Cuneiform, derived from Latin, is a compound word composed of cuneus (wedge) and forma (shape). Cuneiform writing is also called "nailhead writing" or "arrowhead writing". The writing used in ancient Western Asia was mostly written on stones and clay tablets (mud bricks). The strokes are wedge-shaped, rather like nail heads or arrowheads. Around 3000 BC, the Bronze Age Sumerians used clay tablets to record accounts in the form of pictures. Gradually these symbols evolved into ideographic symbols, and those that could not be described were expressed in arbitrary designated ways. Moreover, the Sumerians also used it to represent sounds. Several ideograms combined could represent a complex word or phrase, which made many symbols redundant. Cuneiform characters were originally written in straight lines from top to bottom, but were later changed to be written horizontally from left to right, so all cuneiform symbols were turned 90°, from upright to horizontal. Because the right hand is holding the pen, writing horizontally from left to right, the thick end of the wedge-shaped stroke is on the left, and the thin end (the nail tail) is on the right. Sumerian cuneiform characters had symbols and musical notes. After being used and transformed by the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Aramaeans, it became a semi-syllabic script. Contributed to the history of alphabet development. There are about 500 kinds of cuneiform symbols, many of which have multiple meanings, and their "accurate meaning" can only be determined based on the context. This makes the cuneiform writing system more difficult to master than later alphabetic writing systems. Nonetheless, for two thousand years, cuneiform remained the only writing system in Mesopotamia. By around 500 BC, this writing had even become a common medium of commercial communication in most parts of West Asia. Archaeologists have discovered a large number of various cuneiform tablets or inscriptions, which have been successively interpreted since the 19th century, thus forming a new discipline for studying ancient history - Assyriology.
Origin
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1. Both the Euphrates River and the Tigris River originate from the Armenian Plateau in western Asia. Around 4000 BC, the earliest residents here were the Sumerians. They created the splendid Sumerian civilization, and what best reflects the characteristics of this civilization is their writing - cuneiform writing.
Initially, this kind of writing was pictorial writing. Gradually, this kind of pictorial writing developed into Sumerian ideograms, which combined one or several symbols to express a new meaning. For example, "mouth" is used to represent the action "speaking"; symbols representing "eyes" and "water" are used to represent "crying", etc. With the promotion and popularization of writing, the Sumerians simply used a symbol to represent a sound. For example, "arrow" and "life" are the same space in Sumerian, so they used the same symbol "arrow" to represent a sound. . Later, some restrictive radical symbols were added, such as adding an "inverted triangle" before a person's name to indicate that it was a man's name. In this way, this writing system is basically complete.
The Sumerians used reed stalks or bone sticks or wooden sticks cut into triangular tips as pens to write on clay tablets made of moist clay. The characters naturally formed a wedge shape, so this kind of writing was Called cuneiform.
In order to preserve the clay tablets for a long time, they need to be dried before firing. This kind of fired clay tablet documents are not afraid of being eaten by insects, will not rot, and can withstand fire. But the only drawback is that the clay tablets are very bulky, each weighing about one kilogram, and each piece has to be moved around with great effort. So far, nearly one million clay tablets have been unearthed. The largest one is 2.7 meters long and 1.95 meters wide. It can be said to be a huge book!
Cuneiform writing is an original creation of the Sumerian civilization and best reflects the characteristics of the Sumerian civilization. Cuneiform writing had an important impact on the formation and development of many ethnic languages ??in West Asia. Countries such as Babylon, Assyria, Hittite, and Syria in Western Asia have all slightly modified cuneiform and used it as their own writing tools. Even the alphabet created by the Phoenicians contained elements of cuneiform. Cuneiform was the earliest writing in the world. However, due to its extreme complexity, it was completely extinct by the 1st century AD. In ancient Sumer, you could often see people writing on clay tablets with triangular-tipped pens made of reed poles or wooden sticks. This kind of character is written horizontally from left to right, and each stroke is always from thick to thin, like a wooden wedge. This is "cuneiform", one of the three precious gifts that the Sumerians left to later generations of Western civilization.
