The Collaborative International Dictionary
Assyriology \As*syr`i*ol"o*gy\, n. [Assyria + -logy.] The science or study of the antiquities, language, etc., of ancient Assyria.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1846, from Assyria + -ology. Related: Assyriologist.
Wiktionary
n. The study of the ancient Assyrian language and culture.
Wikipedia
Assyriology (from Greek , Assyriā; and , -logia) is the archaeological, historical, and linguistic study of ancient Mesopotamia (essentially ancient Iraq and some areas of northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and southwestern Iran) and of related cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers the Akkadian sister-cultures of Assyria and Babylonia, together with their cultural predecessors, Sumer and the Akkadian Empire. The large number of cuneiform clay tablets preserved by these cultures provide an extremely large resource for the study of the period. The region's (and the world's) first cities such as Ur are archaeologically invaluable for studying the growth of urbanization.
Scholars need a good knowledge of several languages: Akkadian and its major dialects and Sumerian, aided by such languages as Biblical Hebrew, Hittite, Elamite and Imperial Aramaic 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 arcane. Moreover, scholars must be able to read and understand modern English, French, and German, as important references, dictionaries, and journals are published in those languages.
Usage examples of "assyriology".
He is the second diplomat to combine Assyriology with professional political and worldly interests.
Hilprecht is Professor of Assyriology in the University of Pennsylvania.
It had never occurred to Myron or to Effie that in an hotel suite, without even dish-wiping or feeding the chickens, and with no particular longing to study Imagism or Assyriology or the History of Endocrinology, she would not have enough to do.
He had written authoritatively and inaccurately on practically every scholarly subject, in Assyriology as well as Egyptology.
The Reverend Sayce has just been appointed to the new chair of Assyriology at Oxford.
Naturally, in progressive studies like those of Egyptology and Assyriology, a good many theories and conclusions must be tentative and provisional only.
Father Scheil makes an incursion into Assyriology by his publication of some of the Tel el-Amarna tablets, and in this connection M.
Jones was not an Egyptologist, but a specialist in Assyriology who had come from California to work on the great Assyrian dictionary.