a little something about cuneiform

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 35^th to 32^nd 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 4^th 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 4^th 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 1^st 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.