2. How cuneiform originated has always been an unsolved mystery in the history of human culture. This issue has been debated for nearly two centuries. The following two views have been prevalent for a long time.
Traditional archaeologists and historians believe that cuneiform originated from the special fishing and hunting lifestyle in Mesopotamia. This is a relatively common view, and most Western encyclopedias hold this view.
Some scholars hold different views and believe that the origin of cuneiform writing is closely related to the developed social organization in ancient Sumer. This view is held in the "General History of the World" compiled by the Academy of Sciences of the former Soviet Union. When discussing the invention of cuneiform writing, the book writes: "The greatest cultural achievement of the peoples of the Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia is the creation of writing. In the middle of the 4th millennium BC, the Sumerians had the embryo of writing. For administrative purposes Management, it requires more organized communication, so the embryo of this kind of writing became a real writing. "The above two views have coexisted for a long time and are at odds with each other.
However, since the 1970s, archaeoastronomists have put forward an explosive view, believing that cuneiform writing originated from an astronomical event 6,000 years ago - the explosion of the Vela X supernova. It triggered a new round of debate on the origin of cuneiform writing in the world's academic community.
This view originated from the hypothesis of a Sumerian expert. Sumerian expert George Michanowski discovered a phenomenon in his study of cuneiform writing, that is, a large number of records of the same star appeared in earlier clay tablet records, so he proposed the Sumerian The hypothesis that the origin of civilization is related to this star. In 1980, NASA astronomer Richard Stessel demonstrated the rationality of this hypothesis through precise calculations. He believes that the star of civilization mentioned by Michanowski is the Vela X supernova that exploded 6,000 years ago. This is the largest astronomical event that can be remembered in human history. This star can only be barely distinguished today, but 6,000 years ago, its light could shine with the sun during the day and hang with the moon at night, opening a long strip of light on the water of the two rivers. It is conceivable that this mysterious natural phenomenon had a huge psychological impact on early humans. Their awe and worship of the star evolved into mythology and religion, and pictures about the star evolved into the first writings. Experts found that the earliest and most commonly used words in cuneiform are "star" and "god", and these two words are surprisingly similar.
Development
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Archaeological discoveries have confirmed that in ancient Mesopotamia, the initial appearance of writing did not resemble a wedge shape , but just some flat pictures. Obviously, ancient Mesopotamian writing, known as cuneiform writing by later generations, originated from pictographic writing. Archaeologists have discovered clay tablets engraved with this hieroglyphic symbol in the ancient city of Uruk, which have been verified to be around 3200 BC. This is the earliest written record in the world. This kind of writing is simple and the expression is intuitive. Sometimes complex meanings and abstract concepts are expressed by combining several symbols. For example, the combination of "eye" and "water" means "cry", and the combination of "bird" and "egg" means "cry". "Sheng" etc. This kind of writing is pictographic. If you want to express a complex meaning, use two symbols together. For example, "sky" plus "water" means "rain"; "eye" plus "water" means "cry", etc. Later, it was developed that one symbol can represent multiple meanings. For example, "foot" can also mean "walking", "standing", etc. This is an ideographic symbol.
With the development of society and the increase in people's interactions, the things to be expressed are becoming more and more complex and abstract, and primitive graphics are increasingly unsuitable for people's needs. As a result, the Sumerians transformed writing. On the one hand, it simplifies graphics, often using parts to represent the whole; on the other hand, it increases the meaning of symbols. For example, in addition to "foot", the symbol "foot" can also mean "standing" and "walking", and "plough" In addition to "plough", the symbol can also mean "ploughing" and "people who plow the fields". In this way, hieroglyphs developed into ideograms, that is, the meaning of symbols is not directly expressed by graphics but derived from them.
