This article should specify the language of its non-English content, using {{lang}}, {{transliteration}} for transliterated languages, and {{IPA}} for phonetic transcriptions, with an appropriate ISO 639 code. Wikipedia's multilingual support templates may also be used.See why.(March 2024)
Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Akkadian texts are attested from the 24th century BC onward and make up the bulk of the cuneiform record.[8][9] Akkadian cuneiform was itself adapted to write the Hittite language in the early second millennium BC.[10][11] The other languages with significant cuneiform corpora are Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian. The Old Persian and Ugaritic alphabets feature cuneiform-style signs; however, they are unrelated to the cuneiform logo-syllabary proper. The latest known cuneiform tablet dates to 75AD.[12]
Numerical tablet, 3500–3350 BC (Uruk V phase), Khafajah
Pre-cuneiform tags, with drawing of goat or sheep and number (probably "10"), Al-Hasakah, 3300–3100 BC, Uruk culture[17][18]
A table illustrating the progressive simplification of cuneiform signs from archaic (vertical) script to Assyrian
Writing began after pottery was invented, during the Neolithic, when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities.[19] In recent years a contrarian view has arisen on the tokens being the precursor of writing.[20] These tokens were initially impressed on the surface of round clay envelopes (clay bullae) and then stored in them.[19] The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus. Writing is first recorded in Uruk, at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the Near-East.[19]
An ancient Mesopotamian poem gives the first known story of the invention of writing:
Because the messenger's mouth was heavy and he couldn't repeat [the message], the Lord of Kulaba patted some clay and put words on it, like a tablet. Until then, there had been no putting words on clay.
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.[23] The latest firmly dateable tablet, from Uruk, dates to 79/80AD.[24] Ultimately, it was completely replaced by alphabetic writing, in the general sense, in the course of the Roman era, and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. It had to be deciphered as a completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. It was successfully deciphered by 1857.
The cuneiform script changed considerably over more than 2,000years. The image below shows the development of the sign SAĜ "head" (Borger nr. 184, U+12295 𒊕).
Evolution of the cuneiform sign SAG "head", 3000–1000 BC
Stages:
shows the pictogram as it was drawn around 3000BC
shows the rotated pictogram as written from c.2800–2600BC
shows the abstracted glyph in archaic monumental inscriptions, from c.2600 BC
is the sign as written in clay, contemporary with stage 3
represents the late 3rd millennium BC
represents Old Assyrian ductus of the early 2nd millennium BC, as adopted into Hittite
is the simplified sign as written by Assyrian scribes in the early 1st millennium BC and until the script's extinction.
A tablet with proto-cuneiform pictographic characters, end of 4th millennium BC, Uruk III. This is thought to be a list of slaves' names, the hand in the upper left corner representing the owner.
The cuneiform script was developed from pictographicproto-writing 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.[26] These tokens were in use from the 9th millennium BC and remained in occasional use even late in the 2nd millennium BC.[27] Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in Tell Brak, and date to the mid-4th millennium BC.[28] It has been suggested that the token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumerian pictographs.[29]
The Kish tablet, a limestone tablet from Kish with pictographic, early cuneiform, writing, 3500 BC. Possibly the earliest known example of writing. Ashmolean Museum.
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 3,300BC, followed by tablets found in Uruk III, Jemdet Nasr, Early Dynastic I Ur and Susa (in Proto-Elamite) dating to the period until circa 2,900BC.[30]
Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a sharpened reedstylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge shape of the strokes.[31] Most Proto-Cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature.[32] 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.[33][34][35]
Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives 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.
Early pictographic signs in archaic cuneiform, used vertically before c.2300 BC.
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.[37] Later tablets dating after c.2900 BC start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show a language structure typical of the agglutinativeSumerian language.[38] The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I–II periods c.2800 BC, and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumerian.[39]
This is the time when some pictographic element started to be used for their phonetic value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas or personal names.[39] 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. Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, labeled the Early Bronze Age II epoch by historians.
The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets, is Enmebaragesi of Kish (fl.c.2600 BC).[40] Surviving records became less fragmentary for following reigns and by the arrival of Sargon, it had become standard practice for each major city-state to date documents by year-names, commemorating the exploits of its king.
A proto-cuneiform tablet, end of the 4th millennium BC.
Geoffrey Sampson stated that Egyptian hieroglyphs "came into existence a little after Sumerian script, and, probably, [were] invented under the influence of the latter",[42] and that it is "probable that the general idea of expressing words of a language in writing was brought to Egypt from Sumerian Mesopotamia".[43][44] There are many instances of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the development of writing generally place the development of the Sumerian proto-cuneiform script before the development of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter.[45] But given the lack of direct evidence for the transfer of writing, "no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt".[46] Others have held that "the evidence for such direct influence remains flimsy" and that "a very credible argument can also be made for the independent development of writing in Egypt..."[47]
A sumerian inscription in monumental archaic style, c. 26th century BC
Early cuneiform inscriptions were made by using a pointed stylus, sometimes called "linear cuneiform".[48] Many of the early dynastic inscriptions, particularly those made on stone, continued to use the linear style as late as circa 2000BC.[48]
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.[48] By adjusting the relative position of the stylus to the tablet, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions.[48] For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized.[48] The direction of writing was from top-to-bottom and right-to-left.[48] Cuneiform clay tablets could be fired in kilns to bake them hard, and so provide a permanent record, or they could be left moist and recycled if permanence was not needed.[48] Most surviving cuneiform tablets were of the latter kind, accidentally preserved when fires destroyed the tablets' storage place and effectively baked them, unintentionally ensuring their longevity.[48]
From linear to angular
Wedge-tipped stylus for cuneiform writing on clay tablets
The regnal name "Lugal-dalu" in archaic linear script circa 2500 BC, and the same name stylized with standard Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform (𒈗𒁕𒇻).
