In the spotlight – the Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary (LAD) project

Dear Mar Shiprim readers,

As 2025 draws to a close, we thank the team at the Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary (LAD) for sharing their work on this exciting seventeen-year lexicography project.

With best wishes for the holiday season and the new year ahead,

Pavla Rosenstein
Mar Shiprim Editor

In the spotlight – the Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary (LAD) project at Leipzig University

The “LADs” from left to right: Luis D. Sáenz Santos, Janine Wende, Michael P. Streck and Eric Schmidtchen. Photographs courtesy of the LAD project.

Thank you for shining a light on the LAD project. Can you please introduce yourselves?

Prof. Dr. Michael P. Streck: Principal investigator:
I am professor for Ancient Near Eastern Studies at Leipzig university. My research focuses on the grammar, the lexicon, and the literature of Akkadian. Among my recent publications, there are four volumes of a Supplement to the Akkadian Dictionaries, the first part of an Old Babylonian Grammar, and an introduction into Ancient Near Eastern studies. From 2004 to 2018, I was editor-in-chief of the Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie. Working on a new Akkadian dictionary is a highly rewarding task. Finding new Akkadian words in cuneiform texts is like finding a hidden treasure, and each word in the dictionary is an adventure.

Dr. Janine Wende: Research team leader:
I have been an Assyriologist at Leipzig University since 2012. My PhD was in Early Old Babylonian Grammar, but I also had the opportunity to gain experience in Akkadian lexicography of all periods by working in the “Supplement to the Akkadian Dictionaries” project since 2017. While I still feel most at home in the second millennium BCE, I enjoy working on all kinds of texts from all periods. Now at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities, I am privileged to fill the role of research team leader (Arbeitsstellenleiterin), managing research and administration for LAD.

Dr. Luis D. Sáenz Santos: Postdoctoral researcher (Assyriology/Digital Humanities):
I am a postdoctoral researcher in Assyriology with expertise in Digital Humanities, having completed my PhD at Heidelberg. My doctoral work focused on Sumerian and Sumerian-Akkadian omens. During my doctoral research I spent one year in Israel at the Digital Pasts Lab, in a Digital Humanities Program. I combine philological expertise with technical skills, including Image and 3D processing, XML, and web technologies. I participated in the eBL project from its inception until its completion. My current role at the dictionary is focused on the development, conceptualization, and implementation of the digital infrastructure.

Dr. Eric Schmidtchen: Postdoctoral researcher (Assyriology):
After completing my studies in Assyriology at the University of Leipzig in 2012, I pursued a PhD within the BabMed project at Freie Universität Berlin. My research focused on ancient therapeutic and diagnostic-prognostic texts and culminated in my 2021 monograph on Mesopotamian diagnostic texts (BAM 13). This work sparked my broader interest in Assyro-Babylonian divinatory materials and scholarly literature. Since then, I have contributed to two research projects on the omen series Šumma ālu ina mēlê šakin, based in Geneva and Vienna, focusing respectively on text editions and contextual studies of analogical thinking. In my current position as a Postdoctoral Researcher, I am responsible for gathering new attestations and updating existing ones, as well as organizing them within individual lemma entries. I also work with other project members to coordinate the overall lemma structure and assist with public relations tasks when needed.

What are the main goals of the Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary Project (LAD)?

LAD is a 17-year project. It is our goal to create a new, updated online dictionary of the entirety of the Akkadian language. It is perhaps important to point out what it is not: LAD will be neither a glossary, where instances of a lexeme are simply collected and cataloged; nor will it be a thesaurus in the classical sense, where every instance of every word in a corpus is registered. Instead, LAD will in principle not differ drastically from the Akkadian dictionaries Assyriologists use every day: the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) and von Soden’s Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw.). Both are part of the bedrock of our field and remain masterful works of lexicography. But there is also room for improvement. The corpus of Akkadian is so varied and growing so rapidly, that much of it was simply not known when our dictionaries were written. The field of Assyriology itself likewise progressed considerably compared to the 1950s, when early volumes of CAD and AHw. appeared. New words can be added, “ghostwords” removed, and many established readings and interpretations can now be updated and refined.

