Lexical lists

The cuneiform lexical lists are a series of ancient Mesopotamian glossaries which preserve the semantics of Sumerograms, their phonetic value and their Akkadian or other language equivalents.

The most notable text is LU A, a list of professions which would be reproduced for the next thousand years until the end of the Old Babylonian period virtually unchanged.

[3]: 13–18 The Kassite or the Middle Babylonian period shows that scribal schools actively preserved the lexical traditions of the past[4] and there is evidence of the canonization of some texts, such as izi = išātu and Ká-gal = abullu.

[5] Lexical lists fall within one or more of the following broad categories: The extant texts can be classified by typology as follows: This would also have included wax-covered writing boards, though no known examples survive.

The following provides a listing of the various synonym, lexical and grammatical lists whose occurrences have yielded a name used in antiquity or significance has resulted in a designation in modern Assyriology, where the MSL (Materialem zum sumerischen Lexikon / Materials for the Sumerian Lexikon) or other references in square parentheses give the primary publication of the lexical texts, the synonym texts not qualifying for inclusion in this (MSL) series.