What cuneiform writing is today, few know, as a rule, they are narrow specialists in the field of culture and the history of philology. And yet, it is thanks to cuneiform writing that we have the opportunity to write down our thoughts and words on paper. Therefore, in this article we will try to answer the question of what is the origin of cuneiform icons.
What is cuneiform writing?
Cuneiform writing is an ancient form of writing in which certain signs were applied to clay tablets with a specially honed wand.
Cuneiform writing arose as a form of writing in Sumerian culture. This allowed the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation and contributed to the fact that this country took a leading position in the Ancient World.
Also, archaeologists have discovered several more types of ancient writing, similar to cuneiform writing. This is a Persian cuneiform script, the so-called Ugaritic script, as well as Cypriot-Minoan scripture.
The most famous cuneiform country
Answering a question about the origin of cuneiform letters, we will study the state of writing in the most famous and well-studied Sumerian-Babylonian culture.
The first cuneiform tablets of this country, known to modern scholars, date back to 3500 BC. e.
Between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the well-known Sumerian kingdom is located. It was a state with populated cities, with a set of laws, with a rich book tradition, which these clay tablets made up.
Various signs were recorded on these tablets: from the forerunner of laws to household calculations.
The icons themselves were most close in value to the hieroglyphs. However, they already indicated certain verbal combinations and were more conventional in nature than the hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt.
Hypothesis on the occurrence of written cuneiform icons
The origin of cuneiform letters in Mesopotamia has several hypotheses. According to one of the most common of them, cuneiform icons arose as follows.
The owners of large agricultural and cattle-breeding plots were forced to keep records of their property. For this, special figures called tokens were made of clay, which was distributed in those parts of the world. Tokens were molded in the form of animals or poultry, as well as in the form of grain, eggs, etc.
Tokens were folded into a clay vessel, which was sealed with the personal seal of the owner, because only he had access to this knowledge.
Further, with the development of human progress, the custom appeared to draw the conditional outline of these tokens on the lid of the clay vessel itself, and the vessel itself also changed and turned into a simple clay tablet.
The outline of the pictograms has also changed. If earlier they had an imitative character and were similar to those animals that they were designated, now they began to be designated conditionally and schematically by extruding them on fresh clay or even with the help of a special ink with a writing stick.
So, we can understand what the origin of cuneiform letters is, because these are former pictograms.
The combination of two different icons gave a new word. Thus, an ideography using symbolism appeared. For example, if two signs connecting an egg and a bird came together, it meant "fertility and welfare." Ancient cuneiform records clearly allow you to consider such a feature.
By the way, cuneiform writing, having arisen in Sumerian culture, quickly spread throughout the Middle East, unlike Chinese and Egyptian hieroglyphs. The signs of cuneiform writing were more understandable, it was easier to remember and write them. Therefore, today you can study a fairly large number of clay tablets with these entries.
Modern scholars believe that the Sumerian cuneiform writing had a certain effect on the Phoenician script, which, in turn, influenced the creation of the ancient Greek alphabet, which is a kind of ancestor of alphabets of the whole world.
However, later this type of letter was lost. Clay tablets would have lain for a long time if European scientists had not paid close attention to them in the century before last.
The history of deciphering cuneiform signs
Studying the question of what is the origin of cuneiform letters, it is impossible to ignore the problem of their decoding.
Attempts to decipher these signs were made by scientists in the 19th century. Materials they served were inscriptions on tablets of the late era, listing the titles of rulers and their merits.
During archaeological excavations in the territory of Ancient Babylon, not only numerous cuneiform samples were found, but also peculiar dictionaries, according to which the upper classes of this country studied.
Thanks to these findings, most clay tablets were able to decipher. Historians have received invaluable data on life in Ancient Sumer. To date, only the most ancient cuneiform writing, the so-called proto-Sumerian writing, remains undecrypted.