writing books and documents in the form of cuneiform began where

Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk , which advanced the writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE and allowed for the creation of literature .

The name comes from the Latin word cuneus for wedge owing to the wedge-shaped style of writing. In cuneiform, a carefully cut writing implement known as a stylus is pressed into soft clay to produce wedge-like imprints that represent word-signs (pictographs) and, later, phonograms or word-concepts (closer to a modern-day understanding of a word). All of the great Mesopotamian civilizations used cuneiform until it was abandoned in favour of the alphabetic script at some point after 100 BCE, including:

When the ancient cuneiform tablets of Mesopotamia were discovered and deciphered in the late 19th century, they would literally transform human understanding of history. Prior to their discovery, the Bible was considered the oldest and most authoritative book in the world and nothing was known of the ancient Sumerian civilization .

The German philologist Georg Friedrich Grotefend (l. 1775-1853) first deciphered cuneiform prior to 1823, and his work was furthered by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (l. 1810-1895), who deciphered the Behistun Inscription in 1837, as well as the works of Reverend Edward Hincks (l. 1792-1866) and Jules Oppert (l. 1825-1905). The brilliant scholar and translator George Smith (l. 1840-1876), however, contributed significantly to the understanding of cuneiform with his translation of The Epic of Gilgamesh in 1872. This translation allowed other cuneiform tablets to be interpreted more accurately which overturned the traditional understanding of the biblical version of history of the time and made room for scholarly, objective explorations of the history of the Near East to move forward.

Early Cuneiform

The earliest cuneiform tablets, known as proto-cuneiform, were pictorial, as the subjects they addressed were more concrete and visible (a king, a battle , a flood) and were developed in response to the need for long-distance communication in trade . Sophisticated compositions were unnecessary since all that was required was an understanding of the type and quantity of goods shipped, their price, and the name and location of the seller. Scholar Jeremy Black comments on early cuneiform:

For centuries after the first appearance of writing in southern Iraq in the late fourth millennium BCE, it served an exclusively administrative function. Cuneiform was a mnemonic device designed to aid accountants and bureaucrats, rather than a vehicle for high art. (xlix)

These early pictographs came to be replaced by phonograms (symbols representing sounds) in the city of Uruk by c. 3200 BCE. Cuneiform had developed in complexity by the time of the Early Dynastic Period (2900-2334 BCE) as, once the craft of writing was understood, people found more concepts they wanted to express and preserve for the future. Once writing was discovered, the ancient Sumerians sought to record virtually all of the human experience.

Part of that experience naturally touched on the origin of humanity, which then suggested the origin of all aspects of the human experience. The goddess Nisaba , formerly an agricultural deity, now became the goddess of writing and accounts – even the divine scribe of the gods – in response to the development of the written word. As the subject matter became more intangible (the will of the gods, creation, the afterlife, the quest for immortality), the script became more complex so that, before 3000 BCE, it needed streamlining.

The representations on tablets were simplified, and the strokes of the stylus conveyed word-concepts (honor) rather than word-signs (an honorable man). The written language was further refined through the rebus, which isolated the phonetic value of a certain sign so as to express grammatical relationships and syntax to determine the meaning. In clarifying this, the scholar Ira Spar writes:

This new way of interpreting signs is called the rebus principle. Only a few examples of its use exist in the earliest stages of cuneiform from between 3200 and 3000 B.C. The consistent use of this type of phonetic writing only becomes apparent after 2600 B.C. It constitutes the beginning of a true writing system characterized by a complex combination of word-signs and phonograms—signs for vowels and syllables—that allowed the scribe to express ideas. By the middle of the Third Millennium B.C., cuneiform primarily written on clay tablets was used for a vast array of economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly documents. (1)

Development of Cuneiform

One no longer had to struggle with the meaning of a pictograph; one now read a word-concept, which more clearly conveyed the meaning of the writer. The number of characters used in writing was also reduced from over 1,000 to 600 in order to simplify and clarify the written word. The best example of this is given by scholar Paul Kriwaczek who notes that in the time of proto-cuneiform:

All that had been devised thus far was a technique for noting down things, items and objects, not a writing system. A record of 'Two Sheep Temple God Inanna ' tells us nothing about whether the sheep are being delivered to, or received from, the temple, whether they are carcasses, beasts on the hoof, or anything else about them. (63)

Cuneiform developed to the point where it could be made clear, to use Kriwaczek's example, whether the sheep were coming from or going to the temple, for what purpose, and whether they were living or dead. During the Early Dynastic Period, scribal schools were established to preserve, teach, and further develop the craft of writing. These schools were known as edubba ("House of Tablets") and were initially established and operated out of private homes. The teacher (supervisor) made the rules for each individual edubba at first, and these rules were strictly enforced. The edubba later developed and spread throughout Sumer and, it seems, operated out of buildings expressly designated for the purpose of education.

Boys of the upper class (and sometimes girls) would enter the edubba around the age of eight and continue their studies for the next twelve years. The curriculum progressed from the simplest act of manipulating a moist clay tablet and stylus to forming words and then sentences. The act of writing in cuneiform was not as simple as just holding a piece of clay and making impressions in it. One had to constantly turn the tablet as one was writing to make the marks correctly.

Students were first shown how to simply make the vertical, horizontal, and oblique wedge marks clearly, and they practiced this exercise until they had mastered how to do it properly to the correct depth and dimension. Once the skill of manipulating both clay tablet and stylus was mastered, students moved on to learn characters that conveyed meaning and then produce sentences. While students were mastering the craft of writing, they were also instructed in mathematics, accounting, history, religion , and the values of their culture . Scholar Samuel Noah Kramer comments:

In order to satisfy this pedagogical need, the Sumerian scribal teachers devised a system of instruction which consisted primarily in linguistic classification – that is, they classified the Sumerian language into groups of related words and phrases and had the students memorize and copy them until they could reproduce them with ease. In the third millennium BCE, these "textbooks" became increasingly more complete, and gradually grew to be more or less stereotyped and standard for all the schools of Sumer. Among them we find long lists of names of trees and reeds: of all sorts of animals, including insects and birds; of countries, cities , and villages; of stones and minerals. These compilations reveal a considerable acquaintance with what might be termed botanical, zoological, geographical, and mineralogical lore – a fact that is only now beginning to be realized by historians of science . ( History , 6)

Students progressed through their stages of education until they reached the level of the Tetrad (compositions of four) and Decad (compositions of ten) which were studied, memorized, and copied repeatedly. The Tetrad was comprised of simple texts, including the Hymn to Nisaba , while the Decad's texts were more complex in both composition and meaning. After the Decad, a student was expected to master even more complex compositions, such as A Supervisor's Advice to a Young Scribe or The Curse of Agade prior to graduation. Compositions were usually concluded with praise to Nisaba in gratitude for her inspiration and encouragement.

By this progression, literature not only developed but was made available for comment and criticism in written form while, in the process, the history of Mesopotamian civilization and culture, in every era, was preserved. By the time of the priestess-poet Enheduanna (l. 2285-2250 BCE), who wrote her famous hymns to Inanna in the Sumerian city of Ur , cuneiform was sophisticated enough to convey emotional states such as love and adoration, betrayal and fear, longing and hope, as well as the precise reasons why the writer might be experiencing such states.

Cuneiform could also express the human fear of death and hope of a life beyond, the tales of the creation of the world, the relationship between humans and their gods, and the devastation of existential despair when it seemed as though the gods had disappointed one's hopes and expectations. Cuneiform writing expressed in tangible form the whole of the human experience for the first time in history. Cuneiform can be understood, in fact, as the beginning of human historical documentation.

Cuneiform Decipherment & Impact

The great literary works of Mesopotamia such as the Atrahasis , The Descent of Inanna , The Myth of Etana , the Enuma Elish, and the famous Epic of Gilgamesh were all written in cuneiform and were completely unknown until the mid-19th century when men like George Smith, the Reverend Edward Hincks, Jules Oppert, and Rawlinson deciphered the language and translated it. Kramer writes:

The Sumerian literary documents range in size from large twelve- column tablets inscribed with hundreds of compactly written lines of text to tiny fragments run into the hundreds and vary in length from hymns of less than fifty lines to myths close to a thousand lines. As literary products, the Sumerian belles-lettres rank high among the aesthetic creations of civilized man. They compare not too unfavorably with the ancient Greek and Hebrew masterpieces and, like them, mirror the spiritual and intellectual life of an ancient culture which would otherwise have remained largely unknown. Their significance for a proper appraisal of the cultural and spiritual development of the entire ancient Near East can hardly be overestimated. ( Sumerians , 166)

Even so, as noted, these works were entirely unknown until the mid-19th century. Rawlinson's translations of Mesopotamian texts were first presented to the Royal Asiatic Society of London in 1837 and again in 1839. In 1846, he worked with the archaeologist Austin Henry Layard in his excavation of Nineveh and was responsible for the earliest translations from the library of Ashurbanipal discovered at that site.

Edward Hincks focused on Persian cuneiform, establishing its patterns and identifying vowels among his other contributions. Jules Oppert identified cuneiform's origins and established the grammar of Assyrian cuneiform. George Smith was responsible for deciphering T he Epic of Gilgamesh and, in 1872, famously, the Mesopotamian version of the Flood Story, which until then was thought to be original to the biblical Book of Genesis.

Many biblical texts were thought to be original until cuneiform was deciphered. The Fall of Man and the Great Flood were understood as literal events in human history dictated by God to the author (or authors) of Genesis but were now recognized as Mesopotamian myths which Hebrew scribes had embellished on from The Myth of Etana and the Atrahasis . The biblical story of the Garden of Eden could now be understood as a myth derived from the Enuma Elish and other Mesopotamian works. The Book of Job , far from being an actual historical account of an individual's unjust suffering, could now be recognized as a literary motif belonging to a Mesopotamian tradition following the discovery of the earlier Ludlul-Bel-Nemeqi text which relates a similar story.

The concept of a dying and reviving god who goes down into the underworld and then returns to life, presented as a novel concept in the gospels of the New Testament, was now understood as an ancient paradigm first expressed in Mesopotamian literature in the poem The Descent of Inanna . The very model of many of the narratives of the Bible, including the gospels , could now be read in light of the discovery of Mesopotamian naru literature which took a figure from history and embellished upon his achievements in order to relay an important moral and cultural message.

Prior to this time, as noted, the Bible was considered the oldest book in the world, and the Song of Solomon was thought to be the oldest love poem, but all of that changed with the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform. The oldest love poem in the world is now recognized as The Love Song of Shu-Sin dated to 2000 BCE, long before The Song of Solomon was written. These advances in understanding were all made by the 19th-century archaeologists and scholars sent to Mesopotamia to substantiate biblical stories through physical evidence, but, in fact, what they discovered was precisely the opposite of what they had been sent to find.

Along with other Assyriologists (among them, T. G. Pinches and Edwin Norris), Rawlinson spearheaded the development of Mesopotamian language studies, and his Cuneiform Inscriptions of Ancient Babylon and Assyria , along with his other works, became the standard reference on the subject following their publication in the 1860s and remain respected scholarly works into the present day.

George Smith, regarded as an intellect of the first rank, died on a field expedition to Nineveh in 1876 at the age of 36. Smith, a self-taught translator of cuneiform, made his first contributions to deciphering the ancient writing in his early twenties, and his death at such a young age has long been regarded as a significant loss to the advancement in translations of cuneiform in the 19th century.

The literature of Mesopotamia significantly informed written works which came after. Mesopotamian literary motifs can be detected in the works of Egyptian , Hebrew, Greek, and Roman works and still resonate in the present day through the biblical narratives which they inform. When George Smith deciphered cuneiform he dramatically changed the way human beings would understand their history.

The accepted version of the creation of the world, original sin, and many of the other precepts by which people had been living their lives were all challenged by the revelation of Mesopotamian – largely Sumerian – literature. Since the discovery and decipherment of cuneiform, the history of civilization and human progress has been radically revised from the understanding of only 200 years ago, and further revisions are expected as more cuneiform tablets are discovered and translated for the modern age.

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Bibliography

Bertman, S. Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Black, J., et al. The Literature of Ancient Sumer. Oxford University Press, 2006.
Durant, W. Our Oriental Heritage. Simon & Schuster, 2010.
Kramer, S. N. History Begins at Sumer. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Kramer, S. N. The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. University of Chicago Press, 1971.
Kriwaczek, P. Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization. Thomas Dunne Books, 2012.
Leick, G. The A to Z of Mesopotamia. Scarecrow Press, 2010.
The Origins of Writing by Ira Spar Accessed 9 Nov 2022.

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World History Edu

Ancient Mesopotamia

Cuneiform Writing: History, Meaning, Symbols, and Facts

by World History Edu · May 26, 2021

Cuneiform – the world’s oldest writing

Cuneiform was a writing system invented by the ancient Sumer people of the Mesopotamian region (ancient Middle East). According to historians, this form of writing emerged about 5,000 years ago, making it the world’s first-known written language. For over 3,000 years, the cuneiform script remained the dominant written language in the known world, before it was replaced by alphabetical scripts.

In the article below, World History Edu takes an in-depth look into the history, meaning, and significance of cuneiform writing.

Origin story of Cuneiform writing

Many consider the origin of writing as the origin of Sumerian cuneiform due to how old the cuneiform writing system is.

The ancient Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia (located in what is now southern Iraq) are widely held as the civilization that invented cuneiform writing around 3500 BCE. The writing form would then span from the early Bronze Age to the Common Era, around 75 CE.

Cuneiform was used by all the great civilizations that emerged from ancient Mesopotamia, including the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Elamites, Hatti, and the Persians. For centuries, those inscriptions on clay tablets were used by city administrators and priests of temples to keep record of ration allocation and the grain, sheep and other forms of goods that were received.

Cuneiform writing was also used to take records of activities pertaining to business and trade. It was also the primary writing language used by story writers, poets, and letter writers.

Beginning around 100 BCE, cuneiform script stated getting replaced by alphabetic script, primarily the Aramaean alphabet.

Due to the wedge-shaped stylus that was used in writing, the cuneiform system is sometimes known as the ancient wedge-shaped impressions of the Mesopotamians. The origin of the word has been stated to come from the Latin word cuneus which means ‘wedge’. The Latin word most likely stemmed from the cuneiform writing style in the first place.

The cuneiform writing was generally made with a writing implement/tool – i.e. a reed stylus – which was then pressed into a soft clay to give wedge-like impressions

Cuneiform tablets and how they were made

Based on archaeological findings, historians reason that Sumerian city of Uruk was the birthplace of the cuneiform writing system. It began with proto-cuneiform, a pictorial writing system that historians believe was used on many of the earliest cuneiform tablets.

After a wedge-tipped stylus is pushed into wet clay to make the writing, the tablet is then placed in kilns in order to for it to be baked hard. The writers that did not want to leave a permanent record used moist clay, allowing them to easily alter the record at later date.

Archaeologists opine that many of the discovered cuneiform tablets that we see today were likely preserved by chance after invading armies burnt down buildings that contained a relatively moist clay tablet. The fire acted like an oven, baking those clay tablets into what we see today.

Cuneiform – The Kish tablet, a limestone tablet from Kish with pictographic, early cuneiform, writing, 3500 BC. Possibly the earliest known example of writing. Ashmolean Museum.

Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs

Cuneiform, along with the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, constitutes the oldest known writing system. However, the Egyptian hieroglyphs are believed to have emerged a few centuries after the birth of the Sumerian proto-cuneiform. Some historians posit that the hieroglyphs may have taken some inspiration from the Mesopotamian cuneiform writing.

Ancient Mesopotamian rulers had the habit of inscribing cuneiform script into commemorative stelae, detailing how mighty a ruler they were, or in some cases, how divine their rule was.

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Evolution of Cuneiform writing

The pre-cuneiform writing was not advanced enough to convey more than concrete and visible subjects. It relied solely on pictographic technique. This was around the late 4th millennium BCE. Those pictographic techniques were in turn influenced by near eastern token system, which dates to the 9 th millennium BCE. This type of cuneiform writing spanned from 3400 BCE to 3100 BCE.

With the passage of time, the subjects on the cuneiform tablets became more complex and difficult (i.e. from a modern scholar’s perspective) to interpret. Those changes started with the proto-cuneiform writing of around 3100 BCE, when slight syllabic elements began to appear in the writing. On the back of the introduction of a modified wedge-tipped stylus around 2500 BCE, early dynastic cuneiform writing became relatively easier and quicker to produce.

As signs in the cuneiform system changed from pictograms to syllabograms, the ancient Mesopotamians could convey subjects like immortality and the commands of the gods. This was starkly different from the previous versions that could only note down things and objects. Say there was a bird and the god Marduk pictorially used in the system, readers would struggle to decipher what those objects tell in relation to each other. Was the bird an embodiment of Marduk? Or was the bird being sacrificed to Marduk?

The early dynastic cuneiform system of around the late 3 rd millennium BCE was a bit more refined and could communicate grammatical relationships and syntax. It could easily convey ideas as it combined word-signs and phonograms. This allowed for the writing system to be used communicating ideas in religion, economics, politics and literature.

Also, the characters were reduced from more than 1000 to 600 in order to allow for more clarity. By the 23 rd Century BCE, cuneiform had reached a point where emotional concepts like loyalty, trust, love, fear, hate, hope, and anger could be communicated. This explains how Enheduanna , the famous priestess of Inanna, in Ur (a Sumerian city) could write her poems and hymns in praise of the Mesopotamian goddess Inanna.

Proto-cuneiform tablet, Jemdet Nasr period, c. 3100–2900 BCE

When were cuneiform inscriptions deciphered?

For several centuries, Common Era scholars worked day and night trying to decipher cuneiform writings. For example Arabo-Persian historians of the Islamic Golden Age (8 th century to 14 th century CE) tried their hardest to unravel the mysteries of cuneiform writings littered across Mesopotamia region. All of those attempts ended in disappointment.

Many Middle Ages European scholars – like the Venetian explorer Giosafat Barbaro and theology professor Antonio de Gouvea – share with the rest of Europe about how they had encountered very strange writing in a number of ancient ruins in the Middle East, particularly in Persepolis (present-day Iran). In the 17 th century, English traveler and historian Sir Thomas Herbert rightly stated how those strange characters were not Egyptian hieroglyphics. Sir Thomas noted that they were words and syllables instead of letters.

In the 18 th century, scholars such as German cartographer and explorer Carsten Niebuhr and French Indologist Anquietil-Duperron paved the way for the likes of George Smith, Edward Hincks, Jules Oppert (1825-1905), and Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810-1895) to properly decipher the various ancient Mesopotamian cuneiforms. For example Rawlinson finished deciphering Old Persian cuneiform in the 1830s. Hincks contributed tremendously in analyzing the patterns and vowels found in Persian cuneiform.

Borrowing on the techniques used to decipher Old Persian cuneiform, scholars were able to decipher Akkadian and then Sumerian cuneiforms.

It is worth mentioning that George Smith played an instrumental role in translating those cuneiforms into English. The acclaimed historian and archaeologist died at the age of 36 while deeply engrossed in his work during the excavation of Nineveh (what is now Kuyunjik) in 1876. Smith is praised for having taught himself how to translate cuneiform.

Cuneiform writing | English archaeologist George Smith is most known for translating the ancient Mesopotamian epic, The Epic of Gilgamesh

Most famous cuneiform literature

Since the mid-19th century CE, archaeologists have discovered many cuneiform tablets that contain Mesopotamian literature and epics like the Atrahasis , The Myth of Etana , The Enuma Elish and The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Library of Ashurbanipal, which was discovered by English traveler and archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard and Hormuzd Rassam in 1849, had a collection of more than 30,000 clay tablets, mostly written in Akkadian language. The library, which was built by King Ashurbanipal of the Assyrian Empire, contained the famous Epic of Gilgamesh .

The 1933 discovery of a collection of close to 20,000 cuneiform tablets in Persepolis, Iran was welcomed with joy by the archeology community.

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Critically acclaimed Assyriologist George Smith (1840-1876) is credited with translating The Epic of Gilgamesh in 1872 CE. It turned out that the account of the Great Flood was not original to the Book of Genesis in the Bible. Smith’s numerous trips and excavations of the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh ( Kuyunjik in present-day Iraq) unearthed a number of cuneiform clay tablets relating to ancient Mesopotamian creation story. Those discoveries and many other more opened the flood gates for other cuneiform tablets to be translated. It enabled historians objectively reinterpret the history of those ancient civilizations.

Significance

Cuneiform writing system was significant in the sense that it helped many Mesopotamian civilizations convey a great chunk of knowledge and history. It ranks as the most important contribution of the Sumerian civilization, influencing the culture, scholarship and religion of ancient Egyptians, ancient Greeks and Romans.

After cuneiform tablets were deciphered, historians gained access to a great chunk of human history that was penned in cuneiform. This transformed how historians understood the history of those ancient civilizations.

Cuneiform writing and the Bible

Before the discovery of cuneiform on ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets, it was widely accepted that the Bible, specifically the Song of Solomon, was the oldest book in the world. The Song of Solomon for example was seen as the oldest love poem. With the discovery of cuneiform, that title currently belongs to the ancient Mesopotamian love poem titled The Love Song of Shu-Sin. This particular poem goes all the way back to around 2000 BCE.

