gMmEHTGWDAER
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`University of California l’res‘x’
`Bcrkclcy and Lox Angclcs California
`.
`.
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`i
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`© 1987 The rrmtecs ot the British Muscum
`Designed by Arthur Lockwood
`Front cover dcsign by (imhmne Dudley
`Printed in (ireat Britain
`
`Volume 3 in the Reading Thu pas! series
`
`C t
`I
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`-'
`a a ogulng "I
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`L'b
`fC
`\£,a::goc Bonfire“
`Cuneiform.
`(Reading the past)
`B'b'mgmph."= P.
`Includes index.
`I. Titlr.
`I. Cuneiform writing.
`4I7'.7
`I’]3|93.W35
`I988
`ISBN 0-520-061I5-2 (pbk.i
`
`-l’ hl'cat'o Data
`u I
`I n
`
`II. Series.
`87-5879
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`

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`Contents
`
`Enefase
`
`1 Origin and Develogment
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`
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`EE ERIEkSBté‘oStibx.ax
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`' raries
`
`4 The Geographical Spread
`5 Decigherment
`6 Samgle Texts
`LEakes
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`Where to see Cuneiform lnscrigtions
`Further Reading
`Index
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`

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`Preface
`
`Cuneiform writing was for 2.500 years one of the two principal media of literate
`civilisation. together with Egyptian hieroglyphs. If one adds the 500 years of its slow
`decline then it matches the length of time for which our own alphabet has been in
`common use. It is beyond the scope of this book to give even a brief sketch of the history
`of the different peoples and kingdoms involved. The maps and chronological table,
`however. are designed to give a basic outline. In any case. our knowledge of the details of
`chronology often remains inadequate. so many events or changes can only be dated
`generally to centuries or millennia.
`Archaeologists and historians alike have tended to be quite inconsistent in their use of
`place names. ancient or modern. So. to avoid confusion. I have kept to the ancient names
`where known. giving the modern names in brackets where common usage has made
`them well known. Since much of the subject matter is common to the civilisations of
`
`Sumer. Babylon and Assyria I frequently use the term Mesopotamia to cover all three.
`Assyrian and Babylonian are both dialects of the Akkadian language. and I use all
`three terms. Transliterations of Akkadian are printed in italic script. while Sumerian is
`printed in Roman upper or lower case. and translations are printed in quotes.
`
`C. B. F. Walker
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`1
`
`Origin and Development
`
`Pictographs
`Writing was invented in order to record business activities in the early Near East. With
`the growth of centralised economies the officials of palaces and temples needed to be
`able to keep track of the amounts of grain and numbers of sheep and cattle which were
`entering or leaving their stores and farms. It was impossible to rely on a man‘s memory
`for every detail, and a new method was needed to keep reliable records.
`When man first began to write he wrote not with pen and ink on paper but by
`scratching signs on to damp clay with a pointed stick or reed. The raw materials were
`readily available in the river valleys of the Near East and cost little effort to prepare.
`Clay can be easily worked into a suit-ably flat shape for writing on while moist. and if left
`to dry in the sun after being inscribed will soon be hard enough to stand up to consider-
`able wear and tear.
`
`On the very earliest texts pictures (sometimes called pictographs) were drawn on
`damp clay using a pointed tool. But quite soon the scribes found it was quicker to
`produce a stylised representation of an object by making a few marks in the clay rather
`than attempt an artistic impression by naturalistic drawing in straight or curving lines.
`These stylised representations then had to be standardised so that everyone could recog-
`nise them. Since the scribes were no longer trying to be great artists the drawing instru-
`ment did not have to be finely pointed but could be blunt or flat. The end of the wooden
`or reed stylus, which struck the clay first, made a wider mark than the shaft, and so came
`into being the typical wedge-shaped impression after which this writing system became
`known — cuneiform (from the Latin word rimeus meaning wedge). Many early tablets
`show a mixture of signs drawn and written in cuneiform.
`Until quite recently the theory presented in most books on Mesopotamian
`archaeology was that writing was invented in southern Iraq c. 3000 BC. or slightly earlier.
`perhaps by a Sumerian living in Uruk. Whether or not he was Sumerian is uncertain
`since the very earliest texts of all are purely pictographic (picture writing) and without
`phonetic indications to show which language is being written. The suggestion that he
`lived in Uruk was based on the facts that the earliest evidence for writing was found
`there and that by 3000 BC the city had already enjoyed a long history.
`Today the picture looks rather different. Evidence for early stages of writing in the
`form of tablets inscribed with numbers only, sometimes also bearing seal impressions.
