Sumerian hieroglyphs. Sumerian civilization and its writing
Type: syllabo-ideographic
language family: not installed
Localization: Northern Mesopotamia
Propagation time:3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.
The homeland of all mankind, the Sumerians called the island of Dilmui, identified with modern Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
The earliest is presented on texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet-Nasra, dated 3300 BC.
The Sumerian language still continues to be a mystery to us, since even now it has not been possible to establish its relationship with any of the known language families. Archaeological materials suggest that the Sumerians created the Ubaid culture in the south of Mesopotamia at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. Thanks to the emergence of hieroglyphic writing, the Sumerians left many monuments of their culture, imprinting them on clay tablets.
The cuneiform script itself was a syllabic script, consisting of several hundred characters, of which about 300 were the most common; they included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the sixdecimal and decimal systems.
Sumerian writing evolved over 2200 years
Most of the signs have two or more readings (polyphonism), since they often acquired a Semitic meaning next to the Sumerian. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, "sun" - bar and "shine" - lah).
The very invention of Sumerian writing was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which has gone from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to signs that began to write the simplest syllables, turned out to be an extremely progressive system. It was borrowed and used by many peoples who spoke other languages.
At the turn of IV-III millennia BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population - Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. The widely known story of the Great Flood is first found in Sumerian historical and mythological texts.
Although Sumerian writing was invented exclusively for economic needs, the first written literary monuments appeared among the Sumerians very early: among the records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of genres of folk wisdom, cult texts and hymns.
Due to this circumstance, the cultural influence of the Sumerians in the Ancient Near East was enormous and outlived their own civilization for many centuries.
Subsequently, writing loses its pictorial character and transforms into cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing was used in Mesopotamia for almost three thousand years. However, she was later forgotten. For decades, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 an unusually energetic Englishman, Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. Once he was informed that an inscription was preserved on a sheer cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be one and the same inscription made in three ancient languages, including Old Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language he knew, and then managed to understand another inscription, identifying and deciphering more than 200 cuneiform characters.
In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the legacy of the Sumerians when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.
In the figure you can see how, over 500 years, the hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.
Modification of numerals Sumerian from hieroglyphs to cuneiform
~3300 BC e. - 75 AD e.
Initially from right to left, in columns, then from left to right in lines (starting from 2400-2350 BC for handwritten texts; from the 2nd millennium BC for monumental inscriptions)
300 - 900 characters for syllabic and ideographic systems; About 30 letters for phonetic adaptation on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean; 36 letters for the Old Persian syllabary.
The oldest known documents are tablets with administrative documents of the Sumerian kingdom.
original writing
| Ancient Mesopotamia |
|---|
 |
| Assiriology |
| Regions and states |
| City-states of Sumer Upper Mesopotamian states Akkad Sumero-Akkadian kingdom Isin Amorite kingdoms Babylonia Assyria Subartu Primorye |
| Population |
| Aborigines of Mesopotamia · Sumerians · Akkadians · Babylonians · Assyrians · Amorites · Arameans · Kassites · Gutians · Lullubians · Subareas · Chaldeans · Hurrians |
| Writing and languages |
| Cuneiform |
| Sumerian Akkadian Proto-Euphratic languages Proto-Tigrid (banana) languages Hurrian |
| Sumero-Akkadian mythology |
| periodization |
| Prehistoric Mesopotamia |
| Uruk era - Jemdet-Nasr |
| Early dynastic period |
| Early despotisms |
| Old Babylonian/ Old Assyrian periods |
| Middle Babylonian/ Middle Assyrian periods |
| Neo-Assyrian period |
| Neo-Babylonian kingdom |
Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system. The form of writing was largely determined by writing material - a clay tablet, on which, while the clay was still soft, signs were squeezed out with a wooden stick for writing or a pointed reed; hence the "wedge-shaped" strokes.
History
Mesopotamia
The oldest monument of Sumerian writing is a tablet from Kish (about 3500 BC). It is followed in time by documents found in the excavations of the ancient city of Uruk, dating back to 3300 BC. e. The appearance of writing coincides in time with the development of cities and the accompanying complete restructuring of society. At the same time, the wheel and the knowledge of copper smelting appear in Mesopotamia.
Starting from the II millennium BC. e. Cuneiform is spreading throughout the Middle East, as evidenced by the Amarna Archive and the Bogazköy Archive.
