Sumerian cuneiform writing is part of the few legacies that remain after this ancient civilization. Unfortunately, most of the architectural monuments have been lost. There were only clay tablets with unique inscriptions on which the Sumerians wrote - cuneiform writing. For a long time, it remained an unsolved mystery, however, through the efforts of scientists, mankind now has data on what constituted the civilization of Mesopotamia.
Sumerians: who they are
Sumerian civilization (literal translation of “black-headed”) is one of the very first that arose on our planet. The very origin of the people in history is one of the most acute questions: the debates of scientists are still ongoing. This phenomenon is even given the designation "Sumerian question." The search for archaeological data has led little to anything, so the field of linguistics has become the main source of study. The Sumerians, whose cuneiform writing is best preserved, began to be studied from the point of view of linguistic kinship.
About 5 thousand years BC, settlements appeared in the valley of the Tigris and Efrat rivers in the southern part of Mesopotamia, which later grew into a powerful civilization. Finds by archaeologists show how developed in the economic plan were the Sumerians. Cuneiform writing on numerous clay tablets tells about this.
Excavations in the ancient city of Sumerians Uruk allow us to make an unequivocal conclusion that the Sumerian cities were quite urbanized: there were classes of artisans, merchants, and managers. Outside the cities, shepherds and peasants lived.
Sumerian language
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 it was soon replaced by Akkadian.
The Sumerians nevertheless continued to use their original language in religious events, it conducted administrative work, studied at schools. This continued until the beginning of our era. How did the Sumerians write their language in writing? Cuneiform writing was used precisely for this.
Unfortunately, the phonetic system of the Sumerian language could not be restored, because it belongs to the type when the lexical and grammatical meaning of a word lies in numerous affixes joining the root.
Cuneiform Evolution
The emergence of cuneiform writing of the 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 writing is considered the first letter that appeared, which gave a basis to other writing systems of Mesopotamia.
Initially, numerical values were recorded while they were far from written. A certain amount was designated with special clay figures - tokens. One token is one item.
With the development of economic activity, this became inconvenient, therefore, special designations began to be made on each figure. Tokens were stored in a special container, which depicted the owner's seal. Unfortunately, in order to count the names, it was necessary to break the repository, and then seal it again. For convenience, they began to depict information about the contents next to the seal, and after the figures physically disappeared altogether - only prints remained. So the first clay tablets appeared. What was depicted on them was nothing more than pictograms: specific designations of specific numbers and objects.
Later, pictograms began to reflect abstract symbols. For example, the bird and the egg shown next 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 character began to correspond to a certain sound design that is not related to the depicted object. The style also changes, it is simplified (as - we will tell further). In addition, the symbols unfold for convenience, become horizontally oriented.
The emergence of cuneiform writing gave an impetus to replenish the dictionary of styles, which is very active.
Cuneiform writing: basic principles
What was 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 style was largely influenced by the material on which they wrote - clay. Why she? Let's not forget that Mesopotamia is an area where there are practically no trees suitable for processing (recall the Slavic birch bark letters or the Egyptian papyrus made from a bamboo stalk), there was no stone there either. But clay in the floods of the rivers was plentiful, so it was widely used by 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 capama tip was triangular. The writing process was to immerse the stick in soft clay and leave a certain pattern. When the kapama was pulled out of clay, the elongated part of the triangle left a wedge-like mark, therefore the name is “cuneiform”. To save what was written, the tablet was fired in an oven.
The origin of a syllable
As it was written above, before cuneiform writing appeared, the Sumerians had another type of style - pictography, then ideography. Later, the signs became simplified, for example, instead of a whole bird, only a paw was depicted. 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 - for this it is enough to portray another ideogram alongside. 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 method of expression is called logography.
Nevertheless, it was difficult to portray ideograms on clay, so over time, each of them was replaced with a certain combination of dash-wedges. This pushed the writing process further, allowing syllables to be applied to specific sounds. Thus, a syllable began to develop, which existed for a long time.
Decoding and meaning for other languages
The middle of the 19th century was marked by attempts to understand the essence of cuneiform writing of the Sumerians. Grotefend made great strides in this. However, the Behistun inscription found made it possible to finally decrypt many texts. The texts carved on the rock contained examples of the ancient Persian, Elamite and Akkadian styles. Rawlins was able to decrypt the texts.
The emergence of cuneiform writing of the Sumerians influenced the writing of other countries between the rivers. Spreading, civilization carried with it a verbal-syllable type of writing, which was adopted by other peoples. Especially clearly visible is the entry of the cuneiform writing of the Sumerians into the Elamite, Hurrian, Hittite and Urartian script.