`has been found not only at Uruk but also at Nineveh in Iraq. at Susa, (Ihoga Mish and
`Godin Tepe in western Iran, and at Tell Brak and Habuba Kabira in north Syria; most of
`these can be dated to the later fourth millennium BC. Next, two tablets from Tell Brak.
`
`found in I984, depict a goat and a sheep, each accompanied by the number 10. They are
`quite as primitive as anything from Uruk: if anything they may even be earlier, since they
`show the whole of the animals, whereas pictures on the earliest tablets from Uruk show
`only the heads of animals. In the east the pictographic texts found at Susa, known as
`
`2
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`2 Pictographic tablets from Tell Brak.
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`proto-Elamite, appear in an archaeological level which shows marked differences from
`the previous level, suggesting the arrival of a new cultural group. and since these proto-
`Elamite texts have now been found as far east as Seistan on the border of Afghanistan. it
`may be that the script was invented on the Iranian plateau. Study of the early Uruk texts
`themselves has also suggested that they are dependent on an earlier tradition of pictogra-
`phy which has not yet been found or identified. Thus it is beginning to look as if we
`should think in terms of the invention of writing as being a gradual process. accom-
`plished over a wide area, rather than the product of a single Sumerian genius.
`In practice any meaningful discussion has to start with the tablets found at Uruk in the
`early archaeological level known as Uruk IV and a slightly later group found in Uruk lll.
`Contemporary with the Uruk Ill tablets are tablets from Jemdet Nasr to the north and
`the proto-Elamite tablets from Susa. Historically the Uruk lV-lll levels date to c. 3300 —
`2900 BC. There are both similarities and differences between the tablets from Uruk and
`
`Jemdet Nasr and those from Susa. but while the Uruk and Jemdet Nasr tablets are
`regarded as the beginning of writing in Sumerian. the Susa tablets are seen as the first
`examples of the still little-understood Elamite language.
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`3|
`3
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`Musée du Louvre. Paris.
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`3 A proto-Elamite tablet.
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`II)
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`orchard
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`walk rsmnd %
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`gin-"guh
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`giéimmar
`date-palm
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`4 TJHC n! cuneiform ugns‘ showing fur each Sign the pictugraphic form (a 3000 BC). an early
`(r. 650 BC]. now turned through
`cuncimrm rcprcscnmnnn 1". 2400 m I, and the Lat: Assyrun furm
`ml dcgrcm. With the Sumerian phonetic equivalent and meaning.
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`ll
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`The inscriptions on these early tablets consist of brief economic records or lists of
`signs for the instruction of trainee scribes. The signs are mostly pictographic: that is to
`say the sign for an ox looks like an ox‘s head. the sign for barley looks like an ear of
`barley, and the sign for a day is a picture of the sun coming up over the horizon. The
`pictures quickly take on a cuneiform appearance and are regularly accompanied by
`numbers. which is enough to suggest that the texts were economic (receipts. delivery
`notes or inventories). An intensive study of all these early texts by a team from the
`University of Berlin from a mathematical point of view is slowly producing a better
`understanding of the meaning of the texts and the nature of the underlying economic
`system. although we are still a long way from being able to read the texts rather than
`interpret them.
`Eighty-five per cent of the tablets from the early levels at Uruk are economic and are
`concerned with the income and outgoings of the city's temples in terms of food. live-
`stock and textiles. Remarkably. it has been possible to identify a large number of place
`names known from the later history of Sumer. mostly within the vicinity of Uruk. but
`including Kish and Eshnunna to the north, Aratta (somewhere in the mountains of Iran].
`and Dilmun (modern Bahrein). Fifteen per cent of the texts are lexical lists. including the
`names of various commodities. animals and officials. These lists were presumably
`compiled to establish and teach a definitive system of writing recognisable to every
`scribe. Significantly, exactly the satne lists can be found from six hundred years later.
`showing the strength of the tradition. This continuity has been a great help in identi—
`fying many of the early signs which would otherwise have been quite unintelligible.
`Popular books on cuneiform have tended to give the impression that identifying the
`early signs is easy: in fact things are not so simple. Pictures of an ox or an ear of barley are
`identifiable. but there are many signs which we cannot yet explain as pictures even when
`by working back from the later lexical lists we are able to establish their meaning.
`As soon as we are able to read the texts intelligibly. we are confronted by another
`difficulty. The early texts are not written in near lines with every sign in the appropriate
`order — that came later - but with all the signs for each sense unit (or sentence) grouped
`together in a box tsee front cover). The correct order in which to read the signs is thus a
`matter of interpretation.
