Cuneiform is a
logo
A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...
-
syllabic
Syllabic may refer to:
*Syllable, a unit of speech sound, considered the building block of words
**Syllabic consonant, a consonant that forms the nucleus of a syllable
*Syllabary, writing system using symbols for syllables
*Abugida, writing system ...
script
Script may refer to:
Writing systems
* Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire
* Script (styles of handwriting)
** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
that was used to write several languages of the
Ancient Middle East
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran (Elam, Me ...
. The script was in active use from the early
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
until the beginning of the
Common Era
Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...
. It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
: ) which form its
signs. Cuneiform was originally developed to write the
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day ...
of southern
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...
(modern
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
). Cuneiform is the
earliest known writing system.
Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian.
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record. Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the
Hittite language
Hittite (natively / "the language of Neša", or ''nešumnili'' / "the language of the people of Neša"), also known as Nesite (''Nešite'' / Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people ...
in the early
second millennium BC
The 2nd millennium BC spanned the years 2000 BC to 1001 BC.
In the Ancient Near East, it marks the transition from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age.
The Ancient Near Eastern cultures are well within the historical era:
The first half of the mil ...
. The other languages with significant cuneiform
corpora
Corpus is Latin for "body". It may refer to:
Linguistics
* Text corpus, in linguistics, a large and structured set of texts
* Speech corpus, in linguistics, a large set of speech audio files
* Corpus linguistics, a branch of linguistics
Music
* ...
are
Eblaite
Eblaite (, also known as Eblan ISO 639-3), or Palaeo-Syrian, is an extinct East Semitic language used during the 3rd millennium BC by the populations of Northern Syria. It was named after the ancient city of Ebla, in modern western Syria. Varian ...
,
Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
,
Hurrian
The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: ''Ḫu-ur-ri''; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern ...
,
Luwian
The Luwians were a group of Anatolian peoples who lived in central, western, and southern Anatolia, in present-day Turkey, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. They spoke the Luwian language, an Indo-European language of the Anatolian sub-fa ...
, and
Urartian
Urartian or Vannic is an extinct Hurro-Urartian language which was spoken by the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Urartu (''Biaini'' or ''Biainili'' in Urartian), which was centered on the region around Lake Van and had its capital, Tushpa, ...
. The
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
and
Ugaritic alphabet
The Ugaritic writing system is a cuneiform abjad (consonantal alphabet) used from around either 1400 BCE or 1300 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit (modern Ras Al Shamra), Syria, in 1928. It h ...
s feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to the cuneiform logo-syllabary proper.
The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75 AD. The script fell totally out of use soon after and was forgotten until its rediscovery and
decipherment
In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts. Decipherment in cryptography refers to decryption. The term is used sardonically in everyday language to describe attempts to ...
in the
19th century
The 19th (nineteenth) century began on 1 January 1801 ( MDCCCI), and ended on 31 December 1900 ( MCM). The 19th century was the ninth century of the 2nd millennium.
The 19th century was characterized by vast social upheaval. Slavery was abolis ...
. The study of cuneiform belongs to the field of
Assyriology
Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , '' -logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southea ...
. An estimated half a million tablets are held in museums across the world, but comparatively few of these are
published
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
. The largest collections belong to the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
( 130,000 tablets), the
Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin
The Vorderasiatisches Museum (, ''Near East Museum'') is an archaeological museum in Berlin. It is in the basement of the south wing of the Pergamon Museum and has one of the world's largest collections of Southwest Asian art. 14 halls distrib ...
, the
Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, the
Istanbul Archaeology Museums
The Istanbul Archaeology Museums ( tr, ) are a group of three archaeological museums located in the Eminönü quarter of Istanbul, Turkey, near Gülhane Park and Topkapı Palace.
The Istanbul Archaeology Museums consists of three museums:
#Arch ...
, the
National Museum of Iraq
The Iraq Museum ( ar, المتحف العراقي) is the national museum of Iraq, located in Baghdad. It is sometimes informally called the National Museum of Iraq, a recent phenomenon influenced by other nations' naming of their national museum ...
, the
Yale Babylonian Collection
Comprising some 45,000 items, the Yale Babylonian Collection is an independent branch of the Yale University Library housed on the Yale University campus in Sterling Memorial Library at New Haven, Connecticut, United States. In 2017, the collec ...
( 40,000 tablets), and
Penn Museum
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...
.
History
![Cuneiform evolution from archaic script](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f9/Cuneiform_evolution_from_archaic_script.jpg)
Writing began after pottery was invented, during the
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...
, when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities.
In recent years a contrarian view has arisen on the tokens being the precursor of writing. These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes (
clay bullae) and then stored in them.
The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a
stylus
A stylus (plural styli or styluses) is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision w ...
. Writing is first recorded in
Uruk
Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...
, at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the
Near-East
The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...
.
["Beginning in the pottery-phase of the Neolithic, clay tokens are widely attested as a system of counting and identifying specific amounts of specified livestock or commodities. The tokens, enclosed in clay envelopes after being impressed on their rounded surface, were gradually replaced by impressions on flat or plano-convex tablets, and these in turn by more or less conventionalized pictures of the tokens incised on the clay with a reed stylus. The transition to writing was complete ]
An ancient Mesopotamian poem gives the first known story of the
invention of writing
The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by systems of markings and how these markings were used for various purposes in different societies, thereby transforming social organization. Writing systems are the foundati ...
:
The cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 31st century BC down to the second century AD. The latest firmly dateable tablet, from Uruk, dates to 79/80 AD. Ultimately, it was completely replaced by
alphabetic writing (in the general sense) in the course of the
Roman era
In modern historiography, ancient Rome refers to Roman civilisation from the founding of the city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC ...
, and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as a completely unknown writing system in 19th-century
Assyriology
Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , '' -logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southea ...
. It was successfully deciphered by 1857.
Sumerian pictographs (circa 3300 BC)
The cuneiform script was developed from
pictographic
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon
An icon () is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, in the cultures of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, and Catholic ch ...
proto-writing
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in Eastern Europe and China. They used ideograph ...
in the late 4th millennium BC, stemming from the near eastern token system used for accounting. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. These tokens were in use from the 9th millennium BC and remained in occasional use even late in the 2nd millennium BC. Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in
Tell Brak
Tell Brak (Nagar, Nawar) was an ancient city in Syria; its remains constitute a tell located in the Upper Khabur region, near the modern village of Tell Brak, 50 kilometers north-east of Al-Hasaka city, Al-Hasakah Governorate. The city's o ...
, and date to the mid-4th millennium BC. It has been suggested that the token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumerian pictographs.
![Tableta con trillo](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Tableta_con_trillo.png)
Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. The first unequivocal written documents start with the Uruk IV period, from circa 3,300 BC, followed by tablets found in Uruk III,
Jemdet Nasr
Jemdet Nasr ( ar, جمدة نصر) is a tell or settlement mound in Babil Governorate (Iraq) that is best known as the eponymous type site for the Jemdet Nasr period (3100–2900 BC), and was one of the oldest Sumerian cities. The site was first ...
, Early Dynastic I
Ur and
Susa
Susa ( ; Middle elx, 𒀸𒋗𒊺𒂗, translit=Šušen; Middle and Neo- elx, 𒋢𒋢𒌦, translit=Šušun; Neo-Elamite and Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼𒀭, translit=Šušán; Achaemenid elx, 𒀸𒋗𒐼, translit=Šušá; fa, شوش ...
(in
Proto-Elamite
The Proto-Elamite period, also known as Susa III, is a chronological era in the ancient history of the area of Elam, dating from . In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period. Proto-Elamite sites are recognized as the oldest ...
) dating to the period until circa 2,900 BC.
Originally, pictographs were either drawn on
clay
Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4).
Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...
tablets in vertical columns with a sharpened
reed
Reed or Reeds may refer to:
Science, technology, biology, and medicine
* Reed bird (disambiguation)
* Reed pen, writing implement in use since ancient times
* Reed (plant), one of several tall, grass-like wetland plants of the order Poales
* ...
stylus
A stylus (plural styli or styluses) is a writing utensil or a small tool for some other form of marking or shaping, for example, in pottery. It can also be a computer accessory that is used to assist in navigating or providing more precision w ...
or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes.
Most
Proto-Cuneiform
The Proto-Cuneiform script was used in Mesopotamia from roughly 3300 BC to 2900 BC. It arose from the token based system used in the region for the preceding millennia and was replaced by the development of early Cuneiform script in the Early Dy ...
records from this period were of an accounting nature.
The proto-cuneiform sign list has grown, as new texts are discovered, and shrunk, as variant signs are combined. The current sign list is 705 elements long with 42 being numeric and four considered pre-proto-Elamite.
Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as
determinative
A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
s and were the Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Proper names continued to be usually written in purely "logographic" fashion.
Archaic cuneiform (circa 2900 BC)
![Cuneiform pictographic signs (vertical)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Cuneiform_pictographic_signs_%28vertical%29.jpg)
The first inscribed tablets were purely pictographic, which makes it technically difficult to know in which language they were written. Different languages have been proposed though usually Sumerian is assumed. Later tablets after circa 2,900 BC start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show a language structure typical of the non-Indo-European
agglutinative
In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...
Sumerian language
Sumerian is the language of ancient Sumer. It is one of the oldest attested languages, dating back to at least 3000 BC. It is accepted to be a local language isolate and to have been spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, in the area that is modern-day ...
. The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I-II, circa 2,800 BC, and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumerian.
This is the time when some pictographic element started to be used for their phonetical value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas or personal names.
Many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, and writing became increasingly
phonological
Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...
. Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time (
Early Bronze Age II
The ancient Near East was the home of early civilizations within a region roughly corresponding to the modern Middle East: Mesopotamia (modern Iraq, southeast Turkey, southwest Iran and northeastern Syria), ancient Egypt, ancient Iran ( Elam, ...
).