The script was widely used on commemorative stelae and carved reliefs to record the achievements of the ruler in whose honor the monument had been erected. The spoken language included many homophones and near-homophones, and in the beginning, similar-sounding words such as "life" [til] and "arrow" [ti] were written with the same symbol (𒋾). As a result, many signs gradually changed from being logograms to also functioning as syllabograms, so that for example, the sign for the word "arrow" would become the sign for the sound "ti".[49]
Syllabograms were used in Sumerian writing especially to express grammatical elements, and their use was further developed and modified in the writing of the Akkadian language to express its sounds.[50] Often, words that had a similar meaning but very different sounds were written with the same symbol. For instance the Sumerian words 'tooth' [zu], 'mouth' [ka] and 'voice' [gu] were all written with the original pictogram for mouth (𒅗).
A contract for the sale of a field and a house, in the wedge-shaped cuneiform adapted for clay tablets, Shuruppak, circa 2600BC.
Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance, the syllable [ɡu] had fourteen different symbols.
The inventory of signs was expanded by the combination of existing signs into compound signs. They could either derive their meaning from a combination of the meanings of both original signs (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' and 𒀀 a 'water' were combined to form the sign for 𒅘 nag̃ 'drink', formally KA×A; cf. Chinese compound ideographs), or one sign could suggest the meaning and the other the pronunciation (e.g. 𒅗 ka 'mouth' was combined with the sign 𒉣 nun 'prince' to express the word 𒅻 nundum, meaning 'lip', formally KA×NUN; cf. Chinese phono-semantic compounds).[51]
Another way of expressing words that had no sign of their own was by so-called 'Diri compounds' – sign sequences that have, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example, the compound IGI.A (𒅆𒀀) – "eye" + "water" – has the reading imhur, meaning "foam").[52]
Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. Therefore, symbols were put together to indicate both the sound and the meaning of a symbol. For instance, the word 'raven' (UGA) had the same logogram (𒉀) as the word 'soap' (NAGA), the name of a city (EREŠ), and the patron goddess of Eresh (NISABA). To disambiguate and identify the word more precisely, two phonetic complements were added – Ú (𒌑) for the syllable [u] in front of the symbol and GA (𒂵) for the syllable [ga] behind. Finally, the symbol for 'bird', MUŠEN (𒄷) was added to ensure proper interpretation. As a result, the whole word could be spelt 𒌑𒉀𒂵𒄷, i.e. Ú.NAGA.GAmušen (among the many variant spellings that the word could have).
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 ruler Lugalzagesi (r. c. 2294–2270BC).[53][48] The vertical style remained for monumental purposes on stone stelas until the middle of the 2nd millennium.[48]
Written Sumerian was used as a scribal language until the first century AD. The spoken language died out between about 2100 and 1700BC.
Left: Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform syllabary, used by early Akkadian rulers.[54] Right: Seal of Akkadian Empire ruler Naram-Sin (reversed for readability), c. 2250 BC. The name of Naram-Sin (Akkadian: 𒀭𒈾𒊏𒄠𒀭𒂗𒍪: DNa-ra-am DSîn, Sîn being written 𒂗𒍪 EN.ZU), appears vertically in the right column.[55] 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.[56]
The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from the 23rd century BC (short chronology). The Akkadian language being East Semitic, its structure was completely different from Sumerian.[57] The Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs.[57] Still, many of the Sumerian characters were retained for their logographic value as well: for example the character for "sheep" was retained, but was now pronounced immerum, rather than the Sumerian udu.[57] Such retained individual signs or, sometimes, entire sign combinations with logographic value are known as Sumerograms, a type of heterogram.
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.[57] From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (20th century BC), the script evolved to accommodate the various dialects of Akkadian: Old Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian.[57] 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:
Babylonian tablets of the time of Hammurabi (circa 1750 BC).
Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, either in inscriptions or on clay tablets, continued to be in use throughout the 2nd millennium BC.
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 KAxGUR7 consists of 31 strokes.
Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian script. Written Akkadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary, 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, written in a Chinese-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms and others as phonetic characters.
This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian 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.[clarification needed] Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of logographic and phonemic writing.