Sumerian writing emerged gradually. As we now know, it took 1,000 years of evolution from the expression of certain concepts through graphics to the emergence of writing. Around 3500 BC, the Sumerians began to carve images on stone or imprint on clay as a sign of ownership of something: either a rock to represent a "heart of stone", or a tree to represent a house.
About 500 years later, the evolution from graphics to text accelerated greatly.
By that time, Sumerian temple administrators were using many standardized diagrams and combining them to preserve records of the temple's property and business transactions.
Although the written characters of this period still have hieroglyphic characteristics, they have gone beyond the stage of using pictures to represent people and specific things, and have developed into using pictures to represent abstract things, such as: a bowl represents food, A head plus a bowl means eating.
It took another 500 years for mature writing to completely replace the old writing, because by then the original pictures had become so systematic that people no longer regarded them as pictures, but as pictures. They are pure symbols; many of these symbols no longer represent specific words, but become syllable symbols that can be combined with other similar symbols to form words.
Around 2500 BC, this writing system in Sumer reached a fully developed stage. There are around 500 cuneiform symbols, many of which have multiple meanings, making the cuneiform writing system much more difficult to master than later alphabetic writing systems. Despite this, cuneiform remained the only writing system in Mesopotamia for two thousand years; by around 500 BC, this writing had even become a common medium of commercial communication in much of Western Asia.
The cuneiform documents that survived from the Sumerian era and were excavated in modern times were all copied on clay tablets. About 90% of these tablets are business and administrative records, and the remaining 10% are fragments of dialogues, proverbs, hymns, and myths and legends.
Sumerian dialogue took the form of two characters arguing against each other on opposite sides of a debate—summer versus winter, ax versus plow, or farmer versus shepherd. There is usually no winner or loser in a debate because both sides have many arguments to stand on. On the other hand, surviving Sumerian proverbs provide a clear perspective.
A fascinating Sumerian aphorism goes like this: "Where servants stay, there will be quarrels; where barbers stay, there will be slander."
Cuneiform writing spread to many places in western Asia, and it brought the "fire" of civilization to mankind. After the decline of the last Sumerian dynasty in 2007 BC, the Kingdom of Babylon inherited this legacy and made new developments. At the same time, the Semitic Akkadians also wrote in cuneiform according to the pronunciation of their language. This was done by every people who established rule in Mesopotamia until the time of the Greeks.
Propagation
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The areas where cuneiform writing spread is mainly in West Asia and Southwest Asia. During the reign of the Babylonians and Assyrians, cuneiform developed further, the vocabulary became more expanded and complete, and the calligraphy became more refined and beautiful. With the spread of culture, other ethnic groups in the Mesopotamia also adopted this writing. Around 1500 BC, the cuneiform script invented by the Sumerians has become a common writing system for national exchanges at that time. Even Egypt and Mesopotamia countries used cuneiform script in diplomatic correspondence or when establishing treaties. Later, due to the development of commerce, the Persians on the Iranian plateau improved the Mesopotamian cuneiform script and gradually turned it into an advanced alphabetical script.
The discovery process
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In 1472, an Italian named Pablo was traveling in ancient Persia, which is today’s Iran. , saw a strange, never-before-seen font on the dilapidated walls of some ancient temples near Shiraz. Almost all of these fonts have triangular tips, which look like nails or wooden wedges for sharpening. Some are lying horizontally, some have the tips pointing up or down, and some are placed diagonally. It looks like it was carved into it by a sharp fingernail. Pablo was very surprised. Is this text? Or something else? He returned to Italy with this doubt. However, no one was interested in his discovery in West Asia at the time, and people quickly forgot about it. Europeans did not know that this was cuneiform writing.
More than a hundred years later, another Italian visited Shiraz, he was Valais. Valle was more diligent than Pablo, and he copied the fonts on these ruins. Later, he discovered this type of font engraved on clay tablets in ancient ruins in today's Iraq, so he concluded that it must be the writing of ancient West Asians. Valais took his discovery back to Europe. He made such a strange writing known to Europeans for the first time.
