ASOR BLOG: A Brief History of Sumerology (Erika Marsal). I have to say I was disappointed by this one. The history is weighted toward the discovery of Sumerian and the early stages of its decipherment. That's fine, but, astonishingly, it does not mention either Samuel Noah Kramer or Thorkild Jacobsen. Granted, they were not grammarians per se, but they contributed greatly to the publication and decipherment of the literary texts. And I was looking forward to learning about the developments in Sumerology since the early 1990s when I stopped trying to keep up with it, but the essay leaves off with the publication of the grammar by Marie-Louise Thomsen in the 1980s.
Be that as it may, Sumerian is not entirely irrelevant to the study of ancient Judaism and it has come up from time to time at PaleoJudaica. Some past posts involving it are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
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