Elamite cuneiform was a simplified form of the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, used to write the Elamite language in the area that corresponds to modern Iran from the 3rd millennium BC to the 4th century BC. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts, Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite. The earliest known Elamite cuneiform text is a treaty between Akkadians and the Elamites that dates back to 2200BC.[58] Some believe it might have been in use since 2500BC.[59] 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".[58]
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 kings.[60] The inscriptions, similar to that of the Rosetta Stone's, were written in three different writing systems. The first was Old Persian, which was deciphered in 1802 by Georg Friedrich Grotefend. The second, Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after the Old Persian text. Because Elamite is unlike its neighboring Semitic languages, the script's decipherment was delayed until the 1840s.[61]
Elamite cuneiform appears to have used far fewer signs than its Akkadian prototype and initially relied primarily on syllabograms, but logograms became more common in later texts. Many signs soon acquired highly distinctive local shape variants that are often difficult to recognise as related to their Akkadian prototypes.[62]
Hittite cuneiform
Hittite cuneiform is an adaptation of the Old Assyrian cuneiform of c.1800BC to the Hittite language and was used from the 17th until approximately the 13th century BC. More or less the same system was used by the scribes of the Hittite Empire for two other Anatolian languages, namely Luwian (alongside the native Anatolian hieroglyphics) and Palaic, as well as for the isolate Hattic language. When the cuneiform script was adapted to writing Hittite, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings, also known as Akkadograms, was added to the script, in addition to the Sumerian logograms, or Sumerograms, which were already inherent in the Akkadian writing system and which Hittite also kept. Thus the pronunciations of many Hittite words which were conventionally written by logograms are now unknown.
Hurrian and Urartian cuneiform
The Hurrian language (attested 2300–1000BC) and Urartian language (attested 9th–6th century BC) were also written in adapted versions of Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. Although the two languages are related, their writing systems seem to have been developed separately. For Hurrian, there were even different systems in different polities (in Mitanni, in Mari, in the Hittite Empire). The Hurrian orthographies were generally characterised by more extensive use of syllabograms and more limited use of logograms than Akkadian. Urartian, in comparison, retained a more significant role for logograms.[62]
Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian cuneiform
Neo-Assyrian cuneiform syllabary (circa 650 BC)
Left: Simplified cuneiform syllabary, in use during the Neo-Assyrian period.[54] The "C" before and after vowels stands for "Consonant". Right: Mesopotamian palace paving slab, c. 600 BC
In the Iron Age (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:
"Assurbanipal King of Assyria" Aššur-bani-habal šar mat Aššur KI Same characters, in the classical Sumero-Akkadian script of circa 2000BC (top), and in the Neo-Assyrian script of the Rassam cylinder, 643BC (bottom).[63]
Babylonian cuneiform was simplified along similar lines during that period, albeit to a lesser extent and in a slightly different way. From the 6th century, the Akkadian language was marginalized by Aramaic, written in the Aramaic alphabet, but Akkadian cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the Parthian Empire (250BC–226AD).[64] The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75AD.[65] The ability to read cuneiform may have persisted until the third century AD.[66][67]
The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script. Old Persian cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great 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, Akkadian, Hurrian, and Hittite cuneiforms.[68]
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" (𐏎), "king" (𐏋) or "country" (𐏌). 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.[69]
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 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.
Between half a million[15] and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000[70]–100,000 have been read or published. The British Museum holds the largest collection (approx. 130,000 tablets), followed by the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, the Louvre, the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, the National Museum of Iraq, the Yale Babylonian Collection (approx. 40,000), and Penn Museum. Most of these have "lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published",[15] as there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world.[70]
The first cuneiform inscriptions published in modern times, both copied from Achaemenid royal inscriptions in Persepolis in the early 17th century. Pietro Della Valle's inscription, today known as XPb, is from the Palace of Xerxes.[71]
The decipherment of cuneiform began with the decipherment of Old Persian cuneiform in 1836.
The first cuneiform inscriptions published in modern times were copied from the Achaemenid royal inscriptions in the ruins of Persepolis, with the first complete and accurate copy being published in 1778 by Carsten Niebuhr. Niebuhr's publication was used by Grotefend in 1802 to make the first breakthrough – the realization that Niebuhr had published three different languages side by side and the recognition of the word "king".[72]
The rediscovery and publication of cuneiform took place in the early 17th century, and early conclusions were drawn such as the writing direction and that the Achaemenid royal inscriptions are three different languages, with two different scripts. In 1620, García de Silva Figueroa dated the inscriptions of Persepolis to the Achaemenid period, identified them as Old Persian, and concluded that the ruins were the ancient residence of Persepolis. In 1621, Pietro Della Valle specified the direction of writing from left to right.
In 1762, Jean-Jacques Barthélemy found that an inscription in Persepolis resembled that found on a brick in Babylon. Carsten Niebuhr made the first copies of the inscriptions of Persepolis in 1778 and settled on three different types of writing, which subsequently became known as Niebuhr I, II and III. He was the first to discover the sign for a word division in one of the scriptures. Oluf Gerhard Tychsen was the first to list 24 phonetic or alphabetic values for the characters in 1798.
Actual decipherment did not take place until the beginning of the 19th century, initiated by Georg Friedrich Grotefend in his study of Old Persian cuneiform. He was followed by Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin in 1822 and Rasmus Christian Rask in 1823, who was the first to decipher the name Achaemenides and the consonants m and n. Eugène Burnouf identified the names of various satrapies and the consonants k and z in 1833–1835. Christian Lassen contributed significantly to the grammatical understanding of the Old Persian language and the use of vowels. The decipherers used the short trilingual inscriptions from Persepolis and the inscriptions from Ganjnāme for their work.