Gradually, this notation system is being replaced by other language notation systems that have appeared by that time.
Deciphering cuneiform
The tables in the relevant articles list the sets of syllabograms used in the corresponding form of cuneiform. Row headings indicate the proposed consonant phoneme (or allophone), while column headings indicate subsequent or preceding vowels. In the cells corresponding to the intersection of a consonant and a vowel, the standard transliteration of this syllable is indicated - in this case, the value closest to the expected phonetic sound is selected. For example, the sign
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Synonyms:See what "Cuneiform" is in other dictionaries:
Cuneiform... Spelling Dictionary
Cuneiform- Cuneiform. The development of cuneiform characters. Cuneiform, writing, the signs of which consist of groups of wedge-shaped dashes (the signs were squeezed out on wet clay). It originated in the 4th millennium BC in Sumer and was later adapted for ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
The writing system that originated in Mesopotamia and became widespread in the 31st millennium BC. throughout the Middle East. The cuneiform looks like elongated triangular icons, squeezed out on clay tablets with a split reed. ... ... Financial vocabulary
Cuneiform, writing, the signs of which consist of groups of wedge-shaped dashes (the signs were squeezed out on wet clay). It originated in the 4th millennium BC in Sumer and was later adapted for Akkadian, Elamite, Hurrian, Hitto ... ... Modern Encyclopedia
Writing, the signs of which consist of groups of wedge-shaped dashes (the signs were squeezed out on wet clay). Appeared ok. 3000 BC e. in Sumer and was later adapted for Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Urartian and other languages. By… … Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
Letters, writing Dictionary of Russian synonyms. cuneiform n., number of synonyms: 2 letters (3) ... Synonym dictionary
Cuneiform- (cuneiform), writing (more precisely, a group of writings) created in Bl. East. Split reed sticks and raw clay tablets were used for writing. The signs squeezed out with a stick (stylus) were groups of wedge-shaped ... ... The World History
Cuneiform, cuneiform, female. (philol.). 1. only units An alphabet whose letters are combinations of wedge-shaped dashes carved on stone or extruded on clay tablets (used by the ancient Persians, Assyrians, etc. ... ... Dictionary Ushakov
Cuneiform, and, wives. (specialist.). Wedge-shaped lines used by the Assyro-Babylonians, the ancient Persians, and some other ancient peoples. | adj. cuneiform, oh, oh. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu.… … Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
Type: syllabo-ideographic
Language family: not established
Localization: Northern Mesopotamia
Distribution time: 3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.
Sumer, one of the oldest civilizations of the Middle East, existed at the end of the 4th - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the Southern Mesopotamia, the region of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the south of modern Iraq.
The first settlements on this territory began to appear already in the VI millennium BC. e.
Where the Sumerians came to these lands, among which the local agricultural communities disappeared, has not yet been clarified.
Their own traditions speak of an eastern or southeastern origin. They considered Eredu, the southernmost of the cities of Mesopotamia, now the settlement of Abu Shakhrain, to be their oldest settlement.
The homeland of all mankind, the Sumerians called the island of Dilmui, identified with modern Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
The earliest Sumerian writing is represented by texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet-Nasra, dated 3300 BC.
The Sumerian language still continues to be a mystery to us, since even now it has not been possible to establish its relationship with any of the known language families. Archaeological materials suggest that the Sumerians created the Ubaid culture in the south of Mesopotamia at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. Thanks to the emergence of hieroglyphic writing, the Sumerians left many monuments of their culture, imprinting them on clay tablets.
The cuneiform script itself was a syllabic script, consisting of several hundred characters, of which about 300 were the most common; they included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the sixdecimal and decimal systems.
Sumerian writing evolved over 2200 years
Most of the signs have two or more readings (polyphonism), since they often acquired a Semitic meaning next to the Sumerian. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, "sun" - bar and "shine" - lah).
The very invention of Sumerian writing was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which has gone from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to signs that began to write the simplest syllables, turned out to be an extremely progressive system. It was borrowed and used by many peoples who spoke other languages.
At the turn of IV-III millennia BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population of Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. The widely known story of the Great Flood is first found in Sumerian historical and mythological texts.
Although Sumerian writing was invented exclusively for economic needs, the first written literary monuments appeared among the Sumerians very early: among the records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of genres of folk wisdom, cult texts and hymns.
