LANDSBERGER, Benno

(1890–1968)

   German Assyriologist. A graduate in Oriental Studies at Leipzig, he returned there in 1926 after serving in World War I. Dismissed from his post during the Nazi era, he went first to the Turkish University of Ankara, where he taught in the language, history, and geography faculty before accepting an appointment at the Oriental Institute at Chicago, where he remained until 1955. His most important contributions were in the field of language and lexicography. He published many of the most important Mesopotamian lexical lists (Materialien zum sumerischen Lexikon [vols. 1–9]; Materials for the Sumerian Lexicon [with Erica Reiner and Miguel Civil, vols. 10–17]; The Date Palm and Its Byproducts in Cuneiform Sources) and a highly influential essay on the epistemological challenges to Assyriology (“Die Eigenbegrifflichkeit der Babylonischen Welt,” 1965).