Writing
is a method used to express language in a visual form. The history
of writing shows how visually expressed languages have developed over
time from their predecessors. The first writing systems were not
invented during the early Bronze Age but rather were a development
from even earlier forms of symbol systems containing ideographic and
mnemonic symbols commonly called proto-writing. In the late Bronze
Age true writing emerged. True writing differs from proto-writing in
that it could be encoded by a reader and be reconstructed. One of
the earliest forms of writing was cuneiform.
Cuneiform
writing emerged through pictographic proto-writing in the Sumerian
civilization during Mesopotamia's “proto-literate” period, which
spanned from the 35th to 32nd centuries BCE.
About 10 millennia ago, before cuneiform was developed, the Sumerians
used clay tokens as counters and shaped them into various
three-dimensional forms. Each clay token represented an item of
agricultural and manufactured goods. In the 4th millenium
BCE, clay bullae were developed to contain the clay tokens like an
envelope for transactions, etc. The first step in the development of
a true writing system occurred when clay tokens were imprinted on the
bullae, although often the three-dimensional tokens were not clearly
imprinted and had to be fixed by hand. At the end of the 4th
millenium BCE, new signs were created and most of the new signs did
not have three-dimensional counterparts; only about 12 did.
Thus, a writing system was developed as pictographs. The
pictographs were written with a reed as a stylus on unbaked clay
tablets. The end of the blunt reed left wedge-shaped marks on the
clay, giving Cuneiform its meaning: wedge-shaped.
Along
with the writing system, a counting system was also developed.
Instead of inscribing all of the same symbols, the Sumerians realized
that they could use the same symbol to represent a certain number of
items. The counting system was used by Sumerian scribes, people who
wrote documents and helped keep track of records such as the number
of cattle that a particular person owned. The counting system was
based on the numbers 1, 10, and 60, and was written in a logical
manner. For example, 70 cattle would be represented by the sign for
60 followed by the sign for 10.
Many
of the symbols had multiple meanings. A picture of a foot, for
example, could mean “to stand”, “to go”, and “to bring”.
More complex meanings were expressed by combining two pictograph
symbols, such as woman and mountain, which would give the meaning
female slave. By about 2800 BCE, the Sumerians advanced in their
writing by realizing that the same syllabic sounds could be used for
different words. For example, the sound for arrow, pronounced “ti”,
would also be used to represent the word for life, “til”;
similarly the syllable “ha” for fish could be used for other
words as well. To easily know what a word meant in a given category,
a system of determinatives was created to indicate how to pronounce
it and to know what symbol it was used for. Early Sumerian cuneiform
contained 1,000 texts but as the years progressed the writings became
simplified and more abstract so that the number of texts decreased to
400. Early cuneiform was written vertically, up and down,
but changed around 3000 BCE to horizontal, left to right. The
earliest texts of Sumerian cuneiform come from the cities of Uruk and
Jamdat Nasr and date back to around 3300 BCE.
Cuneiform
did not only exist in Sumerian civilization but was adopted and
adapted to create other scripts for the Akkadians, Assyrians,
Elamites, and the Hittites. It also inspired the old Persian
alphabets. In 2500 BCE, Akkadian cuneiform was adapted from Sumerian
cuneiform and many words were adopted straight from Sumerian.
Adapting the Sumerian script was similar to how Chinese scripts were
adapted to write Japanese. There were between 200 and 400 symbols
and many of the words had multiple pronunciations. Like
the Sumerian writing system, the Akkadian system had determinatives,
which added about 400 more symbols. By approximately 2000
BCE, Akkadian cuneiform went through important modifications. The
signs were reduced to a higher level of abstraction and were composed
of only five wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and an
angular hook. Also many of the signs became distorted to
form new phonetic values. In the 1st century CE, Akkadian
cuneiform became extinct.
Assyrian
cuneiform was a mixed method of writing during the Babylonian and
Assyrian empires. Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified as time
progressed. In 1800 BCE, Hittite cuneiform was adapted from Old
Assyrian cuneiform. A layer of Akkadian logographic spelling was
also added but the pronunciations of many Hittite words written in
those logograms are unknown.
Elamite
cuneiform was the third writing system for the Elamite language.
Elamite cuneiform was adapted from Akkadian cuneiform around 2500 BCE
and had a simplified form by 1000 BCE. Elamite cuneiform had the
least number of symbols, as there were only 206 total, and only 130
of those symbols were constantly used.
Old
Persian cuneiform was written with simplified symbols created by 520
BCE by Darius I. It used far fewer wedge strokes than the Assyrians,
with logograms mostly for words like god and king.
Cuneiform
originated in the Middle East in the Sumerian civilization and
influenced many other civilizations to adapt their writing systems to
that language. Cuneiform writing is difficult to interpret because
there are many symbols and multiple meanings to those symbols, so an
interpreter could get the wrong meaning. It is also difficult to
convert to another script because one has to analyze the many
meanings that can be used for a particular symbol. One thing that
has remained the same in cuneiform is the counting system based on 1,
10, and 60, which we still use today.