The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets, is
Enmebaragesi
Enmebaragesi ( Sumerian: ''En-me-barag-gi-se'' N-ME-BARA2-GI4-SE originally Mebarasi () was the penultimate king of the first dynasty of Kish and is recorded as having reigned 900 years in the ''Sumerian King List''. Like his son and successor ...
of Kish (fl. c. 2600 BC). Surviving records became less fragmentary for following reigns and by the end of the pre-Sargonic period it had become standard practice for each major city-state to date documents by year-names, commemorating the exploits of its ''lugal'' (king).
File:Precuneiform tablet-AO 29561-IMG 9151-gradient.jpg, Pre-cuneiform tablet, end of the 4th millennium BC.
File:Archaic cuneiform tablet E.A. Hoffman.jpg, Proto-cuneiform tablet, Jemdet Nasr period
The Jemdet Nasr Period is an archaeological culture in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). It is generally dated from 3100 to 2900 BC. It is named after the type site Tell Jemdet Nasr, where the assemblage typical for this period was first r ...
, c. 3100–2900 BC.
File:Cuneiform tablet- administrative account of barley distribution with cylinder seal impression of a male figure, hunting dogs, and boars MET DT847.jpg, Proto-cuneiform tablet, Jemdet Nasr period
The Jemdet Nasr Period is an archaeological culture in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). It is generally dated from 3100 to 2900 BC. It is named after the type site Tell Jemdet Nasr, where the assemblage typical for this period was first r ...
, c. 3100–2900 BC. A dog on a leash is visible in the background of the lower panel.
File:Blau Monument British Museum 86260.jpg, The Blau Monuments
The Blau Monuments are a pair of inscribed stone objects from Mesopotamia now in the British Museum. They are commonly thought to be a form of ancient kudurru.I. J. Gelb, P. Steinkeller, and R. M. Whiting Jr, "OIP 104. Earliest Land Tenure Systems ...
combine proto-cuneiform characters and illustrations, 3100–2700 BC. British Museum.
Cuneiforms and hieroglyphs
Geoffrey Sampson
Geoffrey Sampson (born 1944) is Professor of Natural Language Computing in the Department of Informatics, University of Sussex.[Egyptian hieroglyphs
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...]
"came into existence a little after
Sumerian script
Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system, script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East, Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the ...
, and, probably,
ereinvented under the influence of the latter",
and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia". There are many instances of
Egypt-Mesopotamia relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the
development of writing
The history of writing traces the development of expressing language by systems of markings and how these markings were used for various purposes in different societies, thereby transforming social organization. Writing systems are the foundati ...
generally place the development of the Sumerian
proto-cuneiform
The Proto-Cuneiform script was used in Mesopotamia from roughly 3300 BC to 2900 BC. It arose from the token based system used in the region for the preceding millennia and was replaced by the development of early Cuneiform script in the Early Dy ...
script before the development of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter.
Early Dynastic cuneiform (circa 2500 BC)
![Sumerian 26th c Adab](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Sumerian_26th_c_Adab.jpg)
Early cuneiform inscription were made by using a pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear cuneiform".
Many of the early dynastic inscriptions, particularly those made on stone, continued to use the linear style as late as circa 2000 BC.
In the mid-3rd millennium BC, a new wedge-tipped stylus was introduced which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped cuneiform. This development made writing quicker and easier, especially when writing on soft clay.
By adjusting the relative position of the stylus to the tablet, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions.
For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized.
The direction of writing was from top-to-bottom and right-to-left.
Cuneiform clay tablets could be fired in
kiln
A kiln is a thermally insulated chamber, a type of oven, that produces temperatures sufficient to complete some process, such as hardening, drying, or chemical changes. Kilns have been used for millennia to turn objects made from clay int ...
s to bake them hard, and so provide a permanent record, or they could be left moist and recycled if permanence was not needed, so surviving cuneiform tablets have largely been preserved by accident.
The script was also widely used on commemorative
stelae
A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...
and carved reliefs to record the achievements of the ruler in whose honor the monument had been erected. The spoken language included many
homophone
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
s and near-homophones, and in the beginning, similar-sounding words such as "life"
iland "arrow"
iwere written with the same symbol. WIth the rise of the Akkadian language some signs gradually changed from being pictograms to
syllabogram Syllabograms are signs used to write the syllables (or morae) of words. This term is most often used in the context of a writing system otherwise organized on different principles—an alphabet where most symbols represent phonemes, or a logographi ...
s, most likely to make things clearer in writing. In that way, the sign for the word "arrow" would become the sign for the sound "ti".
![Sales contract Shuruppak Louvre AO3766](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/Sales_contract_Shuruppak_Louvre_AO3766.jpg)
Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance, the syllable
uhad fourteen different symbols.
When the words had a similar meaning but very different sounds they were written with the same symbol. For instance 'tooth'
u 'mouth'
aand 'voice'
uwere all written with the symbol for "voice". To be more accurate, scribes started adding to signs or combining two signs to define the meaning. They used either geometrical patterns or another cuneiform sign.
As time went by, the cuneiform got very complex and the distinction between a pictogram and syllabogram became vague. Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. Therefore, symbols were put together to indicate both the sound and the meaning of a compound. The word 'raven'
GAhad the same logogram as the word 'soap'
AGA
Aga or AGA may refer to:
Business
* Architectural Glass and Aluminum (AGA), a glazing contractor, established in 1970
* AGA (automobile), ''Autogen Gasaccumulator AG'', 1920s German car company
*AGA AB, ''Aktiebolaget Svenska Gasaccumulator'', a ...
the name of a city
REŠ and the patron goddess of Eresh
ISABA
Isaba ( eu, Izaba) is a town and municipality located in the province and autonomous community of Navarre, northern Spain.
Is the main town of the Roncal valley and is sited in the Pyrenees
The Pyrenees (; es, Pirineos ; french: Pyrénées ; ca ...
Two phonetic complements were used to define the word
in front of the symbol and
ubehind. Finally, the symbol for 'bird'
UŠENwas added to ensure proper interpretation.
For unknown reasons, cuneiform pictographs, until then written vertically, were rotated 90° counterclockwise, in effect putting them on their side. This change first occurred slightly before the Akkadian period, at the time of the
Uruk
Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...
ruler
Lugalzagesi
Lugal-Zage-Si ( ; frequently spelled ''Lugalzaggesi'', sometimes ''Lugalzagesi'' or "Lugal-Zaggisi") of Umma (reigned c. 2358 - 2334 BCE middle chronology) was the last Sumerian king before the conquest of Sumer by Sargon of Akkad and the rise o ...
(r. c. 2294–2270 BC).
The vertical style remained for monumental purposes on stone
stela
A stele ( ),Anglicized plural steles ( ); Greek plural stelai ( ), from Greek , ''stēlē''. The Greek plural is written , ''stēlai'', but this is only rarely encountered in English. or occasionally stela (plural ''stelas'' or ''stelæ''), whe ...
s until the middle of the 2nd millennium.
Written Sumerian was used as a scribal language until the first century AD. The spoken language died out between about 2100 and 1700 BC.
Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform
: ''
DNa-ra-am
D Sîn'', ''Sîn'' being written 𒂗𒍪 EN.ZU), appears vertically in the right column. British Museum. These are some of the more important signs: the
complete Sumero-Akkadian list of characters actually numbers about 600, with many more "values", or pronunciation possibilities.
The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the
Akkadian Empire
The Akkadian Empire () was the first ancient empire of Mesopotamia after the long-lived civilization of Sumer. It was centered in the city of Akkad (city), Akkad () and its surrounding region. The empire united Akkadian language, Akkadian and ...
from the 23rd century BC (
short chronology
The chronology of the ancient Near East is a framework of dates for various events, rulers and dynasties. Historical inscriptions and texts customarily record events in terms of a succession of officials or rulers: "in the year X of king Y". Com ...
). The
Akkadian language
Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...
being
East Semitic
The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the Semitic languages. The East Semitic group is attested by three distinct languages, Akkadian, Eblaite and possibly Kishite, all of which have been long extinct. They were influenced by ...
, its structure was completely different from Sumerian.
There was no way to use the Sumerian writing system as such, and the Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs.
Still, some of the Sumerian characters were retained for their pictorial value as well: for example the character for "sheep" was retained, but was now pronounced ''immerū'', rather than the Sumerian "udu-meš".
The East Semitic languages employed equivalents for many signs that were distorted or abbreviated to represent new values because the syllabic nature of the script as refined by the Sumerians was not intuitive to Semitic speakers.
From the beginning of the
Middle Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...
(20th century BC), the script evolved to accommodate the various dialects of Akkadian: Old Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian.
At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and the ''Winkelhaken'' impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus. The signs exemplary of these basic wedges are:
* AŠ (B001, U+12038)
: horizontal;
* DIŠ (B748, U+12079)
: vertical;
* GE
23, DIŠ ''tenû'' (B575, U+12039)
: downward diagonal;
* GE
22 (B647, U+1203A)
: upward diagonal;
* U (B661, U+1230B)
: the ''
Winkelhaken
The ''Winkelhaken'' (, "angular hook"), also simply called a hook, is one of five basic wedge elements appearing in the composition of signs in Akkadian cuneiform. It was realized by pressing the point of the stylus into the clay.
A single Winkelh ...
''.
Except for the ''Winkelhaken'', which has no tail, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition.
Signs tilted by about 45 degrees are called ''tenû'' in Akkadian, thus DIŠ is a vertical wedge and DIŠ ''tenû'' a diagonal one. If a sign is modified with additional wedges, this is called ''gunû'' or "gunification"; if signs are cross-hatched with additional ''Winkelhaken'', they are called ''šešig''; if signs are modified by the removal of a wedge or wedges, they are called ''nutillu''.
"Typical" signs have about five to ten wedges, while complex
ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated, but distinct signs); the ligature KAxGUR
7 consists of 31 strokes.
Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian script. Written
Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian
syllabary
In the linguistic study of written languages, a syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent the syllables or (more frequently) moras which make up words.
A symbol in a syllabary, called a syllabogram, typically represents an (optiona ...