Through nearly two hundred years of archaeological excavations in Mesopotamia and linguists’ successful translation of a large number of clay tablets, people finally know that cuneiform is the oldest known script in the world. Word. It is a unique writing system invented by the ancient Sumerians and inherited and transformed by the Akkadians. The Babylonians and Assyrians also inherited this precious cultural heritage and spread it to other parts of Western Asia. The first cuneiform writing that Westerners saw was the cuneiform writing modified by the Persians on the Iranian plateau. It was very different from the cuneiform writing used by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians.
However, how cuneiform originated has always been an unsolved mystery in the history of human culture. This issue has been debated for nearly two centuries. The following two views have been prevalent for a long time.
Traditional archaeologists and historians believe that cuneiform originated from the special fishing and hunting lifestyle in Mesopotamia. This is a relatively common view, and most Western encyclopedias hold this view.
Some scholars hold different views and believe that the origin of cuneiform writing is closely related to the developed social organization in ancient Sumer. This view is held in the "General History of the World" compiled by the Academy of Sciences of the former Soviet Union. When discussing the invention of cuneiform writing, the book writes: "The greatest cultural achievement of the peoples of the Mesopotamia and Mesopotamia is the creation of writing. In the middle of the 4th millennium BC, the Sumerians had the embryo of writing. For administrative purposes Management, it requires more organized communication, so the embryo of this kind of writing became a real writing. "The above two views have coexisted for a long time and are at odds with each other.
However, since the 1970s, archaeoastronomists have put forward an explosive view, believing that cuneiform writing originated from an astronomical event 6,000 years ago - the explosion of the Vela X supernova. It triggered a new round of debate on the origin of cuneiform writing in the world's academic community.
This view originated from the hypothesis of a Sumerian expert. Sumerian expert George Michanowski discovered a phenomenon in his study of cuneiform writing, that is, a large number of records of the same star appeared in earlier clay tablet records, so he proposed the Sumerian The hypothesis that the origin of civilization is related to this star. In 1980, NASA astronomer Richard Stessel demonstrated the rationality of this hypothesis through precise calculations. He believes that the star of civilization mentioned by Michanowski is the Vela X supernova that exploded 6,000 years ago. This is the largest astronomical event that can be remembered in human history. This star can only be barely distinguished today, but 6,000 years ago, its light could shine with the sun during the day and hang with the moon at night, opening a long strip of light on the water of the two rivers. It is conceivable that this mysterious natural phenomenon had a huge psychological impact on early humans. Their awe and worship of the star evolved into mythology and religion, and pictures about the star evolved into the first writings. Experts discovered that the earliest and most commonly used words in cuneiform are "star" and "god", and these two words are surprisingly similar.
The exploration from the natural sciences is exciting and provides new insights into the origins of cuneiform writing. However, many scholars have also raised doubts about whether the explosion of a new star really has the power to create human civilization? Does this mean that cuneiform writing is completely different from the general rules of development of other writings in the world? In addition, archaeological excavation results from Assyria and Babylon also prove that the Mesopotamians indeed regarded writing as sacred, respected writing, and believed that the destiny of life was regulated by writing. Therefore, they often wear amulets with characters engraved on them. When building temples or palaces, they often place tablets with characters in the foundations to pray to gods. All these factors have given cuneiform writing a layer of mystery.
Identification
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The identification process of cuneiform writing is very similar to that of Egyptian hieroglyphics. This matter goes back 2,500 years.
That was in March 522 BC. At that time, the Persian Emperor Cambyses led an army to Egypt. There was a monk named Gomeda, who launched a rebellion in various parts of Persia and Media in the name of Bardia, the emperor's brother who was executed by Cambyses. The rebellion lasted for half a year. Emperor Cambyses died suddenly of illness on his way back to Persia from Egypt. For a time, the Persian aristocracy was leaderless. At this time, a nobleman named Darius obtained the throne through conspiracy. He finally put down the rebellion.
