Sumerian Lexicon
The following lexicon contains 1,255 Sumerian logogram words and 2,511 Sumerian compound words. A
logogram is a reading of a cuneiform sign which represents a word in the spoken language. Sumerian scribes
invented the practice of writing in cuneiform on clay tablets sometime around 3400 B.C. in the Uruk/Warka region
of southern Iraq. The language that they spoke, Sumerian, is known to us through a large body of texts and
through bilingual cuneiform dictionaries of Sumerian and Akkadian, the language of their Semitic successors, to
which Sumerian is not related. These bilingual dictionaries date from the Old Babylonian period (1800-1600 B.C.),
by which time Sumerian had ceased to be spoken, except by the scribes. The earliest and most important words in
Sumerian had their own cuneiform signs, whose origins were pictographic, making an initial repertoire of about a
thousand signs or logograms. Beyond these words, two-thirds of this lexicon now consists of words that are
transparent compounds of separate logogram words. I have greatly expanded the section containing compounds
in this version, but I know that many more compound words could be added.
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