"ONE LETTER AT A TIME" - The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary is nearing completion:

As the final volume of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary goes to press, Martha Roth, its editor for the past 11 years, heads to the Humanities dean’s office.

The room looks foreign now to Martha Roth. Empty, orderly. A week ago the sprawling, odd-angled space on the Oriental Institute’s third floor was still home to the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary project. Piles of papers smothered desks, and windowsills acquiesced to coffee mugs, Post-it notes, jumbled stacks of books. But with the effort to document every word of ancient Akkadian nearing completion after 86 years, Roth, the dictionary’s current editor-in-charge, is consolidating. She’s culled countless duplicate index cards and consigned dozens of filing cabinets and yellowing binders to a janitor’s closet across the hall.

[...]

Cool.

(Via Jack Sasson's Agade list.)