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Ancient History of Lexicology

By Timofeiy
  • 3200 BCE

    Sumerian tablets

    Sumerian tablets
    Earliest monolingual Sumerian wordlists in cuneiform writing on clay tablets from level IVa of the city of Uruk. These tablets, of which there are about 670, were used in the teaching of the writing system.
  • 2400 BCE

    Eblaite language

    Eblaite language
    Earliest bilingual wordlists of Sumerian and the Semitic language Eblaite on clay tablets in Sumerian cuneiform from the archives of the ancient city of Ebla (at Tell Mardikh in modern Syria).
  • 1800 BCE

    Akkadian tablets

    Akkadian tablets
    Compilation of the Sumerian–Akkadian lexical tablets known as HAR-ra = h̬ubullu or Urra-hubullu (this is the first entry, for a word meaning ‘interest-bearing debt’), comprising more than 9,700 entries in cuneiform writing.
  • Period: 1800 BCE to 1700 BCE

    Egyptian heiroglyphs

    Compilation of the thematically ordered Egyptian list of nouns written in hieroglyphs on papyrus known as the Ramesseum Onomasticon. Subsequent lists of the same sort would be compiled for two millennia: the Tebtunis Onomasticon of the 1st–2nd century ad, a papyrus in hieratic script originally more than ten metres long, exceptionally includes a section of verbs as well as one of nouns.
  • 300 BCE

    Nighaṇṭu

    Nighaṇṭu
    Compilation of the Nighaṇṭu, a list of Sanskrit words from Vedic texts, which appears to be the earliest extant lexicographical text from the Sanskrit tradition; a commentary on it, the Nirukta, appears to be no later than the third century bc, and may be earlier.
  • Period: 300 BCE to 200 BCE

    Philitas of Cos and Simias or Simmias of Rhodes

    Philitas of Cos and Simias (or Simmias) of Rhodes make the first extensive learned collections of glosses of ancient Greek epic and dialect words, initiating the Greek lexicographical tradition. Their work only survives in fragments.
  • 200 BCE

    Erya

    Erya
    Compilation of the Erya (‘The Ready Guide’), a thematically-arranged compendium of glosses, covering 4,300 characters, which is the earliest extant Chinese wordlist and had a long tradition of successors.
  • Period: 100 BCE to 1 BCE

    Latin Lexicology

    Beginnings of ancient Latin lexicography, in works such as the lost Liber glossematorum of Lucius Ateius Philologus.