REINER, ERICA

(1924–2005)

Hungarian-born American Assyriologist. She studied linguistics at Budapest University before attending the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes in Paris, where she studied Akkadian, Sumerian, and Elamite. In 1952 she went to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, where she worked on the Assyrian Dictionary project, initiated by Leo Oppenheim, which she directed after the latter’s retirement in 1973 for the next 20 years, until 1993 (see her memoir An Adventure of Great Dimension: The Launching of the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, 2002). She also helped to establish an annual scholarly meeting, the Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, and published a number of important works in the fields of lexicography, grammar, astronomy, divination, and literature (A Linguistic Analysis of Akkadian, 1966; Shurpu: A Collection of Sumerian and Akkadian Incantations, 1970; Babylonian Planetary Omens, 4 volumes, 1975–2005 [with D. Pingree]; Your Thwarts in Pieces,Your Mooring Ropes Cut: Poetry from Babylonia and Assyria, 1985).