#5 Cuneiform Writing

As the small villages of Sumer developed into the more renowned ancient Sumerian cities of Ur, Nippur, Uruk to name a few, so did the need to develop a system of recording information about their daily lives and the stories that were being communicated at that time (these becoming the history for us to discover today). The clay tablet and stylus were the writing implements that the scribes being the responsible persons trained to utilize them. The stylus' indentations left a mark on the damp clay and this resulted in wedge shapes being formed. These symbols produced in this wedge (in Latin - 'cunei') shape gave name to this type of script - cuneiform. Cuneiform writing was in use for approximately 3000 years and evolved from being picture signs (pictograms) representing objects, to sound signs (phonograms) that represented the sounds of the language and each of these signs subsequently represented a syllable.

From the early beginnings of recording simple information, Sumerian writing and the re-telling of information or the language of the people, developed into various forms of literature written in cuneiform including myths, poetry, hymns and the law at about 2500BC. Cuneiform writing also transgressed to become the written language of other civilizations including the Babylonians, Assyrians and Persians.

I located this interesting video link that shows images (and commentary) that helps to explain symbolic writing and the progression more complex forms of writing.
[Youtube video Written Word - Birth of Writing date accessed 15/10/09]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7JsfwAcCo0

#2 Sumerian Clay Tablets

Digesting the information that I gleaned from Lionel Casson’s book about who invented the earliest forms of writing and subsequently infant libraries, I noted keywords, phrases and new terminology to help enlarge the areas that I could now begin to search. I commenced with reading monograms discovered on library catalogues followed by web browsing, linking and journal searches.

Scanned Image - Clay Tablet

[Donoughue, C 2007, The story of writing, British Museum Press, London]

Archaeological 'finds' in Ancient Mesopotamia have uncovered numerous forms of clay tablets. Wet clay, the material used by the early Sumerian civilization was abundant as the Sumerian people had settled on land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The clay tablets were formed by hand and once inscribed, were sun baked (ideal desert climate for this) or kiln baked. More importantly, from the historical point of view, the clay tablet has stood the test of time (unlike the papyrus scrolls developed by the Ancient Egyptians). The clay tablet was in use for more than two and half millennia from the beginning of the Bronze Age and in some cases to the beginning of the Christian era.

Clay tablets recorded a range of information that recorded both facts and ideas of the civilization including business transactions, employment arrangements, laws, legends, proverbs, poems and music [Cowley, D & Williamson, C 2007, The world of the book, The Miegunyah Press, Carlton, p. 3).

The link to the University Library of the VU Amsterdam University shows some excellent digital examples of early clay tablets (some 49) that have been photographed from different angles.