Niebuhr inscription 1, with the suggested words for "King" (𐎧𐏁𐎠𐎹𐎰𐎡𐎹) highlighted, repeated three times. Inscription now known to mean "Darius the Great King, King of Kings, King of countries, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenian, who built this Palace".[73] Today known as DPa, from the Palace of Darius in Persepolis, above figures of the king and attendants[74]
Niebuhr inscription 2, with the suggested words for "King" (𐎧𐏁𐎠𐎹𐎰𐎡𐎹) highlighted, repeated four times. Inscription now known to mean "Xerxes the Great King, King of Kings, son of Darius the King, an Achaemenian".[73] Today known as XPe, the text of fourteen inscriptions in three languages (Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian) from the Palace of Xerxes in Persepolis.[75]
An extract from the Cyrus Cylinder (lines 15–21), giving the genealogy of Cyrus the Great and an account of his capture of Babylon in 539BCThe cuneiform sign "EN", for "Lord" or "Master": the evolution from the pictograph of a throne circa 3000BC, followed by simplification and rotation down to circa 600BC.
Antiochus I Soter with titles in Akkadian on the cylinder of Antiochus: "Antiochus, King, Great King, King of multitudes, King of Babylon, King of countries". Note that while the images above transcribe the Akkadian pronunciation of the text, the actual spelling is highly logographic and would be strictly transliterated as follows, with the logograms (Sumerograms) capitalised and the syllabograms (phonetic signs) italicised: 1. DIŠan-ti-ʾu-ku-us LUGAL GAL-ú 2. LUGAL dan-nu LUGAL ŠÁR LUGAL E.KI LUGAL KUR-KUR 3. za-ni-in É.SAG.ÍL ù É.ZI.DA[82] In Unicode: 1. 𒁹𒀭𒋾𒀪𒆪𒊻𒈗𒃲𒌑 2. 𒈗𒆗𒉡𒈗𒎗𒈗𒂊𒆠𒈗𒆳𒆳 3. 𒍝𒉌𒅔𒂍𒊕𒅍𒅇𒂍𒍣𒁕
Cuneiform has a specific format for transliteration. 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 (𒀭) 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, representing the original Sumerian meaning, 'god' or the determinative for a deity. In transliteration, a different rendition of the same glyph is chosen depending on its role in the present context.[83]
Therefore, a text containing DINGIR (𒀭) and A (𒀀) in succession could be construed to represent the Akkadian words "ana", "ila", god + "a" (the accusative case 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, 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 different languages written with Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. The following conventions see wide use across the different fields:
To disambiguate between homophones, i.e. between signs pronounced identically, the letters that express the pronunciation of a sign are supplemented with subscript numbers. For example, u1 stands for the glyph 𒌋, u2 stands for 𒌑, and u3 stands for 𒅇, all thought to have been pronounced /u/. No.1 is usually treated as the default interpretation and not indicated explicitly, so u is equivalent to u1. For the numbers 2 and 3, accent diacritics are often used as well: an acute accent stands for no.2 and a grave accent for no.3. Thus, u is equivalent to u1 (𒌋), ú is equivalent to u2 (𒌑) and ù to u3 (𒅇). The sequence of numbering is conventional but essentially arbitrary and a consequence of the history of decipherment.
As shown above, signs as such are represented in capital letters. 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, in which a sequence of signs does not stand for a combination of their usual readings, as in the spelling 𒅆𒀀 IGI.A for the word imhur 'foam' given above. Capital letters may also be used to indicate a Sumerogram, for example, KÙ.BABBAR 𒆬𒌓 – Sumerian for "silver" – being used with the intended Akkadian reading kaspum, "silver", 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. An Akkadogram in Hittite is indicated by capital letters as well, but they are italicised: e.g. ME-E transcribes the sign sequence 𒈨𒂊 when the intended reading is Hittite wātar "water", based on Akkadian mê "water (accusative-genitive case)".
Another convention is that determinatives are written in superscript: thus, the sequence 𒀕𒆠 (the name of the city Uruk) is transliterated as unugki to show that the second sign, KI, meaning "earth", isn't intended to be pronounced, but only specifies the type of meaning the former sign has. In this case, that it is a place name. A few common determinatives are transliterated with abbreviations: for example, d represents the sign 𒀭 DINGIR when it serves as an indicator that one or more following signs form the name of a deity, as seen in the transliteration of 𒀭𒂗𒆤 as den-líl "Enlil". 𒁹 DIŠ 'one' and 𒊩 MUNUS 'woman' as prefixed determinatives for male and female personal names, uncommon in Sumerian, but subsequently used for some other languages, are often rendered with the abbreviations m and f for "masculine" and "feminine".
In Sumerian transliteration, a multiplication sign ('×') is used to indicate typographic ligatures. For example, the sign 𒅻 NUNDUM, which stands for the word nundum "lip", can also be designated as KA×NUN, which indicates that it is a compound of the signs 𒅗 KA "mouth" and 𒉣 NUN "prince".
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, 𒌨𒀭𒇉, read Ur-Bau at one time,[citation needed] was later read as Ur-Engur, and is now read as Ur-Nammu or Ur-Namma; for Lugal-zage-si (𒈗𒍠𒄀𒋛), a king of Uruk, some scholars continued to read Ungal-zaggisi; and so forth. 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. 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 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 𒌷𒈬𒍑, 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 (𒌷) can also be read as rí and that the name is that of the Akkadian king Rimush.
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 (1936) lists 939 signs used in the earliest period, late Uruk, 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 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. Mittermayer and Attinger (2006, Altbabylonische Zeichenliste der Sumerisch-Literarischen Texte or "aBZL") list 480 Sumerian forms, written in Isin-Larsa 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 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).
Syllabary
The tables below contain the transliteration schemes of Sumero-Akkadian syllabograms.