In order to praise his achievements, Darius had his story of suppressing the rebellion engraved on a large rock near the village of Behiston on the outskirts of Ecbatana, the capital of Media (today's Hamadan, Iran). This is the famous Behiston inscription.
The Behistun inscription is also engraved with three scripts: cuneiform, New Elamite and Old Persian. In 1835, by chance, French scholar Rawlinson discovered this inscription and made a rubbing. In 1843, he deciphered the ancient Persian text, then compared the ancient Persian text with the cuneiform script, and finally understood the cuneiform script. The mystery of cuneiform writing was thus solved.
It turns out that the oldest cuneiform script was written straight from right to left. Because of the inconvenience of writing, I later turned the glyph sideways 90 degrees and changed it to a horizontal line from left to right. Cuneiform was invented by the Sumerians. As early as 4000 BC, they created this writing while developing the Mesopotamia.
First of all, this kind of writing is pictographic. If you want to express a complex meaning, use two symbols together. For example, "sky" plus "water" means "rain"; "eye" plus "water" means "cry", etc. Later, it was developed that one symbol can represent multiple meanings. For example, "foot" can also mean "walking", "standing", etc. This is an ideographic symbol.
Later, a symbol can also represent a sound. For example, the cuneiform character "star" has the sound "um" in Sumerian. If it is used to represent pronunciation, it is the same as the original sound. The meaning of the word "star" doesn't matter anymore, it just means the pronunciation, which is the phonetic symbol.
In order to express the meaning and pronunciation of the relevant cuneiform characters, the Sumerians invented radical characters. For example, if a special symbol is added before a person's name, it means that it is a man's name.
The Sumerians did not know how to make paper. They used clay to make rectangular clay tablets, cut reeds or wooden sticks into triangular points and carved characters on them, and then dried the clay tablets or baked them over fire. This is what people later called the clay tablet document. At first, the Sumerian clay tablets were round or cone-shaped, which was not convenient for writing and storage. Later, the Sumerians changed the clay tablets to square shapes. Most of the written materials of the Sumerians are preserved after being engraved on such square clay tablets. So far, hundreds of thousands of such clay tablets have been excavated in the Mesopotamia.
Because the Sumerians used "pens" made of reed stalks or wooden sticks with a triangular tip, the mark where the pen was put down was deeper and wider, and the place where the pen was lifted was narrower. Later, people used This kind of ancient writing in Mesopotamia is called cuneiform writing.
Cuneiform later spread to many places in western Asia, and it made significant contributions to human civilization. After the decline of the last Sumerian dynasty in 2007 BC, the Kingdom of Babylon inherited this cultural heritage and developed even further.
Deciphering Cuneiform
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Since the 17th century, explorers and archaeologists have collected broken pottery from the Mesopotamia area, Strange written symbols were found on fragments of stone carvings and clay tablets. Of course, people now know that these writings, known as "cuneiform", are one of the oldest writings of mankind. They are the soul of Babylonian culture and are so named because their strokes resemble wooden wedges.
Incredibly, the major breakthrough in deciphering cuneiform was due to a drunken bet, completed by a German middle school teacher. When Iranian cuneiform inscriptions were brought to Europe, many scholars tried to understand this mysterious text, but they were still unable to determine whether it was text, whether it was phonetic or pictographic, and from which direction it should be read. In 1802, Grotefend, a 27-year-old middle school teacher in G?ttingen, Germany, made a bet with his friends while drinking. He said that he had a premonition that he would be able to decipher the cuneiform script, and then started based on the small amount of information at hand. To delve into. He boldly guessed that the first set of characters on the three cuneiform tablets in the ancient Persian capital should be Persian pinyin characters, and the content of the inscription was the name and title of a certain king. Using strict logical analysis, he went through a step-by-step process. Bu speculated that he was successful.