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Due to this circumstance, the cultural influence of the Sumerians in the Ancient Near East was enormous and outlived their own civilization for many centuries.
Subsequently, writing loses its pictorial character and transforms into cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing was used in Mesopotamia for almost three thousand years. However, she was later forgotten. For decades, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 an unusually energetic Englishman, Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. Once he was informed that an inscription was preserved on a sheer cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be one and the same inscription made in three ancient languages, including Old Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language he knew, and then managed to understand another inscription, identifying and deciphering more than 200 cuneiform characters.
In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the legacy of the Sumerians when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.
In the figure you can see how, over 500 years, the hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.
No less ancient than the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and a very curious variety of ideographic writing, is cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing is sometimes called writing on clay, based on the fact that clay tiles served as the material for this writing.
The first to write in cuneiform were the Sumerians, an ancient and cultured people who lived between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Cuneiform was not the original writing of the Sumerians. At first, the Sumerians used pictorial writing.
Each sign of ancient Sumerian writing expressed a concept to which a word corresponded in oral speech, i.e. this letter was ideographic, based on pictography. Texts with pictorial ideograms are monuments of the so-called proto-Sumerian writing, or procuneiform writing, which is the earliest version of Sumerian cuneiform writing.
There are many similarities between the development of cuneiform and hieroglyphs. Both the ancient Egyptians and the Sumerians wrote with drawings, trying to depict with the greatest accuracy what they wanted to tell, to leave information. In the future, their drawings were simplified, and the images began to convey both the concept itself and the action similar to it. For example, a drawing of a leg could also be a part of the body of the leg, and convey the verbs of motion to walk, run, stand, etc. In many Sumerian texts, a truly wise person is called "listening", in the Sumerian language the word "mind" and "ear" were denoted by the same sign. It is curious that the Sumerians did not know the word "read", and they did not read the texts, but "saw" or "heard".
If the Egyptians for a long time tried to preserve the drawing as writing, then the Sumerians, based on the characteristics of clay, replaced the exact image of the object with a combination of dashes - vertical, horizontal and oblique. The name "cuneiform" such a letter received for its appearance. The scribe worked like this: a small flat tablet was made from wet clay, on which letters were applied with a sharp stick. On viscous clay, it is difficult to draw lines of the same thickness. Where the scribe's wand began to draw a sign, a small indentation appeared in the damp clay, and when he drew the line further, the sign went in a thin line. Therefore, the signs turned out to look like triangles or wedges. Not very necessary records could then be erased, and tablets with important documents were burned on fire, and they became hard as stone. Archaeologists have learned to fold even broken tablets and read what is written on them. And if the recording was made on stone or metal, then in this case they tried to preserve the appearance of the wedges. (The table in several figures shows how the Sumerian script gradually turned into cuneiform).
Determinatives (determinants) played an important role in Sumerian cuneiform writing. They stood, as a rule, before the word being defined, indicating to which group of names (men, women, cities, trees, etc.) it belongs.
Sumerian cuneiform was adopted by a number of neighboring Semitic and non-Semitic peoples.
Around the middle of the III millennium BC. Sumerian cuneiform was adapted for their language by the Akkadians (Babylonians) and the Assyrians.
While maintaining the general principles of cuneiform developed by the Sumerians, the Akkadians at the same time made some changes to the borrowed writing system. They reduced the number of signs from 1,000 to 510, of which only 300 were the most common. The Akkadian syllabic signs were formed not only from the corresponding signs of the Sumerian cuneiform script, but were also created on the basis of ideograms that conveyed monosyllabic words of the Akkadian language. In Akkadian cuneiform, the number of syllabic signs increased.
Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform in its commonly known form finally fell into disuse after the Persian conquest of Babylonia in 539 BC. and the destruction of the city of Babylon.
In 1849, the English archaeologist and explorer Sir Henry Austin Layard visited the ruins of ancient Babylon in southern Mesopotamia (the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers). It was there that he discovered the first copies of cuneiform tablets, which have become one of the most controversial mysteries of archeology.
These incredibly ancient texts contain tales that bear similarities to biblical stories, tales of the creation of deities, and a reference to a flood and a giant ark. Experts have spent decades trying to decipher these complex symbols of the ancient Sumerian civilization. One of the most interesting aspects of cuneiform writing is the transition from the original Sumerian pictograms and hieroglyphs to the cuneiform scripts of Akkadian and Assyrian.