The Sumerians used a base-60 numerical system. A number, such as "70", would be represented with the digit for "60" (𒁹) and the digit for "10" (𒌋): 𒁹𒌋. It's important to mention that the number for "60" is the same as the number for "1";[85] the reason this number isn't read as "11" is because of the order of the numbers: 60 then 10, not 10 then 60.
Usage
An example: King Shulgi foundation tablet (c. 2094–2047 BC)
DNimintabba.............. "For Nimintabba" NIN-a-ni..................... "his Lady", SHUL-GI.................... "Shulgi" NITAH KALAG-ga...... "the mighty man" LUGAL URIMKI-ma... "King of Ur" LUGAL ki-en-............... "King of Sum-" -gi ki-URI-ke................. "-er and Akkad", É-a-ni.......................... "her Temple" mu-na-DU................... "he built"[86]
Foundation tablet of king Shulgi (c. 2094–2047 BC), for the Temple of Nimintabba in Ur. ME 118560 British Museum.[87][88] Inscription "For his Lady Nimintabba, Shulgi the mighty man, King of Ur and King of Sumer and Akkad, has built her Temple":[86] Traditional cuneiforms were written vertically, but modern transcription is based on the "rotated" script adopted in the 2nd millennium BC.
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.[89] One example from the 8th century BC was found at Nimrud. The wax contained toxic amounts of arsenic.[90] It was used to record laws, like the Code of Hammurabi. 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 stone kudurru.[91][92] Studies by Assyriologists like Claus Wilcke[93] and Dominique Charpin[94] 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,[95] 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. Citizens with a higher degree of literacy 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.
Cuneiform ama-gi, literally "return to the mother", loosely translated as "liberty", is the logo of Liberty Fund.[96]
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.[98] The base character inventory is derived from the list of Ur III signs compiled by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative of UCLA 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.[99]
A map showing the locations of all known provenanced cuneiform inscriptions. Cuneiform Inscriptions Geographical Site Index v1.5, November 2022, from Uppsala University.
↑ Tablets from the site surfaced on the market as early as 1880, when three tablets made their way to European museums. By the early 1920s, the number of tablets sold from the site exceeded 4,000. While the site of Kültepe was suspected as the source of the tablets, and the site was visited several times, it was not until 1925 when Bedřich Hrozný corroborated this identification by excavating tablets from the fields next to the tell that were related to tablets already purchased.
Related Research Articles
Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of human language. A writing system uses a set of symbols and rules to encode aspects of spoken language, such as its lexicon and syntax. However, written language may take on characteristics distinct from those of any spoken language.
Akkadian is an extinct East Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia from the third millennium BC until its gradual replacement in common use by Old Aramaic among Assyrians and Babylonians from the 8th century BC.
Sumer is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia, emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like nearby Elam, it is one of the cradles of civilization, along with Egypt, the Indus Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe, and Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other crops, a surplus which enabled them to form urban settlements. The world's earliest known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between c. 3350 – c. 2500 BC, following a period of proto-writing c. 4000 – c. 2500 BC.
The history of Sumer spans through the 5th to 3rd millennia BCE in southern Mesopotamia, and is taken to include the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods. Sumer was the region's earliest known civilization and ended with the downfall of the Third Dynasty of Ur around 2004 BCE. It was followed by a transitional period of Amorite states before the rise of Babylonia in the 18th century BCE.
Elam was an ancient civilization centered in the far west and southwest of modern-day Iran, stretching from the lowlands of what is now Khuzestan and Ilam Province as well as a small part of southern Iraq. The modern name Elam stems from the Sumerian transliteration elam(a), along with the later Akkadian elamtu, and the Elamite haltamti. Elamite states were among the leading political forces of the Ancient Near East. In classical literature, Elam was also known as Susiana, a name derived from its capital Susa.
Elamite, also known as Hatamtite and formerly as Scythic, Median, Amardian, Anshanian and Susian, is an extinct language that was spoken by the ancient Elamites. It was recorded in what is now southwestern Iran from 2600 BC to 330 BC. Elamite is generally thought to have no demonstrable relatives and is usually considered a language isolate. The lack of established relatives makes its interpretation difficult.
Assyriology, also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The field covers Pre Dynastic Mesopotamia, Sumer, the early Sumero-Akkadian city-states, the Akkadian Empire, Ebla, the Akkadian and Imperial Aramaic speaking states of Assyria, Babylonia and the Sealand Dynasty, the migrant foreign dynasties of southern Mesopotamia, including the Gutians, Amorites, Kassites, Arameans, Suteans and Chaldeans. Assyriology can be included to cover Neolithic pre-Dynastic cultures dating to as far back as 8000 BC, to the Islamic Conquest of the 7th century AD, so the topic is significantly wider than that implied by the root "Assyria".
The Proto-Elamite script is an early Bronze Age writing system briefly in use before the introduction of Elamite cuneiform.
Ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement originated in the loosely organized city-states of Early Dynastic Sumer. Each city, kingdom and trade guild had its own standards until the formation of the Akkadian Empire when Sargon of Akkad issued a common standard. This standard was improved by Naram-Sin, but fell into disuse after the Akkadian Empire dissolved. The standard of Naram-Sin was readopted in the Ur III period by the Nanše Hymn which reduced a plethora of multiple standards to a few agreed upon common groupings. Successors to Sumerian civilization including the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Persians continued to use these groupings. Akkado-Sumerian metrology has been reconstructed by applying statistical methods to compare Sumerian architecture, architectural plans, and issued official standards such as Statue B of Gudea and the bronze cubit of Nippur.
