Cuneiform

Cuneiform is one of the earliest known writing systems, used in the ancient Near East. It was created around the early Bronze Age and continued to be used until the 1st century BC. The name "cuneiform" comes from the wedge-shaped marks that make up its signs, created by pressing a reed stylus into soft clay.

Originally, cuneiform was developed to write the Sumerian language spoken in southern Mesopotamia, which is modern-day Iraq. Over time, it was adapted to write many other languages, including Akkadian, Hittite, Eblaite, Elamite, Hurrian, Luwian, and Urartian. Even some alphabets, like Old Persian and Ugaritic, used cuneiform-style signs.

Cuneiform was rediscovered in the 17th century through trilingual inscriptions found at Persepolis. These inscriptions were finally deciphered in the early 19th century, leading to the modern study of this ancient script, known as Assyriology. Today, museums around the world hold an estimated half a million cuneiform tablets, with major collections in the British Museum, Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin, the Louvre, the Istanbul Archaeology Museums, the National Museum of Iraq, the Yale Babylonian Collection, and the Penn Museum.

History

See also: History of writing

Writing began after pottery was invented, during the Neolithic when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or commodities. 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. Writing is first recorded in Uruk, at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and soon after in various parts of the Near-East.

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. It had to be deciphered as a completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. It was successfully deciphered by 1857.

The cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC, stemming from the Near Eastern token system used for accounting. Early tokens with pictographic shapes of animals, associated with numbers, were discovered in Tell Brak, and date to the mid-4th millennium BC. 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 c. 3300 BC.

Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a sharpened reed stylus or incised in stone. Most Proto-Cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature. 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.

The first inscribed tablets were purely pictographic, which makes it technically difficult to determine which language they represent. Different languages have been proposed, though usually Sumerian is assumed. Later tablets dating after c. 2900 BC start to use syllabic elements, which clearly show a language structure typical of the agglutinative Sumerian language.

About 2800 BC some pictographic elements started to be used for their phonetic syllabic value, permitting the recording of abstract ideas and 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.

Early cuneiform inscriptions 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 c. 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.

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. Words that sounded alike would have different signs. The inventory of signs was expanded by the combination of existing signs into compound signs.

The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadian Empire from the 24th century BC. The Akkadian language being East Semitic, its structure was completely different from Sumerian. The Akkadians found a practical solution in writing their language phonetically, using the corresponding Sumerian phonetic signs. Still, many of the Sumerian characters were retained for their logographic value as well.

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 between the 3rd millennium and 4th century BC.

Hittite cuneiform is an adaptation of Old Assyrian cuneiform to write the Hittite language that emerged c. 1800 BC and was used between the 17th–13th centuries BC.

In the Iron Age (c. 10th–6th centuries BC) during the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified.

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.

The cuneiform script changed considerably over more than 2,000 years. The image below shows the development of the sign SAĜ "head" (Borger nr. 184, U+12295 𒊕). Stages: shows the pictogram as it was drawn around 3000 BC shows the rotated pictogram as written from c. 2800–2600 BC 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.

Archaeology

Between 500,000 and 2 million cuneiform tablets have been found by archaeologists, but only around 30,000 to 100,000 have been studied or shared with the public. The British Museum has the largest group of these tablets, with about 130,000, followed by museums in Berlin, Paris, Istanbul, Iraq, and the United States. Many of these tablets have been in museum collections for over 100 years without being fully examined or shared, partly because there are very few experts in the world who can understand and translate them.

Decipherment

Main article: Decipherment of cuneiform

The first cuneiform inscriptions were published in the early 1600s from Persepolis. Scholars began to study these inscriptions and realized they were written in different languages.

The real decipherment began in 1836 when scholars started to understand Old Persian cuneiform. Over time, many people helped uncover the meanings of the symbols. By studying inscriptions from places like Persepolis and Ganjnāme, they learned to read cuneiform. Finally, the decipherment was finished when scholars fully understood the Behistun Inscription.

Transliteration

Cuneiform writing uses a special way to show its signs called transliteration. This helps scholars understand the ancient texts better. When transliterating, experts decide how to read each sign because one sign can have many meanings.

For example, a sign might stand for a syllable, a whole word, or even an idea like "god." Transliteration separates these signs with dashes, making it easier to see how they might be read. Scholars also use special rules to show different sounds and meanings, like using capital letters for certain words or adding small numbers to show similar sounds.

These rules help everyone read and study cuneiform texts more clearly, even though the exact meaning of some signs can change over time as we learn more about ancient languages.

Sign inventories

See also: List of cuneiform signs and Cuneiform (Unicode block)

The Sumerian cuneiform script had around 1,000 different signs. Over time, this number was reduced to about 600 by the 24th century BC. Different languages, like Akkadian and Hittite, used some of these signs but not all.

A. Falkenstein counted 939 signs from very early times, while other researchers have listed different numbers depending on the time period and language. The way people wrote changed over time, especially when a more casual style of writing began, which led to more variations in the signs used.

Syllabary

The tables below show how Sumero-Akkadian sounds were written with cuneiform signs.

Numerals

Main article: Babylonian cuneiform numerals

The Sumerians used a base-60 system for their numbers. For example, the number "70" was shown using the symbol for "60" together with the symbol for "10". The order of these symbols mattered, as it told the reader that the number was 60 plus 10, not 10 plus 60.

Usage

Cuneiform was a writing system used in ancient Mesopotamia for many purposes. People wrote on clay tablets, stone, and even wax boards. They used it to record laws, make maps, write medical guides, and share religious stories. Everyone from ordinary people to scholars could learn different levels of cuneiform.

Today, some modern logos are inspired by cuneiform symbols. For example, the logo of the Liberty Fund uses a symbol meaning “liberty,” and the GigaMesh Software Framework uses a symbol that means “street” or “road junction.”

Unicode

Unicode version 16.0 includes special sections for the ancient writing system called cuneiform. These sections contain characters used for writing languages like Sumerian and Akkadian. The characters are organized in special number ranges, making it easier for computers to display and study this ancient script.

The idea to add cuneiform to Unicode was suggested by experts in 2004. They used lists of cuneiform signs from important research projects to decide which characters to include. This helps historians and students work with cuneiform texts using modern computers.

Corpus

Many efforts have been made since the 1800s to gather all known cuneiform writings into a collection. Today, two important projects continue this work: the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative and the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus. These help scholars study the ancient scripts more easily.