|Tello]] (ancient Girsu, capital of the state of [[Lagash]]) in 1877, and published the first part of ''Découvertes en Chaldée'' with transcriptions of Sumerian tablets in 1884. The [[University of Pennsylvania]] began excavating Sumerian [[Nippur]] in 1888.

''A Classified List of Sumerian Ideographs'' by R. Brünnow appeared in 1889.

The bewildering number and variety of phonetic values that signs could have in Sumerian led to a detour in understanding the language – a [[Paris]]-based [[oriental studies|orientalist]], [[Joseph Halévy]], argued from 1874 onward that Sumerian was not a natural language, but rather a [[secret code]] (a [[cryptolect]]), and for over a decade the leading Assyriologists battled over this issue. For a dozen years, starting in 1885, [[Friedrich Delitzsch]] accepted Halévy's arguments, not renouncing Halévy until 1897.<ref>Prince, J. Dyneley, "The Vocabulary of Sumerian", Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 25, pp. 49–67, 1904</ref>

[[François Thureau-Dangin]] working at the Louvre in Paris also made significant contributions to deciphering Sumerian with publications from 1898 to 1938, such as his 1905 publication of ''Les inscriptions de Sumer et d'Akkad''. [[Charles Fossey]] at the Collège de France in Paris was another prolific and reliable scholar. His pioneering ''Contribution au Dictionnaire sumérien–assyrien'', Paris 1905–1907, turns out to provide the foundation for P. Anton Deimel's 1934 ''Sumerisch-Akkadisches Glossar'' (vol. III of Deimel's 4-volume ''Sumerisches Lexikon'').

In 1908, [[Stephen Herbert Langdon]] summarized the rapid expansion in knowledge of Sumerian and Akkadian vocabulary in the pages of ''Babyloniaca'', a journal edited by [[Charles Virolleaud]], in an article "Sumerian-Assyrian Vocabularies", which reviewed a valuable new book on rare logograms by Bruno Meissner.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=genpub;cc=genpub;sid=925969e1cdb54224dccf86fdb4bdef76;rgn=full+text;idno=ACG1616.0002.001;view=image;seq=00000217|title=Babyloniaca, études de philologie assyro-babylonienne.}}</ref> Subsequent scholars have found Langdon's work, including his tablet transcriptions, to be not entirely reliable.

In 1944, the Sumerologist [[Samuel Noah Kramer]] provided a detailed and readable summary of the decipherment of Sumerian in his ''Sumerian Mythology''.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/sum |title=Sumerian Mythology |first=Samuel Noah |last=Kramer |author-link=Samuel Noah Kramer |orig-date=1944 |year=1961 |access-date=2005-09-23 |archive-date=2005-05-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20050525092728/http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/sum/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

Friedrich Delitzsch published a learned Sumerian dictionary and grammar in the form of his ''Sumerisches Glossar'' and ''Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik'', both appearing in 1914.<ref>Marstal, Erica. The beginnings of Sumerology (I). From Delitzsch’s grammar to Adam Falkenstein. Aula Orientalis, 32: 283–297. [https://www.ub.edu/ipoa/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20142AuOrMarsal.pdf Online]</ref> Delitzsch's student, [[Arno Poebel]], published a grammar with the same title, ''Grundzüge der sumerischen Grammatik'', in 1923, and for 50 years it would be the standard for students studying Sumerian. Another highly influential figure in Sumerology during much of the 20th century was [[Adam Falkenstein]], who produced a grammar of the language of [[Gudea]]'s inscriptions.<ref>Marstal, Erica. The beginnings of Sumerology (II). From Delitzsch’s grammar to Adam Falkenstein. Aula Orientalis 33, 255–269 [https://www.ub.edu/ipoa/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/20152AuOrMarsal.pdf Online]</ref> Poebel's grammar was finally superseded in 1984 on the publication of ''The Sumerian Language: An Introduction to its History and Grammatical Structure'', by [[Marie-Louise Thomsen]]. While there are various points in Sumerian grammar on which Thomsen's views are not shared by most Sumerologists today, Thomsen's grammar (often with express mention of the critiques put forward by Pascal Attinger in his 1993 ''Eléments de linguistique sumérienne: La construction de du<sub>11</sub>/e/di 'dire{{'-}}'') is the starting point of most recent academic discussions of Sumerian grammar.

More recent monograph-length grammars of Sumerian include [[Dietz Otto Edzard]]'s 2003 ''Sumerian Grammar'' and Bram Jagersma's 2010 ''A Descriptive Grammar of Sumerian'' (currently digital, but soon{{When|date=October 2024}} to be printed in revised form by Oxford University Press). Piotr Michalowski's essay (entitled, simply, "Sumerian") in the 2004 ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages'' has also been recognized as a good modern grammatical sketch.

There is relatively little consensus, even among reasonable Sumerologists, in comparison to the state of most modern or classical languages. Verbal morphology, in particular, is hotly disputed. In addition to the general grammars, there are many monographs and articles about particular areas of Sumerian grammar, without which a survey of the field could not be considered complete.

The primary institutional lexical effort in Sumerian is the [[Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary]] project, begun in 1974. In 2004, the PSD was released on the Web as the ePSD. The project is currently supervised by Steve Tinney. It has not been updated online since 2006, but Tinney and colleagues are working on a new edition of the ePSD, a working draft of which is available online.