The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary was conceived to provide more than
lexical information alone, more than a one-to-one equivalent between
Akkadian and English words. By presenting each word in a meaningful
context, usually with a full and idiomatic translation, it recreates the
cultural milieu and thus in many ways assumes the function of an
encyclopedia. Its source material ranges in time from the third
millennium BC to the first century AD, and in geographic area from the
Mediterranean Sea in the west to the Zagros Mountains in the east. The
Chicago Assyrian Dictionary has become an invaluable source for the
study of the civilisations of the ancient Near East, their political and
cultural history, their achievements in the sciences of medicine,
astronomy, mathematics, and linguistics, and not least the timeless
beauty of their poetry.