The earliest lexicon
The very first known list of words was made a long time ago, around 3,000 years ago, in ancient Mesopotamia (the region that is now Iraq).
The people who lived there, called the Sumerians, made these early word lists.
They had two main ones:
1. Urra=hubullu:
— This was a very long list of Sumerian words, with their meanings in another language called Akkadian.
— It had thousands of words organized into different topics, like gods, animals, jobs, and more.
2. Diri:
— This list focused on words related to geography, astronomy, and other specialized topics.
There was also a third one called Emesal Vocabulary, which had words used more by women and in religious rituals.
These ancient word lists were important for education, preserving knowledge, and helping people communicate better. They were some of the first attempts at creating a organized collection of words and their meanings — kind of like an early dictionary.