, together with logograms that were read as whole words. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. The complexity of the system bears a resemblance to
Old Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial.
Old Jap ...
, written in a Chinese-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms and others as phonetic characters.
Elamite cuneiform
Elamite cuneiform
Elamite cuneiform was a logo-syllabic script used to write the Elamite language. The complete corpus of Elamite cuneiform consists of over 30,000 tablets and fragments. The majority belong to the Achaemenid era, and contain primarily economic rec ...
was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, used to write the
Elamite language
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
in the area that corresponds to modern
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts,
Proto-Elamite
The Proto-Elamite period, also known as Susa III, is a chronological era in the ancient history of the area of Elam, dating from . In archaeological terms this corresponds to the late Banesh period. Proto-Elamite sites are recognized as the oldest ...
and
Linear Elamite
Linear Elamite was a writing system used in Elam during the Bronze Age between , and known mainly from a few extant monumental inscriptions. It was used contemporaneously with Elamite cuneiform and records the Elamite language. The French archae ...
. The earliest known Elamite cuneiform text is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200 BC.
However, some believe it might have been in use since 2500 BC.
[Peter Daniels and William Bright (1996)] The tablets are poorly preserved, so only limited parts can be read, but it is understood that the text is a treaty between the Akkad king
Nāramsîn and Elamite ruler
Hita, as indicated by frequent references like "Nāramsîn's friend is my friend, Nāramsîn's enemy is my enemy".
The most famous Elamite scriptures and the ones that ultimately led to its decipherment are the ones found in the trilingual
Behistun inscriptions, commissioned by the
Achaemenid
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, wikt:𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an History of Iran#Classical antiquity, ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Bas ...
kings.
[Reiner, Erica (2005)] The inscriptions, similar to that of the
Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle te ...
's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was
Old Persian
Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
, which was deciphered in 1802 by
Georg Friedrich Grotefend
Georg Friedrich Grotefend (9 June 1775 – 15 December 1853) was a German epigraphist and philologist. He is known mostly for his contributions toward the decipherment of cuneiform.
Georg Friedrich Grotefend had a son, named Carl Ludwig Grot ...
. The second,
Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after the Old Persian text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. They are spoken by more than 330 million people across much of West Asia, the Horn of Africa, and latterly North Africa, Malta, West Africa, Chad, and in large immigra ...
, the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s. Even today, lack of sources and comparative materials hinder further research of Elamite.
Assyrian cuneiform
This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the
Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. ...
n and
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
n empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with a phonetic complement. Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of logographic and phonemic writing.
Hittite cuneiform
Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC (roughly spanning the 17th to 12th ...
is an adaptation of the Old Assyrian cuneiform of c. 1800 BC to the
Hittite language
Hittite (natively / "the language of Neša", or ''nešumnili'' / "the language of the people of Neša"), also known as Nesite (''Nešite'' / Neshite, Nessite), is an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken by the Hittites, a people ...
. When the cuneiform script was adapted to writing Hittite, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings was added to the script, thus the pronunciations of many Hittite words which were conventionally written by logograms are now unknown.
In the
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...
(c. 10th to 6th centuries BC), Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified. The characters remained the same as those of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiforms, but the graphic design of each character relied more heavily on wedges and square angles, making them significantly more abstract. The pronunciation of the characters was replaced by that of the Assyrian dialect of the
Akkadian language
Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...
:
File:Assurbanipal King of Assyria (Sumero-Akkadian and Neo-Babylonian scripts).jpg, "
Assurbanipal
Ashurbanipal (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning " Ashur is the creator of the heir") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 669 BCE to his death in 631. He is generally remembered as the last great king of Assyria. Inheriting the throne as ...
King of
Assyria
Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...
"
''Aššur-bani-habal šar mat Aššur
KI''
Same characters, in the classical Sumero-Akkadian script of circa 2000 BC (top), and in the Neo-Assyrian script of the
Rassam cylinder
The Rassam cylinder is a cuneiform cylinder, forming a prism with ten faces, written by Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the 7th century BCE, in 643 BCE. The cylinder was discovered in the North Palace of Nineveh by Hormuzd Rassam in 1854, hen ...
, 643 BC (bottom).
File:Rassam cylinder with translation of the First Assyrian Conquest of Egypt, 643 BCE.jpg, The Rassam cylinder
The Rassam cylinder is a cuneiform cylinder, forming a prism with ten faces, written by Neo-Assyrian king Ashurbanipal in the 7th century BCE, in 643 BCE. The cylinder was discovered in the North Palace of Nineveh by Hormuzd Rassam in 1854, hen ...
with translation of a segment about the Assyrian conquest of Egypt
The Assyrian conquest of Egypt covered a relatively short period of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 673 BCE to 663 BCE. The conquest of Egypt not only placed a land of great cultural prestige under Assyrian rule but also brought the Neo-Assyrian Empi ...
by Ashurbanipal
Ashurbanipal (Neo-Assyrian language, Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "Ashur (god), Ashur is the creator of the heir") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 669 BCE to his death in 631. He is generally remembered as the last great king o ...
against "Black Pharaoh
The Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt (notated Dynasty XXV, alternatively 25th Dynasty or Dynasty 25), also known as the Nubian Dynasty, the Kushite Empire, the Black Pharaohs, or the Napatans, after their capital Napata, was the last dynasty of th ...
" Taharqa
Taharqa, also spelled Taharka or Taharqo (Egyptian: 𓇿𓉔𓃭𓈎 ''tꜣ-h-rw-k'', Akkadian: ''Tar-qu-u2'', , Manetho's ''Tarakos'', Strabo's ''Tearco''), was a pharaoh of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt and qore (king) of the Kingdom of ...
, 643 BC
From the 6th century, the
Akkadian language
Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...
was marginalized by
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated in ...
, written in the
Aramaean alphabet
The ancient Aramaic alphabet was adapted by Arameans from the Phoenician alphabet and became a distinct script by the 8th century BC. It was used to write the Aramaic languages spoken by ancient Aramean pre-Christian tribes throughout the Fertil ...
, but Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the
Parthian Empire
The Parthian Empire (), also known as the Arsacid Empire (), was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I, who led the Parni tribe in conque ...
(250 BC–226 AD). The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75 AD. The ability to read cuneiform may have persisted until the third century AD.
Derived scripts
Old Persian cuneiform (5th century BC)
The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script.
Old Persian cuneiform
Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey ( Van Fo ...
was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by
Darius the Great
Darius I ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his d ...
in the 5th century BC. Most scholars consider this writing system to be an independent invention because it has no obvious connections with other writing systems at the time, such as
Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
, Akkadian,
Hurrian
The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: ''Ḫu-ur-ri''; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern ...
, and
Hittite cuneiforms.
It formed a semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" (), "king" () or "country" (). This almost purely alphabetical form of the cuneiform script (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), was specially designed and used by the early Achaemenid rulers from the 6th century BC down to the 4th century BC.
Because of its simplicity and logical structure, the Old Persian cuneiform script was the first to be deciphered by modern scholars, starting with the accomplishments of
Georg Friedrich Grotefend
Georg Friedrich Grotefend (9 June 1775 – 15 December 1853) was a German epigraphist and philologist. He is known mostly for his contributions toward the decipherment of cuneiform.
Georg Friedrich Grotefend had a son, named Carl Ludwig Grot ...
in 1802. Various ancient bilingual or trilingual inscriptions then permitted to decipher the other, much more complicated and more ancient scripts, as far back as to the 3rd millennium Sumerian script.
Ugaritic
Ugaritic
Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic language, classified by some as a dialect of the Amorite language and so the only known Amorite dialect preserved in writing. It is known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologis ...
was written using the
Ugaritic alphabet
The Ugaritic writing system is a cuneiform abjad (consonantal alphabet) used from around either 1400 BCE or 1300 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit (modern Ras Al Shamra), Syria, in 1928. It h ...
, a standard Semitic style
alphabet
An alphabet is a standardized set of basic written graphemes (called letters) that represent the phonemes of certain spoken languages. Not all writing systems represent language in this way; in a syllabary, each character represents a syll ...
(an ''
abjad
An abjad (, ar, أبجد; also abgad) is a writing system in which only consonants are represented, leaving vowel sounds to be inferred by the reader. This contrasts with other alphabets, which provide graphemes for both consonants and vowels ...
'') written using the cuneiform method.
Archaeology
Between half a million
[ and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000][–100,000 have been read or published. The ]British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin
The Vorderasiatisches Museum (, ''Near East Museum'') is an archaeological museum in Berlin. It is in the basement of the south wing of the Pergamon Museum and has one of the world's largest collections of Southwest Asian art. 14 halls distrib ...
, the Louvre
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
, the Istanbul Archaeology Museums
The Istanbul Archaeology Museums ( tr, ) are a group of three archaeological museums located in the Eminönü quarter of Istanbul, Turkey, near Gülhane Park and Topkapı Palace.
The Istanbul Archaeology Museums consists of three museums:
#Arch ...
, the National Museum of Iraq
The Iraq Museum ( ar, المتحف العراقي) is the national museum of Iraq, located in Baghdad. It is sometimes informally called the National Museum of Iraq, a recent phenomenon influenced by other nations' naming of their national museum ...
, the Yale Babylonian Collection
Comprising some 45,000 items, the Yale Babylonian Collection is an independent branch of the Yale University Library housed on the Yale University campus in Sterling Memorial Library at New Haven, Connecticut, United States. In 2017, the collec ...
(approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum
The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology—commonly known as the Penn Museum—is an archaeology and anthropology museum at the University of Pennsylvania. It is located on Penn's campus in the University City neighb ...
. Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published", as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world.
Decipherment
For centuries, travelers to Persepolis
, native_name_lang =
, alternate_name =
, image = Gate of All Nations, Persepolis.jpg
, image_size =
, alt =
, caption = Ruins of the Gate of All Nations, Persepolis.
, map =
, map_type ...
