Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Cuneiform Writing

Here is the website that I found about the cuneiform writing:
http://i-cias.com/e.o/cuneiform.htm

Cuneiform writing originated in southern Mesopotamia, and was created in the Sumerian culture in C3100BC, and was used until about year 0. Cuneiform is made of wedge-shaped strokes, and inscribed on clay, stone, metal, wax...... etc. It was for writing in the Sumerian language, and it used for Acadian, Babylonian and Assyrian later. Cuneiform developed into the dominant writing style of the Middle East, and it even spread to Egypt, but it was normally and preferred to write hieroglyphic there. In first stages of cuneiform writing, it was based on pictographs, but for practical reasons, the system based on straight lines came to prevails. The pictographs changed into symbols made from straight lines, and numbers were represented by repeated strokes or circles. In its early stages, cuneiform was written from top to bottom. During the 3rd millennium BCE, this changed into writing from left to right. The signs also took on new form, being turned on their sides.

I learned that people invent the words gradually to connection with other people, and this is the progress of the civilization. "Every step leaves its print" people developed the civilization little by little, and become the modern world now.

1 comment:

Savant English School said...

Excellent work! I am also very interested in cuneiform. That they spent so much time is interesting. Also, it was a combination of a "phonetic alphabet" based on sound and "pictographs" based on meaning, like in Chinese. This is unique. Mesopotamia was an interesting culture. If only we had a time machine!