LAD will be a traditional dictionary in the sense that it catalogs lemmata occurring in the Akkadian text corpus. It is our aim to define the lexicon of Akkadian as comprehensively as the evidence allows, not only through translations, but also detailed descriptions of the properties and usages of a word through space and time. Unlike the dictionaries in use today, LAD will be “born digital”, conceived and published as a database.

Collage illustrating ancient and modern lexicography using an extract tablet from the series ura = hubullu, now kept at the Altorientalisches Institut of Leipzig University (SIL 122). (c) Janine Wende

Can you tell us more about the team working on LAD?

LAD is a project at the Saxon Academy of Science and Humanities in Leipzig (SAW), with our office located at the Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies of Leipzig University. We leverage the digital infrastructure of the Academy, which is already well established for other long-term digital humanities projects.

The project is funded with a total of ca. € 5.8 million by the “Academies’ Programme”, currently the largest long-term research program in Germany, which is coordinated by the Union of Academies. Prof. Streck started the application process all the way back in 2021, and due to the highly competitive nature of the program, it was not an easy win. Finally, in late November 2024, we received confirmation that the application was successful.

The team currently consists of three full-time members and one student research assistant with an additional part-time doctoral position to be added at the beginning of 2026. The research team leader and digital humanities position are intended to be held by the same staff members for the duration of the project. The remaining postdoc and doctoral positions will be held by different researchers during this time, chosen according to their specialty within the modularized work plan. 

The project launched last year and is intended to run until 2041. What are some findings from the first year and how does the timeline look over the next sixteen years?

The most important task for the first year is creating the digital infrastructure. Luis Sáenz has been working tirelessly to build the LAD from the ground up, creating a database and website that meets the project’s many requirements. Through the generous help of Walter Sommerfeld and eBL’s Enrique Jiménez, we were able to import a list of more than 17,000 lemmata with their English translations. While some updating and refinement are still needed, this speeds up our work considerably, providing us with a skeleton frame at the center of what will become a network of fully fleshed out dictionary entries.

At the same time, the rest of the team has begun the philological work that goes into writing a dictionary. This is a multi-step process, but the most basic part of lexicographical work remains the collecting of attestations. LAD focuses on texts and sub-corpora that are either entirely new to the dictionaries or well-known compositions that have been newly edited in recent decades with additional manuscripts or improved readings.

Our process of choosing references is highly selective and has been developed during the work on LAD’s predecessor project, the Supplement to the Akkadian Dictionaries (SAD). Rather than aiming for completeness – an impossibility given the vastness of the Akkadian corpus – we focus on new and informative references. This means we are looking for new lemmata, new morphological variants, new meanings, nuances, and contexts, new periods of attestation, as well as new attestations that change or improve our current understanding of certain words.

Concurrently, we are incorporating the material that has already been collected in the SAD over the years, a process that is more time-consuming than initially expected and will continue into 2026.

One of the advantages of working in a digital format is that we do not have to go letter by letter, as has been the case for all existing dictionaries. Instead, our work is organized in modules according to text corpora:

The duration allotted to each module is estimated based on size and complexity of each text group. In 2026, we will start working on material from module 2 (scholarly texts). In parallel to collecting references, we will begin conceptualizing and structuring each lemma. This includes updating translations and adding grammatical information as well as arranging the attestations in a way that best illustrates the various meanings, nuances and usages of a word.

Finally, we will digitize the print dictionaries CAD and AHw.

