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"CUNEIFORM WRITING"
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Cuneiform
Thanks to the use of clay tablets as a writing medium, cuneiform records have survived for thousands of years, providing a fascinating glimpse into the political, economic, and religious institutions of ancient Mesopotamia.
Book
Writing, law, and kingship in Old Babylonian Mesopotamia
Ancient Mesopotamia, the fertile crescent between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now western Iraq and eastern Syria, is considered to be the cradle of civilization—home of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, as well as the great Code of Hammurabi. The Code was only part of a rich juridical culture from 2200–1600 BCE that saw the invention of writing and the development of its relationship to law, among other remarkable firsts. Though ancient history offers inexhaustible riches, Dominique Charpin focuses here on the legal systems of Old Babylonian Mesopotamia and offers considerable insight into how writing and the law evolved together to forge the principles of authority, precedent, and documentation that dominate us to this day. As legal codes throughout the region evolved through advances in cuneiform writing, kings and governments were able to stabilize their control over distant realms and impose a common language—which gave rise to complex social systems overseen by magistrates, judges, and scribes that eventually became the vast empires of history books. Sure to attract any reader with an interest in the ancient Near East, as well as rhetoric, legal history, and classical studies, this book is an innovative account of the intertwined histories of law and language.
eBook
The writing on the wall : a true story of daring, duplicity, and the race to decipher the world's oldest script
\"It was one of history's great vanishing acts. As early as 3500 BCE, scribes in the mud-walled city-state of Sumer used a reed stylus to press tiny wedge-shaped symbols into clay. For three thousand years, the script chronicled the military conquests, scientific discoveries, and epic literature of the grand kingdoms of Mesopotamia - Assyria, Babylon, the mighty Achaemenid Empire - along with precious minutia about everyday life so long ago. But as the palaces of these once great kingdoms sank beneath the desert sands, the meaning of these characters was lost. London, 1857. Colossal sculptures of winged bulls and alabaster bas-reliefs depicting cities under siege and vassals bearing tributes to Biblical kings lined the halls of the British Museum. In the Victorian era's obsession with the triumph of human progress, the mysterious kingdoms of ancient Mesopotamia - the very cradle of civilization - had captured the public imagination. Yet Europe's best philologists struggled to decipher the strange characters. Cuneiform seemed to have thousands of symbols - with some scholars claiming each could be pronounced in up to eight, nine, even ten different ways. Others insisted they'd cracked the code and deciphered inscriptions that corresponded precisely to the Old Testament - proving the veracity of the Word of God. Was it all a hoax? A delusion? A rollicking adventure through the golden age of archaeology, The Writing on the Wall tracks the decades-long race to decipher the oldest script in the world. It's the story of a swashbuckling young archeologist, a suave British military officer, and a curmudgeonly Irish rector, all vying for glory - from the ruins of Persepolis to the opulence of Ottoman-era Baghdad - in a quest to unearth the relics of lost civilizations and unlock the secrets of humanity's past\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Structured-Light Scanning and Metrological Analysis for Archaeology: Quality Assessment of Artec 3D Solutions for Cuneiform Tablets
This paper deals with a metrological and qualitative evaluation of the Artec 3D structured-light scanners: Micro and Space Spider. As part of a larger European project called ITSERR, these scanners are tested to reconstruct small archaeological artefacts, in particular cuneiform tablets with different dimensions. For this reason, Micro and Space Spider are compared in terms of the entire workflow, from preparatory work to post-processing. In this context, three cuneiform replica tablets will serve as examples on which the Artec scanners will have to prove their worth. Metric analyses based on distance maps, RMSe calculations and density analyses will be carried out to understand metrological differences between these tools. The creation of 3D models of cuneiform tablets is the first step in developing a virtual environment suitable for sharing the archaeological collection with collaborators and other users. The inclusion of semantic information through specific ontologies will be the next step in this important project.
Journal Article
An Introduction to Akkadian Literature
This book initiates the reader into the study of Akkadian
literature from ancient Babylonia and Assyria. With this one
relatively short volume, the novice reader will develop the
literary competence necessary to read and interpret Akkadian texts
in translation and will gain a broad familiarity with the major
genres and compositions in the language.
The first part of the book presents introductory discussions of
major critical issues, organized under four key rubrics: tablets,
scribes, compositions, and audiences. Here, the reader will find
descriptions of the tablets used as writing material; the training
scribes received and the institutional contexts in which they
worked; the general characteristics of Akkadian compositions, with
an emphasis on poetic and literary features; and the various
audiences or users of Akkadian texts. The second part surveys the
corpus of Akkadian literature defined inclusively, canvasing a wide
spectrum of compositions. Legal codes, historical inscriptions,
divinatory compendia, and religious texts have a place in the
survey alongside narrative poems, such as the Epic of
Gilgamesh , Enuma elish , and Babylonian
Theodicy . Extensive footnotes and a generous bibliography
guide readers who wish to continue their study.
Essential for students of Assyriology, An Introduction to
Akkadian Literature will also prove useful to biblical
scholars, classicists, Egyptologists, ancient historians, and
literary comparativists.
eBook
Alphabet scribes in the land of cuneiform : sهepiru professionals in Mesopotamia in the neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods
This book discusses the alphabetic scribes (sهepiru) mentioned in Mesopotamian documents of the Neo-Babylonian and Achaemenid periods - specifically, of the 6th-5th centuries BCE. The period in question saw a wide diffusion of writing in the Northwest Semitic alphabetic script - mostly in Aramaic - in Mesopotamia; yet, alphabetic texts were normally written in ink on perishable materials and did not survive to be discovered by modern archaeologists. In contrast, cuneiform tablets written on clay have been found in large numbers, and they document different aspects of the alphabetic scribes' activities. This book presents evidence for understanding the Akkadian term sهepiru as a designation for an alphabetic scribe and discusses the functions of these professionals in different administrative and economic spheres. It further considers the question of the ethnic origins of the alphabetic scribes in Mesopotamia, with special attention to the participation of Judeans in Babylonia in this profession. Bloch also provides translations of over 100 cuneiform documents of economic, legal and administrative content.
Book
The Shape of Stories
The volume provides a methodological toolbox for the study of cuneiform narratives--including literary, historical, and religious texts from the ancient Near East--with each chapter illustrating a different approach to narrative analysis through a series of compelling case studies.
eBook
Materiality of Writing in Early Mesopotamia
This volume presents recent research on the relationship between the material format of text-bearing artefacts, the texts they carry, and their genre. The essays cover a vast period, from the counting stones of the late 4th millennium BCE to the time of the Great Hittite Kingdom in the 2nd millennium BCE. The breadth of substantive focus allows new insights of relevance to scholars in both Ancient Middle Eastern studies and the humanities.
eBook