, located in Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
, had noticed carved cuneiform inscriptions and were intrigued.[Sayce 1908.] Attempts at deciphering Old Persian cuneiform
Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey ( Van Fo ...
date back to Arabo-Persian historians of the medieval Islamic world
The Islamic Golden Age was a period of cultural, economic, and scientific flourishing in the history of Islam, traditionally dated from the 8th century to the 14th century. This period is traditionally understood to have begun during the reign ...
, though these early attempts at decipherment
In philology, decipherment is the discovery of the meaning of texts written in ancient or obscure languages or scripts. Decipherment in cryptography refers to decryption. The term is used sardonically in everyday language to describe attempts to ...
were largely unsuccessful.
In the 15th century, the Venetian Giosafat Barbaro Giosafat Barbaro (also Giosaphat or Josaphat) (1413–1494) was a member of the Venetian Barbaro family. He was a diplomat, merchant, explorer and travel writer. explored ancient ruins in the Middle East and came back with news of a very odd writing he had found carved on the stones in the temples of Shiraz
Shiraz (; fa, شیراز, Širâz ) is the List of largest cities of Iran, fifth-most-populous city of Iran and the capital of Fars province, Fars Province, which has been historically known as Pars (Sasanian province), Pars () and Persis. As o ...
and on many clay tablets.
Antonio de Gouvea
Antonio de Gouvea, O.E.S.A. (1575 – 18 August 1628) was a diplomat in the service of Habsburg Spain, who served as ambassador (envoy) to Safavid Iran between 1602 and 1613. An Augustinian Portuguese missionary by origin, during his service a ...
, a professor of theology, noted in 1602 the strange writing he had seen during his travels a year earlier in Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
.[C. Wade Meade]
''Road to Babylon: Development of U.S. Assyriology,''
Brill Archive, 1974 p.5. In 1625, the Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
traveler Pietro Della Valle
Pietro Della Valle ( la, Petrus a Valle; 2 April 1586 – 21 April 1652), also written Pietro della Valle, was an Italian composer, musicologist, and author who travelled throughout Asia during the Renaissance period. His travels took him to the ...
, who had sojourned in Mesopotamia between 1616 and 1621, brought to Europe copies of characters he had seen in Persepolis and inscribed bricks from Ur and the ruins of Babylon
''Bābili(m)''
* sux, 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠
* arc, 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ''Bāḇel''
* syc, ܒܒܠ ''Bāḇel''
* grc-gre, Βαβυλών ''Babylṓn''
* he, בָּבֶל ''Bāvel''
* peo, 𐎲𐎠𐎲𐎡𐎽𐎢 ''Bābiru''
* elx, 𒀸𒁀𒉿𒇷 ''Babi ...
. The copies he made, the first that reached circulation within Europe, were not quite accurate, but Della Valle understood that the writing had to be read from left to right, following the direction of wedges. However, he did not attempt to decipher the scripts.
Englishman Sir Thomas Herbert
Sir Thomas Herbert, 1st Baronet (1606–1682), was an English traveller, historian and a gentleman of the bedchamber of King Charles I while Charles was in the custody of Parliament (from 1647 until the king's execution in January 1649).
Biogr ...
, in the 1638 edition of his travel book ''Some Yeares Travels into Africa & Asia the Great'', reported seeing at Persepolis carved on the wall "a dozen lines of strange characters...consisting of figures, obelisk, triangular, and pyramidal" and thought they resembled Greek. In the 1677 edition he reproduced some and thought they were 'legible and intelligible' and therefore decipherable. He also guessed, correctly, that they represented not letters or hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
but words and syllables, and were to be read from left to right. Herbert is rarely mentioned in standard histories of the decipherment of cuneiform.
In 1700 Thomas Hyde
Thomas Hyde (29 June 163618 February 1703) was an English linguist, historian, librarian, classicist, and orientalist. His chief work was the 1700 'On the Ancient Religion of the Persians'' the first attempt to use Arab and Persian sources ...
first called the inscriptions "cuneiform", but deemed that they were no more than decorative friezes.
Old Persian cuneiform: deduction of the word for "King" (circa 1800)
Proper attempts at deciphering Old Persian cuneiform started with faithful copies of cuneiform inscriptions, which first became available in 1711 when duplicates of Darius's inscriptions were published by Jean Chardin
Jean Chardin (16 November 1643 – 5 January 1713), born Jean-Baptiste Chardin, and also known as Sir John Chardin, was a French jeweller and traveller whose ten-volume book ''The Travels of Sir John Chardin'' is regarded as one of the finest ...
.[Kent, R. G.: "Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon", page 9. American Oriental Society, 1950.]
Carsten Niebuhr
Carsten Niebuhr, or Karsten Niebuhr (17 March 1733 Lüdingworth – 26 April 1815 Meldorf, Dithmarschen), was a German mathematician, cartographer, and explorer in the service of Denmark. He is renowned for his participation in the Royal Danish ...
brought very complete and accurate copies of the inscriptions at Persepolis to Europe, published in 1767 in ''Reisebeschreibungen nach Arabien'' ("Account of travels to Arabia and other surrounding lands"). The set of characters that would later be known as Old Persian cuneiform
Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey ( Van Fo ...
, was soon perceived as being the simplest of the three types of cuneiform scripts that had been encountered, and because of this was understood as a prime candidate for decipherment (the two other, older and more complicated scripts were Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
and Babylonian). Niebuhr identified that there were only 42 characters in the simpler category of inscriptions, which he named "Class I", and affirmed that this must therefore be an alphabetic script.
At about the same time, Anquetil-Duperron
Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (7 December 173117 January 1805) was the first professional French Indologist. He conceived the institutional framework for the new profession. He inspired the founding of the École française d'Extrême-Orien ...
came back from India, where he had learnt Pahlavi
Pahlavi may refer to:
Iranian royalty
*Seven Parthian clans, ruling Parthian families during the Sasanian Empire
*Pahlavi dynasty, the ruling house of Imperial State of Persia/Iran from 1925 until 1979
**Reza Shah, Reza Shah Pahlavi (1878–1944 ...
and Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
under the Parsis
Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim co ...
, and published in 1771 a translation of the ''Zend Avesta
The Avesta () is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language.
The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the litu ...
'', thereby making known Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
, one of the ancient Iranian languages. With this basis, Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy
Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy (; 21 September 175821 February 1838), was a French nobleman, linguist and orientalist. His son, Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, became a journalist.
Life and works
Early life
Silvestre de Sacy was born in Pa ...
was able to start the study of Middle Persian
Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle Per ...
in 1792–93, during the French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
, and he realized that the inscriptions of Naqsh-e Rostam
Naqsh-e Rostam ( lit. mural of Rostam, fa, نقش رستم ) is an ancient archeological site and necropolis located about 12 km northwest of Persepolis, in Fars Province, Iran. A collection of ancient Iranian rock reliefs are cut into the ...
had a rather stereotyped structure on the model: "Name of the King, the Great King, the King of Iran and Aniran
Anērān (Middle Persian, ) or Anīrân (Modern Persian, ) is an ethno-linguistic term that signifies "non-Iranian" or "non-Iran" (non-Aryan). Thus, in a general sense, 'Aniran' signifies lands where Iranian languages are not spoken. In a pejorativ ...
, son of N., the Great King, etc...". He published his results in 1793 in ''Mémoire sur diverses antiquités de la Perse''.
In 1798, Oluf Gerhard Tychsen
Oluf (Olaus) Gerhard Tychsen (14 December 1734, Tønder, then Schleswig, now Denmark – 30 December 1815, Rostock, then Mecklenburg-Schwerin, now Germany) was a German Orientalist and Hebrew scholar. He is known today as one of the founding fath ...
made the first study of the inscriptions of Persepolis copied by Niebuhr. He discovered that series of characters in the Persian inscriptions were divided from one another by an oblique wedge () and that these must be individual words. He also found that a specific group of seven letters () was recurring in the inscriptions, and that they had a few recurring terminations of three to four letters. However, Tychsen mistakenly attributed the texts to Arsacid
The Parthian Empire (), also known as the Arsacid Empire (), was a major Iranian political and cultural power in ancient Iran from 247 BC to 224 AD. Its latter name comes from its founder, Arsaces I, who led the Parni tribe in conqueri ...
kings, and therefore was unable to make further progress.
Friedrich Münter
Friedrich Christian Carl Heinrich Münter (14 October 1761 – 9 April 1830) was a German-Danish scholar, theologian, and Bishop of Zealand from 1808 until his death. His name has also been recorded as Friederich Münter.
In addition to his posit ...
Bishop of Copenhagen improved over the work of Tychsen, and proved that the inscriptions must belong to the age of Cyrus
Cyrus ( Persian: کوروش) is a male given name. It is the given name of a number of Persian kings. Most notably it refers to Cyrus the Great ( BC). Cyrus is also the name of Cyrus I of Anshan ( BC), King of Persia and the grandfather of Cyrus ...
and his successors, which led to the suggestion that the inscriptions were in the Old Persian
Old Persian is one of the two directly attested Old Iranian languages (the other being Avestan language, Avestan) and is the ancestor of Middle Persian (the language of Sasanian Empire). Like other Old Iranian languages, it was known to its native ...
language and probably mentioned Achaemenid
The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire (; peo, wikt:𐎧𐏁𐏂𐎶, 𐎧𐏁𐏂, , ), also called the First Persian Empire, was an History of Iran#Classical antiquity, ancient Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. Bas ...
kings. He suggested that the long word appearing with high frequency and without any variation towards the beginning of each inscription () must correspond to the word "King", and that repetitions of this sequence must mean "King of Kings". He correctly guessed that the sequence must be pronounced ''kh-sha-a-ya-th-i-ya'', a word of the same root as the Avestan
Avestan (), or historically Zend, is an umbrella term for two Old Iranian languages: Old Avestan (spoken in the 2nd millennium BCE) and Younger Avestan (spoken in the 1st millennium BCE). They are known only from their conjoined use as the scrip ...
''xšaΘra-'' and the Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
'' kṣatra-'' meaning "power" and "command", and now known to be pronounced ''xšāyaθiya'' in Old Persian.