Anatolian hieroglyphs are an indigenous logographic script native to central Anatolia, consisting of some 500 signs. They were once commonly known as Hittite hieroglyphs, but the language they encode proved to be Luwian, not Hittite, and the term Luwian hieroglyphs is used in English publications. They are typologically similar to Egyptian hieroglyphs, but do not derive graphically from that script, and they are not known to have played the sacred role of hieroglyphs in Egypt. There is no demonstrable connection to Hittite cuneiform.
Elamite cuneiform was a logo-syllabic script used to write the Elamite language. The corpus of Elamite cuneiform consists of tablets and fragments. The majority were created during the Achaemenid era, and contain primarily economic records.
Linear Elamite was a writing system used in Elam during the Bronze Age between c. 2300 and 1850 BCE, and known mainly from a few extant monumental inscriptions. It was used contemporaneously with Elamite cuneiform and records the Elamite language. The French archaeologist François Desset and his colleagues have argued that it is the oldest known purely phonographic writing system, although others, such as the linguist Michael Mäder, have argued that it is partly logographic.
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, Armenia, Romania (Gherla), Turkey, and along the Suez Canal. They were mostly inscriptions from the time period of Darius I, such as the DNa inscription, as well as his son, Xerxes I. Later kings down to Artaxerxes III used more recent forms of the language classified as "pre-Middle Persian".
In epigraphy, a multilingual inscription is an inscription that includes the same text in two or more languages. A bilingual is an inscription that includes the same text in two languages. Multilingual inscriptions are important for the decipherment of ancient writing systems, and for the study of ancient languages with small or repetitive corpora.
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.
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, Eblaite, or Hittite. This type of logogram characterized, to a greater or lesser extent, every adaptation of the original Mesopotamian cuneiform system to a language other than Sumerian. The frequency and intensity of their use varied depending on period, style, and genre. In the same way, a written Akkadian word that is used ideographically to represent a language other than Akkadian is known as an Akkadogram.
The Kish tablet is a limestone tablet found at the site of the ancient Sumerian city of Kish in modern Tell al-Uhaymir, Babylon Governorate, Iraq. A plaster cast of the tablet is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum, while the original is housed at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. It should not be confused with the Scheil dynastic tablet, which contains part of the Sumerian King List and is also sometimes called the Kish tablet.
The cuneiform lexical lists are a series of ancient Mesopotamian glossaries which preserve the semantics of Sumerograms, their phonetic value and their Akkadian or other language equivalents. They are the oldest literary texts from Mesopotamia and one of the most widespread genres in the ancient Near East. Wherever cuneiform tablets have been uncovered, inside Iraq or in the wider Middle East, these lists have been discovered.
The proto-cuneiform script was a system of proto-writing that emerged in Mesopotamia, eventually developing into the early cuneiform script used in the region's Early Dynastic I period. It arose from the token-based system that had already been in use across the region in preceding millennia. While it is known definitively that later cuneiform was used to write the Sumerian language, it is still uncertain what the underlying language of proto-cuneiform texts was.
↑ Jagersma, Abraham Hendrik (2010). A descriptive grammar of Sumerian(PDF) (Thesis). Leiden: Faculty of the Humanities, Leiden University. p.15. In its fully developed form, the Sumerian script is based on a mixture of logographic and phonographic writing. There are basically two types of signs: word signs, or logograms, and sound signs, or phonograms.
↑ Sara E. Kimball; Jonathan Slocum. "Hittite Online". The University of Texas at Austin Linguistics Research Center. Early Indo-European OnLine. 2 The Cuneiform Syllabary. Archived from the original on November 7, 2023. Hittite is written in a form of the cuneiform syllabary, a writing system in use in Sumerian city-states in Mesopotamia by roughly 3100 B.C.E. and used to write a number of languages in the ancient Near East until the first century B.C.E.
↑ Sara E. Kimball; Jonathan Slocum. "Hittite Online". The University of Texas at Austin Linguistics Research Center. Early Indo-European OnLine. 2 The Cuneiform Syllabary. Archived from the original on November 7, 2023. ...by approximately 2350 B.C.E. documents were written in cuneiform in Akkadian. Sumerian, a long extinct language, is related to no known language, ancient or modern, and its structure differed from that of Akkadian, which made it necessary to modify the writing system.
↑ Huehnergard, John (2004). "Akkadian and Eblaite". The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p.218. ISBN978-0-521-56256-0. Connected Akkadian texts appear c. 2350 and continue more or less uninterrupted for the next two and a half millennia...
↑ Sara E. Kimball; Jonathan Slocum. "Hittite Online". The University of Texas at Austin Linguistics Research Center. Early Indo-European OnLine. 2 The Cuneiform Syllabary. Archived from the original on November 7, 2023. These modifications are important, because the Hittites borrowed them when they borrowed the writing system, probably from a north Syrian source, in the early second millennium B.C.E. In borrowing this system, the Hittites retained conventions established for writing Sumerian and Akkadian...
↑ Archi, Alfonso (2015). "How the Anitta text reached Hattusa". Saeculum: Gedenkschrift für Heinrich Otten anlässlich seines 100. Geburtstags. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN978-3-447-10365-7. The existence of the Anitta text demonstrates that there was not a sudden and total interruption in writing but a phase of adaptation to a new writing.