The deciphering and translation of cuneiform challenged the Bible’s authority on the creation story and the original sin. It also meant that historians no longer considered the Bible as the oldest known-authoritative book in human history.

Many stories and texts in the Bible that were thought original to the Bible turned out to have been adapted from Mesopotamian stories as shown in the discovered cuneiform tablets. For example, the stories about The Fall of Man and the Great Flood in the biblical Book of Genesis were said to have been given to human beings by God, making them appear as being written by God. Archaeological findings show that many of those stories were adapted from Mesopotamian myths. The Hebrew scholars garnished them to make them fit the narrative of the prevailing religion at the time.

The Garden of Eden story in the Bible and the Book of Job were most likely derived from Mesopotamian myths The Enuma Elish and Ludlul-Bel-Nimeqi respectively. The gospels of the New Testament – i.e. the concept of a deity or superhuman dying and resurrecting – likely came from the Mesopotamian poem The Descent of Inanna.

Cuneiform writing | The invention of writing according to an ancient Mesopotamian poem, Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (c. 1800 BCE). Kulaba is the name for the ancient Mesopotamian city of Uruk

More facts about cuneiform

As late as 75 AD, cuneiform writing was still in usage.
The Sumerian city of Uruk (located east of the Euphrates River in present-day Iraq) holds the title of being the first-known place to have the first recorded writing. The writing was done around the 4 th millennium BCE.
Famed English orientalist Thomas Hyde (1636-1703) was the first scholar to term the characters “cuneiform”. However, he opined wrongly that the inscriptions were used by the ancient Mesopotamians for decorative purposes.
More than 500,000 cuneiform tablets have been discovered so far in modern times, many of them are housed in museums across the world. With more than 130,000 cuneiform tablets, the British Museum has the largest collections of cuneiform tablets in the world. Other museums that possess considerable number of cuneiform tablets include the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, the Istanbul Archaeology Museums (in Eminonu, Istanbul, Turkey), the Yale Babylonian Collection, Penn Museum in Philadelphia, U.S., and the Louvre in France.

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Cuneiform: The World’s Oldest Writing System

Cuneiform, the world’s first writing system, is a fascinating window into the lives of our ancestors.

Developed over 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, cuneiform was used to record everything – including everyday transactions, personal letters, and epic poems, like the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Today, it leaves historians and archaeologists with an invaluable source of information about ancient history, literature, religion, and science.

One might picture a scribe living in ancient Babylon, carefully etching the wedges onto a clay tablet as the sun sets around him.

Understanding cuneiform and its history allows us to unlock not only the thoughts, secrets, and sagas of such a scribe; but those of an entire ancient world.

The Origin of Cuneiform Writing

Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system that we know of today. It was originally developed in ancient Mesopotamia for the Sumerian language around 3500 BC.

While the Sumerians were the earliest known users of cuneiform writing, the earliest written records in ancient Sumer are pictographic tablets from Uruk. This early form could only express the basic ideas of concrete objects.

However, the need to represent proper names would eventually bring about the use of pictographic shapes to evoke in the reader’s mind an underlying sound – phonetic writing.

Few physical examples of proto-cuneiform survive from its earliest period – between 3200 and 3000 BC – but by the middle of the third millennium BC, cuneiform was everywhere, utilized for all things economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly.

Over time, the cuneiform script evolved and was used for various languages beyond Sumerian, like Akkadian , Hittite, and Elamite.

As far as modern archaeology has uncovered, the latest known use of cuneiform was likely around 75 AD, after which the script is thought to have fallen out of use. It was completely forgotten until its rediscovery and decipherment in more modern times.

Its Discovery and Decipherment

Early attempts at cuneiform decipherment date back to medieval Arabo-Persian historians.

Later in the 15th century, European explorers like Giosafat Barbaro, Antonio de Gouvea, and Pietro Della Valle recorded and publicized the early writing systems, including Old Persian inscriptions.

Later, in 1638, Sir Thomas Herbert from England claimed cuneiform as legible and intelligible, and the linguist Thomas Hyde coined the term “cuneiform” in 1700.

The race to decipher and translate cuneiform inscriptions would quicken throughout the late 1700s and into the 1800s.

Finally, the script was cracked open with the identification of the word “king” and the name of the great Persian king, Darius the Great , by Georg Friedrich Grotefend.

Old Persian cuneiform would be successfully deciphered by linguists, historians, and archaeologists across Europe, followed by the cuneiform scripts in other languages such as Elamite, Babylonian, Akkadian, and Sumerian.

Deciphering cuneiform inscriptions took decades of intense, dedicated work by hundreds of scholars, but in the end, their findings opened an entirely new world to the annals of history.

Clay Tablets and a Written Language

But how did cuneiform work? How did the ancient Mesopotamians write it?

In short, cuneiform writing is logo-syllabic, meaning each of its written symbols – themselves composed of wedges pressed into the soft clay by a reed stylus – is representative of a spoken syllable or of a certain character or word.

Since the Sumerian language was monosyllabic, the cuneiform signs typically represented syllables, resulting in a word-syllabic script.

The writing became increasingly complex as time passed, and the pictographs evolved into conventionalized linear drawings.

The writing system developed in stages, starting with pictographs and abstract signs and progressing to the more well-known wedge-shaped signs.

As cuneiform transitioned from pure words to a partially phonetic script, the ‘rebus principle’ became necessary, where pictographic shapes were used to evoke an underlying sound form rather than the basic notion of the drawn object.

With time, the written script would become quite complex. Still, until the first century AD, written Sumerian continued to be utilized as a scribal language. The spoken language, on the other hand, eventually died out around 2000 BC.

Clay tablets were the most common writing material, and as a result, the marks took on a wedge shape from the slanted edge of a stylus.

About 6,000 of these early cuneiform tablets have been discovered, while hundreds of thousands of later, more developed cuneiform tablets are housed in museums worldwide.

Cuneiform’s Regional Influence

The Sumerian script became a complex system that could express just about any topic of human endeavor, and the written word quickly evolved into the backbone of a growing civilization.

It even played a crucial role in disseminating writing to neighboring regions, such as Egypt, with its Egyptian hieroglyphs and the Indus Valley, where writing appeared not long after on official seals featuring individuals’ names and titles.

Cuneiform was adopted by many of these neighboring Mesopotamian and ancient Near East cultures, each of whom adapted it to their different languages.

For example, Linear A and B, the phonetic scripts of Crete and mainland Greece, were likely influenced in this way.

In many ancient societies, cuneiform was used at many levels, from basic functional knowledge for average citizens to technical use for medicine, math, and business.

It could even be considered a complex skill and art form for scholars and played a significant role in Babylonian scribal education.

Ultimately, cuneiform played a crucial role across the ancient Near East.

Legacy and Importance

Cuneiform is largely regarded as the ancient Sumerian culture’s most important and influential contribution. Its creation spurred the birth of literature, allowing for legendary epics, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, to be recorded for all time.

Moreover, the historical significance of cuneiform lies in its role as a precursor to modern writing. Its ability to record and preserve critical information about ancient societies and civilizations enables us today to understand what life must have been like then.

Cuneiform provides not just a window into the past, but in its time, it represented a new technology, driving civilization and history ever forward.

“Cuneiform.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1 Jan. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/cuneiform.

F., Walker C B. Reading the Past: Cuneiform. Univ. of California Press, 1988, Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/Walker.C.ReadingThePastCuneiform/mode/2up, Accessed 27 Feb. 2023.

Radner, Karen, and Eleanor Robson. “Introduction.” The Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2020, pp. xxvi-xxxii, https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/27992/chapter/211695261. Accessed 27 Feb. 2023.

Spar, Ira. “The Origins of Writing.” The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Jan. 1AD, https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrtg/hd_wrtg.htm.

Watkins, Lee, and Dean Snyder. “The Digital Hammurabi Project.” Digital Hammurabi Project, The Johns Hopkins University, 2003, https://pages.jh.edu/dighamm/version2/.

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Cuneiform, an introduction

The earliest writing we know of dates back to around 3000 B.C.E. and was probably invented by the Sumerians , living in major cities with centralized economies in what is now southern Iraq. The earliest tablets with written inscriptions represent the work of administrators, perhaps of large temple institutions, recording the allocation of rations or the movement and storage of goods. Temple officials needed to keep records of the grain, sheep, and cattle entering or leaving their stores and farms and it became impossible to rely on memory. So, an alternative method was required and the very earliest texts were pictures of the items scribes needed to record (known as pictographs).

Early writing tablet recording the allocation of beer, 3100–3000 B.C.E, Late Prehistoric period, clay, probably from southern Iraq. (© Trustees of the British Museum ) The symbol for beer, an upright jar with pointed base, appears three times on the tablet. Beer was the most popular drink in Mesopotamia and was issued as rations to workers. Alongside the pictographs are five different shaped impressions, representing numerical symbols. Over time these signs became more abstract and wedge-like, or “cuneiform.” The signs are grouped into boxes and, at this early date, are usually read from top to bottom and right to left. One sign, in the bottom row on the left, shows a bowl tipped towards a schematic human head. This is the sign for “to eat.”

Writing, the recording of a spoken language, emerged from earlier recording systems at the end of the fourth millennium. The first written language in Mesopotamia is called Sumerian. Most of the early tablets come from the site of Uruk , in southern Mesopotamia, and it may have been here that this form of writing was invented.

These texts were drawn on damp clay tablets using a pointed tool . It seems the scribes realized it was quicker and easier to produce representations of such things as animals, rather than naturalistic impressions of them. They began to draw marks in the clay to make up signs, which were standardized so they could be recognized by many people.

From these beginnings, cuneiform signs were put together and developed to represent sounds, so they could be used to record spoken language. Once this was achieved, ideas and concepts could be expressed and communicated in writing.

Cuneiform is one of the oldest forms of writing known. It means “wedge-shaped,” because people wrote it using a reed stylus cut to make a wedge-shaped mark on a clay tablet. Letters enclosed in clay envelopes, as well as works of literature, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh have been found. Historical accounts have also come to light, as have huge libraries such as that belonging to the Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal . Cuneiform writing was used to record a variety of information such as temple activities, business, and trade. Cuneiform was also used to write stories, myths, and personal letters. The latest known example of cuneiform is an astronomical text from 75 C.E. During its 3,000-year history, cuneiform was used to write around 15 different languages including Sumerian, Akkadian , Babylonian , Assyrian, Elamite, Hittite , Urartian, and Old Persian .

Cuneiform tablets at the British Museum

The department’s collection of cuneiform tablets is among the most important in the world. It contains approximately 130,000 texts and fragments and is perhaps the largest collection outside of Iraq. The centerpiece of the collection is the Library of Ashurbanipal, comprising many thousands of the most important tablets ever found. The significance of these tablets was immediately realized by the Library’s excavator, Austin Henry Layard, who wrote:

They furnish us with materials for the complete decipherment of the cuneiform character, for restoring the language and history of Assyria, and for inquiring into the customs, sciences, and . . . literature, of its people.

The Library of Ashurbanipal is the oldest surviving royal library in the world. British Museum archaeologists discovered more than 30,000 cuneiform tablets and fragments at his capital, Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik). Alongside historical inscriptions, letters, and administrative and legal texts, were found thousands of divinatory, magical, medical, literary and lexical texts. This treasure-house of learning has held unparalleled importance to the modern study of the ancient Near East ever since the first fragments were excavated in the 1850s.

The Flood Tablet, part of the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” 7th century B.C.E., Neo-Assyrian, 15.24 x 13.33 x 3.17 cm, from Nineveh, northern Iraq (© Trustees of the British Museum )

Epic of Gilgamesh and The Flood Tablet

The best known piece of literature from ancient Mesopotamia is the story of Gilgamesh, a legendary ruler of Uruk, and his search for immortality. The Epic of Gilgamesh is a huge work, the longest piece of literature in Akkadian (the language of Babylonia and Assyria). It was known across the ancient Near East, with versions also found at Hattusas (capital of the Hittites), Emar in Syria, and Megiddo in the Levant .

This, the eleventh tablet of the Epic, describes the meeting of Gilgamesh with Utnapishtim. Like Noah in the Hebrew Bible , Utnapishtim had been forewarned of a plan by the gods to send a great flood. He built a boat and loaded it with all his precious possessions, his kith and kin, domesticated and wild animals and skilled craftsmen of every kind.

Utnapishtim survived the flood for six days while mankind was destroyed, before landing on a mountain called Nimush. He released a dove and a swallow but they did not find dry land to rest on, and returned. Finally a raven that he released did not return, showing that the waters must have receded.

This Assyrian version of the Old Testament flood story is the most famous cuneiform tablet from Mesopotamia. It was identified in 1872 by George Smith, an assistant in The British Museum. On reading the text “he … jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement, and, to the astonishment of those present, began to undress himself.”

This tablet contains both a cuneiform inscription and a unique map of the Mesopotamian world. Babylon is shown in the centre (the rectangle in the top half of the circle), and Assyria, Elam, and other places are also named. Map of the World , Late Babylonian, c. 500 B.C.E., clay, findspot: Abu Habba, 12.2 x 8.2 cm (© Trustees of the British Museum )

Map of the world

This tablet contains both a cuneiform inscription and a unique map of the Mesopotamian world. Babylon is shown in the center (the rectangle in the top half of the circle), and Assyria, Elam, and other places are also named.

The central area is ringed by a circular waterway labelled “Salt-Sea.” The outer rim of the sea is surrounded by what were probably originally eight regions, each indicated by a triangle, labelled “Region” or “Island,” and marked with the distance in between. The cuneiform text describes these regions, and it seems that strange and mythical beasts as well as great heroes lived there, although the text is far from complete. The regions are shown as triangles since that was how it was visualized that they first would look when approached by water.

The map is sometimes taken as a serious example of ancient geography, but although the places are shown in their approximately correct positions, the real purpose of the map is to explain the Babylonian view of the mythological world.

Observations of Venus

Thanks to Assyrian records, the chronology of Mesopotamia is relatively clear back to around 1200 B.C.E. However, before this time dating is less certain.

Cuneiform tablet with observations of Venus, Neo-Assyrian, 7th century B.C.E., from Nineveh, northern Iraq, clay, 17.14 x 9.20 x 2.22 cm (© Trustees of the British Museum )

This tablet is one of the most important (and controversial) cuneiform tablets for reconstructing Mesopotamian chronology before around 1400 B.C.E.

The text of the tablet is a copy, made at Nineveh in the seventh century B.C.E., of observations of the planet Venus made in the reign of Ammisaduqa, king of Babylon, about 1000 years earlier. Modern astronomers have used the details of the observations in an attempt to calculate the dates of Ammisaduqa. Ideally this process would also allow us to date the Babylonian rulers of the early second and late third millennium B.C.E. Unfortunately, however, there is much uncertainty in the dating because the records are so inconsistent. This has led to different chronologies being adopted with some scholars favoring a “high” chronology while others adopt a “middle” or “low” range of dates. There are good arguments for each of these.

Literacy was not widespread in Mesopotamia. Scribes, nearly always men, had to undergo training, and having successfully completed a curriculum became entitled to call themselves dubsar , which means “scribe.” They became members of a privileged élite who, like scribes in ancient Egypt , might look with contempt upon their fellow citizens.

Understanding of life in Babylonian schools is based on a group of Sumerian texts of the Old Babylonian period. These texts became part of the curriculum and were still being copied a thousand years later. Schooling began at an early age in the é-dubba , the “tablet house.” Although the house had a headmaster, his assistant, and a clerk, much of the initial instruction and discipline seems to have been in the hands of an elder student—the scholar’s “big brother.” All these had to be flattered or bribed with gifts from time to time to avoid a beating.

Apart from mathematics, the Babylonian scribal education concentrated on learning to write Sumerian and Akkadian using cuneiform and on learning the conventions for writing letters, contracts, and accounts. Scribes were under the patronage of the Sumerian goddess Nisaba. In later times her place was taken by the god Nabu, whose symbol was the stylus (a cut reed used to make signs in damp clay).

Deciphering cuneiform

The decipherment of cuneiform began in the eighteenth century as European scholars searched for proof of the places and events recorded in the Bible. Travelers, antiquaries, and some of the earliest archaeologists visited the ancient Near East where they uncovered great cities such as Nineveh. They brought back a range of artifacts, including thousands of clay tablets covered in cuneiform.

Scholars began the incredibly difficult job of trying to decipher these strange signs representing languages no-one had heard for thousands of years. Gradually the cuneiform signs representing these different languages were deciphered thanks to the work of a number of dedicated people.

Confirmation that they had succeeded came in 1857. The Royal Asiatic Society sent copies of a newly found clay record of the military and hunting achievements of King Tiglath-pileser I to four scholars: Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, Edward Hincks, Julius Oppert, and William H. Fox Talbot. They each worked independently and returned translations that broadly agreed with each other.

This was accepted as proof that cuneiform had been successfully deciphered, but there are still elements that we don’t completely understand and the study continues. What we have been able to read, however, has opened up the ancient world of Mesopotamia. It has not only revealed information about trade, building, and government, but also great works of literature, history, and everyday life in the region.

Additional resources

Read a chapter in our textbook, Reframing Art History , about rethinking how we approach the art of the Ancient Near East.

I.L. Finkel, “A join to the Map of the World: a notable discovery,” British Museum Magazine : 5 (Winter 1995), p. 26–27.

W. Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Winona Lake, Eisenbrauns, 1998).

I.L. Finkel, Gilgamesh: the Hero King (London, The British Museum Press, 1998).

M. Roaf, “Observations of Venus,” in The Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East (New York, 1990).

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The origins of writing.

Proto-Cuneiform tablet with seal impressions: administrative account of barley distribution with cylinder seal impression of a male figure, hunting dogs, and boars

Cuneiform tablet: administrative account with entries concerning malt and barley groats

Cylinder seal and modern impression: three "pigtailed ladies" with double-handled vessels

Ira Spar Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

October 2004

The alluvial plains of southern Mesopotamia in the later half of the fourth millennium B.C. witnessed a immense expansion in the number of populated sites. Scholars still debate the reasons for this population increase, which seems too large to be explained simply by normal growth. One site, the city of Uruk , surpassed all others as an urban center surrounded by a group of secondary settlements. It covered approximately 250 hectares, or .96 square miles, and has been called “the first city in world history.” The site was dominated by large temple estates whose need for accounting and disbursing of revenues led to the recording of economic data on clay tablets. The city was ruled by a man depicted in art with many religious functions. He is often called a “ priest-king .” Underneath this office was a stratified society in which certain professions were held in high esteem. One of the earliest written texts from Uruk provides a list of 120 officials including the leader of the city, leader of the law, leader of the plow, and leader of the lambs, as well as specialist terms for priests, metalworkers, potters, and others.

Many other urban sites existed in southern Mesopotamia in close proximity to Uruk. To the east of southern Mesopotamia lay a region located below the Zagros Mountains called by modern scholars Susiana. The name reflects the civilization centered around the site of Susa. There temples were built and clay tablets, dating to about 100 years after the earliest tablets from Uruk, were inscribed with numerals and word-signs. Examples of Uruk-type pottery are found in Susiana as well as in other sites in the Zagros mountain region and in northern and central Iran, attesting to the important influence of Uruk upon writing and material culture. Uruk culture also spread into Syria and southern Turkey, where Uruk-style buildings were constructed in urban settlements.

Recent archaeological research indicates that the origin and spread of writing may be more complex than previously thought. Complex state systems with proto-cuneiform writing on clay and wood may have existed in Syria and Turkey as early as the mid-fourth millennium B.C. If further excavations in these areas confirm this assumption, then writing on clay tablets found at Uruk would constitute only a single phase of the early development of writing. The Uruk archives may reflect a later period when writing “took off” as the need for more permanent accounting practices became evident with the rapid growth of large cities with mixed populations at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. Clay became the preferred medium for recording bureaucratic items as it was abundant, cheap, and durable in comparison to other mediums. Initially, a reed or stick was used to draw pictographs and abstract signs into moistened clay. Some of the earliest pictographs are easily recognizable and decipherable, but most are of an abstract nature and cannot be identified with any known object. Over time, pictographic representation was replaced with wedge-shaped signs, formed by impressing the tip of a reed or wood stylus into the surface of a clay tablet. Modern (nineteenth-century) scholars called this type of writing cuneiform after the Latin term for wedge, cuneus .

Today, about 6,000 proto-cuneiform tablets, with more than 38,000 lines of text, are now known from areas associated with the Uruk culture, while only a few earlier examples are extant. The most popular but not universally accepted theory identifies the Uruk tablets with the Sumerians, a population group that spoke an agglutinative language related to no known linguistic group.

Some of the earliest signs inscribed on the tablets picture rations that needed to be counted, such as grain, fish, and various types of animals. These pictographs could be read in any number of languages much as international road signs can easily be interpreted by drivers from many nations. Personal names, titles of officials, verbal elements, and abstract ideas were difficult to interpret when written with pictorial or abstract signs. A major advance was made when a sign no longer just represented its intended meaning, but also a sound or group of sounds. To use a modern example, a picture of an “eye” could represent both an “eye” and the pronoun “I.” An image of a tin can indicates both an object and the concept “can,” that is, the ability to accomplish a goal. A drawing of a reed can represent both a plant and the verbal element “read.” When taken together, the statement “I can read” can be indicated by picture writing in which each picture represents a sound or another word different from an object with the same or similar sound.