File:Niebuhr inscription 1 with word for King.jpg, Niebuhr inscription 1, with the suggested words for "King" () highlighted. Inscription now known to mean "Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, who built this Palace".
File:Niebuhr inscription 2 with word for King.jpg, Niebuhr inscription 2, with the suggested words for "King" () highlighted. Inscription now known to mean "Xerxes the Great King, King of Kings, son of Darius the King, an Achaemenian".
Old Persian cuneiform: deduction of the names of Achaemenid rulers and translation (1802)
By 1802 Georg Friedrich Grotefend
Georg Friedrich Grotefend (9 June 1775 – 15 December 1853) was a German epigraphist and philologist. He is known mostly for his contributions toward the decipherment of cuneiform.
Georg Friedrich Grotefend had a son, named Carl Ludwig Grot ...
conjectured that, based on the known inscriptions of much later rulers (the Pahlavi inscriptions of the Sassanid
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
kings), a king's name is often followed by "great king, king of kings" and the name of the king's father.[Kent, R. G.: "Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon", page 10. American Oriental Society, 1950.] This understanding of the structure of monumental inscriptions in Old Persian was based on the work of Anquetil-Duperron
Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (7 December 173117 January 1805) was the first professional French Indologist. He conceived the institutional framework for the new profession. He inspired the founding of the École française d'Extrême-Orien ...
, who had studied Old Persian through the Zoroastrian
Zoroastrianism is an Iranian religion and one of the world's oldest organized faiths, based on the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster. It has a dualistic cosmology of good and evil within the framework of a monotheistic on ...
Avesta
The Avesta () is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language.
The Avesta texts fall into several different categories, arranged either by dialect, or by usage. The principal text in the litu ...
s in India, and Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy
Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy (; 21 September 175821 February 1838), was a French nobleman, linguist and orientalist. His son, Ustazade Silvestre de Sacy, became a journalist.
Life and works
Early life
Silvestre de Sacy was born in Pa ...
, who had decrypted the monumental Pahlavi inscriptions of the Sassanid
The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...
kings.
Looking at the length of the character sequences in the Niebuhr inscriptions 1 & 2, and comparing with the names and genealogy of the Achaemenid kings as known from the Greeks, also taking into account the fact that the father of one of the rulers in the inscriptions didn't have the attribute "king", he made the correct guess that this could be no other than Darius the Great
Darius I ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his d ...
, his father Hystaspes who was not a king, and his son the famous Xerxes. In Persian history around the time period the inscriptions were expected to be made, there were only two instances where a ruler came to power without being a previous king's son. They were Darius the Great
Darius I ( peo, 𐎭𐎠𐎼𐎹𐎺𐎢𐏁 ; grc-gre, Δαρεῖος ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was a Persian ruler who served as the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his d ...
and Cyrus the Great
Cyrus II of Persia (; peo, 𐎤𐎢𐎽𐎢𐏁 ), commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire, the first Persian empire. Schmitt Achaemenid dynasty (i. The clan and dynasty) Under his rule, the empire embraced ...
, both of whom became emperor by revolt. The deciding factors between these two choices were the names of their fathers and sons. Darius's father was Hystaspes and his son was Xerxes, while Cyrus' father was Cambyses I
Cambyses I ( peo, 𐎣𐎲𐎢𐎪𐎡𐎹 ''Kabūjiya'') was king of Anshan (Persia), Anshan from c. 580 to 559 BC and the father of Cyrus the Great (Cyrus II), younger son of Cyrus I, and brother of Arukku. He should not be confus ...
and his son was Cambyses II
Cambyses II ( peo, 𐎣𐎲𐎢𐎪𐎡𐎹 ''Kabūjiya'') was the second King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire from 530 to 522 BC. He was the son and successor of Cyrus the Great () and his mother was Cassandane.
Before his accession, Cambyses ...
. Within the text, the father and son of the king had different groups of symbols for names so Grotefend assumed that the king must have been Darius.
These connections allowed Grotefend to figure out the cuneiform characters that are part of Darius, Darius's father Hystaspes, and Darius's son Xerxes. He equated the letters with the name ''d-a-r-h-e-u-sh'' for Darius, as known from the Greeks. This identification was correct, although the actual Persian spelling was ''da-a-ra-ya-va-u-sha'', but this was unknown at the time. Grotefend similarly equated the sequence with ''kh-sh-h-e-r-sh-e'' for Xerxes, which again was right, but the actual Old Persian transcription was ''wsa-sha-ya-a-ra-sha-a''. Finally, he matched the sequence of the father who was not a king with Hystaspes, but again with the supposed Persian reading of ''g-o-sh-t-a-s-p'', rather than the actual Old Persian ''vi-i-sha-ta-a-sa-pa''.
By this method, Grotefend had correctly identified each king in the inscriptions, but his identification of the value of individual letters was still quite defective, for want of a better understanding of the Old Persian language itself. Grotefend only identified correctly eight letters among the thirty signs he had collated. However groundbreaking, this inductive method failed to convince academics, and the official recognition of his work was denied for nearly a generation. Although Grotefend's Memoir was presented to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities
The Göttingen Academy of Sciences (german: Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen)Note that the German ''Wissenschaft'' has a wider meaning than the English "Science", and includes Social sciences and Humanities. is the second oldest of the se ...
on September 4, 1802, the academy refused to publish it; it was subsequently published in Heeren's work in 1815, but was overlooked by most researchers at the time.
External confirmation through Egyptian hieroglyphs (1823)
It was only in 1823 that Grotefend's discovery was confirmed, when the French philologist
Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...
Champollion, who had just deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, was able to read the Egyptian dedication of a quadrilingual hieroglyph-cuneiform inscription on an alabaster vase in the Cabinet des Médailles
The BnF Museum or Museum of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, formerly known as the Cabinet des Médailles, is a significant art and history museum in Paris. It displays collections of the ''Département des Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques ...
, the Caylus vase
The Caylus vase is an Egyptian alabaster jar dedicated in the name of the Achaemenid king Xerxes I (c.518–465 BCE) in Egyptian hieroglyph and Old Persian cuneiform. Beyond its historical value as a dynastic artifact of Achaemenid Egypt, its qu ...
. The Egyptian inscription on the vase was in the name of King Xerxes I
Xerxes I ( peo, 𐎧𐏁𐎹𐎠𐎼𐏁𐎠 ; grc-gre, Ξέρξης ; – August 465 BC), commonly known as Xerxes the Great, was the fourth King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, ruling from 486 to 465 BC. He was the son and successor of ...
, and the orientalist Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin
Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin (17 January 1791 – 17 July 1832) was a French academic, orientalist, and pioneer in the field of what would be known as Armenian Studies.
Biography
Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin was born in Paris on 17 January 1791, th ...
, who accompanied Champollion, was able to confirm that the corresponding words in the cuneiform script were indeed the words which Grotefend had identified as meaning "king" and "Xerxes" through guesswork. In effect the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs was thus decisive in confirming the first steps of the decipherment of the cuneiform script.
Consolidation of the Old Persian cuneiform alphabet
In 1836, the eminent French scholar Eugène Burnouf
Eugène Burnouf (; April 8, 1801May 28, 1852) was a French scholar, an Indologist and orientalist. His notable works include a study of Sanskrit literature, translation of the Hindu text ''Bhagavata Purana'' and Buddhist text ''Lotus Sutra''. He ...
discovered that the first of the inscriptions published by Niebuhr contained a list of the satrapies
A satrap () was a governor of the provinces of the ancient Median and Achaemenid Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic empires.
The satrap served as viceroy to the king, though with consid ...
of Darius. With this clue in his hand, he identified and published an alphabet of thirty letters, most of which he had correctly deciphered.[Prichard 1844, pp. 30–31]
A month earlier, a friend and pupil of Burnouf's, Professor Christian Lassen
Christian Lassen (22 October 1800 – 8 May 1876) was a Norwegian-born, German orientalist and Indologist. He was a professor of Old Indian language and literature at the University of Bonn.
Biography
He was born at Bergen, Norway where he att ...
of Bonn, had also published his own work on ''The Old Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of Persepolis''. He and Burnouf had been in frequent correspondence, and his claim to have independently detected the names of the satrapies, and thereby to have fixed the values of the Persian characters, was consequently fiercely attacked. According to Sayce, whatever his obligations to Burnouf may have been, Lassen's
Decipherment of Elamite and Babylonian
Meanwhile, in 1835 Henry Rawlinson, a British East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...
army officer, visited the Behistun Inscriptions in Persia. Carved in the reign of King Darius of Persia (522–486 BC), they consisted of identical texts in the three official languages of the empire: Old Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, Babylonian and Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
. The Behistun inscription was to the decipherment of cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle te ...
(discovered in 1799) was to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyph
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
s in 1822.
Rawlinson successfully completed the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform. In 1837, he finished his copy of the Behistun inscription, and sent a translation of its opening paragraphs to the Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...
. Before his article could be published, however, the works of Lassen and Burnouf reached him, necessitating a revision of his article and the postponement of its publication. Then came other causes of delay. In 1847, the first part of the Rawlinson's Memoir was published; the second part did not appear until 1849. The task of deciphering Old Persian cuneiform texts was virtually accomplished.
After translating Old Persian, Rawlinson and, working independently of him, the Irish Assyriologist
Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , '' -logia'') is the archaeological, anthropological, and linguistic study of Assyria and the rest of ancient Mesopotamia (a region that encompassed what is now modern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southea ...
Edward Hincks
Edward Hincks (19 August 1792 – 3 December 1866) was an Irish clergyman, best remembered as an Assyriologist and one of the decipherers of Mesopotamian cuneiform. He was one of the three men known as the "holy trinity of cuneiform", with S ...
, began to decipher the other cuneiform scripts. The decipherment of Old Persian was thus notably instrumental to the decipherment of Elamite
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was used in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite works disappear from the archeological record ...
and Babylonian, thanks to the trilingual Behistun inscription.
