Early European travelers to Persepolis noticed carved cuneiform inscriptions and were intrigued. After translating the Persian, Rawlinson and, working independently of him, the Anglo-Irish Egyptologist Edward Hincks, began to decipher the others. [7], This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with a phonetic complement. 47|publisher=HarperCollins|year=2003|id=ISBN 0 00 712899 1]. [cite book|author=Daniels, Peter|coauthors=Bright, William|title=The World's Writing Systems|pages=p. [http://www.jhu.edu/digitalhammurabi/research/2004_06_04_n2786_cuneiform_unicode.pdf] The base character inventory is derived from the list of Ur III signs compiled by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative of UCLA based on the inventories of Miguel Civil, Rykle Borger (2003), and Robert England. The Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite (and Luwian), Hurrian (and Urartian) languages, and it inspired the Old Persian and Ugaritic national alphabets. It formed a semi-alphabetic syllabary, using far fewer wedge strokes than Assyrian used, together with a handful of logograms for frequently occurring words like "god" and "king." It was invented in Mesopotamia in the late fourth millennium B.C. This is still easier to read than the original cuneiform, but now the reader is able to trace the sounds back to the original signs and determine if the correct decision was made on how to read them. 3.2: 1998-2005, A-B ISBN 3-921747-24-4, D-E ISBN 3-921747-25-2, G ISBN 3-921747-29-5**vol. The cuneiform writing system originated around 3000 B.C.E. [7], At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals, and the Winkelhaken impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus.[5]. [5], Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, and so forth, are known as "determinants," and were the Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. Therefore, a text containing DINGIR and MU in succession could be construed to represent the words "ana", "ila", god + "a" (the accusative ending), god + water, or a divine name "A" or Water. The complexity of the system bears a resemblance to classical Japanese, written in a Chinese-derived script, where some of these Sinograms were used as logograms, and others as phonetic characters. Infobox Writing systemname=Cuneiformtype=Logographictypedesc=and syllabiclanguages=Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hattic, Hittite, Hurrian, Luwian, Sumerian, Urartiantime=ca. For example, the sign DINGIR in a Hittite text may represent either the Hittite syllable "an" or may be part of an Akkadian phrase, representing the syllable "il", or it may be a Sumerogram, representing the original Sumerian meaning, 'god'. By 1851, Hincks and Rawlinson could read 200 Babylonian signs. ), Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified. Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, or they could be recycled if permanence was not needed. Stage 5 represents the late 3rd millennium, and stage 6 represents Old Assyrian ductus of the early 2nd millennium, as adopted into Hittite. [http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/tools/SignLists/KWU/index.html] *Wolfgang Schramm, "Akkadische Logogramme", Goettinger Arbeitshefte zur Altorientalischen Literatur (GAAL) Heft 4, Goettingen (2003), ISBN 3-936297-01-0.*F. The inexperienced Talbot had made a number of mistakes, and Oppert's translation contained a few doubtful passages which the jury politely ascribed to his unfamiliarity with the English language. ISBN links support NWE through referral fees, https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=Cuneiform_script&oldid=1071005, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License, Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hattic, Hittite, Hurrian, Luwian, Sumerian, Urartian. In two years, he completed a version of about half of the Persian text, forwarding to the Royal Asiatic Society a translation of the two first paragraphs of the Behistun inscription, recording the titles and genealogy of Darius. Thureau-Dangin, "Recherches sur l'origine de l'criture cuniforme", Paris (1898). in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. A jury of experts was empanelled to examine the resulting translations and assess their accuracy. Thus, capital letters can be used to indicate a so-called Diri compound - a sign sequence that has, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example, the compound IGI.A - "water" + "eye" - has the reading "imhur", meaning "foam"). Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans the 35th to 32nd centuries. [1] The Code of Hammurabi is the Wikipedia, Cuneiform (disambiguation) Cuneiform (from the Latin word for wedge shaped ) can refer to: Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC Cuneiform (anatomy), three bones in the human foot Cuneiform Records, a music record Wikipedia, Cuneiform (lat. A Joint Project of the University of California at Los Angeles and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Stage 1 shows the pictogram as it was drawn around 3000 BCE. As shown above, signs "as such" are represented in capital letters, while the specific reading selected in the transliteration is represented in small letters. This early style lacked the characteristic wedge-shape of the strokes. 3.3: ISBN 3-921747-22-8 (font CD ISBN 3-921747-23-6)**vol. [6], From about 2900 B.C.E., many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. Stage 2 shows the rotated pictogram as written around 2800 B.C.E. The symbols were wedge shaped Dictionary of the Bible, . This number was reduced to about 600 by the 24th century BCE and the beginning of Akkadian records. in Sumer;[2] its latest surviving use is dated to 75 C.E. ** [http://flaez.ch/freeidg.html FreeIdgSerif] (branched off FreeSerif), encodes some 390 Old Assyrian glyphs used in Hittite cuneiform. Whether or not it originated there, after its introduction cuneiform writing rapidly Ancient Mesopotamia dictioary, Cuneiform (Unicode block) In Unicode, the Sumero Akkadian Cuneiform script is covered in two blocks: U+12000U+1237F Cuneiform (879 assigned characters) U+12400U+1247F Cuneiform Numbers and Punctuation (103 assigned characters) These blocks, in version 6.0, are in the in Wikipedia, cuneiform law Body of laws revealed by documents written in cuneiform script (see cuneiform writing).

