Assyriology

Assyriology (from Greek Ἀσσυρίᾱ, Assyriā; and -λογία, -logia), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies,^[1][2] is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria".

The large number of cuneiform clay tablets preserved by these Sumero-Akkadian and Assyro-Babylonian cultures provide an extremely large resource for the study of the period. The region's, and the world's first cities and city-states like Ur are archaeologically invaluable for studying the growth of urbanization.

Scholars of Assyriology develop proficiency in the two main languages of Mesopotamia: Akkadian (including its major dialects) and Sumerian. Familiarity with neighbouring languages such as Biblical Hebrew, Hittite, Elamite, Hurrian, Indo-Anatolian (also called Indo-Hittite), Imperial Aramaic, Eastern Aramaic dialects, Old Persian, and Canaanite are useful for comparative purposes, and the knowledge of writing systems that use several hundred core signs. There now exist many important grammatical studies and lexical aids. Although scholars can draw from a large corpus of literature, some tablets are broken, or in the case of literary texts where there may be many copies the language and grammar are often arcane. Scholars must be able to read and understand modern English, French, and German, as important references, dictionaries, and journals are published in those languages.