Decipherment of Akkadian and Sumerian
The decipherment of Babylonian ultimately led to the decipherment of Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
, which was a close predecessor of Babylonian. The actual techniques used to decipher the Akkadian language
Akkadian (, Akkadian: )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages''. Ed. Roger D. Woodard (2004, Cambridge) Pages 218-280 is an extinct East Semitic language th ...
have never been fully published; Hincks described how he sought the proper names already legible in the deciphered Persian while Rawlinson never said anything at all, leading some to speculate that he was secretly copying Hincks. They were greatly helped by the excavations of the French naturalist Paul Émile Botta and English traveler and diplomat Austen Henry Layard
Sir Austen Henry Layard (; 5 March 18175 July 1894) was an English Assyriologist, traveller, cuneiformist, art historian, draughtsman, collector, politician and diplomat. He was born to a mostly English family in Paris and largely raised in It ...
of the city of Nineveh
Nineveh (; akk, ; Biblical Hebrew: '; ar, نَيْنَوَىٰ '; syr, ܢܝܼܢܘܹܐ, Nīnwē) was an ancient Assyrian city of Upper Mesopotamia, located in the modern-day city of Mosul in northern Iraq. It is located on the eastern ban ...
from 1842. Among the treasures uncovered by Layard and his successor Hormuzd Rassam
Hormuzd Rassam ( ar, هرمز رسام; syr, ܗܪܡܙܕ ܪܣܐܡ; 182616 September 1910), was an Assyriologist and author.
He is known for making a number of important archaeological discoveries from 1877 to 1882, including the clay tablets tha ...
were, in 1849 and 1851, the remains of two libraries, now mixed up, usually called the Library of Ashurbanipal
The Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, named after Ashurbanipal, the last great king of the Assyrian Empire, is a collection of more than 30,000 clay tablets and fragments containing texts of all kinds from the 7th century BC, including texts in vari ...
, a royal archive containing tens of thousands of baked clay tablets covered with cuneiform inscriptions.
By 1851, Hincks and Rawlinson could read 200 Akkadian signs. They were soon joined by two other decipherers: young German-born scholar Julius Oppert
Julius (Jules) Oppert (9 July 1825 – 21 August 1905) was a French-German Assyriologist, born in Hamburg of Jewish parents.
Career
After studying at Heidelberg, Bonn and Berlin, he graduated at Kiel in 1847, and the next year went to France, wh ...
, and versatile British Orientalist William Henry Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot FRS FRSE FRAS (; 11 February 180017 September 1877) was an English scientist, inventor, and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later ...
. In 1857, the four men met in London and took part in a famous experiment to test the accuracy of their decipherments. Edwin Norris
Edwin Norris (24 October 1795 – 10 December 1872) was a British philologist, linguist and intrepid orientalist who wrote or compiled numerous works on the languages of Asia and Africa. His best-known works are his uncompleted ''Assyrian Dic ...
, the secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society
The Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, commonly known as the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS), was established, according to its royal charter of 11 August 1824, to further "the investigation of subjects connected with and for the en ...
, gave each of them a copy of a recently discovered inscription from the reign of the Assyrian emperor Tiglath-Pileser I
Tiglath-Pileser I (; from the Hebraic form of akk, , Tukultī-apil-Ešarra, "my trust is in the son of Ešarra") was a king of Assyria during the Middle Assyrian period (1114–1076 BC). According to Georges Roux, Tiglath-Pileser was "one of t ...
. A jury of experts was impaneled to examine the resulting translations and assess their accuracy. In all essential points, the translations produced by the four scholars were found to be in close agreement with one another. There were, of course, some slight discrepancies. The inexperienced Talbot had made a number of mistakes, and Oppert's translation contained a few doubtful passages which the jury politely ascribed to his unfamiliarity with the English language. But Hincks' and Rawlinson's versions corresponded remarkably closely in many respects. The jury declared itself satisfied, and the decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform was adjudged a ''fait accompli''.
Finally, Sumerian, the oldest language with a script, was also deciphered through the analysis of ancient Akkadian-Sumerian dictionaries and bilingual tablets, as Sumerian long remained a literary language in Mesopotamia, which was often re-copied, translated and commented in numerous Babylonian tablets.
Proper names
In the early days of cuneiform decipherment, the reading of proper names presented the greatest difficulties. However, there is now a better understanding of the principles behind the formation and the pronunciation of the thousands of names found in historical records, business documents, votive inscriptions, literary productions, and legal documents. The primary challenge was posed by the characteristic use of old Sumerian non-phonetic logograms in other languages that had different pronunciations for the same symbols. Until the exact phonetic reading of many names was determined through parallel passages or explanatory lists, scholars remained in doubt or had recourse to conjectural or provisional readings. However, in many cases, there are variant readings, the same name being written phonetically (in whole or in part) in one instance and logographically in another.
Digital approaches
Computer-based methods are being developed to digitise tablets and help decipher texts.
Transliteration
Cuneiform has a specific format for transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
. Because of the script's polyvalence, transliteration requires certain choices of the transliterating scholar, who must decide in the case of each sign which of its several possible meanings is intended in the original document. For example, the sign dingir
''Dingir'' (, usually transliterated DIĜIR, ) is a Sumerian word for "god" or "goddess". Its cuneiform sign is most commonly employed as the determinative for religious names and related concepts, in which case it is not pronounced and is con ...
in a Hittite text may represent either the Hittite syllable ''an'' or may be part of an Akkadian phrase, representing the syllable '' il'', it may be a Sumerogram
A Sumerogram is the use of a Sumerian cuneiform character or group of characters as an ideogram or logogram rather than a syllabogram in the graphic representation of a language other than Sumerian, such as Akkadian or Hittite.
Sumerograms are no ...
, representing the original Sumerian meaning, 'god' or the determinative
A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...
for a deity. In transliteration, a different rendition of the same glyph is chosen depending on its role in the present context.
Therefore, a text containing DINGIR and MU in succession could be construed to represent the words "ana", "ila", god + "a" (the accusative case
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...
ending), god + water, or a divine name "A" or Water. Someone transcribing the signs would make the decision how the signs should be read and assemble the signs as "ana", "ila", "Ila" ("god"+accusative case), etc. A transliteration of these signs, however, would separate the signs with dashes "il-a", "an-a", "DINGIR-a" or "Da". This is still easier to read than the original cuneiform, but now the reader is able to trace the sounds back to the original signs and determine if the correct decision was made on how to read them. A transliterated document thus presents the reading preferred by the transliterating scholar as well as an opportunity to reconstruct the original text.
There are differing conventions for transliterating Sumerian, Akkadian (Babylonian), and Hittite (and Luwian) cuneiform texts. One convention that sees wide use across the different fields is the use of acute and grave accents as an abbreviation for homophone disambiguation. Thus, ''u'' is equivalent to ''u1'', the first glyph expressing phonetic ''u''. An acute accent, ''ú'', is equivalent to the second, ''u2'', and a grave accent ''ù'' to the third, ''u3'' glyph in the series (while the sequence of numbering is conventional but essentially arbitrary and subject to the history of decipherment). In Sumerian transliteration, a multiplication sign ('×') is used to indicate typographic ligature
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the first li ...
s. As shown above, signs ''as such'' are represented in capital letter
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
s, while the specific reading selected in the transliteration is represented in small letters. Thus, capital letters can be used to indicate a so-called Diri compound – a sign sequence that has, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example, the compound IGI.A – "eye" + "water" – has the reading ''imhur'', meaning "foam"). In a Diri compound, the individual signs are separated with dots in transliteration. Capital letters may also be used to indicate a Sumerogram (for example, KÙ.BABBAR – Sumerian for "silver" – being used with the intended Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
reading ''kaspum'', "silver"), an Akkadogram, or simply a sign sequence of whose reading the editor is uncertain. Naturally, the "real" reading, if it is clear, will be presented in small letters in the transliteration: IGI.A will be rendered as imhur4.
Since the Sumerian language has only been widely known and studied by scholars for approximately a century, changes in the accepted reading of Sumerian names have occurred from time to time. Thus the name of a king of Ur, read ''Ur-Bau'' at one time, was later read as ''Ur-Engur'', and is now read as Ur-Nammu
Ur-Nammu (or Ur-Namma, Ur-Engur, Ur-Gur, Sumerian: , ruled c. 2112 BC – 2094 BC middle chronology, or possibly c. 2048–2030 BC short chronology) founded the Sumerian Third Dynasty of Ur, in southern Mesopotamia, following several centuries ...
or Ur-Namma; for Lugal-zage-si
Lugal-Zage-Si ( ; frequently spelled ''Lugalzaggesi'', sometimes ''Lugalzagesi'' or "Lugal-Zaggisi") of Umma (reigned c. 2358 - 2334 BCE middle chronology) was the last Sumerian king before the conquest of Sumer by Sargon of Akkad and the rise o ...
, a king of Uruk
Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harm ...
, some scholars continued to read ''Ungal-zaggisi''; and so forth. Also, with some names of the older period, there was often uncertainty whether their bearers were Sumerians or Semites. If the former, then their names could be assumed to be read as Sumerian, while, if they were Semites, the signs for writing their names were probably to be read according to their Semitic equivalents, though occasionally Semites might be encountered bearing genuine Sumerian names. There was also doubt whether the signs composing a Semite's name represented a phonetic reading or a logographic compound. Thus, e.g. when inscriptions of a Semitic ruler of Kish, whose name was written ''Uru-mu-ush'', were first deciphered, that name was first taken to be logographic because ''uru mu-ush'' could be read as "he founded a city" in Sumerian, and scholars accordingly retranslated it back to the original Semitic as ''Alu-usharshid''. It was later recognized that the URU sign can also be read as ''rí'' and that the name is that of the Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to:
* Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire
* Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language
* Akkadian literature, literature in this language
* Akkadian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo- syllabi ...
king Rimush
Rimush (or Rimuš, ''Ri-mu-uš'') was the second king of the Akkadian Empire. He was the son of Sargon of Akkad and Queen Tashlultum. He was succeeded by his brother Manishtushu, and was an uncle of Naram-Sin of Akkad. Rimush reported having a sta ...
