Sumerian cuneiform writing is part of the few heritage left after this ancient civilization. Unfortunately, most of the architectural monuments have been lost. Only clay tablets remained with unique writings on which the Sumerians wrote - cuneiform. For a long time it remained an unsolved mystery, but thanks to the efforts of scientists, humanity now has data on what the civilization of Mesopotamia was like.
Sumers: who are they
The Sumerian civilization (literally translated as “black-headed”) is one of the very first civilizations that arose on our planet. The very origin of the people in history is one of the most pressing issues: the disputes of scientists are still ongoing. This phenomenon is even given the designation "Sumerian question". The search for archaeological data led to little, so the main source of study was the field of linguistics. The Sumerians, whose cuneiform script is the best preserved, began to be studied in terms of linguistic affinity.
Approximately 5 thousand years BC in the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the southern part of Mesopotamia, settlements appeared, which later grew into a mighty civilization. The finds of archaeologists indicate how economically developed the Sumerians were. Cuneiform writing on numerous clay tablets speaks of this.
Excavations in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk allow us to make an unambiguous conclusion that the Sumerian cities were quite urbanized: there were classes of artisans, merchants, managers. Shepherds and peasants lived outside the cities.
Sumerian language
The Sumerian language is a very interesting linguistic phenomenon. Most likely, he came to southern Mesopotamia from India. For 1-2 millennia, the population spoke it, but Akkadian soon supplanted it.
The Sumerians still continued to use their original language in religious events, administrative work was carried out in it, and they studied in schools. This continued until the beginning of our era. How did the Sumerians write their language? Cuneiform was used for just that.
Unfortunately, the phonetic structure of the Sumerian language could not be restored, because it belongs to the type when the lexical and grammatical meaning of a word consists of numerous affixes that join the root.
Evolution of cuneiform
The emergence of cuneiform Sumerians coincides with the beginning of economic activity. It is connected with the fact that it was necessary to fix the elements of administrative activity or trade. It should be said that the Sumerian cuneiform is considered to be the first script to appear, which provided the basis for other writing systems in Mesopotamia.
Initiallydigital values were recorded while they were far from writing. A certain amount was indicated by special clay figurines - tokens. One token - one item.
With the development of housekeeping, this became inconvenient, so special signs began to be made on each figure. Tokens were stored in a special container, which depicted the seal of the owner. Unfortunately, in order to count the titles, the vault had to be broken and then resealed. For convenience, information about the contents began to be depicted next to the seal, and after that the figurines physically disappeared altogether - only prints remained. This is how the first clay tablets appeared. What was depicted on them was nothing more than pictograms: specific designations for specific numbers and objects.
Later, pictograms began to reflect abstract symbols as well. For example, a bird and an egg depicted next to it already indicated fertility. Such a letter was already ideographic (signs-symbols).
The next stage is the phonetic design of pictograms and ideograms. It should be said that each sign began to correspond to a certain sound design, which has nothing to do with the depicted object. The style is also changing, it is simplified (we will tell you how later). In addition, the symbols are rotated for convenience, becoming horizontally oriented.
The emergence of cuneiform gave impetus to the replenishment of the dictionary of styles, which is very active.
Cuneiform: basic principles
What did it representis cuneiform writing? Paradoxically, the Sumerians could not read: the principle of writing was not the same. They saw the written text, because the basis was ideographic writing.
The inscription was largely influenced by the material on which they wrote - clay. Why she? Let's not forget that Mesopotamia, a region where there are practically no trees suitable for processing (remember Slavic birch bark letters or Egyptian papyrus made from a bamboo stem), there was no stone there either. But there was plenty of clay in the floods of the rivers, so it was widely used by the Sumerians.
The blank for writing was a clay cake, it had the shape of a circle or a rectangle. Signs were applied with a special stick called kapama. It was made of hard material, such as bone. The tip of the capama was triangular. The writing process consisted of dipping a stick into soft clay and leaving a specific pattern. When the kapama was pulled out of the clay, the elongated part of the triangle left a wedge-like mark, hence the name "cuneiform". To preserve what was written, the tablet was burned in a kiln.
The origin of the syllabary
As mentioned above, before cuneiform appeared, the Sumerians had another type of inscription - pictography, then ideography. Later, the signs became simplified, for example, instead of a whole bird, only a paw was depicted. Yes, and the number of signs used is gradually reduced - they become more universal, they begin to mean not only direct concepts, but also abstract ones - forit is enough to depict another ideogram next to it. So, standing next to “another country” and “woman” denoted the concept of “slave”. Thus, the meaning of specific signs became clear from the general context. This way of expressing is called logography.
Still, it was difficult to depict ideograms on clay, so over time, each of them was replaced by a certain combination of dashes-wedges. This pushed the process of writing further, allowing the application of the correspondence of syllables to certain sounds. Thus, a syllabary began to develop, which lasted for a long time.
Decryption and meaning for other languages
The middle of the 19th century was marked by attempts to understand the essence of Sumerian cuneiform writing. Grotefend made great strides in this. However, the found Behistun inscription made it possible to finally decipher many texts. The texts carved on the rock contained examples of ancient Persian, Elamite and Akkadian script. Rawlins was able to decipher the texts.
The appearance of cuneiform writing of the Sumerians influenced the writing of other countries of Mesopotamia. Spreading, civilization carried with it the verbal-syllabic type of writing, which was adopted by other peoples. The entry of Sumerian cuneiform into Elamite, Hurrian, Hittite and Urartian writing is especially clearly visible.