This new way of interpreting signs is called the rebus principle. Only a few examples of its use exist in the earliest stages of cuneiform from between 3200 and 3000 B.C. The consistent use of this type of phonetic writing only becomes apparent after 2600 B.C. It constitutes the beginning of a true writing system characterized by a complex combination of word-signs and phonograms—signs for vowels and syllables—that allowed the scribe to express ideas. By the middle of the third millennium B.C. , cuneiform primarily written on clay tablets was used for a vast array of economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly documents.

Spar, Ira. “The Origins of Writing.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wrtg/hd_wrtg.htm (October 2004)

Additional Essays by Ira Spar

Spar, Ira. “ Mesopotamian Creation Myths .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ Flood Stories .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ Gilgamesh .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ Mesopotamian Deities .” (April 2009)
Spar, Ira. “ The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan .” (April 2009)

Related Essays

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Art of the First Cities in the Third Millennium B.C.
The Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods (2004–1595 B.C.)
The Middle Babylonian / Kassite Period (ca. 1595–1155 B.C.) in Mesopotamia
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Early Excavations in Assyria
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Cuneiform Writing: How Clay And Reeds Changed the World

Cuneiform writing was a powerful form of written communication in the ancient Middle East. It served as the vital cornerstone upon which modern writing was developed.

Cuneiform writing was the most widespread form of written communication created and used in the ancient Middle East. Clay cuneiform tablets and reed styluses were used to produce something that had great historical significance and contributed to the development of many modern writing forms.

The Origin Of Cuneiform Writing’s Name

The word “cuneiform” comes from the original Latin “cuneus”, meaning “wedge-shaped” in reference to the appearance of the writing style. To create cuneiform symbols and letters, writers would use a stylus to press wedge-shaped symbols into soft clay tablets. These shapes represented various “word-signs,” also known as pictographs, and, later, “word-concepts,” the closest approximation to modern-day words.

The original pictographic symbols that predated cuneiform writing were largely organized into vertical columns, but once the wedge-shaped pen was created, that changed. Instead, people began writing in horizontal rows using the wedge shape to push signs into the malleable clay. That method was far easier to maintain than the original carving of symbols into clay with a sharpened reed , allowing cuneiform to spread farther across the Middle East than any writing system that came before it.

The Creators Of Cuneiform

The creation of cuneiform writing is attributed to the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia in modern-day Iraq. The Sumerians are among the oldest civilizations in history, predating even the Pyramids of Giza . They created a great many useful things, but the cuneiform stands out as their most significant cultural contribution.

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Despite its Sumerian origins, cuneiform was also adopted, improved, and expounded upon by several other ancient civilizations. Among these were the Akkadians, the Babylonians, the Elamites, the Hittites, the Assyrians, and the Hurrians. Each culture improved the writing form in one way or another, enhancing its economic utility until the Phoenecian alphabet eventually replaced it. It is important to note that because of all the various changes and enhancements made to cuneiform, by the time the system was dismissed as a relevant means of communication, it had split to encompass multiple different writing styles that used individual wedge-shapes and was no longer a singular method.

Proto-Cuneiform

The earliest version of cuneiform writing is known today as “proto-cuneiform.” It originally was developed near the end of the fourth millennium B.C. and was widely embraced. This type of writing centered entirely on pictures of highly concrete images and ideas. Subjects for early cuneiform tablets included such things as kings, battles, grains, and floods. Still, they could also communicate numbers, as represented by circular impressions, and economic information used in temples or other large gathering places to hold land records.

Wide-Spread Use Of Cuneiform Tablets and Writing

Until the alphabetic script was developed after 100 BCE, cuneiform writing was widely used across every great Mesopotamian civilization. The Akkadians, Babylonians, Elamites, Hittites, and Assyrians were several among a long list of ancient societies that embraced cuneiform. They all had many reasons for doing so, as a writing system was becoming an invaluable asset to developing societies.

Originally, the cuneiform writing style was developed to play an economic role–maintaining inventories, counting items, and general related purposes. However, with the ease of its use and readily-available materials, the clay-and-reed writing system soon spread. Cuneiform began to be used to record maps, laws, medical manuals, and religious stories as it was developed. The clay cuneiform tablets created for preserving writings were also extensively used in schools, often recycled by students unless the information they contained was too valuable to lose. If it were, the tablet would be baked in a kiln to preserve the writing, and many of these cuneiform tablets still exist to be seen today in various museums.

The Epic Of Gilgamesh

One of the greatest and most well-known literature pieces to come from cuneiform writing was the Epic of Gilgamesh . This epic poem is thought to date back to 2100 B.C. in the Third Dynasty of Ur, but the surviving cuneiform tablets available today only date to 1800 B.C. It was recorded on Babylonian cuneiform tablets by Sumerians in Mesopotamia, and it is predated as a religious text only by the Pyramid Texts .

The original epic tells the story of Uruk’s king, Bilgamesh, and Enkido, a wild man sent to stop the king from oppressing his people. The two undertake many quests and adventures together once Enkido becomes civilized, and they become good friends. However, once the pair kills a beast sent by a goddess, Enkido is put to death by the goddess, thus completing the first half of the story. In the second, Bilgamesh, or Gilgamesh in the modern translation, commits himself to a long, danger-filled journey to discover the secret of immortal life in light of his friend’s passing. Many great stories have been written about Gilgamesh and his trials, and they are featured in many modern adaptations. These include The Twelve Dancing Princesses (1857), collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, The Great American Novel (1973) by Phillip Roth, and Warm Bodies (2011) by Isaac Marion.

The Extinction Of Cuneiform

By the year 1,000 A.D., cuneiform writing became almost entirely extinct. Everyone had turned to more diverse writing methods that allowed for greater communication, and cuneiform essentially became a dead writing system until the 19th century. By then, researchers began to decipher the various symbols and meanings to translate great Mesopotamian works of previously unknown literature.

Cuneiform’s Contribution To Class-Free Literacy

Aside from unifying a writing system for the ancient Middle East, cuneiform also developed into styles that any citizen could read. It was meant to be used by all–not just the upper class. Various scripts and basic symbols were put in place specifically because of how easy to use they were. That is not to say that all cuneiform was easy to read and interpret by everyone. Rather, the ancient Sumerians intentionally took steps to ensure that everyone had the same ability to communicate via clay and reed.

Average citizens in any Mesopotamian culture were able to pick up the most basic, functional knowledge of cuneiform that they could then put to work for them in many ways. Most citizens did not need to keep lengthy economic or medical documents, but they still maintained various personal letters and business-related texts. Meanwhile, those with more scholastic inclinations were able to study the writing system more thoroughly. They began recording medicines, diagnoses, mathematical equations, and much, much more. People also used cuneiform to embrace creativity. This was done largely by those with the highest amount of literacy . These people could fine-tune their writing abilities to produce great stories, epic poems, and other artworks still admired today.

The Evolution Of Cuneiform Writing

Thanks to the wide-spread use of cuneiform writing, people soon realized how important it was to have a means by which they could record various pieces of information. From cuneiform symbols to hieroglyphs and beyond, ancient societies’ pictographic writing systems were greatly appreciated in their time. But as time progressed and societies advanced, people wanted a new way of writing. A way that wouldn’t limit them with pictures and symbols but would grant them access to their entire vocabularies in written form. The need for an alphabet soon became blindingly apparent.

Therefore, around 1500 B.C., the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet came into existence. Drawing largely from the easy pictographs of cuneiform and hieroglyphics, the system entered a three-phase cycle. The first phase was based on acrophony–using signs to take the place of the first letter of the word they represented. For example, the letter “H” could be represented by a picture of a house since the first letter in “house” is “H.” This phase most closely resembled the writing forms to date.

The second phase was consonantal, focusing on spelling words based on closures in the breathing channel when certain letters like “B,” “M,” and “P,” were pronounced. Finally, the third phase was a compilation and summation of all other writing styles in developing twenty-two signs to represent different letters instead of the previous hundreds of options. It was this writing form, derived from cuneiform, that is the origin of Western writing today.

Cuneiform Writing: Key Takeaways

Cuneiform writing was a system that used the most basic of tools to bring about one of the greatest inventions of the ancient Middle East . It allowed for records to be kept, art to be created, and societies to be more economically successful while promoting literacy for all and not just the aristocrats. Cuneiform is a system that is out of date as a whole now, but one that is time-honored because it is the cornerstone upon which the basis for modern writing sits.

Ancient Sumer & The Sumerian Civilization: Here’s What We Know

By Hannah McCall BA Criminal Justice & Legal Studies, BA English Hannah graduated college with twin B.A.s in English and Criminal Justice & Legal Studies and intentionally made time throughout her education to pursue her lifelong love of history by serving on staff for her university’s history club. Hannah particularly loves studying mythologies and legends from a variety of cultures but enjoys Greek, Norse, Egyptian, and Hindu mythologies most of all.

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The World's Oldest Writing

Features May/June 2016

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In early 2016 , hundreds of media outlets around the world reported that a set of recently deciphered ancient clay tablets revealed that Babylonian astronomers were more sophisticated than previously believed. The wedge-shaped writing on the tablets, known as cuneiform, demonstrated that these ancient stargazers used geometric calculations to predict the motion of Jupiter. Scholars had assumed it wasn’t until almost A.D. 1400 that these techniques were first employed—by English and French mathematicians. But here was proof that nearly 2,000 years earlier, ancient people were every bit as advanced as Renaissance-era scholars. Judging by the story’s enthusiastic reception on social media, this discovery captured the public imagination. It implicitly challenged the perception that cuneiform tablets were used merely for basic accounting, such as tallying grain, rather than for complex astronomical calculations. While most tablets were, in fact, used for mundane bookkeeping or scribal exercises, some of them bear inscriptions that offer unexpected insights into the minute details of and momentous events in the lives of ancient Mesopotamians.

First developed around 3200 B.C. by Sumerian scribes in the ancient city-state of Uruk, in present-day Iraq, as a means of recording transactions, cuneiform writing was created by using a reed stylus to make wedge-shaped indentations in clay tablets. Later scribes would chisel cuneiform into a variety of stone objects as well. Different combinations of these marks represented syllables, which could in turn be put together to form words. Cuneiform as a robust writing tradition endured 3,000 years. The script—not itself a language—was used by scribes of multiple cultures over that time to write a number of languages other than Sumerian, most notably Akkadian, a Semitic language that was the lingua franca of the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires.

After cuneiform was replaced by alphabetic writing sometime after the first century A.D. , the hundreds of thousands of clay tablets and other inscribed objects went unread for nearly 2,000 years. It wasn’t until the early nineteenth century, when archaeologists first began to excavate the tablets, that scholars could begin to attempt to understand these texts. One important early key to deciphering the script proved to be the discovery of a kind of cuneiform Rosetta Stone, a circa 500 B.C. trilingual inscription at the site of Bisitun Pass in Iran. Written in Persian, Akkadian, and an Iranian language known as Elamite, it recorded the feats of the Achaemenid king Darius the Great (r. 521–486 B.C. ). By deciphering repetitive words such as “Darius” and “king” in Persian, scholars were able to slowly piece together how cuneiform worked. Called Assyriologists, these specialists were eventually able to translate different languages written in cuneiform across many eras, though some early versions of the script remain undeciphered.

Today, the ability to read cuneiform is the key to understanding all manner of cultural activities in the ancient Near East—from determining what was known of the cosmos and its workings, to the august lives of Assyrian kings, to the secrets of making a Babylonian stew. Of the estimated half-million cuneiform objects that have been excavated, many have yet to be catalogued and translated. Here, a few fine and varied examples of some of the most interesting ones that have been.

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Table Of Contents

The development of cuneiform from pictographs to Assyrian characters.

The theory advanced by Schmandt-Besserat to explain this transformation is that the clay shapes are tokens representing agricultural goods such as grain, sheep, and cattle and that they were used as a form of bookkeeping. The multiplication of types of tokens could correspond to the increase in the number of kinds of goods that were exchanged with the rise of urbanization in the 4th millennium bce . Tokens placed in an envelope might have constituted a sort of “bill of lading” or a record of indebtedness. To serve as a reminder of the contents of the envelope so that every reader would not need to break open the envelope to read the contents, corresponding shapes were impressed upon the envelope. But if the content was marked on the envelope, there was no need to put the tokens in an envelope at all; the envelope could be flattened into a convenient surface and the shapes impressed on it. Now that there was no need for the tokens at all, their message was simply inscribed into the clay. These shapes, drawn in the wet clay with a reed stylus or a pointed stick, constituted the first writing.

The historical record is much more explicit after 3200 bce and reveals clearly the stages involved in the evolution from a limited system of notation suitable for recording particular events into a full general-purpose orthography. Archaic Sumerian used mostly graphs representing numerals, names for objects, and names of persons. Graphs for numerals were geometric shapes, while those for objects were often stylized pictures of the things they represented. Yet the system was a genuine logographic writing system generally adequate to economic and administrative purposes. With the substitution of a blunt writing stylus for a pointed one, the symbols become less picturelike and more conventionalized. The writing system takes the name cuneiform from the shape of the strokes that form the symbols (from Latin cuneus , “wedge”).

The next major stage in the evolution of Sumerian writing was the adoption of the phonographic principle, the use of a sign to represent a common sound rather than a common meaning . For example, the graph representing “water” appears to have been used also to represent the locative suffix “in,” because the latter sounded the same as, or similar to, the word water . It is as if in English a person used the word ball to stand for a person named Bill on the grounds that it is easy to represent the ball with a circular graph while there is no obvious way to represent Bill, and the two words sound similar. The Sumerian script, however, remained primarily logographic and resorted to phonographic signs only when forced to, for representing unpicturable words and for distinguishing ambiguous graphs.

Sumerian script was adopted in the 3rd millennium bce by the Akkadians , who greatly expanded the phonographic properties of the script. The Assyrians and the Babylonians, both speaking dialects of the Akkadian language , were responsible for most of the cuneiform writing in a form known today as Akkadian cuneiform.

Cuneiform Tablets: One Of The Earliest Systems Of Writing Invented By The Sumerians

A. Sutherland - AncientPages.com - A Sumerian epic poem entitled "Inanna and Enki" says that the art of writing was among many essential elements of civilization, transferred from Eridu , the City of the Kings, to Uruk . It was dedicated to the people of earth by Enki, God of Wisdom .

According to Mesopotamian beliefs, writing is considered a gift of the gods, and writing means both power and knowledge.

Mesopotamian writing- cuneiform tablets

Archaeological evidence, on the other hand, suggests that the Sumerians have developed this excellent skill for a long time. The invention of writing, dating from 5000 BC to 2000 BC, was used for keeping accounts, describing religious events and scientific achievements, and keeping records of extraordinary happenings, known today as written history.

More than 5,000 years ago, people living in Mesopotamia developed a form of writing to record and communicate different types of information. The early writing was based on pictograms, which helped share basic information about crops and taxes.

Several scientists worldwide examined the inscribed tablets and could date their creation to at least 6,500 years ago. However, many believe that the Tartaria tablets represent the first writing in the world. Their existence suggests that the Danube civilization invented a writing system long before the Sumerians.

Mesopotamian cuneiform writing was made with the help of the stylus to make wedge-shaped marks in the clay. Using this method over thousands of years, Mesopotamian scribes recorded on clay tablets - daily events, trade, and the numbers of sheep, cattle, crops, and laborers in the workforce, because trade and economic necessities were likely the biggest motivators for writing.

Many cuneiform tablets were later covered with astronomy, texts of omen collections, medical texts, and therapeutic, symptom, and disease texts. Later, the Babylonians wrote sophisticated mathematical procedures in cuneiform script on clay tablets.

Later, the pictogram signs were replaced with the so-called ' cuneiform script' that dates back to the late fourth millennium BC. The Sumerians are credited with this invention, one of the earliest writing systems.

Also, the earliest known dictionaries in the world developed when people needed to translate words in Sumerian into Eblaite since Ebla was a major educational center. However, literature was not intended for a broad audience but rather for the royal collections and school libraries used for studies and teaching.

The Sumerian script was also adapted for writing the Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages. It became an inspiration for the Ugaritic alphabet and Old Persian cuneiform. The cuneiform writing system was used for over 3000 years, and during at least 2000 years, the system underwent considerable changes.

The primary material on which the records were made was clay, abundant in Mesopotamia. It is worth adding that more Sumerian texts could be preserved compared to the Egyptians. It is because clay tablets had much better durability than the Egyptian writing material – papyrus.

The Phoenician alphabet gradually replaced cuneiform writing during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BC). By the second century CE, the script had become extinct. All knowledge of how to read it was lost until the deciphering process began in the 19th century.

World’s oldest dictionaries come from the Akkadian Empire. The dictionaries are about 4,500-year-old a nd were discovered in Ebla, one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. They written on cuneiform tablets and are part of the famous ancient Ebla archive. The Urra=hubullu glossary, a major Babylonian glossary or encyclopedia from the second millennium BC, preserved in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

When the Sumerian state ceased to exist, the Babylonians and the Assyrians took over the entire cultural heritage. In legacy, the Sumerians left numerous magical and historical texts, mathematical-natural, philological, and astrological-astronomical textbooks.

Many of these texts were copied, and new ones were created, but these works remained anonymous. The first early attempts at deciphering the cuneiform tablets were also largely unsuccessful because it was difficult to determine the origin of many of them.

Archaeologists unearthed many thousands of cuneiform tablets. One example is the discovery of 30,000 clay tablets found in Nineveh, one of the essential sources of knowledge about ancient Mesopotamia.

Letter sent by the high-priest Lu’enna to the king of Lagash (maybe Urukagina), informing him of his son's death in combat. w:Clay tablet, c. 2400 BC, found in Telloh (ancient Girsu). Photo credit: Jastrow/Louvre Museum via commons.wikimedia.org

The Sumerian script was also adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages. It became an inspiration for the Ugaritic alphabet and Old Persian cuneiform. The cuneiform writing system was used for more than 3000 years, and during at least 2000 years, the system underwent considerable changes.

The basic material on which the records were made was clay, which was abundant in Mesopotamia. It is worth adding that more Sumerian texts could be preserved compared to the Egyptians. This is due to the fact that clay tablets had much better durability than the Egyptian writing material – papyrus.

The Phoenician alphabet gradually replaced cuneiform writing during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–612 BC). By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, and all knowledge of how to read it was lost until it began to be deciphered in the 19th century.

When the Sumerian state ceased to exist, the entire cultural heritage was taken over by the Babylonians and the Assyrians. In legacy, the Sumerians left numerous magical and historical texts, mathematical-natural, philological, and astrological-astronomical textbooks.

Many of these texts were copied, and new ones were created, but these works remained anonymous. The first early attempts at decipherment of the cuneiform tablets were largely unsuccessful also because it was difficult to determine the origin of many works.

By the end of the 1850s, Hincks and Rawlinson had successfully provided a working decipherment of Mesopotamian cuneiform. Their contribution formed the foundation of our knowledge of the Sumer, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian empires, all native to Mesopotamia.

Written by – A. Sutherland AncientPages.com Staff Writer

Updated on October 3, 2022

References:

Beckett, T. Sumerians: Discover History’s First Civilization

Freeman, H. Sumerians: A History From Beginning to End

King, L. W. A History of Sumer & Akkad

More From Ancient Pages

Published in James Wright, ed., INTERNATIONAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, Elsevier, 2014

Writing – a system of graphic marks representing the units of a specific language – has been invented independently in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica. The cuneiform script, created in Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq, ca. 3200 BC, was first. It is also the only writing system which can be traced to its earliest prehistoric origin. This antecedent of the cuneiform script was a system of counting and recording goods with clay tokens. The evolution of writing from tokens to pictography, syllabary and alphabet illustrates the development of information processing to deal with larger amounts of data in ever greater abstraction.

Introduction

The three writing systems that developed independently in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica, shared a remarkable stability. Each preserved over millennia features characteristic of their original prototypes. The Mesopotamian cuneiform script can be traced furthest back into prehistory to an eighth millennium BC counting system using clay tokens of multiple shapes. The development from tokens to script reveals that writing emerged from counting and accounting. Writing was used exclusively for accounting until the third millennium BC, when the Sumerian concern for the afterlife paved the way to literature by using writing for funerary inscriptions. The evolution from tokens to script also documents a steady progression in abstracting data, from one-to-one correspondence with three-dimensional tangible tokens, to two-dimensional pictures, the invention of abstract numbers and phonetic syllabic signs and finally, in the second millennium BC, the ultimate abstraction of sound and meaning with the representation of phonemes by the letters of the alphabet.

Writing is humankind’s principal technology for collecting, manipulating, storing, retrieving, communicating and disseminating information. Writing may have been invented independently three times in different parts of the world: in the Near East, China and Mesoamerica. In what concerns this last script, it is still obscure how symbols and glyphs used by the Olmecs, whose culture flourished along the Gulf of Mexico ca 600 to 500 BC, reappeared in the classical Maya art and writing of 250-900 AD as well as in other Mesoamerican cultures (Marcus 1992). The earliest Chinese inscriptions, dated to the Shang Dynasty, c. 1400–1200 BC, consist of oracle texts engraved on animal bones and turtle shells (Bagley 2004). The highly abstract and standardized signs suggest prior developments, which are presently undocumented.

