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Posted on 11/11/2020 5:55:50 PM PST by BenLurkin
It’s not a language. It’s not an alphabet, either, exactly.
The ancient system of writing is one of, if not the, oldest. It was invented around 3,500–3,000 B.C. by the Sumerians and used in the region for more than 3,000 years.
[The symbols were initially pictograms, they soon became quite stylized and are indeed made up of varying arrangements of lines and triangles or wedges. Rather than using, for example, a picture of a cow to represent a cow, cuneiform used a symbol that was sort of a stripped-down image of a cow. This made it much more efficient. As time went on, symbols were introduced for abstract nouns like love or fear, and later, adjectives.
Eventually the symbols became even more abstract — no longer recognizable as cows — and evolved into a system for representing speech sounds, or syllables, rather than using a unique symbol for each word. At this point, the system could easily transcribe spoken language.
One of the advantages of cuneiform is that it could represent a variety of languages, rather like an alphabet that can write, say, English, German, Spanish and many other languages. Cuneiform was used to write in at least a dozen languages in addition to Sumerian, including Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite and Persian.
The Royal Game of Ur, a board game that was popular in ancient Mesopotamia. Rather like chess or backgammon today, the game was likely played in pubs and palaces. Finkel translated the rules.
...130,000 tablets of cuneiform at the British Museum? They’re patiently waiting for scholars to come read them and let the rest of us know what they say.
(Excerpt) Read more at discovermagazine.com ...
If you want to try your hand at a 4,500-year-old game, you can find the rules here.
http://www.ancientgames.org/royal-game-ur-game-20-squares/
Go to the Penn Museum website and try out their interactive exhibit that lets you sign your name in cuneiform.
https://www.penn.museum/cgi/cuneiform.php
gnip
Any votes for Joe Stalin recorded on those clay tablets?
This might be right up our alley.
someday among those several thousand “pages” of cuniform writing will be a sumerian language text of the book of job.
Interesting thought!
The game isn’t quite as complicated as fizzbin.
Any votes for Joe Stalin recorded on those clay tablets?
—
Yes, quite a few, but there were way more for Biden ...
Thanks for the pings!
You guys are amazing by yourselves, but together, the only word is “ASTOUNDING!” Thanks!
‘Face
:o])
No but there are 130,000 tablets of cuneiform at the British Museum, doubtless they will all be found to be biden votes...
I shouldn't wonder.
What do you suppose our descendants will know about us in 30 generations?
LOL! <3
:^) Thanka!
I think I will stick with heckers.
:o])
I had some courses with hotshot academics brought in from Duke to teach deconstruction theory a la Derida and feminist writing theory. It was the high water mark in an era of new theories of writing and reading texts—until the more recent “woke” theories and white privilege theory came into vogue in academic circles.
One of the feminist theory readings was about the dearth of feminine writers in word civilizations. The explanation was that writing instruments such as quill pens and following inventions of fountain pens and ball pens were in fact representations of the male penis and therefore subtly anti-woman. (I kid you not.I couldn't make this up)
I stopped the professor's argument when I asked what the original writing instrument of cuneiform writing must have represented in a much older culture.
bttt
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