Although Grotefend only invented the Persian cuneiform deciphering method, it was like the key to opening a secret treasure box, which helped the British Rawlinson and other scholars decipher the ancient Mesopotamia 33 years later. Mya and other cuneiform texts in Western Asia opened the way.
By 1900, although there were still some lexical problems and grammatical doubts, the interpretation of Sumerian cuneiform, the origin of various cuneiform scripts in the ancient world, was basically a success. In this way, modern people can finally understand the entire process of the occurrence, development and demise of this great but extinct civilization and the many precious legacies it left to mankind by reading the precious documents left to us by the ancient Mesopotamian civilization.
Cuneiform writing
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1. Definition of cuneiform writing
Cuneiform writing refers to ancient Western Asia A general term for the laws inscribed in cuneiform in the slave countries in the Mesopotamia region. These countries include countries established by the Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Elamites, Hittites, etc. It originated in From around 3000 BC to the 6th century BC, it disappeared with the destruction of New Babylon (there are differences in the time of its demise).
In addition to having different characters, these countries have similar economies, politics, and cultures, which determines that their laws have some similarities.
2. The emergence and development of cuneiform writing
Between 3000 BC and 2500 BC, the Sumerians and Akkadians in the two river basins successively established some City states, these early states already had their own heads of state, councils of elders and litigation institutions. They already had the basic characteristics of a state, and traditional tribal customary laws gradually transitioned to laws.
According to historical records, around 3000 BC, there were already sporadic legal norms recorded in cuneiform writing, such as prohibitions on cheating and theft.
Around the end of the 21st century BC, Ur-Nammu founded the Third Dynasty of Ur, which unified the southern Mesopotamia and implemented centralized rule. The king combined military, administrative and judicial powers. In order to meet the needs of governance, the Ur-Nammu Code was promulgated, written in cuneiform. In addition to the preface, there are 29 articles, whose contents have covered damage and compensation, marriage, family and inheritance, and punishment, etc., reflecting the code's The protection of slave owners' interests and private property, this is the world's first written code, which marks that ancient Eastern law has entered the stage of codification. It had a significant impact on the subsequent legislation in the Mesopotamia.
After the demise of the Third Dynasty of Ur, the southern Mesopotamia was in a state of division again. Some city-states at that time also formulated some written codes. The main ones include the "Sumerian Code", the "Sumerian Relatives Law", the "Libit Isda Code", the "Bilalama Code", etc., which still basically inherited the "Ur-Nammu Code". style, but with a much broader scope. By the 18th century BC, Hammurabi, the sixth king of Babylon, had completed the unification of the two river basins and formulated the "Code of Hammurabi" (also known as the Stone Pillar Law). Its formulation is a collection of cuneiform laws and a symbol of The writing method of cuneiform writing has developed to a relatively complete level. Until the 1st century BC, cuneiform writing gradually withdrew from the stage of history.
3. Basic characteristics of cuneiform writing
1. The structural system of the law is relatively complete, generally using a syllogism of preface, body and conclusion. In the main text, all the laws are integrated, and the people and punishments are not distinguished. The preamble and conclusion often emphasize the purpose of legislation in the name of God, flaunt the achievements of legislators, implement the idea of ??"divine right of kings", emphasize the "fairness", "justice" and sanctity of the code, requiring people to abide by it, with the purpose of strengthening The sanctity and authority of the text of the Code.
2. The legal content covers a wide range of areas, covering almost all basic areas of law, such as civil, criminal, litigation, etc., but many issues are still regulated by customary law, and homomorphic revenge is retained. tradition.
3. It is basically a compilation of judicial precedents and does not stipulate general abstract concepts and legislative principles.
4. Although laws are described as manifestations of God’s will, they are not “divine laws.” There are no religious moral norms, it is entirely a matter of actual municipal and secular legal relations.