An early version of the LAD website will become available in a few months, where our results will be published continually. Users will also be able to cite entries, each of which will have a stable ID. Since the LAD will grow and change over the course of its creation, it will be possible to view previous versions of each entry as well. One of the advantages of the digital format is the ability to add and update constantly. Transparency is ensured through the use of labels that reflect the current state of work, such as “draft”, “in review”, or “published”.

While there is no print publication of the entire dictionary planned, we do not exclude the possibility of publishing a handbook-style version at some point. Meanwhile, the still ongoing SAD project, which is also led by Michael Streck, closely co-operates with the LAD and will be able to publish some of our collective findings in print. Additionally, there will be several PhD projects conducted within the LAD framework, each hopefully resulting in a monograph.

Once the digital infrastructure is stable, the technical aspects of the project will be presented in a paper to be published by Luis Sáenz. While not strictly related to LAD, there will appear a special thematic issue on the Akkadian Lexicon coordinated by Janine Wende in the interdisciplinary journal Claroscuro, directed by Prof. Leticia Rovira at the National University of Rosario, Argentina.

Draft (beta version) Homepage of the Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary website, showing its search bar and entry statistics (from Nov. 2005). The page will go online within a few months.

How will the new Akkadian dictionary differ from existing dictionaries?

As for the dictionary’s macrostructure, the secret ingredient is familiarity: any word you would look up in either Akkadisches Handwörterbuch (AHw), the CAD, or the Concise Dictionary of Akkadian, you will also be able to look up in the LAD. The headword of each entry will be the normalized Akkadian form, usually in its Old Babylonian variant but without mimation. We define an entry based on very few guiding principles, primarily etymology and morphology. This means, for example, that we consider Akkadian našpaku “grain storage” and našpaku “spout (of a vessel)” to be the same word in spite of the two different meanings in English. In Akkadian, there is no difference: našpaku means “place/means of pouring (out).” This approach means that our list of entries will more closely resemble AHw. than CAD, where different principles were applied, resulting in a greater number of homonyms in the latter.

It is the microstructure of each entry, where we take full advantage of the digital format. In traditional print dictionaries, space and the associated printing costs are to be considered; LAD has no such restrictions.

Each entry will have the following elements:

• Headword
• All formal variants (including dialectal forms)
• Translations into English, German, French and Arabic
• Part of speech (e.g. verb, adjective)
• Semantic category (e.g. animal, motion, materia magica)
• Distribution (i.e. periods of attestation)
• Logograms
• Etymology (language of origin and room for a brief discussion)
• Grammatical information (gender, root, vowel class, noun pattern etc.)
• References (i.e. full quoted Akkadian attestations with English translations)
• General discussion and bibliography
• Inclusion of AHw. and CAD
• Cross references within LAD to etymologically or semantically related words
• External links (e.g. to existing online glossaries from other projects)
• Author(s) of the entry

In accordance with well-established practices in digital humanities, individual attestations will be directly linked to online text publications, such as eBL, ORACC or ARCHIBAB whenever possible. We are also implementing a shared bibliography with eBL, which will be synchronized via an API. While the readings and translations will always be our own, users will be more easily able to check source material themselves, especially if they do not have access to an Assyriological library. We will also provide supplementary material pertaining to basic grammar and other languages in contact with Akkadian for users outside of Assyriology to ensure the dictionary is accessible across disciplines and interests.

The entry parû I “onager-donkey hybrid; mule” in LAD, featuring the corresponding CAD and AHw.-entries on the right. (c) Luis D. Sáenz Santos

Can you give us some examples of recently published texts that will be incorporated into the new dictionary?

There have been thousands of Akkadian texts newly discovered and published in the past decades. To name only a few examples, our corpus includes the entire CUSAS series, large parts of the archives from Mari, and the Middle Assyrian material from Dur-Katlimmu.

Older texts with newer editions and additions play a significant role as well: the epic of Gilgameš has surprisingly yielded more the 200 new attestations and several new words not yet recorded in the dictionaries.