Of these three writing systems, therefore, only the earliest, the Mesopotamian cuneiform script, invented in Sumer, present-day Iraq, c. 3200 BC, can be traced without any discontinuity over a period of 10,000 years, from a prehistoric antecedent to the present-day alphabet. Its evolution is divided into four phases: (a) clay tokens representing units of goods were used for accounting (8000–3500 BC); (b) the three dimensional tokens were transformed into two-dimensional pictographic signs, and like the former tokens, the pictographic script served exclusively for accounting (3500–3000 BC); (c) phonetic signs, introduced to transcribe the name of individuals, marked the turning point when writing started emulating spoken language and, as a result, became applicable to all fields of human experience (3000–1500 BC); (d) with two dozen letters, each standing for a single sound of voice, the alphabet perfected the rendition of speech. After ideography, logography and syllabaries, the alphabet represents a further segmentation of meaning.

1. Tokens as Precursor of Writing

The direct antecedent of the Mesopotamian script was a recording device consisting of clay tokens of multiple shapes (Schmandt-Besserat 1996). The artifacts, mostly of geometric forms such as cones, spheres, disks, cylinders and ovoids, are recovered in archaeological sites dating 8000–3000 BC (Fig. 1). The tokens, used as counters to keep track of goods, were the earliest code—a system of signs for transmitting information. Each token shape was semantic, referring to a particular unit of merchandise. For example, a cone and a sphere stood respectively for a small and a large measure of grain, and ovoids represented jars of oil. The repertory of some three hundred types of counters made it feasible to manipulate and store information on multiple categories of goods (Schmandt-Besserat 1992).

(Fig. 1) Envelope, tokens and corresponding markings, from Susa, Iran (Courtesy Musée du Louvre, Département des Antiquités Orientales)

The token system had little in common with spoken language except that, like a word, a token stood for one concept. Unlike speech, tokens were restricted to one type of information only, namely, real goods. Unlike spoken language, the token system made no use of syntax. That is to say, their meaning was independent of their placement order. Three cones and three ovoids, scattered in any way, were to be translated ‘three baskets of grain, three jars of oil.’ Furthermore, the fact that the same token shapes were used in a large area of the Near East, where many dialects would have been spoken, shows that the counters were not based on phonetics. Therefore, the goods they represented were expressed in multiple languages. The token system showed the number of units of merchandize in one-to-one correspondence, in other words, the number of tokens matched the number of units counted: x jars of oil were represented by x ovoids. Repeating ‘jar of oil’ x times in order to express plurality is unlike spoken language.

2. Pictography: Writing as Accounting Device

After four millennia, the token system led to writing. The transition from counters to script took place simultaneously in Sumer and Elam, present-day western Iran when, around 3500 BC, Elam was under Sumerian domination. It occurred when tokens, probably representing a debt, were stored in envelopes until payment. These envelopes made of clay in the shape of a hollow ball had the disadvantage of hiding the tokens held inside. Some accountants, therefore, impressed the tokens on the surface of the envelope before enclosing them inside, so that the shape and number of counters held inside could be verified at all times (Fig. 1). These markings were the first signs of writing. The metamorphosis from three-dimensional artifacts to two-dimensional markings did not affect the semantic principle of the system. The significance of the markings on the outside of the envelopes was identical to that of the tokens held inside.

About 3200 BC, once the system of impressed signs was understood, clay tablets—solid cushion-shaped clay artifacts bearing the impressions of tokens—replaced the envelopes filled with tokens. The impression of a cone and a sphere token, representing measures of grain, resulted respectively in a wedge and a circular marking which bore the same meaning as the tokens they signified (Fig. 2). They were ideograms—signs representing one concept. The impressed tablets continued to be used exclusively to record quantities of goods received or disbursed. They still expressed plurality in one-to-one correspondence.

(Fig. 2) Impressed tablet featuring an account of grain, from Godin Tepe, Iran (Courtesy Dr. T. Cuyler Young, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto)

Pictographs—signs representing tokens traced with a stylus rather than impressed—appeared about 3100 BC. These pictographs referring to goods mark an important step in the evolution of writing because they were never repeated in one-to-one correspondence to express numerosity. Besides them, numerals—signs representing plurality—indicated the quantity of units recorded. For example, ‘33 jars of oil’ were shown by the incised pictographic sign ‘jar of oil’, preceded by three impressed circles and three wedges, the numerals standing respectively for ‘10’ and ‘1’ (Fig. 3). The symbols for numerals were not new. They were the impressions of cones and spheres formerly representing measures of grain, which then had acquired a second, abstract, numerical meaning. The invention of numerals meant a considerable economy of signs since 33 jars of oil could be written with 7 rather then 33 markings.

(Fig. 3) Pictographic tablet featuring an account of 33 measures of oil, from Godin Tepe, Iran (Courtesy Dr. T. Cuyler Young, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto)

In sum, in its first phase, writing remained mostly a mere extension of the former token system. Although the tokens underwent formal transformations from three- to two-dimensional and from impressed markings to signs traced with a stylus, the symbolism remained fundamentally the same. Like the archaic counters, the tablets were used exclusively for accounting (Nissen and Heine 2009). This was also the case when a stylus, made of a reed with a triangular end, gave to the signs the wedge-shaped ‘cuneiform’ appearance (Fig. 4). In all these instances, the medium changed in form but not in content. The only major departure from the token system consisted in the creation of two distinct types of signs: incised pictographs and impressed numerals. This combination of signs initiated the semantic division between the item counted and number.

(Fig. 4) Economic cuneiform tablet (Courtesy Texas Memorial Museum, The University of Texas at Austin)

3. Logography: Shift from Visual to Aural

About 3000 BC, the creation of phonetic signs—signs representing the sounds of speech—marks the second phase in the evolution of Mesopotamian writing, when, finally, the medium parted from its token antecedent in order to emulate spoken language. As a result, writing shifted from a conceptual framework of real goods to the world of speech sounds. It shifted from the visual to the aural world.

With state formation, new regulations required that the names of the individuals who generated or received registered merchandise were entered on the tablets. The personal names were transcribed by the mean of logograms—signs representing a word in a particular tongue. Logograms were easily drawn pictures of words with a sound close to that desired (for example in English the name Neil could be written with a sign showing bent knees ‘kneel’). Because Sumerian was mostly a monosyllabic language, the logograms had a syllabic value. A syllable is a unit of spoken language consisting of one or more vowel sounds, alone, or with one or more consonants. When a name required several phonetic units, they were assembled in a rebus fashion. A typical Sumerian name ‘An Gives Life’ combined a star, the logogram for An, god of heaven, and an arrow, because the words for ‘arrow’ and ‘life’ were homonyms. The verb was not transcribed, but inferred, which was easy because the name was common.

Phonetic signs allowed writing to break away from accounting. Inscriptions on stone seals or metal vessels deposited in tombs of the ‘Royal Cemetery’ of Ur, c. 2700–2600 BC, are among the first texts that did not deal with merchandise, did not include numerals and were entirely phonetic (Schmandt-Besserat 2007) The inscriptions consisted merely of a personal name: ‘Meskalamdug,’ or a name and a title: ‘Puabi, Queen’ (Fig. 5). Presumably, these funerary texts were meant to immortalize the name of the deceased, thereby, according to Sumerian creed, ensuring them of eternal life. Other funerary inscriptions further advanced the emancipation of writing. For example, statues depicting the features of an individual bore increasingly longer inscriptions. After the name and title of the deceased followed patronymics, the name of a temple or a god to whom the statue was dedicated, and in some cases, a plea for life after death, including a verb. These inscriptions introduced syntax, thus bringing writing yet one step closer to speech.

(Fig. 5) Name and title of Puabi carved on a seal recovered in the Royal Cemetery of Ur (U10939) (Source: Pierre Amiet, La Glyptique Mésopotamienne Archaique, Editions du CNRS, Paris 1980, Pl. 90: 1182)

After 2600–2500 BC, the Sumerian script became a complex system of ideograms mixed more and more frequently with phonetic signs. The resulting syllabary—system of phonetic signs expressing syllables—further modeled writing on to spoken language (Rogers 2005). With a repertory of about 400 signs, the script could express any topic of human endeavor. Some of the earliest syllabic texts were royal inscriptions, and religious, magic and literary texts.

The second phase in the evolution of the Mesopotamian script, characterized by the creation of phonetic signs, not only resulted in the parting of writing from accounting, but also its spreading out of Sumer to neighboring regions. The first Egyptian inscriptions, dated to the late fourth millennium BC, belonged to royal tombs (Baines 2007). They consisted of ivory labels and ceremonial artifacts such as maces and palettes bearing personal names, written phonetically as a rebus, visibly imitating Sumer. For example, the Palette of Narmer bears hieroglyphs identifying the name and title of the Pharaoh, his attendants and the smitten enemies. Phonetic signs to transcribe personal names, therefore, created an avenue for writing to spread outside of Mesopotamia. This explains why the Egyptian script was instantaneously phonetic. It also explains why the Egyptians never borrowed Sumerian signs. Their repertory consisted of hieroglyphs representing items familiar in the Egyptian culture that evoked sounds in their own tongue.

The phonetic transcription of personal names also played an important role in the dissemination of writing to the Indus Valley where, during a period of increased contact with Mesopotamia, c. 2500 BC, writing appears on seals featuring individuals’ names and titles (Parpola 1994). In turn, the Sumerian cuneiform syllabic script was adopted by many Near Eastern cultures who adapted it to their different linguistic families and in particular, Semitic (Akkadians and Eblaites); Indo-European (Mitanni, Hittites, and Persians); Caucasian (Hurrians and Urartians); and finally, Elamite and Kassite. It is likely that Linear A and B, the phonetic scripts of Crete and mainland Greece, c. 1400–1200 BC, were also influenced by the Near East.

4. The Alphabet: The Segmentation of Sounds

The invention of the alphabet about 1500 BC ushered in the third phase in the evolution of writing in the ancient Near East (Sass 2005). The first, so-called Proto-Sinaitic or Proto-Canaanite alphabet, which originated in the region of present-day Lebanon, took advantage of the fact that the sounds of any language are few. It consisted of a set of 22 letters, each standing for a single sound of voice, which, combined in countless ways, allowed for an unprecedented flexibility for transcribing speech (Powell 2009). This earliest alphabet was a complete departure from the previous syllabaries. First, the system was based on acrophony—signs to represent the first letter of the word they stood for—for example an ox head (alpu) was ‘a,’ a house (betu) was b (Fig. 6). Second, it was consonantal—it dealt only with speech sounds characterized by constriction or closure at one or more points in the breath channel, like b, d, l, m, n, p, etc. Third, it streamlined the system to 22 signs, instead of several hundred.

(Fig. 6) Proto-Sinaitic Alphabet (source: Michael Roaf, Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia, Equinox, Oxford1990, p. 150)

The transition from cuneiform writing to the alphabet in the ancient Near East took place over several centuries. In the seventh century BC the Assyrian kings still dictated their edicts to two scribes. The first wrote Akkadian in cuneiform on a clay tablet; the second Aramaic in a cursive alphabetic script traced on a papyrus scroll. The Phoenician merchants established on the coast of present day Syria and Lebanon, played an important role in the diffusion of the alphabet. In particular, they brought their consonantal alphabetic system to Greece, perhaps as early as, or even before 800 BC. The Greeks perfected the Semitic alphabet by adding letters for vowels—speech sounds in the articulation of which the breath channel is not blocked, like a, e, i, o, u. As a result the 27-letter Greek alphabet improved the transcription of the spoken word, since all sounds were indicated. For example, words sharing the same consonants like ‘bad,’ ‘bed,’ ‘bid,’ ‘bud,’ could be clearly distinguished. The alphabet did not subsequently undergo any fundamental change.

5. The Modern Alphabets

Because the alphabet was invented only once, all the many alphabets of the world, including Latin, Arabic, Hebrew, Amharic, Brahmani and Cyrillic, derive from Proto-Sinaitic. The Latin alphabet used in the western world is the direct descendant of the Etruscan alphabet (Bonfante 2002). The Etruscans, who occupied the present province of Tuscany in Italy, adopted the Greek alphabet, slightly modifying the shape of letters. In turn, the Etruscan alphabet became that of the Romans, when Rome conquered Etruria in the first century BC. The alphabet followed the Roman armies. All the nations that fell under the rule of the Roman Empire became literate in the first centuries of our era. This was the case for the Gauls, Angles, Saxons, Franks and Germans who inhabited present-day France, England and Germany.

Charlemagne (800 AD) had a profound influence on the development of the Latin script by establishing standards. In particular a clear and legible minuscule cursive script was devised, from which our modern day lower case derives. The printing press invented in 1450 dramatically multiplied the dissemination of texts, introducing a new regularity in lettering and layout. The Internet catapults the alphabet into cyberspace, while preserving its integrity

6. Writing: Handling Data in Abstraction

Beyond the formal and structural changes undergone by writing in the course of millennia, its evolution also involved strides in the ability to handle data in abstraction. At the first stage, the token system antecedent of writing, already abstracted information in several ways. First, it translated daily-life commodities into arbitrary, often geometric forms. Second, the counters abstracted the items counted from their context. For example, sheep could be accounted independently of their actual location. Third, the token system separated the data from the knower. That is to say, a group of tokens communicated directly specific information to anyone initiated in the system. This was a significant change for an oral society, where knowledge was transmitted by word of mouth from one individual to another, face to face. Otherwise, the token system represented plurality concretely, in one-to-one correspondence. Three jars of oil were shown by three tokens, as it is in reality. At the same time, the fact that the token system used specific counters to count different items was concrete—it did not abstract the notion of item counted from that of number. (Certain English numerical expressions referring to particular sets, such as twin, triplet, quadruplet and duo, trio or quartet, are comparable to concrete numbers.)

When tokens were impressed on the envelopes to indicate the counters enclosed inside, the resulting markings could no longer be manipulated by hand. In other words, the transmutation of three-dimensional counters into two-dimensional signs constituted a second step in abstraction. By doing away with tokens, the clay tablets marked a third level of abstraction since the impressed markings no longer replicated a set of actual counters. The invention of numerals, which separated the notion of numerosity from that of the item counted, was a crucial fourth step in abstraction. The signs expressing the concept of oneness, twoness, etc., allowed plurality to be dealt with in fully abstract terms. In turn, the phonetic units marked a fifth step of abstraction, since the signs no longer referred to the objects pictured, but rather the sound of the word they evoked.

Phonetics allowed writing to shift from a representational to a conceptual linguistic system. That is to say it enabled writing to leave the realm of real goods in order to enter the world of words and the ideas they stand for. Finally, the process that started with ideograms expressing concepts and phonetic signs referring to the sound of monosyllabic words reached the ultimate segmentation of meaning with letters. As Marshall McLuhan (1997) defined it, the alphabet consists of semantically meaningless letters corresponding to semantically meaningless sounds. The alphabet brought data handling to a final double-stepped abstraction.

7. Conclusion: The Stability of Writing Systems

The origin of the Chinese script and the development of Mesoamerican writing are still obscure. The Mesopotamian script, however, offers a well-documented evolution over a continuous period of 10,000 years. The system underwent drastic changes in form, gradually transcribed spoken language more accurately, and handled data in more abstract terms. The most striking universal feature of all writing systems, however, is their uncanny endurance, unmatched among human creations. The Chinese script never needed to be deciphered because the signs have changed little during the 3400 years of its recorded existence (Xigui 2000). It also always remained ideographic, merely inserting rebus-like phonetic complements in some characters. The Mesoamerican Maya phonetic glyphs preserved the symbolism initiated by the Olmecs in the previous millennium (Coe and Van Stone 2005). Finally, when the last clay tablet was written in the Near East, c. 300 AD, the cuneiform script had been in use for three millennia. It replaced an age-old token system that had preceded it for over 5000 years; it was replaced by the alphabet, which we have now used for 3500 years.

Bagley, R. W. (2004). Anyang writing and the Origin of the Chinese writing system. In S.D. Houston (Ed.). The First Writing (pp. 190-249). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Baines, J. (2007). Visual and Written culture in Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Black, J. (2008) The Obsolescence and Demise of the Cuneiform Writing in Elam. In J. Baines, J. Bennet, S. Houston (eds). The Disappearance of Writing Systems (pp.45-72). London: Equinox.

Bonfante, G., Bonfante, L. (2002) The Etruscan Language (revised edition). Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Coe, M. D. and van Stone, M. (2005) Reading the Maya Glyphs, Thames and Hudson, London.

Malafouris L, (2010) Grasping the concept of number: How did the sapient mind move beyond approximation, in: I. Morley & C. Renfrew (eds.), The Archaeology of Measurement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (pp.35-42)

Marcus, J. (1992). Mesoamerican Writing Systems. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Moos, M. A. ed., (1997) Marshall McLuhan Essays, Media Research. Amsterdam:Overseas Publishers Association.

Nissen, H. J., & Heine, P. (2009). From Mesopotamia to Iraq. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Parpola, A. (1994) Deciphering the Indus Script. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Powell, B. B. (2009). Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization. London: Wiley Blackwell.

Rogers, H. (2005). Writing Systems, A Linguistic Approach. London: Blackwell.

Salomon, R. (2012). Some Principles and Patterns of Script Change. In S.D. Houston (ed). The Shape of Script. (pp. 119-133) Santa Fe: Sar Press.

Sass, B. (2005) The Alphabet at the Turn of the Millennium, The West Semitic Alphabet ca. 1150-850 BC – The Antiquity of the Arabian, Greek and Phrygian Alphabets, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University.

Schmandt-Besserat, D. (2007) When Writing Met Art. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1996). How Writing Came About. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Schmandt-Besserat, D. (1992). Before Writing. (2 vols). Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press.

Xigui, Q. (2000) Chinese Writing, The Institute of East Asian Studies, The University of California, Berkeley.

Abstraction: Consider the property of an item dissociated from any specific instance.

Abstract counting: When numbers are considered separately from the items counted.

Alphabet: A writing system based on a set of letters, each standing for a single spoken sound.

Concrete counting: the use of different sets of numbers to count different set of items.

Cuneiform: The writing system developed in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC. The script was written with a triangular stylus, which gave the stroke their characteristic angular shape.

Logography: a sign refers to one word.

Numeral: a sign to write a number.

Pictograph: A character in the form of a picture representing either the sound of the word it evokes or the object represented.

Syllabary: A writing system based on characters each representing a syllable, or unit of spoken language consisting of at least a vowel with, sometimes, additional vowels or consonants. Tablet a lump of clay prepared in a cushion shape to support a written document.

Writing : A system of human communication by the mean of arbitrary visual signs.

Page last updated: 2/6/21

Cuneiform: the Writing Form of Mesopotamia

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20120208-Nebuchadnezzar Barrel cylinder.JPG

Cuneiform (pronounced “cune-AY-uh-form”) was devised by the Sumerians more than 5,200 years ago and remained in use until about A.D. 80 A.D. when it was replaced by the Aramaic alphabet Jennifer A. Kingson wrote in the New York Times: "Evolving roughly at the same time as early Egyptian writing, it served as the written form of ancient tongues like Akkadian and Sumerian. Because cuneiform was written in clay (rather than on paper on papyrus) and important texts were baked for posterity, a large number of readable tablets have survived to modern times. Many of them written by professional scribes who used a reed stylus to etch pictograms into clay. [Source: Jennifer A. Kingson, New York Times November 14, 2016]

Cuneiform was used by speakers of 15 languages over 3,000 years. The Sumerians, Babylonians and Eblaites had large libraries of clay tablets. The Elbaites wrote in columns and used both sides of the tablets. The latest datable tablet, from Babylon, described the planetary positions for A.D. 74-75.

The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has one of the world’s largest collections of cuneiform tablets from early Mesopotamia. Yale also has a bunch, including a tablets of meal recipes.

Websites on Mesopotamia: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; International Association for Assyriology iaassyriology.com ; Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago isac.uchicago.edu ; University of Chicago Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations nelc.uchicago.edu ; University of Pennsylvania Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations (NELC) nelc.sas.upenn.edu ; Penn Museum Near East Section penn.museum ; Ancient History Encyclopedia ancient.eu.com/Mesopotamia ; British Museum britishmuseum.org ; Louvre louvre.fr/en/explore ; Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org/toah ; Ancient Near Eastern Art Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum.org ; Iraq Museum theiraqmuseum ABZU etana.org/abzubib ; Archaeology Websites Archaeology News Report archaeologynewsreport.blogspot.com ; Anthropology.net anthropology.net : archaeologica.org archaeologica.org ; Archaeology in Europe archeurope.com ; Archaeology magazine archaeology.org ; HeritageDaily heritagedaily.com ; Live Science livescience.com/

Sumerian Writing

Clay tablets with pictographs appeared around 4000 B.C. The earliest with Sumerian writing appeared around 3200 B.C. Around 2,500 B.C., Sumerian writing evolved into partial syllabic script capable of recording the vernacular. A Sumerian clay tablet from around 3200 B.C. inscribed in wedgelike cuneiform with a list of professions “is among the earliest examples of writings that we know of so far,” according to the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute’ director, Gil J. Stein. [Source: Geraldine Fabrikant. New York Times, October 19, 2010]

Cuneiform tablet for beer, bread and oil from Ur III period (2100-2000BC)

The Sumerian are credited with inventing writing around 3200 B.C. based on symbols that showed up perhaps around 8,000 B.C. What distinguished their markings from pictograms is that theye were symbols representing sounds and abstract concepts instead of images. No one knows who the genius was who came up with this idea. The exact date of early Sumerian writing is difficult to ascertain because the methods of dating tablets, pots and bricks on which the oldest tablets with writing were found are not reliable.

