Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia

ZIMMERN, HEINRICH

(1862–1931)
German Assyriologist. From 1881 to 1885 he studied theology and Semitic languages at Leipzig and Berlin, specializing in Akkadian, which he studied under Friedrich Delitzsch, and worked on his doctoral dissertation on the subject of Babylonian penitential psalms. He went on to Erlangen, Strassburg, and Halle before he was offered a position as professor of Assyriology at Leipzig in 1894, where he remained until retirement. He was one of the editors of the Hebrew and Aramaic dictionary, but his main scholarly project was a major study of Babylonianreligion, mainly based on cuneiform ritual tablets (Zur Kenntnis der baby- lonischen Religion, 1896–1901).