Babylonian & Assyrian early civilizations left a vast corpus of records & scribes preserved through the medium of cuneiform writing on clay tablets. Reiner looks back on the last half-century & more of work on the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary (CAD) project at the Oriental Inst. of Chicago, focusing on the reformulation of the task that took place during her years of participation in the 1950s & 1960s. This included intellectual clashes between scholars Thorkild Jacobsen & Leo Oppenheim. Benno Landsberger supported Oppenheim & helped to move the project forward. Oriental Inst. dir. Robert McC.

Adams concurs in the course that has made the CAD one of the great humanistic achievements of our time.