↑ Westenholz, Aage (December 18, 2007). "The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again". Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie. 97 (2): 294. doi:10.1515/ZA.2007.014. S2CID161908528. The latest datable cuneiform tablet that we have today concerns astronomical events of 75 AD and comes from Babylon. It provides a terminus post quem, at least for Babylon.
↑ Kramer, Samuel Noah (1963). The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. His numerous treatises, text editions, and polemics helped to consolidate the new science, now generally becoming known as Assyriology— based on the fact that the earliest excavations were conducted in northern Iraq, the home of the Assyrian people...
1 2 3 "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 W. Hallo; W. Simpson (1971). The Ancient Near East. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. p.25.
↑ Bennison-Chapman, Lucy E. "Reconsidering 'Tokens': The Neolithic Origins of Accounting or Multifunctional, Utilitarian Tools?." Cambridge Archaeological Journal 29.2 (2019): 233–259.
↑ Hunger, Hermann, and Teije de Jong, "Almanac W22340a from Uruk: The latest datable cuneiform tablet.", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 104.2, pp. 182–194, 2014
↑ Overmann, Karenleigh A.. "The Neolithic Clay Tokens", in The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East, Piscataway, New Jersey, US: Gorgias Press, 2019, pp. 157–178
↑ Denise Schmandt-Besserat, "An Archaic Recording System and the Origin of Writing." Syro Mesopotamian Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1–32, 1977
↑ Denise Schmandt-Besserat, An Archaic Recording System in the Uruk-Jemdet Nasr Period, American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 83, no. 1, pp. 19–48, (Jan. 1979)
↑ Robert K. Englund, "Proto-Cuneiform Account-Books and Journals", in Michael Hudson and Cornelia Wunsch, eds., Creating Economic Order: Record-keeping, Standardization and the Development of Accounting in the Ancient Near East (CDL Press: Bethesda, Maryland, USA) pp. 23–46, 2004
↑ Green, M. and H. J. Nissen (1987). Zeichenliste der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk. ATU 2. Berlin
↑ Englund, R. K. (1998). "Texts from the Late Uruk Period". In: Mesopotamien: Späturuk-Zeit und Frühdy- nastische Zeit (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 160/1). Ed. by P. Attinger and M. Wäfler. Fribourg, Switzerland / Göttingen, 15–217
↑ Born, L., & Kelley, K. (2021). A Quantitative Analysis of Proto-Cuneiform Sign Use in Archaic Tribute. Cuneiform Digital Library Bulletin, 006
↑ Foxvog, Daniel A. Introduction to Sumerian grammar(PDF). pp.10–11. Archived(PDF) from the original on January 3, 2017 (about phonemes g̃ and ř and their representation using cuneiform signs).
↑ Foxvog, Daniel A. Introduction to Sumerian grammar(PDF). p.13. Archived(PDF) from the original on January 3, 2017 (about phonemes g̃ and ř and their representation using cuneiform signs).
↑ Frye, Richard N. "History of Mesopotamia – Mesopotamia from c. 320 bce to c. 620 ce". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved December 11, 2020. The use of cuneiform in government documents ceased sometime during the Achaemenian period, but it continued in religious texts until the 1st century of the Common era.
↑ Anderson, Terence J.; Twining, William (2015). "Law and archaeology: Modified Wigmorean Analysis". In Chapman, Robert; Wylie, Alison (eds.). Material Evidence: Learning from Archaeological Practice. Abingdon, UK; New York, NY: Routledge. p.290. ISBN978-1-317-57622-8. Retrieved August 20, 2019.
↑ Windfuhr, G. L.: "Notes on the old Persian signs", page 1. Indo-Iranian Journal, 1970.
↑ Schmitt, R. (2008), "Old Persian", in Roger D. Woodard (ed.), The Ancient Languages of Asia and the Americas (illustrateded.), Cambridge University Press, p.77, ISBN978-0-521-68494-1
1 2 Watkins, Lee; Snyder, Dean (2003), The Digital Hammurabi Project(PDF), The Johns Hopkins University, archived(PDF) from the original on July 14, 2014, Since the decipherment of Babylonian cuneiform some 150 years ago museums have accumulated perhaps 300,000 tablets written in most of the major languages of the Ancient Near East – Sumerian, Akkadian (Babylonian and Assyrian), Eblaite, Hittite, Persian, Hurrian, Elamite, and Ugaritic. These texts include genres as variegated as mythology and mathematics, law codes and beer recipes. In most cases these documents are the earliest exemplars of their genres, and cuneiformists have made unique and valuable contributions to the study of such moderns disciplines as history, law, religion, linguistics, mathematics, and science. In spite of continued great interest in mankind's earliest documents it has been estimated that only about 1/10 of the extant cuneiform texts have been read even once in modern times. There are various reasons for this: the complex Sumero/Akkadian script system is inherently difficult to learn; there is, as yet, no standard computer encoding for cuneiform; there are only a few hundred qualified cuneiformists in the world; the pedagogical tools are, in many cases, non-optimal; and access to the widely distributed tablets is expensive, time-consuming, and, due to the vagaries of politics, becoming increasingly difficult.