.
Syllabary
The table below shows signs used for simple syllables of the form CV or VC. As used for the Sumerian language, the cuneiform script was in principle capable of distinguishing at least 16 consonants, transliterated as
as well as four vowel qualities, ''a, e, i, u''.
The Akkadian language had no use for ''g̃'' or ''ř'' but needed to distinguish its emphatic series
In Semitic languages, Semitic linguistics, an emphatic consonant is an obstruent consonant which originally contrasted with series of both voiced and voiceless obstruents. In specific Semitic languages, the members of this series may be realized ...
, ''q, ṣ, ṭ'', adopting various "superfluous" Sumerian signs for the purpose (e.g. ''qe''=KIN, ''qu''=KUM, ''qi''=KIN, ''ṣa''=ZA, ''ṣe''=ZÍ, ''ṭur''=DUR etc.)
Hittite, as it adopted the Akkadian cuneiform, further introduced signs such as ''wi5''=GEŠTIN.
Sign inventories
The Sumerian cuneiform script had on the order of 1,000 distinct signs (or about 1,500 if variants are included). This number was reduced to about 600 by the 24th century BC and the beginning of Akkadian records. Not all Sumerian signs are used in Akkadian texts, and not all Akkadian signs are used in Hittite.
A. Falkenstein
Adam Falkenstein (17 September 1906 – 15 October 1966) was a German Assyriologist.
He was born in Planegg, near Munich in Bavaria and died in Heidelberg.
Life
Falkenstein studied Assyriology in Munich and Leipzig. He was involved primarily ...
(1936) lists 939 signs used in the earliest period (late Uruk
The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BC; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after ...
, 34th to 31st centuries). (See #Bibliography for the works mentioned in this paragraph.)
With an emphasis on ''Sumerian'' forms, Deimel (1922) lists 870 signs used in the Early Dynastic II
The Early Dynastic period (abbreviated ED period or ED) is an archaeological culture in Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) that is generally dated to c. 2900–2350 BC and was preceded by the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr periods. It saw the development of w ...
period (28th century, ''Liste der archaischen Keilschriftzeichen'' or "LAK") and for the Early Dynastic IIIa period (26th century, ''Šumerisches Lexikon'' or "ŠL").
Rosengarten (1967) lists 468 signs used in Sumerian (pre- Sargonian) Lagash
Lagash (cuneiform: LAGAŠKI; Sumerian: ''Lagaš''), was an ancient city state located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about east of the modern town of Ash Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash (modern Al-Hiba) w ...
,
and Mittermayer and Attinger (2006, '' Altbabylonische Zeichenliste der Sumerisch-Literarischen Texte'' or "aBZL") list 480 Sumerian forms, written in Isin-Larsa
The Isin-Larsa period (circa 2025-1763 BCE, Middle Chronology, or 1961-1699 BCE, Short Chronology) is a phase in the history of ancient Mesopotamia, which extends between the end of the Third Dynasty of Ur and the conquest of Mesopotamia by King ...
and Old Babylonian times. Regarding ''Akkadian'' forms, the standard handbook for many years was Borger (1981, ''Assyrisch-Babylonische Zeichenliste'' or "ABZ") with 598 signs used in Assyrian/Babylonian writing, recently superseded by Borger (2004, ''Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon'' or "MesZL") with an expansion to 907 signs, an extension of their Sumerian readings and a new numbering scheme.
Signs used in Hittite cuneiform
Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC (roughly spanning the 17th to 12th ...
are listed by Forrer (1922), Friedrich (1960) and Rüster and Neu (1989, ''Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon'' or "HZL"). The HZL lists a total of 375 signs, many with variants (for example, 12 variants are given for number 123 ''EGIR'').
Numerals
The Sumerians used a numerical system based on 1, 10, and 60. The way of writing a number like 70 would be the sign for 60 and the sign for 10 right after.
Usage
Cuneiform script was used in many ways in ancient Mesopotamia. Besides the well known clay tablets and stone inscriptions cuneiform was also written on wax boards, which one example from the 8th century BC was found at Nimrud
Nimrud (; syr, ܢܢܡܪܕ ar, النمرود) is an ancient Assyrian city located in Iraq, south of the city of Mosul, and south of the village of Selamiyah ( ar, السلامية), in the Nineveh Plains in Upper Mesopotamia. It was a majo ...
. The wax contained toxic amounts of arsenic. It was used to record laws, like the Code of Hammurabi
The Code of Hammurabi is a Babylonian legal text composed 1755–1750 BC. It is the longest, best-organised, and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East. It is written in the Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian, purportedly by Hamm ...
. It was also used for recording maps, compiling medical manuals, and documenting religious stories and beliefs, among other uses. In particular it is thought to have been used to prepare surveying data and draft inscriptions for Kassite
The Kassites () were people of the ancient Near East, who controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire c. 1531 BC and until c. 1155 BC (short chronology).
They gained control of Babylonia after the Hittite sack of Babylon ...
stone kudurru
A kudurru was a type of stone document used as a boundary stone and as a record of land grants to vassals by the Kassites and later dynasties in ancient Babylonia between the 16th and 7th centuries BC. The original kudurru would typically be stor ...
. Studies by Assyriologists like Claus Wilcke and Dominique Charpin
Dominique Charpin (born 12 June 1954, in Neuilly-sur-Seine) is a French Assyriologist, professor at the Collège de France, and corresponding member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, specialized in the "Old-Babylonian" period.
...
suggest that cuneiform literacy was not reserved solely for the elite but was common for average citizens.
According to the ''Oxford Handbook of Cuneiform Culture'', cuneiform script was used at a variety of literacy levels: average citizens needed only a basic, functional knowledge of cuneiform script to write personal letters and business documents. More highly literate citizens put the script to more technical use, listing medicines and diagnoses and writing mathematical equations. Scholars held the highest literacy level of cuneiform and mostly focused on writing as a complex skill and an art form.
Modern usage
Cuneiform is occasionally used nowadays as inspiration for logos.
Ama-gi.svg, Cuneiform ''ama-gi
''Ama-gi'' is a Sumerian word written ''ama-gi4'' or ''ama-ar-gi4''. It has been translated as "freedom", as well as "manumission", "exemption from debts or obligations", and "the restoration of persons and property to their original status" ...
'', literally "return to the mother", loosely translated as "liberty", is the logo of Liberty Fund
Liberty Fund, Inc. is an American private educational foundation headquartered in Carmel, founded by Pierre F. Goodrich. Through publishing, conferences, and educational resources, the operating mandate of the Liberty Fund was set forth in an un ...
.
File:GigaMesh Logo.png, The central element of the GigaMesh Software Framework
The GigaMesh Software Framework is a free and open-source software for display, editing and visualization of 3D-data typically acquired with structured light or structure from motion.
It provides numerous functions for analysis of archaeologic ...
logo is the sign 𒆜 (kaskal) meaning "street" or "road junction
A junction is where two or more roads meet.
History
Roads began as a means of linking locations of interest: towns, forts and geographic features such as river fords. Where roads met outside of an existing settlement, these junctions often led ...
", which symbolizes the intersection of the humanities
Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...
and computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...
. The name GigaMesh is an intentional reference to the legendary Gilgamesh
sux, , label=none
, image = Hero lion Dur-Sharrukin Louvre AO19862.jpg
, alt =
, caption = Possible representation of Gilgamesh as Master of Animals, grasping a lion in his left arm and snake in his right hand, in an Assyr ...
from Mesopotamian folklore.
Unicode
As of version 8.0, the following ranges are assigned to the Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform script in the Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
Standard:
*U+12000–U+123FF (922 assigned characters) Cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...
*U+12400–U+1247F (116 assigned characters) Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation
In Unicode, the Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform script is covered in three blocks in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP):
* U+12000–U+123FF Cuneiform
* U+12400–U+1247F Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation
* U+12480–U+1254F Early ...
*U+12480–U+1254F (196 assigned characters) Early Dynastic Cuneiform
Early Dynastic Cuneiform is the name of a Unicode block of the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP), at U+12480–U+1254F, introduced in version 8.0 (June 2015).
It is a supplement to the earlier encoding of the cuneiform script in the ...
The final proposal for Unicode encoding of the script was submitted by two cuneiform scholars working with an experienced Unicode proposal writer in June 2004.
The base character inventory is derived from the list of Ur III
The Third Dynasty of Ur, also called the Neo-Sumerian Empire, refers to a 22nd to 21st century BC (middle chronology) Sumerian ruling dynasty based in the city of Ur and a short-lived territorial-political state which some historians consider to ...
signs compiled by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) is an international digital library project aimed at putting text and images of an estimated 500,000 recovered cuneiform tablets created from between roughly 3350 BC and the end of the pre-Christian er ...
of UCLA
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...
based on the inventories of Miguel Civil, Rykle Borger (2003) and Robert Englund. Rather than opting for a direct ordering by glyph shape and complexity, according to the numbering of an existing catalog, the Unicode order of glyphs was based on the Latin alphabetic order of their "last" Sumerian transliteration as a practical approximation. Once in Unicode, glyphs can be automatically processed into segmented transliterations.[Gordin S, Gutherz G, Elazary A, Romach A, Jiménez E, Berant J, et al. (2020) "Reading Akkadian cuneiform using natural language processing". ''PLoS ONE'' 15(10): e0240511. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240511]
List of major cuneiform tablet discoveries
See also
* Hieratic
Hieratic (; grc, ἱερατικά, hieratiká, priestly) is the name given to a cursive writing system used for Ancient Egyptian and the principal script used to write that language from its development in the third millennium BC until the ris ...
* Babylonokia
''Babylonokia'' (also ''Babylon-Nokia'', ''Alien-Mobile'', and ''Cuneiform Mobile Phone'') is a 2012 artwork by Karl Weingärtner in the form of a clay tablet shaped like a mobile phone, its keys and screen showing cuneiform script.
Weingärtn ...