By around 3200 B.C., the Sumerians had developed an elaborate system of pictograph symbols with over 2,000 different signs. A cow, for example, was represented with a stylized picture of a cow. But sometimes it was accompanied by other symbols. A cow symbols with three dots, for example, meant three cows.

By around 3100 B.C., these pictographs began representing sounds and abstract concepts. A stylized arrow, for example, was used to represent the word "ti" (arrow) as well as the sound "ti," which would have been difficult to depict otherwise. This meant individual signs could represent both words and syllables within a word.

The first clay tablets with Sumerian writing were found in the ruins of the ancient city of Uruk. It is no known what the said. They appear to have been list of rations of foods. The shapes appear to have been based on objects they represent but there is no effort to be naturalistic portrayals The marks are simple diagrams. So far over a half a million tablets and writing boards with cuneiform writing have been discovered.

John Alan Halloran of sumerian.org wrote: “When the Sumerians invented their writing system around 5400 years ago, it was a pictographic and ideographic system like the Chinese...Yes. Some of the Sumerian ideograms gradually became used as syllabograms, which included the vowel indications. Writing on clay was an inexpensive yet permanent way of recording transactions. The cultural influence of the Sumerians upon later Mesopotamian peoples was enormous. Cuneiform writing has been found at Amarna in Egypt, in the form of an alphabet at Ugarit, and among the Hittites who used it to render their own Indo-European language.” [Source: John Alan Halloran, sumerian.org]

Book: “A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts,” by John L. Hayes is a good introduction to Sumerian writing.

Evolution of the Earliest Sumerian Writing

proto cuneiform

Ira Spar of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wrote: According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Some of the earliest signs inscribed on the tablets picture rations that needed to be counted, such as grain, fish, and various types of animals. These pictographs could be read in any number of languages much as international road signs can easily be interpreted by drivers from many nations. Personal names, titles of officials, verbal elements, and abstract ideas were difficult to interpret when written with pictorial or abstract signs. [Source: Spar, Ira. "The Origins of Writing", Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, October 2004 metmuseum.org \^/]

“A major advance was made when a sign no longer just represented its intended meaning, but also a sound or group of sounds. To use a modern example, a picture of an "eye" could represent both an "eye" and the pronoun "I." An image of a tin can indicates both an object and the concept "can," that is, the ability to accomplish a goal. A drawing of a reed can represent both a plant and the verbal element "read." When taken together, the statement "I can read" can be indicated by picture writing in which each picture represents a sound or another word different from an object with the same or similar sound. \^/

“This new way of interpreting signs is called the rebus principle. Only a few examples of its use exist in the earliest stages of cuneiform from between 3200 and 3000 B.C. The consistent use of this type of phonetic writing only becomes apparent after 2600 B.C. It constitutes the beginning of a true writing system characterized by a complex combination of word-signs and phonograms—signs for vowels and syllables—that allowed the scribe to express ideas. By the middle of the third millennium B.C., cuneiform primarily written on clay tablets was used for a vast array of economic, religious, political, literary, and scholarly documents.” \^/

Scribes and the Production of Cuneiform Tablets

Many cuneiform tablets are dated by the year, month and day. Tablets from monarchs, ministers and other important people were impressed with their seal, which was applied on the wet clay like a paint roller with a cylinder seal. Some cylinder seals produced reliefs that were quite elaborate, made up of scores of images and markings. Important messages were encased in an "envelope" of more clay to insure privacy.

Ancient Mesopotamia writing - and also reading - was a professional rather than a general skill. Being a scribe was an honorable profession. Professional scribes prepared a wide range of documents, oversaw administrative matters and performed other essential duties.Some scribes could write very fast. One Sumerian proverb went: "A scribe whose hands move as fast the mouth, that's a scribe for you."

One of the highest positions in Mesopotamia society was the scribe, who worked closely with the king and the bureaucracy, recording events and tallying up commodities. The kings were usually illiterate and they were dependent on the scribes to make their wishes known to their subjects. Learning and education was primarily the provenance of scribes.

Scribes were the only formally educated members of society. They were trained in the arts, mathematics, accounting and science. They were employed mainly at palaces and temples where their duties included writing letters, recording sales of land and slaves, drawing up contracts, making inventories and conducting surveys. Some scribes were women.

See Education

Subjects and Contents of Cuneiform Tablets

The Mesopotamians could also be described as the worlds first great accountants. The recorded everything that was consumed in the temples on clay tablets and placed them in the temple archives. Many of the tablets recovered were lists of items like this. They also listed "errors and phenomena" that seemed to result in divine retribution such as sickness or bad weather.

Cuneiform writing began mainly as a means of keeping records but developed into a full blown written language that produced great works of literature such as the Gilgamesh story. By 2500 B.C. Sumerian scribes could write almost anything with 800 or so cuneiform signs, including myths, fables, essays, hymns, proverbs, epic poetry, lamentations, laws, lists of astronomical events, list of plants and animals, medical texts with lists ailments and their herbal . There are tablets that record intimate correspondence between friends.

Documents stored in libraries maintained by a succession of rulers. Tablets reported on international trade, described different jobs, kept track of cattle allotments to civil servants and recorded grain payments to the king.

One of the most famous Sumerian tablets contain a story about a great flood that destroyed Sumer. It is virtually the same story ascribed to Noah in the Old Testament. The same tablets also contain “ The Story of Gilgamesh” .

The world oldest known prescriptions, cuneiform tablets dating back to 2000 B.C. from Nippur, Sumer, described how to make poultices, salves and washes. The ingredients, which included mustard, fig, myrrh, bat dropping, turtle shell powder, river silt, snakeskins and "hair from the stomach of a cow," were dissolved into wine, milk and beer.

The oldest known recipe dates back to 2200 B.C. It called for snake skin, beer and dried plums to be mixed and cooked. Another tablet from the same period has the oldest recipe for beer. Babylonian tablets now housed at Yale University also listed recipes. One of the two dozen recipes, written in a language only deciphered in the last century, described making a stew of kid (young goat) with garlic, onions and sour milk. Other stews were made from pigeon, mutton and spleen.

Sumerian Writing and Other Languages

The Sumerian language endured in Mesopotamia for about a thousand years. The Akkadians, the Babylonians, Elbaites, Elamites, Hittites, Hurrians, Ugaritans, Persians and the other Mesopotamian and Near Eastern cultures that followed the Sumerians adapted Sumerian writing to their own languages.

Written Sumerian was adopted with relatively few modifications by the Babylonians and Assyrians. Other peoples such as Elamites, Hurrians, and Ugaritans felt that mastering the Sumerian system was too difficult and devised a simplified syllabary, eliminating many of the Sumerian word-signs.

Archaic Sumerian, the earliest written language in the world, remains as one of the written languages that have not been deciphered. Others include the Minoan language of Crete; the pre-Roman writing from the Iberian tribes of Spain; Sinaitic, believed to be a precursor of Hebrew; Futhark runes from Scandinavia; Elamite from Iran; the writing of Mohenjo-Dam, the ancient Indus River culture; and the earliest Egyptian hieroglyphics;

Sumerian Writing Spreads to the Akkadians

John Alan Halloran of sumerian.org wrote: “The fact that the Sumerians shared their land with Semitic-speaking Akkadians was important because the Akkadians had to turn the Sumerian logographic writing into phonetic syllabic writing in order to use cuneiform to represent phonetically the spoken words of the Akkadian language. [Source: John Alan Halloran, sumerian.org]

“Certain Sumerian cuneiform signs began to be used to represent phonetic syllables in order to write the unrelated Akkadian language, whose pronunciation is known from being a member of the Semitic language family. We have a lot of phonetically written Akkadian starting from the time of Sargon the Great (2300 B.C.). These phonetic syllable signs also occur as glosses indicating the pronunciation of Sumerian words in the lexical lists from the Old Babylonian period. This gives us the pronunciation of most Sumerian words. Admittedly the 20th century saw scholars revise their initial pronunciation of some signs and names, a situation that was not helped by the polyphony of many Sumerian ideographs. To the extent that Sumerian uses the same sounds as Semitic Akkadian, then, we know how Sumerian was pronounced. Some texts use syllabic spelling, instead of logograms, for Sumerian words. Words and names with unusual sounds that were in Sumerian but not in the Semitic Akkadian language can have variant spellings both in Akkadian texts and in texts written in other languages; these variants have given us clues to the nature of the non-Semitic sounds in Sumerian. [Ibid]

“In fact, bilingual Sumerian-Akkadian dictionaries and bilingual religious hymns are the most important source for arriving at the meaning of Sumerian words. But sometimes the scholar who studies enough tablets, such as the accounting tablets, learns in a more precise way to what a particular term refers, since the corresponding term in Akkadian may be very general.”

Babylonian and Elbaite Writing

At Sippar, a Babylonian site just south Baghdad, Iraqi archaeologists discovered an extensive library in the 1980s. A wide variety of tablets were found, including ones that contained literary works, dictionaries, prayers, omens, incantations, astronomical records — still arranged on shelves.

The tablets are mostly around 4,500 years old. They were written in the oldest Semitic language yet identified and deciphered with oldest know bilingual dictionary, written in Sumerian (a language already deciphered) and Elbaite. The Elbaites wrote in columns and used both sides of the tablets. Lists of figures were separated from the totals by a blank column. Treaties, description of wars and anthems to the gods were also recorded on tablets.

Ebla's writing is similar to that of the Sumerians, but Sumerian words are used to represent syllables in the Eblaite Semitic language. The tablets were difficult to translate because the scribes were bilingual and switched back and forth between Sumerian and the Elbaite language making it difficult for historians to figure which was which.

The oldest scribe academies outside of Sumer have been found in Ebla. Because the cuneiform script found on the Ebla tablets was so sophisticated, Pettinato said "one can only conclude that writing had been in use at Ebla for a long time before 2500 B.C."

Cuneiform tablets found in Ebla mention the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah and contain the name of David. They also mention Ab-ra-mu (Abraham), E-sa-um (Esau) and Sa-u-lum (Saul) as well as a knight named Ebrium who ruled around 2300 B.C. and bears an uncanny resemblance to Eber from the Book of Genesis who was the great-great grandson of Noah and the great-great-great-great grandfather of Abraham. Some scholars suggest that Biblical reference are overstated because the divine name yahweh (Jehovah) is not mentioned once in the tablets.

Ugarites and the First Alphabet

The Ugarites reduced all symbols with multiple consonant sounds to signs with a single consent sound. In the Ugarite system each sign consisted of one consonant plus any vowel. That the sign for “p” could be “pa,” “pi” or “pu.” Ugarit was passed on to the Semitic tribes of the Middle east, which included the Phoenician, Hebrews and later the Arabs.

Ugarit, an important 14th century B.C. Mediterranean port on the Syrian coast, was the next great Canaanite city to arise after Ebla. Tablets found at Ugarit indicated it was involved in the trade of box and juniper wood, olive oil, wine.

Ugarit texts refer to deities such as El, Asherah, Baak and Dagan, previously known only from the Bible and a handful of other texts. Ugarit literature is full of epic stories about gods and goddesses. This form of religion was revived by the early Hebrew prophets. An 11-inch-high silver-and-gold statuette of a god, circa 1900 B.C., unearthed at Ugarit in present-day Syria.

Cuneiform Tablets as Historical Sources

Writing on the sun-baked tablets, preserved in the dry climate of Mesopotamia have survive the ravages of time better than the earliest writing of other ancient civilizations in Egypt, China, India and Peru, which used perishable materials such as papyrus, wood, bamboo, palm leaves and cotton and wool twine that have been largely lost to time. Scholars have access to more original documents from Sumer and other Mesopotamian culture than they do from ancient Egypt, Greece or Rome.

The existence of cuneiform was not known until travelers in the Near East in the early 1600s began returning home with strange "chicken scratching" that were regarded as decorations not writing. A large archives of Sumerian cuneiform records was found in sacred Nippur. Some 20,000 cuneiform tablets were discovered in a 260-room place in Mari, a major Mesopotamian trading center that was ruled by Semitic-speaking tribes. Texts from Assyrian tablets established dates of events in Israelite history and confirmed parts of the Bible.

Ugaritic letters

The Journal of Cuneiform Studies is authoritative periodical on Mesopotamian writing. The University of Pennsylvania contains the world's largest collection of Sumerian cuneiform tablets. Of about 10,000 known Sumerian tablets, the University of Pennsylvania contains about 3,500 of them.

Deciphering Cuneiform

The word cuneiform — Latin for ''wedge-shaped'' — was coined by Thomas Hyde in 1700. Italian nobleman Pietro della Valle was the first to publish facsimile copies of cuneiform in 1658. The first copies from cuneiform accurate enough to form a basis for future decipherment would appear more than a century later, in 1778, the work of Carsten Niebuhr of Denmark.

Comprehension of the ancient script would come nearly a century after that, thanks notably to Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson. In the 1830's and 1840's, the ''father of Assyriology'' copied the long cuneiform inscriptions of Darius I, which were repeated in three languages: Old Persian, Elamite and Akkadian.

With three languages — and three different cuneiform scripts — to work with, Sir Rawlinson was able to present the first ''substantial, connected Old Persian text properly deciphered and reasonably translated,'' Mr. Hallo wrote in ''The Ancient Near East: A History'' The book is a standard textbook that he co-authored with William Kelly Simpson.

Translating Cuneiform

The collection, copying, translation and publishing of cuneiform texts at Yale owe much to Albert T. Clay and J. Pierpont Morgan. In 1910 the Hartford-born financier and industrialist, who was a lifelong collector of Near Eastern artifacts, endowed a professorship of Assyriology and the Babylonian Collection at Yale, and Mr. Clay served as its first professor and curator.

Hand-copying cuneiform texts remains a mainstay of scholarship in the field. The main cuneiform language has been difficult to translate. The symbol, for example, that represented a rising sun later represented some forty words and a dozen separate syllables. The word "anshe," was first translated as "donkey" but it was so found that it could also mean a god, an offering, a chariot-pulling animal, a horse.

The Babylonian Collection ay Yale houses the largest assemblage of cuneiform inscriptions in the United States and one of the five largest in the world. In fact, during Mr. Hallow's 40-year tenure as professor and curator, Yale acquired 10,000 tablets from the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York.

The University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute opened in 1919. It was heavily financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had been greatly influenced by James Henry Breasted, a passionate archaeologist. Abby Rockefeller had read his best seller “Ancient Times” to her children. Today the institute, which still has seven digs going on, boasts objects from excavations in Egypt, Israel, Syria, Turkey and Iraq. Many artifacts were acquired from joint digs with host countries with which the findings were shared. Among the institute’s prized holdings is a 40-ton winged bull from Khorsabad, the capital of Assyria, from around 715 B.C.

Deciphering Sumerian, Old Persian, Babylonian and Assyrian

Samuel Noah Kramar deciphered the Sumerian cuneiform tablets in the 19th century using Rosetta-Stone-like bilingual texts with the same passages in Sumerian and Akkadian (Akkadian in turn had been translated using Rosetta-Stone-like bilingual texts with some passages in an Akkadian-like language and Old Persian). The most important texts came from Persepolis, the ancient capital of Persia.

After the Akkadian text was deciphered, words and sounds in a hitherto unknown language, which appeared to be older and unrelated to Akkadian, were found. This led to the discovery of the Sumerian language and the Sumerian people.

scholars at Cambridge translating cuneiform tablets

Babylonian and Assyrian were deciphered after Old Persian was deciphered. Old Persian was deciphered in 1802, by George Grotefend, a German philologist. He figured out that one of the unknown languages represented by the cuneiform writing from Persepolis was Old Persian based on the words for Persian kings and then translated the phonetic value of each symbol. Early linguists decided that cuneiform was most likely an alphabet because 22 major signs appeared again and again.

Akkadian and Babylonian were deciphered between 1835 and 1847, by Henry Rawlinson, a British military officer, using the Behistun Rock (Bisotoun Rock). Located 20 miles from Kermanshah, Iran, it is one of the most important archeological sites in the world. Located at an elevation of 4000 feet high on an ancient highway between Mesopotamia and Persia, it is a cliff face carved with cuneiform characters that describe the achievements of Darius the Great in three languages: Old Persian, Babylonian and Elamatic.

Rawlinson copied the Old Persian text while suspended by a rope in front of the cliff.. After spending several years working out all Old Persian texts he returned and translated the Babylonian and Elamitic sections. Akkadian was worked out because it was a Semitic similar to Elamitic.

The Behistun Rock also allowed Rawlinson to decipher Babylonian. Assyrian and the entire cuneiform language was worked with the discovery of Assyrian “instruction manuals” and “dictionaries” found at a 7th century Assyrian site.

Restoring Cuneiform Tablets

Babylonian exercise tablet

Just getting cuneiform tablets to the point where they can be translated has also been a considerable chore. Describing what the first restorers and translators were faced with in the 19th century, David Damrosch, a professor of English at Columbia University, wrote in Smithsonian magazine, “Unbaked clay tablets could crumble, and even those that had been baked, giving them the heft and durability of terra cotta tiles that have been broken amid the ruins...Tablets were often stored loose in boxes and sometimes damaged each other...A given tablet might have been broken into a dozen or more pieces that were now widely dispersed among the thousands of fragments at the museum.” One then needs the “ability to piece tablets together, a task requiring both exceptional visual memory and manual dexterity in creating “joins” of fragments.”

“Items under active consideration were laid out on planks set on trestles in a dimly lit room. In addition museums held paper “squeezes” — impressions that had been made by pressing damp paper onto inscriptions too big to move.” But there were problems here too. “The squeezes deteriorated on handling and were further damaged when mice got at them.”

Today, because so few specialists can read the ancient Sumerian and Akkadian languages, many cuneiform tablets have not been read. Many lie in packed away in storage, unlabeled. Scholars at Johns Hopkins are currently setting up a cuneiform data base in which photographs of tablets can be cased with a cuneiform keyboard.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated September 2018

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The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and Evolution

Detailed map of ancient Mesopotamia.

Wikimedia Commons

The earliest writing systems evolved independently and at roughly the same time in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but current scholarship suggests that Mesopotamia’s writing appeared first. That writing system, invented by the Sumerians, emerged in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. At first, this writing was representational: a bull might be represented by a picture of a bull, and a pictograph of barley signified the word barley. Though writing began as pictures, this system was inconvenient for conveying anything other than simple nouns, and it became increasingly abstract as it evolved to encompass more abstract concepts, eventually taking form in the world’s earliest writing: cuneiform. An increasingly complex civilization encouraged the development of an increasingly sophisticated form of writing. Cuneiform came to function both phonetically (representing a sound) and semantically (representing a meaning such as an object or concept) rather than only representing objects directly as a picture.

This lesson plan, intended for use in the teaching of world history in the middle grades, is designed to help students appreciate the parallel development and increasing complexity of writing and civilization in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys in ancient Mesopotamia. You may wish to use this lesson independently as an introduction to Mesopotamian civilization, or as an entry point into the study of Sumerian and Babylonian history and culture.

Guiding Questions

How did cuneiform writing emerge and evolve in ancient Mesopotamia?

How did the cuneiform writing system affect Mesopotamian civilization?

Learning Objectives

Identify specific artifacts that demonstrate how the writing system in Mesopotamia was transformed.

Analyze the purposes writing served in Mesopotamia with an emphasis on how those purposes evolved as the civilization changed.

Evaluate the extent to which the development of systems of writing and the development of civilization are linked.

Lesson Plan Details

The earliest known civilization developed along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now the country of Iraq. The development of successful agriculture, which relied on the region’s fertile soils and an irrigation system that took advantage of its consistent water supply, led to the development of the world’s first cities. The development of stable agriculture through irrigation meant people no longer had to follow changing sources of food. With this stability farmers in the region were able to domesticate animals such as goats, sheep, and cattle. They successfully grew crops of barley and other grains, from which they began to produce dietary staples and other products, such as bread and beer. As their agricultural practices became more successful, farmers were able to create surpluses. In order to ensure the crop yield, a system of canals was dug to divert water for agriculture and lessen the impact of annual floods. With these advances, a significant population of successful farmers, herders, and traders were able to move beyond subsistence agriculture. A series of successive kingdoms—Sumer, Akkadia (also spelled Accadia), Assyria, Babylonia—built cities with monumental architecture, in which trade and commerce were thriving, and even early forms of plumbing were invented for the ruling class.

The development of trade was one of several important factors in Mesopotamia that created a need for writing. The development of complex societies, with social hierarchies, private property, economies that supported tax-funded authorities, and trade, all combined to create a need for written records. The increasingly sophisticated system of writing that developed also helped the civilization develop further, facilitating the management of complex commercial, religious, political, and military systems.

