
(“And others loved to lexicalize!” — Bar Ebroyo, d. 1286)
Lexicography
Beth Mardutho began converting the Brock & Kiraz dictionary (Gorgias Illustrated Learner’s Syriac-English, English-Syriac Dictionary) into a lexical database in 2021 – thereby laying the groundwork for a collaborative, long-term project for a historical dictionary of the Syriac language.
This project provides a framework to provide citations from various historical periods of the language starting with the Old Syriac inscriptions (first to third centuries CE) and continuing to the Kthobonoyo era of the twenty-first century. It is strongly grounded in contact linguistics: lexical borrowings to and from Syriac are denoted, and cognates from the Aramaic language family and the broader Semitic family are collated as well. The project was formally launched in July 2022 at the Symposium Syriacum in Paris.
Team Members

Anna Cherkashina, MA
Research Fellow

Marie G. Hanna, PhD
Research Fellow

Yulia Kirilenko, MA
Research Fellow
Yulia Kirilenko is a Research Fellow in Lexicography at Beth Mardutho. She graduated from the Russian State University for the Humanities with a master’s degree in Oriental Studies, and her master’s thesis examined the El-Amama letters from Palestine. Since graduation she has worked on a project creating a generative software for Akkadian grammar. Her current research interests lie in the field of Semitic lexicography.

Girgis Boshra, PhD
Research Fellow
Girgis Boshra has an MA and Ph.D. from Cairo University’s Department of Classics in “Contrastive Analysis between Greek, Syriac, and Coptic.” He is a researcher at the Panarion Center for Patristic Heritage, where he edited and translated many Patristic texts from Ancient Greek, Latin, and Coptic into Arabic. He directs the publishing unit for the Faculty of Archaeology at Ain Shams University, Egypt, and he is the Editor of the Bulletin of The Center of Papyrological Studies, Ain Shams University. Girgis co-authored HAYAMUS Tri-Lingual Lexicon Ancient Greek – English – Arabic. He also participated in the DDGLC project (Database and Dictionary of Greek Loanwords in Coptic, Free University of Berlin) by proof-reading the Greek data and translating it into Arabic.

Artyom Badeev, BA
Research Assistant
Artyom Badeev is a Research Assistant at the Institute of Linguistics, Russian Academy of Sciences. He holds a BA in Oriental Studies from the Institute for Oriental and Classical Studies (HSE University, Moscow). His bachelor’s thesis examined Avestan and Old Persian demonstratives and deixis. In addition to Iranian-Syriac contacts, Artyom works with Old Iranian and Pamir languages and is currently examining elements of Shughni grammar.

George Kiraz, PhD
General Editor

Phil Forness, PhD
Citations Editor (Early Syriac)

Sebastian P. Brock, PhD
Senior Advisor

Robert D. Hoberman, PhD
Aramaic Cognates Reader

Maria Bulakh, PhD
Semitic Cognates Reader