to the Hittite language. The jury declared itself satisfied, and the decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform was adjudged a "fait accompli". In1835 Henry Rawlinson, a British East India Company army officer, visited the Behistun inscriptions in Persia. [http://www.jhu.edu/ice/BorgerMZ/BorgerMZ.html] *A. Deimel, "Liste der archaischen Keilschriftzeichen" (WVDOG 40; Berlin 1922) [http://www.cdli.ucla.edu/tools/SignLists/LAK/index.html] *F. Ellermeier, M. Studt, [http://www.sumerisches-glossar.de/ Sumerisches Glossar] **vol. Determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity.[6]. The HZL lists a total of 375 signs, many with variants (for example, 12 variants are given for number 123 "EGIR"), Unicode (as of version 5.0) assigns to the Cuneiform script the following ranges::U+12000U+1236E (879 characters) "Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform":U+12400U+12473 (103 characters) "Cuneiform Numbers". However, there is now a better understanding of the principles behind the formation and the pronunciation of the thousands of names found in historical records, business documents, votive inscriptions and literary productions. The Sumerian script was adapted for the writing of the Akkadian, Eblaite, Elamite, Hittite, Luwian, Hattic, Hurrian, and Urartian languages, and it inspired the Ugaritic and Old Persian national alphabets. Originally, pictograms were drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a pen made from a sharpened reed stylus, or incised in stone. The Ugaritic language was written using the Ugaritic alphabet, a standard Semitic style alphabet (an abjad) written using the cuneiform method. Different versions of cuneiform writing were used to write Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia, cuneiform An early kind of writing developed in Mesopotamia and impressed on tablets of clay. Because of the script's polyvalence, transliteration is not only lossless, but may actually contain more information than the original document. Fortunately, in many cases, there are variant readings, the same name being written phonetically (in whole or in part) in one instance, and ideographically in another. *Borger in 1981 lists 598 signs used in Assyrian/Babylonian writing, and 907 in 2003. He also discovered that cuneiform characters were "polyphonic," by which he meant that a single sign could have several different readings depending on the context in which it occurred. Among the treasures uncovered by Botta were the remains of the great library of Assurbanipal, a royal archive containing tens of thousands of baked clay tablets covered with cuneiform inscriptions. At this stage, the former pictograms were reduced to a high level of abstraction, and were composed of only five basic wedge shapes: horizontal, vertical, two diagonals and the "Winkelhaken" impressed vertically by the tip of the stylus. Yet even in those days, the Babylonian syllabary remained a mixture of ideographic and phonetic writing. Stage 7 is the simplified sign as written by Assyrian scribes in the early first millennium, and until the script's extinction. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform ("wedge shaped," from the Latin "cuneus", meaning "wedge"). * [http://cdli.ucla.edu/index.html Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative] . 45 degrees are called "ten" in Akkadian, thus DI is a vertical wedge and DI "ten" a diagonal one. The signs exemplary of these basic wedges are*A (B001, U+12038) cuneiform|: horizontal;*DI (B748, U+12079) cuneiform|: vertical;*GE23, DI "ten" (B575, U+12039) cuneiform|: downward diagonal;*GE22 (B647, U+1203A) cuneiform|: upward diagonal;*U (B661, U+1230B) cuneiform|: the "Winkelhaken".Except for the "Winkelhaken" which is tail-less, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition. when inscriptions of a Semitic ruler of Kish, whose name was written "Uru-mu-ush", were first deciphered, that name was first taken to be ideographic because "uru mu-ush" could be read as "he founded a city" in Sumerian, and scholars accordingly "retranslated" it back to the "original" Semitic as "Alu-usharshid". Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. In the mid-3rd millennium, writing direction was changed to left to right in horizontal rows (rotating all of the pictograms 90 counter-clockwise in the process), and a new wedge-tipped stylus was used which was pushed into the clay, producing wedge-shaped ("cuneiform") signs; these two developments made writing quicker and easier. He believed that the script was essentially syllabic, comprising open syllables (such as "ab" or "ki") as well as more complex closed syllables (like "mur"). Fortunately, in many cases, there are variant readings, the same name being written phonetically (in whole or in part) in one instance, and ideographically in another. The Semitic equivalents for many signs became distorted or abbreviated to form new "phonetic" values, because the syllabic nature of the script as refined by the Sumerians was unintuitive to Semitic speakers. However, there is now a better understanding of the principles behind the formation and the pronunciation of the thousands of names found in historical records, business documents, votive inscriptions, and literary productions. Naturally, the "real" reading, if it is clear, will be presented in small letters in the transliteration: IGI.A will be rendered as imhur4. Not all Sumerian signs are used in Akkadian, and not all Akkadian signs are used in Hittite. But Hincks' and Rawlinson's versions corresponded