The earliest known writing originated with the Sumerians about 5500 years ago. Writing was not invented for telling stories of the great conquests of kings or for important legal documents. Instead, the earliest known writing documented simple commercial transactions.

The evolution of writing occurred in stages. In its earliest form, commercial transactions were represented by tokens. A sale of four sheep was represented by four tokens designed to signify sheep. At first such tokens were made of stone. Later, they were created from clay. Tokens were stored as a record of transactions.

In the next stage of development, pictographs (simple pictures of an object) were drawn into wet clay, and these images replaced the tokens. Scribes no longer drew four sheep pictographs to represent four sheep. Instead, the numeral for four was written beside one sheep pictograph.

Through this process writing was becoming disentangled from direct depiction. More complicated number systems began to develop. The pictographic symbols were refined into the writing system known as cuneiform. The English word cuneiform comes from the Latin cuneus , meaning “wedge.” Using cuneiform, written symbols could be quickly made by highly trained scribes through the skillful use of the wedge-like end of a reed stylus. Eventually, writing became phonetic as well as representational. Once the writing system had moved from being pictographic to phonetic writing could communicate abstractions more effectively: names, words, and ideas. With cuneiform, writers could tell stories, relate histories, and support the rule of kings. Cuneiform was used to record literature such as the Epic of Gilgamesh—the oldest epic still known. Furthermore, cuneiform was used to communicate and formalize legal systems, most famously Hammurabi’s Code.

NCSS.D1.2.6-8. Explain points of agreement experts have about interpretations and applications of disciplinary concepts and ideas associated with a compelling question. NCSS. D2.Geo.7.6-8. Explain how changes in transportation and communication technology influence the spatial connections among human settlements and affect the diffusion of ideas and cultural practices. NCSS.D2.His.1.6-8. Analyze connections among events and developments in broader historical contexts. NCSS.D2.His.2.6-8. Classify series of historical events and developments as examples of change and/or continuity. NCSS.D2.His.3.6-8. Use questions generated about individuals and groups to analyze why they, and the developments they shaped, are seen as historically significant. NCSS.D3.3.6-8. Identify evidence that draws information from multiple sources to support claims, noting evidentiary limitations.

For additional detailed information on the development of writing in Mesopotamia, read the Introduction to the Cuneiform Collection available through the EDSITEment resource Internet Public Library.
Review all websites and materials students will view. Download photographs of artifacts students will be viewing offline. Download and prepare as necessary handouts from the downloadable PDF for this lesson.
Egyptian Symbols and Figures: Hieroglyphs
The Alphabet is Historic

Activity 1. Why the Fertile Crescent?

This Crash Course World History video on Mesopotamia provides a quick, but comprehensive background to get students ready to investigate the materials and activities provided below.

This first activity will introduce students to the part of the world where writing first developed- the area once called Mesopotamia, which was located in what is today the country of Iraq. The earliest cities known today arose in Mesopotamia, an area that is part of what is sometimes called the Fertile Crescent. What clues can we get from the geography of the region to explain why Mesopotamia became the “Cradle of Civilization”? Share with the students the British Museum’s introduction to Mesopotamia: Geography , available through the EDSITEment-reviewed resource The Oriental Institute: The University of Chicago . Then use the Geography: Explore feature to investigate a variety of maps of the region by choosing them from the pull down menu.

With which of these cities are you familiar?
What do you notice about the locations of these modern cities?
Where were most of the cities located? Why there?
How does their location compare with that of the contemporary cities?
Look to the northeast of Mesopotamia. Why is that area not as hospitable to agriculture? The southwest?
Mesopotamia was agriculturally rich. Why did vibrant trade develop in the larger region shown on the map? One reason is that although the area was rich in agriculture, it was poor in many natural resources?
What elements in the terrain also enabled Mesopotamia to develop trade (pay particular attention to the rivers, relatively flat terrain)?

Activity 2. Mesopotamia Timeline

In this activity students will be introduced to the time period in which the first writing developed, and the major events which coincided with this development in ancient Mesopotamia. The National Geographic

includes images, maps, and timelines relevant to the start of this activity.

Distribute the Timeline: Mesopotamia 4000-1000 BCE activity which is available as a PDF for this lesson, or you can do this as an online activity . Note that the timeline covers an extended period, not all of which will be covered in detail in this lesson. This activity will give students who have not had readings about the history of the Middle East, and specifically about Mesopotamia, the opportunity to gain some contextual understanding of the development of cuneiform writing. For students who have had the opportunity to learn about Mesopotamia this exercise will remind them of some of the major events in the history of the area.

Distribute the Timeline Labels handout, which is available as a PDF for this lesson. If practical you may wish to project the timeline onto a screen or redraw the timeline on the board.

As a class, look through the labels. Which do students hypothesize would appear earlier/later on the timeline?

Divide the class into small groups of three or four and assign each group one of the labels. Students can scan through the two summaries of key events in Mesopotamian history that are available on the EDSITEment web resource Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Key Events 8000-2000 BCE
Key Events 2000-1000 BCE

These timelines of key events can be used by students to determine where each label should be placed and to indicate when certain innovations became important.

Note: Cuneiform continued to be used in Mesopotamia well into the first millennium BCE, however, as this lesson is concentrating on the early development of the writing system the timeline in this activity will end before cuneiform writing ceased to be used.

Moving in chronological order, place the labels on the timeline. Each group should work together to provide any additional information about the development that was in the event summary. Challenge students to put together a simple narrative of developments in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley based on the events in the timeline.

What developments in the civilization would have been facilitated by or even require a system of writing?

Activity 3. Jobs in Mesopotamia

In this activity students will begin to think about the development and urbanization of Mesopotamian civilization by thinking about the kinds of occupations that developed over time. Students will also begin to think about the relationship between the evolution of civilization in Mesopotamia and how writing enhanced its development.

Students have probably already studied in their classes about the shift of human societies from the nomadic pursuit of game and wild vegetation, to settled cultivation, and eventually towards settled villages, towns, and cities. As societies became, first, more settled as farmers, and then in certain places more urbanized as some populations became townsfolk, what kinds of new tasks and jobs would need to be done?

Ask students to return to their timeline worksheets. Based on what students learned from the timeline activity, what do they think are some jobs that probably existed in ancient Mesopotamia: Farmer? Trader? Ruler? Builder? Others? Divide the class into small groups and have each group work together to create a list of jobs they believe might have existed in ancient Mesopotamia. Ask each group to contribute one job to a running list that will be written on the board. You may wish to go around the room two or three times.

You can download a list of some occupations which were part of life in ancient Mesopotamia. This is not a comprehensive list, but it will give your class an idea of what life in ancient Mesopotamia was like. You can use this list as a point of comparison with the list that the class has compiled. Students may be surprised to discover which occupations were and were not part of life in ancient Mesopotamia. Ask students to think about the following questions:

What are some jobs the students did not list?
What are some jobs students wouldn’t expect to be on the list, such as factory worker?
What jobs on the list no longer exist?
Which jobs are unfamiliar to students?
Were the students surprised to learn some of the listed jobs existed in ancient Mesopotamia?
Which occupations do they think were the most common? Why?
Which of the jobs on the list are part of an industry, trade, or profession with a need for record keeping? Explain your answers.

Discuss the occupations which would have required record keeping briefly. You may wish to discuss the role of the priestly class in ancient Mesopotamia, as elite, Mesopotamian priests had a far more expanded role in society than students may have experienced with members of the clergy today. The priests of ancient Mesopotamia were part of the ruling class, and much of the tax money that was collected went to the priests and the temples. Next, have students discuss the following questions. You may wish to have them work together in small groups.

Would it have been possible to complete the tasks of these occupations without being able to write anything down? How?
If there were no written records connected to these occupations how would that have affected the occupation?
How might it have made it easier? How might it have made it harder?
Do students think that the appearance of these occupations might have affected the development of writing? How?

Activity 4. Thinking About Writing

The above video is an excerpt from the film The Cyrus Cylinder and provides an overview of the origins of cuneiform.

In addition to the historical basis for these activities, this lesson is also about the nature of written language, how it evolves and how it serves civilization.

Ask the students the purposes of writing in the world today. You may wish to have them discuss questions such as:

Where is writing used as the primary communication device?
What information does it convey?
When is it used in addition to other forms of communication-like speaking?
For what do they use written forms of communication?

Next, ask them to imagine that in an instant all knowledge of alphabetic writing disappeared. Only the drawing of simple pictures remained as the means of written communication. Have the class brainstorm: What would be some of the most essential things for which you would need signs? Which objects, concepts and ideas are the ones you would make sure were standardized and learned right away?

Review the list of essential signs that the class has compiled. Have students create a few of them and draw them on the board. See if a few volunteers can use these “standardized” signs to put together a message someone else in the class will actually understand. Discuss examples of messages relatively easy to communicate with pictographs and others that would be more difficult. Using the signs you’ve made up today, and assuming you had thousands more like them, could you write:

Your name? (Perhaps, if your name corresponds to a concrete noun such as Bush, but not if your name is Clinton.
Verbs like: walk, run, fly?
Adjectives like: delicious, lovely, awesome?
The words: “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
A Man and a Woman
Through the Wire
You Don’t Know My Name

Ask students to discuss the following questions:

What does picture writing do well? Students may note that pictographs can represent nouns, small numbers, and some prepositions—“Two men on horseback.”
What advantages does picture writing have? Students may note that even those without specialized knowledge could potentially understand it.
What are its weaknesses? Students should note that pictographic images have a limited ability to communicate such things as abstractions, sounds and certain parts of speech.
Can a pictograph convey what the word it is depicting sounds like?

Writing in ancient Mesopotamia arose from necessity—specifically, the need to keep records. Gradually, civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley became more urbanized. Eventually, a number of complex systems developed: political, military, religious, legal, and commercial. Writing developed as well, becoming essential to those systems.

Did writing enable those complex systems to arise or did complex systems create the need for a more sophisticated system of writing? Ask students to recall a time they started to do a task and then realized at some point that they should have been writing things down? For example, they might imagine organizing a collection of trading cards by writing down categories. Did writing change the way they approached the task? For example, they might think of deciding to make lists of the cards by category. They could do the task without writing, but writing would better enable them to do it—now the cards are organized by category and there’s a list to check against to identify lost cards. Ask students to think about the following questions as they track the evolution of civilization and writing in ancient Mesopotamia:

What kinds of tasks can be accomplished without writing?
What kinds of tasks cannot be accomplished without writing?
Could a country be ruled, an army trained, a religion organized, laws maintained, buildings built, products marketed, crops raised and sold without writing?
How does writing enhance the ability to do those things?

Activity 5. Barley and the Story of Writing

In this activity students will be introduced to the world’s first writing system—cuneiform—as they work through the British Museum's Mesopotamia site interactive online activity The Story of Writing , available through the EDSITEment resource The Oriental Institute: The University of Chicago .

Introduce the activity by asking students to think about our word “barley.” How many students know what barley is? How is it used? What does it look like in its natural state? You may wish to sketch barley on the board, or show a photograph of barley, such as this photograph .

Barley was a very important crop in ancient Mesopotamia. A pictograph, a pictorial representation of barley—presumably like the one you’ve drawn on the board -- is one of the signs we find on the oldest examples of writing from the region. The first Mesopotamian written representation of barley was a picture. Ask students to think about and discuss the following questions:

What’s the relationship between the way our word “barley” looks and barley itself?
What are the elements of our word for barley -- how do we know that the symbols which make up the word represent the grain?

Students should come to the idea that in the written word “barley” it is the phonetic representations of the sounds of the word as we say it that connect the written word to the concept. Barley in Mesopotamia was called “she.”

Next, navigate with the class, or have students navigate on their own, through The Story of Writing website. Each page contains information on the history and development of the cuneiform character for the word "barley" over time. Students should complete the quiz Treasure Hunt: Bowling for Barley .

When students have completed the answers to the treasure hunt have the class discuss the answers to each of the questions, which are available in the teacher’s rubric . Have students answer the following questions in class discussion. For larger classes you may wish to divide the class into small groups and have each group work on answering one of the following questions, which they should share with the rest of the class.

How did writing evolve in ancient Mesopotamia? Students should note here the progression from representational picture, to symbol, to phonetic representation.
Why do the students think that the ancient Mesopotamians decided to change the writing system from just pictures (pictographs) to the cuneiform shapes? Students might think some of the following questions in order to help them understand the process: Did the change allow the ancient Mesopotamians to include a greater or a lesser number of ideas and objects in their writing? Did the shift towards cuneiform allow scribes to write more quickly?
How did the uses of writing expand over time? Remind students that the earliest written records were made to document buying and selling things like barley or domestic animals. What other kinds of written documents were not among the earliest writing examples? Students should think about the shift from the recording of simple economic transactions to personal letters and stories. What kinds of documents would have been developed later?
How did the change from pictures (direct representation) to cuneiform (abstract representation) affect who could use the system? Students should ponder the idea that an abstract writing system would require learning the system of signs. They should think about our own writing system -- were they able to understand it before someone taught them how to read and write? Once the writing system had changed to cuneiform, who might have learned how to read and write?
Who do you think would want the have a record of the buying and selling of barley? You may wish to remind students that these records were similar to receipts. Why do people make and keep receipts? This may help them to think about why people wanted to keep track of the buying and selling of barley.

Activity 6. Learning from Artifacts

In this activity students will be challenged to make hypotheses about civilization in ancient Mesopotamia. It will be helpful for students to return to the timelines they created in the second activity as a reference point while completing this exercise.

To help them understand the task they will be completing in this activity, begin by asking students to look at one contemporary object on which writing is found, such as a penny. They should imagine they are from the distant future. They know the English language, but they know little else about America in the 21st century. What hypotheses can they make from a penny? The members of this unknown civilization

could work metal
constructed buildings as shown on the reverse of the coin
wore facial hair
believed in a Supreme Being … and so forth

Cuneiform writing was understood before we knew much about civilization in Ancient Mesopotamia. How did that happen? In what is now Iran, there is an inscription carved high on a rock face with the same message in three different languages. One is in Persian (the language that is still used in Iran today) and another is Assyrian cuneiform from Mesopotamia. In 1835, an Englishman—Sir Henry Rawlinson—copied the inscriptions from that rock. Once he had translated the Persian, he was able to use the Persian as a key to decipher the cuneiform. As a result, people were able, for the first time, to read the writing on clay tablets found in the vicinity of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Ask students to think about the previous lesson in which they learned about how the use of writing might have evolved in Mesopotamia. The first writing recorded agricultural transactions. What kinds of thoughts, ideas, actions, or things were easiest to put into pictures? What kinds of things did they believe were the most necessary to keep a record of? After thinking about both of these questions ask students to try to imagine why it is that agricultural transactions—the buying and selling of grains or livestock- were among the first written messages on earth.

Why was it so important to have a written record of agricultural transactions?
Why do you think the first records recorded the sale of grains and livestock? Why not something else?
Who would want to have this record?

Next, students should think about what kind of an effect this type of record keeping might have on the rest of society. If there is a record of who bought what kind of grain, how much they bought, and from whom, what else becomes possible?

Who besides the seller and the buyer might want a record of these transactions?

For example, authorities expecting to take a portion of the revenue from taxes might be interested in having a record of the financial transactions which took place. Now instead of trying to guess how much they should tax someone they had a record of how much the transaction was worth. Having a written record of those transactions would make the collection of taxes both more exact and more efficient.

What other records might have been useful for authorities to keep?
Might they want to keep track of marriages? Births? Deaths? Land sales? Why?
How else might rulers be able to use writing to legitimize and extend their power?

You may wish to begin by working through the model below. For beginning students you may wish to design an additional model in order to make the process explicit to your students. Next, divide the class into small groups of two or three and assign each group of students an artifact from ancient Mesopotamia from the list below. Each group will describe its artifact while showing a photograph of the object, such as the images listed below which are available below through the EDSITEment web resources The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Oriental Institute: The University of Chicago . Then, each group will present its hypotheses about what the object can tell us today about life in ancient Mesopotamia. Presentation to the class will proceed in chronological order, and should try to answer the following questions:

What can be learned about civilization in the Tigris-Euphrates River Valley at the time of the artifact’s creation?
What in the artifact itself supports their hypothesis?
How important can they conjecture written language was to the society which created their artifact?

Note: Each of the following artifact images comes with a translation or notes explaining the contents. All of the pages online offer the opportunity to click for additional views of the artifact (usually a larger view) and/or information.

The following is a model for the process of this activity with the following artifact: Cuneiform Tablet (account of small cattle, ca. 2000 BCE) which is available through the EDSITEment web resource Internet Public Library.

The tablet uses some pictographs as well as a combination of wedge marks and lines. By investigating this tablet, we learn that:

Sheep and goats were raised (“One sheep, Ur-Shara,” “one goat”).
There was at least one forest in the area (“individual sheep from the Forest of the Great Canal” and the job of “forester” existed)
At the time the tablet was written, canals had been built (The name “Great Canal” implies the existence of at least one lesser canal.)
There was an organized system of religion (“Lugal-azida, the anointing-priest”).
Fleece was taken from sheep and presumably used (“fleece plucked”).
Careful records of livestock were made (“Total: 9 sheep”).
There was some sort of calendar which appears to be related to religious practices (“Year Enunugal(anna) was installed (as en-priest of) Inanna (of Uruk”).

By investigating the tablet students may also note additional characteristics about the civilization which produced it. For example, the presence of an established calendar indicates the existence of a fairly sophisticated number system and understanding of astronomy. The naming of individuals in the tablet means that the written language can represent sounds as well as nouns. There are no verbs in the tablet, though the word “plucked,” used here as an adjective, is close.

You may wish to distribute to each group this graphic organizer for writing down the information they gather.

Group presentations should be conducted as if this were a convention of archaeologists trying to piece together a portrait of the evolution of life and writing in ancient Mesopotamia by combining the work of all the groups. Assign one artifact to from the following list to each group:

Administrative tablet with cylinder seal impression of a male figure, hunting dogs, and boars (3100-2900 BCE) from Metropolitan Museum of Art
Stele of Ushumgal (2900-2700 BCE) (a land transaction) from Metropolitan Museum of Art
Cuneiform Receipt for Cattle (ca. 2000 BCE) from Science Museum of Minnesota through the Internet Public Library
Cuneiform Voucher for Rations at a Way Station (ca. 2000 BCE) from Science Museum of Minnesota through the Internet Public Library
Record of Delivery and Expenditure of Cattle (ca. 2000 BCE) from Science Museum of Minnesota through the Internet Public Library
Inscribed Cone (ca. 1800 BCE) from Science Museum of Minnesota through the Internet Public Library
Image of Tablet with Babylonian Flood Myth (ca. 1740 BCE) from Metropolitan Museum of Art
Clay Tablet and Envelope (ca. 1450 BCE) from The Oriental Institute: The University of Chicago (the outcome of litigation between two men)

When each group has completed their investigation of the artifact, gathered their evidence, compiled, and presented their hypotheses, have the class discuss and debate the following questions:

What picture of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia arises from the combined hypotheses of the groups?
Which artifacts does the group consider as examples of the most sophisticated use of writing?
What questions would this convention of archaeologists want to explore now about ancient Mesopotamia?

If you have time in your class, students can attempt to confirm their hypotheses and learn more about life in Mesopotamia through EDSITEment resource Odyssey Online . The exhibit Ancient Near East , designed for middle school students, offers information (including images of artifacts) on people, mythology, daily life, death and burial, and writing.

Using what they’ve learned about the symbols and their evolution, the students should be able to place the following artifacts in the chronological order of their creation. Here they are in chronological order. Present them to the students in random order.

Administrative Tablet (3100-2900 BCE) from EDSITEment resource Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Note barley pictograph.)
Record of Field to be Harvested (c. 2000 BCE) available through the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library. (Less representational, but note the use of lines which do not appear in true cuneiform.)
Promissory Note for Barley (554 BCE) available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library. (All cuneiform wedges.)

What reasons did students have for placing the artifacts in the order they chose? Have students write an explanation for why they placed the examples in the order they chose.

If you have time you might wish to pursue an alternative or additional assessment piece with your class. Each student should compose a brief essay of no more than one page explaining how writing was important to the development of civilization in ancient Mesopotamia. How would writing have been useful for record keeping, legal matters, passing on history and stories to future generations and other activities represented in the artifacts students analyzed? Why would picture writing be difficult to use for some of these purposes?

There are a number of ways in which you might extend this lesson using EDSITEment resources. If you have time you might try some of the following activities:

Students can explore the intersection of the sciences and ancient history in the Humanities magazine article " Using Chemistry to Learn the Provenance of Clay Tablets ," which describes how X-ray fluorescence devices and machine-learning algorithms provide archaeological information about an object without causing any damage to it.
This lesson has centered on cuneiform writing and its evolution. Mathematics also flourished and developed in ancient Mesopotamia. For example, ancient Mesopotamia is the place where the concept of value and the zero were invented. Students can learn more about cuneiform numerals and the Babylonian system of Base 60 with the online exhibit Sumerian and Babylonian Numerals from The School of Computing and IT, both links from the EDSITEment resource The Oriental Institute: The University of Chicago.
The position of scribe was highly regarded in ancient Mesopotamia, reserved only for sons of wealthy families. Interested students can Explore the World of a Scribe , also available through the EDSITEment web resource The Oriental Institute: The University of Chicago.
Budding archeologists can test their skill online using the Puzzle Challenge: Putting Artifacts Back Together , also available through the EDSITEment web resource The Oriental Institute: The University of Chicago.