For the first time, LAD will include material from Ebla. The archives of Ebla were only discovered in the 1970s, decades after work on our existing dictionaries had already commenced. The Ebla texts contain the oldest East-Semitic material we currently know. While its linguistic classification in relation to Akkadian is debated, the shared features in grammar and text tradition justify its inclusion in an Akkadian dictionary.

The resulting dictionary is going to be digital, free to use and include English, German, French and Arabic translations. What can we expect from the user experience?

LAD is developed as a free, digital resource, structured using XML-TEI Lex-0 and hosted in eXist-DB. The team is dedicated to creating a modern, visually appealing interface where the dictionary is always in the foreground, delivering translations of the general meaning in English, German, French, and Arabic. To ensure performance, especially in search functionality, data will be transformed into JSON files in areas where XML proves too slow, offering fast and quick results for lemmata, variations, and translations. Users will be able to navigate dictionary entries efficiently using hyperlinks to related terms. Future plans include implementing versioning, presenting useful statistics and advanced search capabilities with comprehensive filtering of the various microstructure elements. Furthermore, all individual entries will be downloadable, and we aim to make the entire dictionary available for download as well. A major focus is the comprehensive integration of existing resources. We are currently undertaking the massive task of digitizing and annotating the foundational CAD and AHw., which will also be encoded in XML-TEI Lex-0. Both will be available in LAD.

The architecture features a collaborative design built to support community involvement, allowing scholars and collaborators to provide their input. As soon as the first version of LAD goes online we are open to suggestions to improve user experience.

Graduate students and early career scholars can take part in the annual Masterclass Akkadische Lexikographie program as part of the project. Can you tell us more about this program and any other educational or public outreach aspects of the project?

The week-long Masterclass Lexicography for MA students and early PhD students will take place annually for the duration of the project. Within Assyriology, lexicography does not really exist as a discipline, even though we rely on lexicographical works daily, be it as students or researchers. The masterclass aims to teach the basics of our work, but also to offer insights into recent and ongoing research. Participants are invited to conduct lexicographical research themselves and present their findings during the masterclass. From the 2026 Masterclass onward, they will have the opportunity to write their own dictionary entry to be published and credited in LAD. Each year, a theme will be chosen in accordance with the modularized work plan, and a specialist will be invited as guest lecturer. Additionally, we are planning to hold a series of small workshops at the Saxon Academy of Science focusing on select topics in the realm of Akkadian and digital lexicography and we are always happy to work with other study programs like Erasmus to offer internships at LAD.

Our plans for public outreach include an episode on the German-language Assyriology podcast “Von Assur nach Babylon”, to be produced this winter. We are slowly building a presence on Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky as well, were we hope to reach not only our colleagues, but also a wider audience of those interested in the ancient world. There will be a “word of the week” series, were we offer bite-sized insights into our work.

Anything else to add? 

Initial naming ideas for the project included “Digital Dictionary of Akkadian” and similar phrases. We owe the current name – Leipzig Akkadian Dictionary – to a suggestion by Nathan Wasserman. It is not meant to express some sort of rivalry with the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, by the way, but it does add some local flair to the title that will inevitably also be present in our style of philological work. It also reflects a rich tradition of lexicographical research in Leipzig reaching all the way back to Friedrich Delitzsch’s “Assyrisches Wörterbuch zur gesamten bisher veröffentlichten Keilschriftliteratur” (1886) and “Assyrisches Handwörterbuch” (1896), Heinrich Zimmern’s “Akkadische Fremdwörter” (1915), and Benno Landsberger’s studies on the Akkadian lexicon in the early 20th century.

A page from Friedrich Delitzsch’ “Assyrisches Wörterbuch zur gesamten bisher veröffentlichten Keilschriftliteratur”, Leipzig 1886.

For more information about the LAD project, please visit:

https://www.saw-leipzig.de/de/projekte/leipzig-akkadian-dictionary

Interview by Pavla Rosenstein