: a 21st-century cuneiform artwork
* Elamite cuneiform
Elamite cuneiform was a logo-syllabic script used to write the Elamite language. The complete corpus of Elamite cuneiform consists of over 30,000 tablets and fragments. The majority belong to the Achaemenid era, and contain primarily economic rec ...
* Hittite cuneiform
Hittite cuneiform is the implementation of cuneiform script used in writing the Hittite language. The surviving corpus of Hittite texts is preserved in cuneiform on clay tablets dating to the 2nd millennium BC (roughly spanning the 17th to 12th ...
* Journal of Cuneiform Studies
The ''Journal of Cuneiform Studies'' was founded in 1947 by the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research. The journal presents articles about ancient Mesopotamian language and history in English, French and German.
Extern ...
* List of cuneiform signs Cuneiform is one of the earliest systems of writing, emerging in Sumer in the late fourth millennium BC.
The signs in the following list are ordered by their 2004 Borger number (MesZL). Archaic versions of cuneiform writing, including the Ur III ( ...
* List of museums of ancient Near Eastern art
This is a list of museums with major art collections from the Ancient Near East.
* British Museum, London, UK. 290,000 objects.
* Vorderasiatisches Museum, Berlin, Germany. 250,000 objects.
* National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, Iraq. 170,000 objects ...
* Old Persian cuneiform
Old Persian cuneiform is a semi-alphabetic cuneiform script that was the primary script for Old Persian. Texts written in this cuneiform have been found in Iran (Persepolis, Susa, Hamadan, Kharg Island), Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey ( Van Fo ...
* Ugaritic alphabet
The Ugaritic writing system is a cuneiform abjad (consonantal alphabet) used from around either 1400 BCE or 1300 BCE for Ugaritic, an extinct Northwest Semitic language, and discovered in Ugarit (modern Ras Al Shamra), Syria, in 1928. It h ...
* Urartian cuneiform
* Proto-cuneiform numerals
The Proto-Cuneiform numerals are one of the most complex Numeral system, systems of enumeration in any early writing system. Their decipherment took place over several phases in the 20th century, including major advances in Adam Falkenstein’s ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
* Adkins, Lesley, ''Empires of the Plain: Henry Rawlinson and the Lost Languages of Babylon'', New York, St. Martin's Press (2003)
*
*
* R. Borger
Riekele or Rykle Borger (born 24 May 1929, Wiuwert, the Netherlands; died 27 December 2010, Göttingen, Germany) was a notable Dutch Assyriologist educated in the German tradition. He was the protégé of Wolfram von Soden, and taught as professo ...
, ''Assyrisch-Babylonische Zeichenliste'', 2nd ed., Neukirchen-Vluyn (1981)
*
* Burnouf, E. (1836)
"Mémoire sur deux Inscriptions Cunéiformes trouvées près d'Hamadan et qui font partie des papiers du Dr Schulz"
emoir_on_two_cuneiform_inscriptions_[that_werefound_near_Hamadan_and_that_form_part_of_the_papers_of_Dr._Schulz.html" ;"title="hat_were.html" ;"title="emoir on two cuneiform inscriptions emoir_on_two_cuneiform_inscriptions_[that_werefound_near_Hamadan_and_that_form_part_of_the_papers_of_Dr._Schulz">hat_were.html"_;"title="emoir_on_two_cuneiform_inscriptions_[that_were">emoir_on_two_cuneiform_inscriptions_[that_werefound_near_Hamadan_and_that_form_part_of_the_papers_of_Dr._Schulz_Imprimerie_Royale,_Paris.
*_Cammarosano,_M._(2017–2018
"Cuneiform_Writing_Techniques"
_cuneiform.neocities.org_(with_further_bibliography)
*_Charvát,_Petr._"Cherchez_la_femme:_The_SAL_Sign_in_Proto-Cuneiform_Writing"._La_famille_dans_le_Proche-Orient_ancien:_réalités,_symbolismes_et_images:_Proceedings_of_the_55e_Rencontre_Assyriologique_Internationale,_Paris,_edited_by_Lionel_Marti,_University_Park,_USA:_Penn_State_University_Press,_2021,_pp. 169–182
*_
*_Anton_Deimel.html" ;"title="hat were">emoir on two cuneiform inscriptions [that werefound near Hamadan and that form part of the papers of Dr. Schulz">hat_were.html" ;"title="emoir on two cuneiform inscriptions [that were">emoir on two cuneiform inscriptions [that werefound near Hamadan and that form part of the papers of Dr. Schulz Imprimerie Royale, Paris.
* Cammarosano, M. (2017–2018
"Cuneiform Writing Techniques"
cuneiform.neocities.org (with further bibliography)
* Charvát, Petr. "Cherchez la femme: The SAL Sign in Proto-Cuneiform Writing". La famille dans le Proche-Orient ancien: réalités, symbolismes et images: Proceedings of the 55e Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Paris, edited by Lionel Marti, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, 2021, pp. 169–182
*
* Anton Deimel">A. Deimel (1922), ''Liste der archaischen Keilschriftzeichen'' ("LAK"), WVDOG 40, Berlin.
* A. Deimel (1925–1950), ''Šumerisches Lexikon'', Pontificum Institutum Biblicum.
* F. Ellermeier, M. Studt
Sumerisches Glossar
** vol. 1: 1979–1980, ,
** vol. 3.2: 1998–2005, A-B , D-E , G
** vol. 3.3: (font CD )
** vol. 3.5:
** vol 3.6: 2003, Handbuch Assur
* Robert K. Englund, Roger J. Matthews, "Proto-Cuneiform Texts from Diverse Collections", Berlin: Gebr. Mann 1996 ISBN 978-3786118756
* Robert K. Englund and Rainer M.Boehmer, "Archaic Administrative Texts from Uruk – The Early Campaigns", (ATU Bd. 5), Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag 1994 ISBN 978-3786117452
* A. Falkenstein
Adam Falkenstein (17 September 1906 – 15 October 1966) was a German Assyriologist.
He was born in Planegg, near Munich in Bavaria and died in Heidelberg.
Life
Falkenstein studied Assyriology in Munich and Leipzig. He was involved primarily ...
, ''Archaische Texte aus Uruk'', Berlin-Leipzig (1936)
* Charpin, Dominique. 2004. 'Lire et écrire en Mésopotamie: une affaire dé spécialistes?' Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres: 481–501.
* E. Forrer, ''Die Keilschrift von Boghazköi'', Leipzig (1922)
* J. Friedrich, ''Hethitisches Keilschrift-Lesebuch'', Heidelberg (1960)
* Jean-Jacques Glassner, ''The Invention of Cuneiform'', English translation, Johns Hopkins University Press (2003), .
*
* Heeren (1815) "Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr und den Handel der vornehmsten Volker der alten Welt", vol. i. pp. 563 seq., translated into English in 1833.
*
* René Labat, ''Manuel d'epigraphie Akkadienne'', Geuthner, Paris (1959); 6th ed., extended by Florence Malbran-Labat (1999), .
* Lassen, Christian (1836
''Die Altpersischen Keil-Inschriften von Persepolis. Entzifferung des Alphabets und Erklärung des Inhalts.''
he Old-Persian cuneiform inscriptions of Persepolis. Decipherment of the alphabet and explanation of its content.Eduard Weber, Bonn, (Germany).
*
* Moorey, P. R. S. (1992). ''A Century of Biblical Archaeology''. Westminster Knox Press. .
* O. Neugebauer
Otto Eduard Neugebauer (May 26, 1899 – February 19, 1990) was an Austrian-American mathematician and historian of science who became known for his research on the history of astronomy and the other exact sciences as they were practiced in anti ...
, A. Sachs (eds.), ''Mathematical Cuneiform Texts'', New Haven (1945).
* Patri, Sylvain (2009). "La perception des consonnes hittites dans les langues étrangères au XIIIe siècle." ''Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie'' 99(1): 87–126. .
* Prichard, James Cowles (1844)
"Researches Into the Physical History of Mankind"
3rd ed., vol IV, Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, London.
* Rawlinson, Henry (1847
"The Persian Cuneiform Inscription at Behistun, decyphered and translated; with a Memoir on Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions in general, and on that of Behistun in Particular,"
''The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland'', vol. X. .
* Rune Rattenborg et al.
University of Uppsala, Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, 2021:001 ISSN 1540-8779
* Y. Rosengarten, ''Répertoire commenté des signes présargoniques sumériens de Lagash'', Paris (1967)
* Chr. Rüster, E. Neu, ''Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon'' (''HZL''), Wiesbaden (1989)
* Sayce, Rev. A. H. (1908)
"The Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions"
Second Edition-revised, 1908, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, Brighton, New York; at pp 9–1
Not in copyright
* Nikolaus Schneider, ''Die Keilschriftzeichen der Wirtschaftsurkunden von Ur III nebst ihren charakteristischsten Schreibvarianten'', Keilschrift-Paläographie; Heft 2, Rom: Päpstliches Bibelinstitut (1935).
* Wilcke, Claus. 2000. Wer las und schrieb in Babylonien und Assyrien. Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-historische Klasse. 2000/6. München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
* Wolfgang Schramm, ''Akkadische Logogramme'', Goettinger Arbeitshefte zur Altorientalischen Literatur (GAAL) Heft 4, Goettingen (2003), .
* F. Thureau-Dangin, ''Recherches sur l'origine de l'écriture cunéiforme'', Paris (1898).
* Ronald Herbert Sack, ''Cuneiform Documents from the Chaldean and Persian Periods'', (1994)
External links
Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
Tablet Collections, Cornell University
Finding aid to the Columbia University Cuneiform Collection at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library
The Cuneiform Wide Web: From Card Catalogues to Digital Assyriology - Shai Gordin and Avital Romach - ANE Today - Oct 2022
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cuneiform Script
Sumerian language
Akkadian language
Elamite language
Obsolete writing systems
Hittite language
Hurro-Urartian languages
Luwian language
Old Persian language
Ugaritic language and literature
4th-millennium BC establishments
1st-century disestablishments
History of writing
Writing systems of Asia