Recommended Websites

Cuneiform Receipt for Cattle (c. 2000 BCE)
Cuneiform Tablet (c. 2000 BCE)
Cuneiform Voucher for Rations at a Way Station (c. 2000 BCE)
Inscribed Cone (c. 1800 BCE)
Introduction to the Cuneiform Collection
Promissory Note for Barley 554 BCE
Record of Delivery and Expenditure of Cattle (c. 2000 BCE)
Record of Field to be Harvested
Administrative Tablet (3100-2900 BCE)
Administrative Tablet with Notes
Cuneiform Prism with the Sumerian King List , (c. 1740 BCE)
Key Events, 2000-1000 BCE
Key Events, 8000-2000 BCE
Stele of Ushumgal (2900-2700 BCE)
Timeline of Art History
Ancient Near East
Clay Tablet and Envelope (c. 1400 BCE)
Map of Ancient Mesopotamia
The Invention of Writing
Cuneiform Chart
Explore the World of a Scribe
Mesopotamian Geography: Explore
Mesopotamia: Geography Introduction
Mesopotamia Timelines
Puzzle Challenge: Putting Artifacts Back Together
The Story of Writing
Sumerian and Babylonian Numerals (Base 60)

Materials & Media

The cuneiform writing system: worksheet 1 - timeline, the cuneiform writing system: worksheet 2 - timeline labels, the cuneiform writing system: worksheet 3 - mesopotamian job list, the cuneiform writing system: worksheet 4 - treasure hunt: bowling for barley, the cuneiform writing system: worksheet 5 - teacher's rubric, the cuneiform writing system: worksheet 6 - graphic organizer, related on edsitement, the birth of cuneiform writing, edsitement’s persian wars resource pages, hammurabi's code: what does it tell us about old babylonia, hammurabi's code.

Sumerian Tablets: A Deeper Understanding of the Oldest Known Written Language

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Ancient languages are captivating despite the fact that studying them or learning about them is a long, complex process. Of course, many students just get briefly acquainted with this subject and delegate all their papers on these topics to professional essay writing services and hire experienced writers to do my paper for them. Some, however, do work on all their assignments by themselves and truly enjoy it. So if you are one of them, keep reading to learn even more interesting facts.

The Sumerian language was developed in ancient Mesopotamia and is the oldest known written language. This language was written in a script known as cuneiform, which was later adapted by other languages that emerged in Mesopotamia and its neighboring regions, including Akkadian, Elamite, and Hittite.

In the modern world, paper (and various electronic devices) is the medium on which writing is made. The Sumerians, however, did not invent paper and used a different medium for their cuneiform script. Documents and text were inscribed by the Sumerians on clay tablets, which has the advantage of greater durability than paper. One of the consequences of this is that a large number of Sumerian clay tablets have survived over the millennia and have been unearthed by archaeologists. Once the Sumerian language was deciphered , much information could be obtained from these tablets.

Cuneiform script of the Sumerian tablet. ( Juan Aunión / Adobe )

The Sumerian language is considered to be a language isolate, which means that there is currently no known language related to it. This language emerged in the Sumerian civilization , which was based in southern Mesopotamia (modern day southern Iraq ), and was first attested around 3100 BC. In the millennium that followed, the Sumerian civilization flourished and with it their language.

During the 24 th century BC, northern and southern Mesopotamia were unified under the Akkadians, who created the world’s first empire. The Akkadian language gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language. Nevertheless, the Sumerian language continued as a written language for a much longer period of time, though its usage was greatly diminished. Written Akkadian ceased to be used around the beginning of the Christian period and Sumerian went extinct shortly before this happened.

Sumerian inscription, 6+6 columns, 120 compartments of archaic monumental cuneiform script. ( पाटलिपुत्र / Public Domain )

What Script Is On the Sumerian Tablets?

The Sumerian script is known as cuneiform , which, incidentally, is a relatively modern term originating from the early 18 th century. This word is derived from Latin and Middle French roots and means ‘wedge-shaped’. This is an apt description of the script, as it is easily recognized thanks to its wedge-shaped characters.

Cuneiform is believed to have originated around 8000 BC and was developed for economic purposes. Initially, this script took the form of pictograms , which were used to graphically represent trade goods and livestock. Small clay tokens representing these goods were made and placed in sealed clay envelopes. In order to show the contents of the envelope, a token would be pressed onto the clay on its exterior.

Reading the So-Called Sumerian Seals Relating to Gods from Outer Space
Tamils and Sumerians Among the FIRST to Reach Australia and Antarctica? PART I
Representation of Sumerian Elites Detected in the Crespi Gold Tablets

Sumerian clay accounting tokens, replaced by Sumerian tablets. (Jastrow / CC BY-SA 2.5 )

As time went by, the Sumerians realized that they could replace the tokens by writing into the clay themselves, which would have been much easier. Over time, the symbols were stylized, simplifying the writing process and resulting in the birth of cuneiform. This connection between the clay tokens and the cuneiform script was made in the 1970s by Denise Schmandt-Besserat, a French archaeologist.

Apart from the type of trade goods, the Sumerian merchants were also interested in keeping track of their quantity and this led to the development of the numeral system in cuneiform. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, the Sumerians used clay tokens to represent the type of trade goods. These tokens represented the number of objects as well.

For instance, if 10 loaves of bread were to be recorded, 10 clay tokens of this item would be made. In order to verify that the quantity of the actual objects matched that of the tokens, one need only to count the objects and the tokens.

This technique is known as correspondence counting and was in use long before the emergence of the Sumerian civilization , though other sorts of counters, such as tally markers, were used instead. This technique was simple, and it worked, though it was cumbersome especially if a merchant had to deal with a large quantity of goods. After the development of the cuneiform script, the clay tokens were replaced with inscriptions on clay tablets, which made recording easier.

Nevertheless, having to draw the symbol for a loaf of bread 10 times to represent that amount was still not very efficient. Therefore, the Sumerians developed a numerical system, whereby quantities of goods were represented by abstract symbols, which would have further simplified the recording process.

Sumerian cuneiform alphabet found on Sumerian tablets. ( drutska / Adobe)

The cuneiform script was inscribed on a variety of material, including stone, metal, and wood. The medium of choice for the Sumerians (as well as other civilizations that used this script), however, was the clay tablet. Using a stylus (commonly made of reed), a scribe would inscribe the desired characters onto a block of soft clay, which would then be sun-dried.

These tablets were fragile and could be recycled by soaking them in water and forming new tablets. Other tablets were fired in kilns (or unintentionally when a building burnt down), which made them hard and durable, thus allowing them to survive in the archaeological record, and to be discovered by archaeologists.

Where Were Sumerian Tablets Discovered?

At some sites, small amounts of clay tablets were found, whereas at others, vast repositories of this material have been unearthed. As previously mentioned, cuneiform and clay tablets were used not only by the Sumerians, but by other civilizations in Mesopotamia and the neighboring regions as well. Therefore, it follows that some of these sites contain clay tablets not of the Sumerian language, but of other languages .

In fact, considering that the Akkadian language became the lingua franca of the region following the ascent of the Akkadian Empire, there are several sites where deposits of Akkadian clay tablets have been discovered. These sites include the Library of Ashurbanipal (about 30000 clay tablets), Assur (over 16000 clay tablets), and Mari (around 25000 clay tablets).

Sites where a significant number of Sumerian clay tablets were found include Drehem and Ebla. The former is situated about 10 kilometers (3 miles) to the south of the Sumerian city of Nippur and has yielded more than 15,000 clay tablets. Whereas Ebla is located in Syria and its clay tablets, in both Sumerian and Eblaite, number in the thousands. In order to make sense of the contents of these clay tablets, it would be necessary for the Sumerian language to first be deciphered.

Ruins of Ebla, Syria, where Sumerian tablets were discovered . ( siempreverde22 / Abode)

Fortunately, by the time the clay tablets were being unearthed from the two sites, i.e. the 20 th century, the Sumerian language had already been deciphered. The decipherment of cuneiform began during the early part of the 19 th century, when scholars began to tackle the monumental inscriptions left behind by the Achaemenid Empire.

The language used by this empire was Old Persian, which was written using a variance of the cuneiform script (known as Old Persian cuneiform). Once this script was deciphered, scholars realized that the Achaemenid inscriptions were in fact composed of three languages and that they all spoke of the same thing. Therefore, once Old Persian was deciphered the other two scripts could be studied as well.

It was determined that the two other languages were Elamite and Akkadian. The decipherment of the latter was an important development, as it provided a prototype for the interpretation of other languages written in cuneiform. Initially, scholars believed that Sumerian was a special way of noting Akkadian and it was only during the 20 th century that they realized their mistake and recognized Sumerian as a separate language altogether. As Sumerian is a language isolate, its structure is unrelated to any other known language, making its translation a challenge for scholars.

Nevertheless, Sumerian continued to be used by the Babylonian priesthood even after its demise as a living language. As a result, grammatical lists and vocabularies were compiled, while many literal translations of many religious texts into Babylonian were made. The text that survive provide scholars today with ample material to work with.

As mentioned earlier, the cuneiform script developed as a means to keep track of the flow of goods. This is seen, for instance, in the clay tablets from Drehem, on which such statements as “Urazagnuuna received from Nirnbati 21 sheep, 2 lambs, 36 kids, which have passed inspection.” and “The chief of the cattle market Abbagagga delivers 11 oxen, 5 sheep, 3 lambs, 10 rams, 2 kids to lntaia” are found.

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This Sumerian tablet records the transfer of a piece of land. (Kaldari / CC BY-SA 3.0 )

Apart from the type of transactions, the tablets also provide the date during which they were made, and scholars were able to shed some light on the Sumerian calendar . The use of the cuneiform script for accounting is also evident in Ebla, as expenses and acquisitions of the royal palace form the subject matter of the majority of tablets from the site.

Although the cuneiform script was initially developed for economic purposes, the Sumerians soon used it for other purposes as well. This is perhaps best reflected in the increasing complexity of the script over the course of time. When the cuneiform script was fully developed, it was not only able to represent objects and numbers, but a variety of linguistic elements as well.

While some characters are logograms , which represent words on their own, others are phonograms, which represent spoken syllables. There were also characters that functioned as determinatives, which indicates the category of the word. This was a complicated writing system, and scholars have identified about 1000 different characters in the older texts and 400 in the newer ones.

Sumerian cuneiform numbers found on Sumerian tablets. ( drutska / Adobe)

What Famous Works Are Found on Sumerian Tablets?

One well-known text recorded on Sumerian clay tablets is the Epic of Gilgamesh , considered to be the oldest work of literature in the world. The standard version of this epic was written in Akkadian , and was discovered by Hormuzd Rassam, a Turkish Assyriologist, in the Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh during the middle of the 19 th century. Despite the fact that the text is incomplete, it is the fullest extant text of the epic that we have at present.

A Sumerian version of the epic also exists, though it is much less famous than its Akkadian counterpart. Moreover, it is much less complete as well, consisting of five poems, namely ‘Gilgamesh and Huwawa’, ‘Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven’, ‘Gilgamesh and Agga of Kish’, ‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld’, and ‘The Death of Gilgamesh’. It has been speculated that these poems circulated independently, as opposed to unified text like the one discovered at Nineveh.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is indicative of the situation between the Akkadian and Sumerian languages. Although the Sumerians invented the cuneiform and began writing on clay tablets, the records they left behind are somewhat overshadowed by those of the Akkadians. As some may already be aware, the Akkadians rose to power under Sargon of Akkad during the 24 th century BC and established the world’s first empire. From this position of dominance, the Akkadian language became a lingua franca and was used not only within the empire, but also beyond its borders. More importantly, the Akkadian gradually came to replace Sumerian as a language of communication.

The Sumerian tablet of the Epic of Gilgamesh. (BabelStone / Public Domain )

After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, the Sumerian civilization experienced a renaissance under the Third Dynasty of Ur , though this was only for a short period of time. At the end of this Sumerian revival, Mesopotamia came under the control of the First Babylonian Empire. Like the Sumerians, the new rulers used the cuneiform script and wrote on clay tablets.

The Babylonian language, however, was not related to Sumerian but was a variant of Akkadian. The Assyrian language too is a variant of Akkadian. One of the consequences of the proliferation of Akkadian is that the quantity of clay tablets written in this language (or one of its variants) outnumbers those written in Sumerian.

Still, the clay tablets left behind by the Sumerians provide an invaluable source of information regarding this ancient civilization. From these tablets, scholars have learned not only about the workings of the Sumerian language, but also about the culture and way of life of this ancient civilization. As an example, as religious texts and myths were recorded on clay tablets we have today an understanding of the Sumerian belief system.

There are numerous clay tablets on which stories of the gods are recorded, for instance, the Sumerian Creation Myth (referred to as the Eridu Genesis by Thorkild Jacobsen) and Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld . While the former deals with the Sumerian belief of how the world was created, the latter reveals their beliefs about death and the Underworld.

There also exists what is known as the Sumerian King List , which is an intriguing stone tablet listing ancient kings of Sumer, their supposed length of reign and location of their kingdoms. It includes prehistoric rulers and claims reigns lasting thousands of years, including 8 kings which ruled for a total of 241,200 years . Most scholars dismiss these reigns as fictional inserts, with the first listed ruler whose historicity has been archaeologically verified being Enmebaragesi of Kish, around 2600 BC. These later dynastical rulers are thus seen as more plausible, although it is noted that not all known dynasties are listed.

Lastly, it may be pointed out that although Sumerian clay tablets have been found in the thousands, not all of them have been translated yet. As scholars continue to translate these tablets, more light may be shed on the Sumerians and would allow us to paint a more complete picture of this ancient civilization.

Top image: Sumerian tablets, Sumerian script is known as cuneiform. Source: Pixabay / CC0

By Wu Mingren

Ager, S. 2019. Sumerian. [Online] Available at: https://www.omniglot.com/writing/sumerian.htm Al-Mutawalli, N. & Sallaberger, W. 2017. The Cuneiform Documents from the Iraqi Excavation at Drehem . Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie . Volume 107, pp. 151-217. Faculty of Oriental Studies. 2016. The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. University of Oxford. [Online] Available at: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/ Gelb, I. 2019. Sumerian Language. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sumerian-language Harford, T. 2017. How the world's first accountants counted on cuneiform. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-39870485 Langdon, S. 1911. Tablets from the Archives of Drehem. Paris: Librairie Paul Geuthner. Puhvel, J. 2019. Cuneiform. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/cuneiform The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2017. Epic of Gilgamesh. [Online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Epic-of-Gilgamesh The Editors. 2016. The World's Oldest Writing. [Online] Available at: https://www.archaeology.org/issues/213-1605/features/4326-cuneiform-the-world-s-oldest-writing Viganò, L. & Pardee, D. 1984. Literary Sources for the History of Palestine and Syria: The Ebla Tablets. The Biblical Archaeologist, 47(1), pp. 6-16.

Wu Mingren (‘Dhwty’) has a Bachelor of Arts in Ancient History and Archaeology. Although his primary interest is in the ancient civilizations of the Near East, he is also interested in other geographical regions, as well as other time periods.... Read More

Collection Cuneiform Tablets: From the Reign of Gudea of Lagash to Shalmanassar III

Featured content, about this collection.

Cuneiform Tablets: From the Reign of Gudea of Lagash to Shalmanassar III presents clay tablets, cones, and brick fragments inscribed using the ancient writing system known as cuneiform from the Library of Congress’ collections. The Sumerians invented this writing system, which involves the use of a wedge-shaped reed stylus to make impressions in clay. Cuneiform Tablets: From the Reign of Gudea of Lagash to Shalmanassar III includes school tablets, accounting records, and commemorative inscriptions. This online presentation features 38 cuneiform tablets, presented with supplementary materials. The 38 tablets are dated from the reign of Gudea of Lagash (2144-2124 B.C.) to Shalmanassar III (858-824 B.C.) during the New Assyrian Empire (884-612 B.C.).

The collection includes 38 items in a variety of materials–mostly clay tablets, but also several brick fragments and two clay cones. Cuneiform, an ancient writing system, involves the use of a reed to make impressions in clay.

Cuneiform was developed by the Sumerians, who thrived during the third millennium B.C. Sumerians influenced culture and development beyond their original borders in Mesopotamia (present-day southern Iraq), site of the world’s earliest civilization. Originally, cuneiform signs were pictograms, later, it also became syllabic. This duality led to ambiguities in interpretation.

The materials used in cuneiform—clay and reeds—were both readily available. Reeds were used as writing implements. The tip of a reed stylus was impressed into a wet clay surface to draw the strokes of the sign—thus acquiring a “wedge-shaped” appearance. The clay [or brick] was then either baked in a kiln or dried by the sun. The word cuneiform is derived from Latin— cuneus for wedge and forma , meaning shape.

The Library of Congress acquired its collection of cuneiform materials in 1929 from Kirkor Minassian, an art dealer. These materials were part of his collection of Islamic bookbindings, manuscripts, textiles, and ceramic and metal objects illustrating the history of the development of writing and book arts in the Middle East.

The cuneiform tablets in this online presentation served various purposes. Twenty-two tablets contain inscriptions pertaining primarily to the receipt of and payment for goods and services–accounting records, in effect. Twelve tablets are school exercise tablets, used by scribes learning the cuneiform writing system. These latter tablets were originally unfired, as they were meant to be erased and reused. Temple accounting records, on the other hand, were fired and stored for future reference. The last group of materials in this collection is votive and commemorative inscriptions. The tablets in this grouping include a cone votive inscription, a plaque votive inscription, and a fragment of a brick commemorative inscription. The votive cone inscription, that is, the inscribed cone-shaped clay "nail" was intended for placement in the walls of a temple.

The oldest tablets date from the reign of Gudea of Lagash (2144-2124 B.C.). Other tablets appear to belong to the Ur III period, late 3rd millennium to early 2nd millennium B.C., including some tablets inscribed with dates ranging from 2063 to 2031 B.C.

The two brick fragments belong to the Shalmanassar III period (858-824 B.C.) during the New Assyrian Empire (884-612 B.C.). These two fragments, which may or may not be parts of the same brick, together measure 15 ½ cm. high by 29 cm. wide. The practice of dating bricks with a ruler’s name began around 2250 B.C. and continues to this day in some areas of the Middle East.

The shape of the clay tablets varies. Most of the clay tablets are square or rectangular and range in size from 2 x 2 cm. to 18 x 9 cm. The round tablets are from 7 cm. to 8 ½ cm. in diameter. All of the school exercise tablets in this collection are round. Scribes distinguished these tablets from an official record, which were almost always square or rectangular. Coloration of the clay materials varies from light to dark.

Many of the tablets are inscribed on both front and back; two also are inscribed on the side. The styles of inscription vary with the content or function of the tablet. A few tablets have relief impressions of figures of deities and royal persons made by cylinder seals. Seals were often affixed to transactions that required authorization—for example on records, envelopes, and storerooms.

School Exercise Tablets

The student tablets are recognizable by their roundness, deliberately made so by scribes in order not to confuse them with other tablets, which were almost always square or rectangular. The Library has twelve such tablets; nine are inscribed on both sides. All student tablets were unfired as the intention was to reuse the same tablet. The teacher in the scribal school ( edubba ) typically inscribed the lesson, three words or a short sentence, on one side of the tablet, and the student copied and recopied it onto the other side until memorized correctly.

Votive and Commemorative Inscription Tablets

This collection contains two votive (religious) tablets and one commemorative inscription tablet. The two votive inscription tablets are from the period of Gudea of Lagash (2144-2124 B.C.). One tablet is a plaque, the other a cone inscription. Both tablets use very different images but represent the same original text, commemorating the dedication of a temple by Gudea. The third tablet is an inscribed brick commemorating a building, dated possibly to the time of Shalmanassar III (858-824 B.C.).

Accounting Tablets

There are various categories of accounting tablets depending on the purpose of the transaction described by the tablet. These transactions include, for example, “ mu-túm ” (delivery), “ šu-ba-ti ” (received from), “ ì--dab ” (royal delivery), and “ šu-bi-ta ” and “ zi-ga-àm ” (expeditures). Item No. 32 is an example of a balanced account for a purchase of barley using the verb “ šu-bi-ta. ” Item No.13 is an example of a “ zi-ga- àm , ”--payments for supervisors ( ugula ) of day laborers ( guruš-ú́4 1-šè ). The average salary for a day laborer during the time of Ur III was 60 sila of barley per month, a sila being slightly less than one quart. The collection also contains a “ satukku ” (offering list), naming the 12 deities to which barley was given ( item 12 ).

Items Presented

The items themselves have been digitally photographed from various angles to show the surfaces where there is cuneiform writing. This presentation also includes images of Professor Marcel Sigrist’s drawing sheets for each three-dimensional item. All sides of an item are presented on one sheet, with a single digital image for each object. Every drawing sheet is annotated to indicate its relationship to the original item, that is, obverse and reverse. These drawings were necessary since, for example, shadows may obscure accuracy in reading the language from a two-dimensional photograph.

