John Alan Halloran

John A. Halloran, the proprietor of the sumerian.org web site, has loved the Sumerians and their language since he created in 1983 the first version of his Sumerian Lexicon dictionary. After studying with Robert K. Englund at UCLA, he published version 4 of the Sumerian Lexicon as a book in 2006. In 2020-2021 he found it possible to explore and summarize the achievements of the Sumerians using his intimate knowledge of Sumerian language and culture and put it all within a larger framework that contrasts life in a state of nature with life in a state of civilization. In his new 432-page book, How The Sumerians Became Rich, you will see for yourself that the Sumerians pioneered long-lasting social and technological solutions to many of the same issues that we face today. How The Sumerians Became Rich is also a companion reference book to the Sumerian Lexicon because it uses Unicode to supply the 100-page cuneiform sign list and sign readings index that was missing from the 2006 book.