`
`Syllabic writing
`The texts from Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, although slowly changing from a pictorial to a
`more linear or cuneiform script, are still largely logographic, that is to say that they use
`one sign or sign-group for each term or concept without adding grammatical elements.
`Even the nature of a transaction is not always clear; are the sheep being brought into or
`out of the temple? We do not know. In any case how could they tell us? Drawing an ox's
`head to represent an ox is straightforward. But how do you say that the ox is live or
`dead? How do you record that it has come or gone? And how do you record the name of
`the person who brought or took it? To communicate these things effectively you need to
`do more than draw pictures. You have to be able to express ideas. You have to be able to
`record a spoken language. The alphabet was not invented until l,500 years later. so the
`first scribes used syllables instead.
`This syllabic stage of the script's development is known from a group of texts from
`Ur corresponding to the archaeological levels Early Dynastic l—ll (c. 2800 8C). In these
`
`31
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`5
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`BM 21014.
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`5 An archaic tablet from Ur.
`C. 2900-2600 3C;
`deliveries of barley and
`meal to a temple.
`BM l28897.
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`6 (Opposite) A tablet of the Fara
`type (t. 2600 ac); a record of
`numbers of workmen.
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`texts we find the first identifiable use of purely phonetic elements and grammar, and as
`soon as we are able to identify the use of syllables in the cuneiform script we encounter
`the Sumerian language. The Sumerians may have been responsible for introducing
`writing at Uruk, but it cannot be proved. Because the script does not perfectly suit all the
`sounds which linguistic experts find in Sumerian.
`it has been suggested that
`the
`cuneiform script was devised by another people. In any case their origins are uncertain,
`and they have in the past been thought of as invaders from the eastern mountains. On the
`other hand the relative cultural continuity in the late Uruk period has suggested to
`others that the Sumerians were there all along.
`
`as w®®fi=i>4<<>
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`gfi/guz
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`ell/gut
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`gui
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`ln Sumerian the word for barley is se (pronounced ‘she‘ as in shepherd). so the sign for
`barley also became the sign for the syllable 'se The Sumerian for ox is gu; but the word
`for thread is also gu, so already you have two possible ways of writing the sound gu.
`There are. in fact. some fourteen ways of writing gu. so for convenience we (but not the
`ancient Sumerians) mark thread as gu and ox as gu4. The word for arrow is ti. but
`so is the word for life. so to write 'life‘ you need only write the sign for arrow. The word
`for mouth is ka (represented as a head with the teeth clearly marked). but the sign ka is
`also used for the idea of shouting, which is again gu (guy. or git); so the sign KA already
`has two values. ka and flu; (and in fact it can also be used for Zn ‘tooth‘. dun ‘speak’, and
`inim ‘word‘). Combining a syllable formed of consonant + vowel (like gu) with one
`formed from vowel + consonant (like ud ‘day’) allows you to make a closed syllable.
`gu-ud. In this way you can make up any combination of vowels and consonants. so long
`as you do not want to put more than two consonants together (no Sumerian cartoonist
`could write ‘l’sst!'). The principle of using several signs to represent the same sound (gu)
`is called homophony. and giving one sign several values (like KA) is called polyphony.
`Both principles are fundamental features of cuneiform writing throughout its 3,000
`year history.
`The early stages of Sumerian writing represented by tablets from Uruk. Jemdet Nasr
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` Titles in the series:
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`
` READING THE PAST
`
`
`
`Cuneiform
`
`
`The cuneiform writing system flourished in the Near East from
`before 3000 BC to AD 75. This book surveys the development of
`the script
`from the earliest pictographic signs to the latest
`astronomical tablets and the process by which it came to be used
`for writing many different Near Eastern languages. Sample texts
`show how the script is analysed into words and syllables and how
`to read the names of the most famous kings as they appear on
`monuments. In addition, extracts from contemporary Sumerian
`literature and school texts give an account of the training of the
`scribes, and the various types of inscription they wrote are
`illustrated. The decipherment of cuneiform is explained and - for
`the collector — some guidelines for the identification of fake
`inscriptions are given.
`
`Christopher Walker is an Assistant Keeper in the Department of
`Western Asiatic Antiquities in the British Museum. He has
`written several works on Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions and
`Mesopotamian history.
`
`With over 40 illustrations
`
`Cuneiform C.B.F. Walker
`Linear Bjohn Chadwick
`Greek Inscriptions BJ“. Cook
`Egyptian Hieroglyphs W.V. Davies
`Mathematics and Measurement O.A. Dilke
`
`Runes RJ. Page
`
`University of California Press/British Museum
`
`The University of California Press
`2120 Berkeley Way
`Berkeley 94 720
`
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`ISBN 0—520—061 15—2
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