There also are transliteration sheets for most of the items. The characters were transliterated into Latin script with special diacritic marks onto 8 ½ x 11-inch regular sheets of white paper. These transliterations are intended to aid in the pronunciation of the characters. Due to damage and illegibility in some of the original cuneiform tablets, transliterations for items number 20, 22, 36, and 38 are not available.

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Photo: UHH/Denstorf

The decipherment of cuneiform writing: A complex matter!

Between the time of the final abandonment of cuneiform script in the first century BCE and the exploration of the Near East by Western travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ce, the history of Mesopotamia was completely forgotten — or almost completely forgotten. All that remained in the collective memory were a few places mentioned in the Bible and in the works of the Greek historians: the Tower of Babel, Kalhu, Nineveh, the so-called Hanging Gardens of Babylon and a few imaginary figures, inspired by renowned Assyrians and Babylonians, such as Semiramis and Sardanapalus.

In 1786, the deposit of the Caillou Michaux in the Cabinet des Médailles in the Bibliothèque Nationale marked the arrival of the first object bearing an inscription in cuneiform text in Europe. The interpretations proposed for the text engraved on the object were completely outlandish. The process used for the decipherment of these entirely unknown writings is long and complex. In fact, in contrast to Egyptian hieroglyphics and Linear B, which record single tongues, cuneiform was used to record about a dozen different languages.

Just like Jean-François Champollion, the scholars of the nineteenth century worked on trilingual texts. But if the Rosetta Stone bears three languages and three different types of script, including Greek, the three languages inscribed on the bas-reliefs and clay tablets all use cuneiform characters. The first scholars who attempted to understand the way in which this writing system worked employed the technique known as ‘decipherment’, which is to say the decryption of the written (or ‘encoded’) message.

During a journey he made to Iran in 1763, Carsten Niebuhr (1733–1815), the Danish mathematician, counted the number of signs employed in each version of the trilingual inscriptions at Persepolis. He identified three different cuneiform writing systems which are read from left to right, and concluded that the most simple system uses an alphabet composed of 40 signs. Georg Friedrich Grotefend (1775–1853), a young classical philologist, concerned himself with this simplest of systems. He looked for repeating sequences, and tried to identify proper nouns. He examined royal inscriptions dating from the Achaemenid era which necessarily included the names of one or more Persian kings known through the texts written by Greeks of the classical period. He deduced that the transcribed language was an ancient form of Persian, an Indo-European language known through the ancient and sacred Zend-avesta. Grotefend isolated some repeating sequences and interpreted them as meaning ‘King, son of […] King, King of Kings’; he also recognised the names of Darius and Xerxes. In addition, in the year 1802 he identified a quarter of the signs in the Old Persian cuneiform alphabet .

The work of deciphering this alphabet was completed 45 years later by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson (1810–1895), an officer of the British East India Company who, meeting the considerable challenge, managed to copy down the immense trilingual inscription of Darius I at Behistun. The Old Persian alphabet, used between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE, is the simplest and most recent cuneiform writing system.

Once the decipherment of Old Persian had been achieved, the scholars found themselves in a situation similar to that Champollion had found himself in; from this point on they knew the content of the trilingual cuneiform texts of Persepolis. The scholars supposed that one of the two other languages was Semitic, and that the majority of the signs represented syllables; this explained their substantial number. The inscriptions and cuneiform tablets written in this script, subsequently called Akkadian (derived from the name of the Akkad region) grew and grew, thanks to the excavations carried out by some British and French diplomats in the north of Iraq, which began in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Four scholars, all of them excellent philologists, worked simultaneously on the decipherment of this Semitic language. At the same time both colleagues and rivals, they continually exchanged views. Henry Rawlinson, having succeeded in deciphering Old Persian, identified the proper nouns in the Akkadian version inscribed on the rockface at Behistun, and went on to publish a book containing the latter in 1851. Jules Oppert (1825–1905), a German Jewish scholar who had settled in France, went to the British Museum to study the tablets originating from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, and participated in an expedition to Mesopotamia between 1852 and 1854. Upon his return, he wrote a report showing that he had understood the principles underlying Akkadian notation and the way in which the language worked.

Henry William Fox Talbot (1800–1877) was just as interested in botany and mathematics as in philology and archaeology. He was also an inventor: his calotype (1841) made it possible to obtain multiple positive photographic images from a single paper negative. To put his invention to good use, he went to the British Museum and photographed the bas-reliefs from Nineveh. This led him back to his passion for philology; he exchanged views with other scholars of the period, including Edward Hincks (1792–1866). The vicar of a small town in Ireland, Hincks, in contrast to his colleagues, scarcely moved any distance from his home. After doing some noteworthy work on hieroglyphics, he turned his attention to the decipherment of the Behistun inscription, discerned the name of the King of Judea on the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, and identified the god of Assyria on the reliefs at Kalhu.

In 1857, on the request of Henry Fox Talbot, the Royal Asiatic Society decided to send to its scholars copies of an inscription of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I (1113–1074), which had just been unearthed. Their translations into English were delivered in sealed envelopes and were opened on 25 May 1857, by a specially assembled commission: largely speaking, the translations coincided, so that date marks the moment when Akkadian written in cuneiform script was successfully deciphered. The use of Akkadian is attested from the middle of the third millennium BCE up until the abandonment of cuneiform script. Starting from the beginning of the second millennium BCE, Babylonian split into two main dialects, used in the North and in the South. The third language written using a cuneiform syllabary in the inscriptions of Persepolis and in the rockface at Behistun is Elamite, a language whose linguistic family has not, as yet, been identified.

Some other languages that used cuneiform script were yet to be discovered. Some bilingual tablets from Nineveh bore a version of Akkadian and a text written in an unknown language. E. Hincks suggested that the writing in cuneiform was not of Semitic origin, whilst J. Oppert imagined that the signs that composed the aforementioned unknown language did not correspond to syllables but instead to words: he named this idiom ‘Sumerian’, based on the title ‘King of Sumer and of Akkad’ adopted by certain Mesopotamian kings. Some tens of thousands of tablets inscribed in Sumerian were unearthed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century in southern Mesopotamia. At the beginning of the twentieth century, François Thureau-Dangin (1872–1944) published some Sumerian royal inscriptions. The decipherment of Sumerian, which continued for the duration of the twentieth century, was partly based on the bilingual lexical lists employed by the scribal apprentices who were required to learn, from the beginning of the second millennium onwards, this dead language.

The decipherment of Hittite, the first Indo-European language written with the aid of the Akkadian cuneiform syllabary, was achieved by the Czech scholar Bedřich Hrozný (1879–1952) in 1915. In 1933, Johannes Friedrich (1893–1972) deciphered Urartian, a language used in the lake Van region between the eleventh and ninth centuries BCE. Eblaite, attested in Syria in the twenty-fourth century was discovered at the eponymous site in 1975. Much work remains to be done in order to reach a perfect understanding of these languages whose direct line of descent is unknown, and which also adopted the cuneiform syllabary, such as the Hurrian written in the north of Syria and Mesopotamia. In addition, much work remains to be done by future generations of Assyriologists so that they might succeed in deciphering the cuneiform tablets unearthed to date, without taking into account those which, alas, are illegally excavated on a daily basis, whose archaeological context is entirely unknown.

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Photo: C. Michel

A seal is an object on which figures are engraved in negative, and whose imprint is affixed to documents or objects to authenticate and seal them inviolably. Seals have existed since ancient times, and in Mesopotamia they were applied to fresh clay to leave their imprint.

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Cuneiform writing, invented by the Sumerians in the second half of the fourth millennium BCE, was used to record a dozen different languages. The archaeological team excavating the site of Boğazköy in Central Anatolia, the ancient Hattusha capital of the Hittites, has just unearthed a cuneiform...

What the Heck is Cuneiform, Anyway?

The writing system is 6,000 years old, but its influence is still felt today

Anne Trubek

Cuneiform made headlines recently with the discovery of 22 new lines from the Epic of Gilgamesh , found on tablet fragments in Iraq. As remarkable as is the discovery of new bits of millennia-old literature is the story of cuneiform itself, a now obscure but once exceedingly influential writing system, the world’s first examples of handwriting.

Cuneiform, was invented some 6,000 years ago in what is now southern Iraq, and it was most often written on iPhone-sized clay tablets a few inches square and an inch high. Deciding to use clay for a writing surface was ingenious: vellum, parchment, papyrus and paper—other writing surfaces people have used in the past—deteriorate easily. But not clay, which has proven to be the most durable, and perhaps most sustainable, writing surface humanity has used.

Cuneiform means "wedge-shaped," a term the Greeks used to describe the look of the signs. It was used to write at least a dozen languages, just as the alphabet that you are reading now is also (for the most part) used in Spanish, German and many other languages. It looks like a series of lines and triangles, as each sign is comprised of marks—triangular, vertical, diagonal, and horizontal—impressed onto wet clay with a stylus, a long thin instrument similar to a pen. Sometimes cuneiform was formed into prisms, larger tablets and cylinders, but mainly it was written on palm-sized pieces of clay. The script is often tiny—almost too small to see with the naked eye, as small the smallest letters on a dime. Why so tiny? That remains one of cuneiform’s biggest mysteries.

Most agree that cuneiform began as proto-writing--like African drumming and Incan quipa – and evolved into the first full-fledged writing system, with signs corresponding to speech. The root of cuneiform lies in tokens, or chits, used by Sumerians to convey information. For example, they would take a stone and declare it a representation for something else. A sheep, say. A bunch of stones might mean a bunch of sheep. These stone tokens would sometimes be placed in a container, and given to someone else as a form of receipt—not that different from what we do today when we hand currency with numbers on it to buy a quart of milk, and the clerk gives us back a piece of paper with numbers on it to confirm the transaction.

By the 4th century B.C., the Sumerians had taken this system to another level of abstraction and efficiency, moving it from proto-writing to writing. They began using clay containers instead of cloth ones, and instead of putting stones inside of them, they stamped the outside of the envelopes that indicated the number and type of tokens inside. One could then "read" the envelope to know what information was being conveyed.

Gradually, Sumerians developed symbols for words. At first these phonemes (one symbol for one thing, instead of letters to make a word) symbolized concrete things; for example, an image of a sheep meant a literal sheep. Then another leap of abstraction was introduced when symbols were developed for intangible ideas, such as God, or women. Cuneiform, in other words, evolved from a way to track and store information into a way to explain the world symbolically.

The marks became more abstract over the centuries . They likely began as pictographic-- sheep symbol for a sheep--but they evolved into signs that look nothing like what they refer to, just as the letters “s-h-e-e-p” have no visual connection to a woolly, four-legged animal. These marks and signs took the form of triangular wedge shapes.

Cuneiform marks became more abstract because it made the system more efficient: they were fewer marks to learn. And for the most part, cuneiform needed to become more complex because society was becoming so as well. The origins of writing lie in the need to keep better records, not, as many might assume or wish, to express oneself, create art, or pray. Most agree cuneiform developed primarily for accounting purposes: while we can’t know about tablets that have been lost, about 75 percent of the cuneiform that has been excavated and translated contains administrative information.

Mundane as this story is concerning why writing was invented—to record sheep sales—the story of how it was later decoded is spectacular. It is somewhat miraculous that we can translate these wedges. For hundreds of years, no one could. Even though cuneiform was used for millennia—and much of it, incised on rocks in Persia, was in plain view for centuries after it ceased to be used--the language was unintelligible for almost 2,000 years. Not until 1837, two years after British army officer Henry Rawlinson copied down inscriptions from the steep cliffs of Behistun could anyone know what the marks said.

Rawlinson’s feat was incredible. He had to climb up cliffs on a very narrow ledge in the middle of an enormous mountain in order to copy down what he saw. And how those marks were made continues to defy logic or explanation: the angle and height of the incisions seem to preclude the possibility of a chiseler on a ladder. Rawlinson at least figured out how to copy the marks, by making paper impressions as he stood, perilously, on the ledge.

Then he took them home, and studied them for years to determine what each line stood for, what each group of symbols meant. Eventually, he decoded the markets that had sat in the open for some 5,000 years, thereby cracking the cuneiform code. (The inscriptions describe the life of Darius the Great, king of the Persian Empire in the 5th century B.C. , as well as descriptions of his victories over rebels during his reign.) As with the Rosetta Stone, on which the same text is written in hieroglyphics, demotic, and Greek, Rawlinson discovered the cliffs of Behistun also contained the same words written three times in three different languages: Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian. Since the other languages had been translated, he could thus translate cuneiform.

Fifteen other languages developed from cuneiform, including Old Persian, Akkadian and Elamite. It was taught as a classical or dead language for generations after it ceased to be a living language. It was taught to those who spoke Aramaic and Assyrian, but who read, copied and recopied Sumerian literary works. By 1600 BC, no Sumerian speakers were alive, but cuneiform was still used for another thousand years. Today, it strikes us a somehow hauntingly familiar: cool, hard, palm-sized tablets onto which receipts, notes, messages and even great works of literature are written and read.

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Cuneiform studies

Cuneiform is one of the earliest forms of writing in human history. It gets its name (“wedge-shaped”) from the wedge-shaped impressions with which its characters are made. Scribes typically wrote by pressing a reed stylus into clay tablets. Cuneiform was used to write many languages in the ancient Near East, including Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, and Hurrian.

The earliest cuneiform tablets we have are based in an economic context: the clay tablets recorded transfers of quantities of raw or processed goods, such as barley for food and beer, for example. Soon all sorts of other types of text began to be written: legal texts, treaties, myths, religious songs, letters and even recipes. Clay tablets survive very well, even without being fired. Hundreds of thousands of documents are preserved in museum collections today. Through them we can learn about the culture, beliefs, economy and history of ancient Near Eastern civilisations from around 3200 BC up until the first century AD.

Film original en Français: Écriture cunéiforme, écrire et compter Film in Deutsch untertitelt: In Keilschrift schreiben und zählen Película con subtítulos en Español: La escritura cuneiforme: escribir y calcular Türkçe altyazılı filmle: Çiviyazısı: yazı ve hesaplama

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Cuneiform Script: The First Writing System of The World
Proto-Cuneiform: Earliest Form of Writing on our Planet
Cuneiform Tablets: One Of The Earliest Systems Of Writing Invented By
What Is Cuneiform;Why This Is First Writing System
Book Minute: Cuneiform Earliest Known Writing System
Sumerian Writing and Cuneiform Facts for Kids (Explained!)

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Cuneiform parallels to the Old Testament #books #cuneiform #history #language #babylonian #astronomy
The Journey of Writing Systems
Ancient City of Uruk #ancientcities #history
Cradle of Civilization: Unearthing the Secrets of Ancient Mesopotamia”#mesopotamia #history #facts
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The Language of Amarna Letters #books #cuneiform #history #language #astronomy #babylonian

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Cuneiform
Cuneiform is a system of writing first developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia c. 3500 BCE. It is considered the most significant among the many cultural contributions of the Sumerians and the greatest among those of the Sumerian city of Uruk, which advanced the writing of cuneiform c. 3200 BCE and allowed for the creation of literature.. The name comes from the Latin word cuneus for ...
Cuneiform
The expansion of cuneiform writing outside Mesopotamia began in the 3rd millennium, when the country of Elam in southwestern Iran was in contact with Mesopotamian culture and adopted the system of writing. The Elamite sideline of cuneiform continued far into the 1st millennium bce, when it presumably provided the Indo-European Persians with the external model for creating a new simplified ...
Cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: cuneus) which form their signs.Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system and was ...
Cuneiform Writing: History, Meaning, Symbols, and Facts
Cuneiform was a writing system invented by the ancient Sumer people of the Mesopotamian region (ancient Middle East). According to historians, this form of writing emerged about 5,000 years ago, making it the world's first-known written language. For over 3,000 years, the cuneiform script remained the dominant written language in the known ...
Cuneiform: The World's Oldest Writing System
Cuneiform, the world's first writing system, is a fascinating window into the lives of our ancestors. Developed over 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, cuneiform was used to record everything - including everyday transactions, personal letters, and epic poems, like the Epic of Gilgamesh. Today, it leaves historians and archaeologists with an ...
Smarthistory
Cuneiform is one of the oldest forms of writing known. It means "wedge-shaped," because people wrote it using a reed stylus cut to make a wedge-shaped mark on a clay tablet. Letters enclosed in clay envelopes, as well as works of literature, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh have been found. Historical accounts have also come to light, as have ...
The Origins of Writing
Only a few examples of its use exist in the earliest stages of cuneiform from between 3200 and 3000 B.C. The consistent use of this type of phonetic writing only becomes apparent after 2600 B.C. It constitutes the beginning of a true writing system characterized by a complex combination of word-signs and phonograms—signs for vowels and ...
Cuneiform Writing: How Clay And Reeds Changed the World
The word "cuneiform" comes from the original Latin "cuneus", meaning "wedge-shaped" in reference to the appearance of the writing style. To create cuneiform symbols and letters, writers would use a stylus to press wedge-shaped symbols into soft clay tablets. These shapes represented various "word-signs," also known as ...
Features
The World's Oldest Writing. Features May/June 2016. By The Editors. Used by scribes for more than three millennia, cuneiform writing opens a dramatic window onto ancient Mesopotamian life. (Eric ...
Writing
The writing system takes the name cuneiform from the shape of the strokes that form the symbols (from Latin cuneus, "wedge"). The next major stage in the evolution of Sumerian writing was the adoption of the phonographic principle, the use of a sign to represent a common sound rather than a common meaning. For example, the graph ...
PDF Early Forms of Writing: Cuneiform
The direction of writing changed to left-to-right horizontal rows, which meant a right-handed scribe would not risk smudging his previous writing as he imprinted the words. The scribes also began adjusting the angle of the tablet to make a wider variety of impressions. Variants of cuneiform script were adopted and used by the Babylonians ...
Cuneiform Tablets: One Of The Earliest Systems Of Writing Invented By
The Phoenician alphabet gradually replaced cuneiform writing during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-612 BC). By the second century CE, the script had become extinct. All knowledge of how to read it was lost until the deciphering process began in the 19th century. World's oldest dictionaries come from the Akkadian Empire.
PDF Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History
Mesopotamia, the scholar has to rely on cuneiform texts, which represent the oldest tradition of writing in human history, in use for nearly 3,000 years. The number and variety of texts written in the cuneiform script are enormous, and present a unique source for the study of history. This book describes the possibilities and challenges the ...
The Evolution of Writing
The transition from cuneiform writing to the alphabet in the ancient Near East took place over several centuries. In the seventh century BC the Assyrian kings still dictated their edicts to two scribes. The first wrote Akkadian in cuneiform on a clay tablet; the second Aramaic in a cursive alphabetic script traced on a papyrus scroll.
Cuneiform: the Writing Form of Mesopotamia
Cuneiform writing has been found at Amarna in Egypt, in the form of an alphabet at Ugarit, and among the Hittites who used it to render their own Indo-European language." [Source: John Alan Halloran, sumerian.org] Book: "A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts," by John L. Hayes is a good introduction to Sumerian writing.
The Cuneiform Writing System in Ancient Mesopotamia: Emergence and
That writing system, invented by the Sumerians, emerged in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. At first, this writing was representational: a bull might be represented by a picture of a bull, and a pictograph of barley signified the word barley. Though writing began as pictures, this system was inconvenient for conveying anything other than simple ...
Where Did Writing Come From?
Where Did Writing Come From? The rise, fall, and rediscovery of cuneiform.
Sumerian Tablets: A Deeper Understanding of the Oldest Known Written
Cuneiform is believed to have originated around 8000 BC and was developed for economic purposes. Initially, this script took the form of pictograms, which were used to graphically represent trade goods and livestock.Small clay tokens representing these goods were made and placed in sealed clay envelopes. In order to show the contents of the envelope, a token would be pressed onto the clay on ...
About this Collection
Cuneiform Tablets: From the Reign of Gudea of Lagash to Shalmanassar III presents clay tablets, cones, and brick fragments inscribed using the ancient writing system known as cuneiform from the Library of Congress' collections. The Sumerians invented this writing system, which involves the use of a wedge-shaped reed stylus to make impressions in clay. Cuneiform Tablets: From the Reign of ...
The decipherment of cuneiform writing: A complex matter!
8 May 2015. Between the time of the final abandonment of cuneiform script in the first century BCE and the exploration of the Near East by Western travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ce, the history of Mesopotamia was completely forgotten — or almost completely forgotten. All that remained in the collective memory were a few places mentioned in the Bible and in the works ...
What the Heck is Cuneiform, Anyway?
Cuneiform means "wedge-shaped," a term the Greeks used to describe the look of the signs. It was used to write at least a dozen languages, just as the alphabet that you are reading now is also ...
PDF Cuneiform, Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor, The British Museum
Originating before 3000 ec, cuneiform script is, as far as we know, the oldest form of writing in the world. The choice of clay as a writing medium in ancient Mesopotamia meant that records of all kinds could survive down to modem times, preserving fascinating documents from ancient civilization, written by a variety of people and societies.
Cuneiform studies
Cuneiform studies. Cuneiform is one of the earliest forms of writing in human history. It gets its name ("wedge-shaped") from the wedge-shaped impressions with which its characters are made. Scribes typically wrote by pressing a reed stylus into clay tablets. Cuneiform was used to write many languages in the ancient Near East, including ...