↑ Sayce, Rev. A. H., "The Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions", Second Edition-revised, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, Brighton, New York, 1908 (Reprint – ISBN978-1-108-08239-6)
↑ Cf. The Cylinder of Antiochus I from the Ezida temple in Borsippa (BM 36277), p.4 by M. Stol and R.J. van der Spek and Antiochus I 01 by The Royal Inscriptions of Babylonia online (RIBo) Project. The transliteration here differs slightly from these sources by rendering the determinative for male personal names 𒁹 with the Sumerian reading of the sign DIŠ, whereas it is more commonly transcribed with the conventional letter M today. The spellings 𒂍𒊕𒅍 (É.SAG.ÍL) and 𒂍𒍣𒁕 (É.ZI.DA) can also be read phonetically in Akkadian (as they are in the second source), because the names themselves have been borrowed into Akkadian with their Sumerian pronunciations. Conversely, the sign 𒆗, which may have the phonetic value dan in Akkadian, was nevertheless originally a Sumerian logogram KAL 'strong'. Finally, 𒅇 (ù) was the word for 'and' not only in Akkadian, but also in Sumerian.
↑ Kudrinski, Maksim. "Hittite heterographic writings and their interpretation" Indogermanische Forschungen, vol. 121, no. 1, pp. 159–176, 2016
1 2 "(For the goddess) Nimintabba, his lady, Shulgi, mighty man, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, her house, built." in Expedition. University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. 1986. p.30.
↑ Zimmermann, Lynn-Salammbô, "Knocking on Wood: Writing Boards in the Kassite Administration", Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 177-237, 2023
↑ Cammarosano, Michele, Katja Weirauch, Feline Maruhn, Gert Jendritzki, and Patrick L. Kohl, "They Wrote on Wax. Wax Boards in the Ancient Near East", Mesopotamia, vol. 54, pp. 121‒180, 2019
↑ Zimmermann, Lynn-Salammbô. "Wooden Wax-Covered Writing Boards as Vorlage for kudurru Inscriptions in the Middle Babylonian Period" Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History, 2022
↑ Wilcke, Claus (2000). Wer las und schrieb in Babylonien und Assyrien. München: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. ISBN978-3-7696-1612-5.
↑ Charpin, Dominique. 2004. "Lire et écrire en Mésopotamie: Une affaire dé spécialistes?" Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres: 481–501.
↑ "Our Logo | Liberty Fund". libertyfund.org. Retrieved May 14, 2020. The cuneiform inscription that serves as Liberty Fund's logo and as a design element in our books is the earliest-known written appearance of the word 'freedom' (amagi), or 'liberty'. It is taken from a clay document written about 2300 B.C. in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.
↑ Anshuman Pandey, "Revised proposal to encode proto-cuneiform in Unicode", L2/23-190, July 11, 2023
↑ 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
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
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, Archaische Texte aus Uruk, Berlin-Leipzig (1936)
E. Forrer, Die Keilschrift von Boghazköi, Leipzig (1922)
J. Friedrich, Hethitisches Keilschrift-Lesebuch, Heidelberg (1960)
Hayes, John L. (2000). A Manual of Sumerian Grammar and Texts. Aids and Research Tools in Ancient Near Eastern Studies. Vol.5 (2ded.). Malibu: Undena Publications. ISBN978-0-89003-197-1.
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.
Hershkovitz, Yehonatan, "The Adaptation Process of Cuneiform in the Old Babylonian Period", Dissertation, Harvard University, 2023
Kramer, Samuel Noah (1981). "Appendix B: The Origin of the Cuneiform Writing System". History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man's Recorded History (3d reviseded.). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. pp.381–383. ISBN978-0-8122-7812-5.
Mittermayer, Catherine; Attinger, Pascal (2006). Altbabylonische Zeichenliste der Sumerisch-Literarischen Texte. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Vol.Special Edition. Academic Press Fribourg. ISBN978-3-7278-1551-5.
O. Neugebauer, A. Sachs (eds.), Mathematical Cuneiform Texts, New Haven (1945).
Ouyang, Xiaoli, and Christine Proust, "Place-Value Notations in the Ur III Period: Marginal Numbers in Administrative Texts", Cultures of Computation and Quantification in the Ancient World: Numbers, Measurements, and Operations in Documents from Mesopotamia, China and South Asia. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp.267–356, 2023
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. doi:10.1515/ZA.2009.003.
Philippe Quenet, "The Diffusion of the Cuneiform Writing System in Northern Mesopotamia: The Earliest Archaeological Evidence", Iraq, vol. 67, no. 2, pp.31–40, 2005
Rattenborg, Rune, Smidt, Gustav Ryberg, Johansson, Carolin, Melin-Kronsell, Nils and Nett, Seraina, "The Archaeological Distribution of the Cuneiform Corpus: A Provisional Quantitative and Geospatial Survey", Altorientalische Forschungen, vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 178-205, 2003
Y. Rosengarten, Répertoire commenté des signes présargoniques sumériens de Lagash, Paris (1967)
Chr. Rüster, E. Neu, Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon (HZL), Wiesbaden (1989)
Nikolaus Schneider, Die Keilschriftzeichen der Wirtschaftsurkunden von Ur III nebst ihren charakteristischsten Schreibvarianten, Keilschrift-Paläographie; Heft 2, Rom: Päpstliches Bibelinstitut (1935).
Wolfgang Schramm, Akkadische Logogramme, Goettinger Arbeitshefte zur Altorientalischen Literatur (GAAL) Heft 4, Goettingen (2003), ISBN978-3-936297-01-0.
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) ISBN978-0-945636-67-0
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