remarkably closely in many respects. In 1857 the four men met in London and took part in a famous experiment to test the accuracy of their decipherments. "qe"=KIN, "qu"=KUM, "qi"=KIN, "a"=ZA, "e"=Z, "ur"=DUR etc. [9] They were greatly helped by Paul mile Botta's discovery of the city of Nineveh in 1842. * [http://www.mirroroftheworld.com.au/inspiration/before_the_book/cuneiform.php Online interactive cuneiform tablet] from the State Library of Victoria collection. In transliteration, a different rendition of the same glyph is chosen depending on its role in the present context. Since the Sumerian language has only been widely known and studied by scholars for approximately a century, changes in the accepted reading of Sumerian names have occurred from time to time. Most later adaptations of Sumerian cuneiform preserved at least some aspects of the Sumerian script. Rster, E. Neu, "Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon" ("HZL"), Wiesbaden (1989)*Nikolaus Schneider, "Die Keilschriftzeichen der Wirtschaftsurkunden von Ur III nebst ihren charakteristischsten Schreibvarianten", Keilschrift-Palographie; Heft 2, Rom: Ppstliches Bibelinstitut (1935). However by the 1664 edition he had guessed, correctly, that they represented not letters or hieroglyphics but words and syllables, and furthermore that they were to be read from left to right. However, the influence of cuneiform died away, and was completely abandoned as a style around the end of the sixth century. Cuneiforms were inscribed on clay tablets, on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed for a stylus. [8] After translating the Persian, Rawlinson and, working independently of him, the Anglo-Irish Egyptologist Edward Hincks, began to decipher the others. In the early days of cuneiform decipherment, the reading of proper names presented the greatest difficulties. Carsten Niebuhr copied them in the eighteenth century, publishing them after his return to Europe in 1767. Signs modified with additional wedges are called "gun", and signs crosshatched with additional "Winkelhaken" are called "eig". A transliteration of these signs, however, would separate the signs with dashes "il-a", "an-a", "DINGIR-a". 10th to 6th c. BCE), Assyrian cuneiform was further simplified. One convention that sees wide use across the different fields is the use of acute and grave accents as an abbreviation for homophone disambiguation. In all essential points the translations produced by the four scholars were found to be in close agreement with one another. *Falkenstein (1936) lists 939 signs used in the earliest period (late Uruk, 34th to 31st centuries)*Borger (2003) lists 907 signs. b) Written in cuneiform: cuneiform script, cuneiform writing. As used for the Sumerian language, the cuneiform script was in principle capable of distinguishing 14 consonants, transliterated as:"b, d, g, , k, l, m, n, p, r, s, , t, z"as well as four vowel qualities, "a, e, i, u".The Akkadian language needed to distinguish its emphatic series, "q, , ", adopting various "superfluous" Sumerian signs for the purpose (e.g. The archaic cuneiform script was adopted by the Akkadians from c. 2500 B.C.E., and by 2000 B.C.E., had evolved into Old Assyrian cuneiform, with many modifications to Sumerian orthography. "Typical" signs have usually in the range of about five to ten wedges, while complex ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated but still distinct signs); the ligature KAxGUR7 consists of 31 strokes. *Journal of Cuneiform Studies*List of cuneiform signs*Old Persian cuneiform script*Ugaritic alphabet, *R. Borger, "Assyrisch-Babylonische Zeichenliste", 2nd ed., Neukirchen-Vluyn (1981)*R. Borger, "Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon", Mnster (2003). Typical signs usually have in the range of about five to ten wedges, while complex ligatures can consist of twenty or more (although it is not always clear if a ligature should be considered a single sign or two collated but still distinct signs); the ligature KAxGUR7 consists of 31 strokes. New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, or they could be recycled if permanence was not needed. 30th century BCE to 1st century CEfam1=(Proto-writing)children=Old Persian, Ugariticunicode= [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U12000.pdf U+12000 to U+1236E] (Sumero-Akkadian Cuneiform) [http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U12400.pdf U+12400 to U+12473] (Numbers)iso15924=Xsux. When the cuneiform script was adapted to writing Hittite, a layer of Akkadian logographic spellings was added to the script, with the result that we no longer know the pronunciations of many Hittite words conventionally written by logograms. (The actual techniques used to decipher the Akkadian language have never been fully published; Hincks described how he sought the proper names already legible in the deciphered Persian while Rawlinson never said anything at all, leading some to speculate that he was secretly copying Hincks. These two developments made writing quicker and easier. From about 2900 BCE, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The cuneiform script underwent considerable changes over a period of more than two millennia. The tables below show signs used for simple syllables of the form CV or VC. Thus, "u" is equivalent to "u1", the first glyph expressing phonetic "u". [http://ebind.library.vanderbilt.edu/cgi-bin/Ebind2html/ETANA/Cuneiform "Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, &c. in the British Museum"] London, Harrison and Sons, 1896.