The American researcher and author of books, Zecharia Sitchin, based on his translations of cuneiform, put forward the idea that ancient civilization the Sumerians contacted extraterrestrial civilizations from distant star systems. So Sitchin ascribes the beginning of Mesopotamia to the events associated with the visit of the Earth by the humanoid race of the Annunaki (who came from heaven). When, according to the big impact theory, the 12th planet Nibiru collided with the planet Tiamat, the Earth, the Moon and many asteroids were formed. The Annunaki from Nibiru survived and visited Earth.
During the excavations, many tablets with cuneiform writing related to the Sumerian civilization were found.
Gods among us
One element on clay cuneiform tablets that is hotly debated in archeology is the nature of the Anunnaki. Myths and stories about the Anunnaki can be found in many other texts, such as the book of Genesis in the Jewish religion and the Bible in the Christian religion. There are similar metaphors, but only the names and titles are changed. The creation of "heaven and earth" from the "watery abyss", "Adam and Eve" created in the image and likeness of a higher being, "Noah's Ark" - all these stories can be metaphors that support such a theory about the origin of our species. But, if these clay cuneiform tablets, written more than 3000 years BC. e., older than the Bible, how true are these myths?
There is a whole theory that the planet Nibiru was a reality and the Anunnaki were a powerful alien race with the knowledge and ability to genetic experimentation and manipulation. They created people by genetic engineering for their own purposes. One of the arguments put forward is the fact that about 10,000 years ago a global catastrophe (possibly nuclear) was quite probable. This resulted in a significant loss of human population, as if someone pressed the reset button for the entire civilization, and human beings were forced to start their development again from scratch. Perhaps the Ark was a spaceship that was able to save a small percentage of the population for the subsequent restoration of society. Was the Ark a metaphor for an alien ship or an actual wooden boat? Supporters of Sitchin's ideas are of the opinion that these were metaphors with which ancient people were able to describe technologies unknown to them, used by powerful beings.
Many Sumerian artefacts show super beings with wings.
So where are they now?
The question arises: "If our species was the result of genetic experiments of alien beings, then where are they now?". Nearly 31,000 ancient clay tablets and their fragments are currently housed in the British Museum. Many of them are still deciphered and translated. The texts printed on them are fragmentary, have an incomplete meaning taken out of context, and therefore have an ambiguous interpretation.
Cuneiform is an example of how the writing of the civilizations that lived in Mesopotamia changed over the course of several thousand years. From wedge-shaped recesses to pictograms and hieroglyphs. It is even difficult to say whether it was an ornament or carried a semantic load. It is not clear in which direction to read this and where the word begins and ends. There are many ambiguous interpretations and rules for translation.
Example of Sumerian cuneiform
In the example of wedge-shaped writing, it can be seen that the writer used the instrument effectively, and quickly pressed the soft clay tablet from right to left. With the development of languages, the writing system also developed. Between 4000 BC and 500 BC the meanings of words changed, reflecting the influence of the Semitic peoples who conquered Mesopotamia. In pictographic writing, depending on the context, any symbol could have several different meanings. Over time, the number of characters was reduced from 1500 to about 600 characters.
And why the Earth?
Sitchin explored possible reasons presence here on Earth of the Anunnaki race. He concluded that these beings first visited Earth, probably 450,000 years ago, when Nibiru entered the solar system. In Africa, they found minerals, in particular gold. The Annunaki were an expedition to Earth from the planet Nibiru, and they needed people as ordinary workers.
Zecharia Sitchin with a model of one of the Sumerian tablets, which depicts solar system including the planet Nibiru
After Sitchin proposed this theory, it was recognized by many scientists as simply ridiculous. Theorists refused to accept Sitchin's idea due to a lack of empirical evidence, and many experts disagreed with his translations of cuneiform on clay tablets. Some scholars believe that Sitchin's translations can be used for other tablets, in the context of the names and stories of ancient people. Researcher Michael Tellinger believes that in fact there is evidence of ancient people mining gold in South Africa. And in Sitchin's translations of Sumerian texts, there are references to sights and megalithic structures that people could not build with ancient technologies.