Languages

Cuneiform

Ancient Scripts: Cuneiform The term "cuneiform" is very deceptive, in that it tricks people into thinking that it's some type of writing system. The truth is that cuneiform denotes not one but several kinds of writing systems, including logosyllabic, syllabic, and alphabetic scripts. In fact, "cuneiform" came from Latin cuneus, which means "wedge"...

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Journal of Cuneiform Studies

Founded in 1947 by the Baghdad School of the American Schools of Oriental Research, theJournal of Cuneiform Studies (JCS) presents technical and general articles on the history and languages of the ancient Mesopotamian and Anatolian literate cultures. Articles appear in English, French, and German. Published once a year; circa 144 pages per issue....

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Early Cuneiform Writing

Over five thousand years ago, people living in Mesopotamia developed a form of writing to record and communicate different types of information... The earliest writing was based on pictograms. Pictograms were used to communicate basic information about crops and taxes. Over time, the need for writing changed and the signs developed into a script we...

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Electronic Translations of Akkadian Cuneiform Texts

eTACT aims to be the definitive repository on the Web for translations of Akkadian materials. Through eTACT, scholars, students, and the general public gain convenient access to a wealth of information that otherwise can be difficult to discover. Visitors to the site can have confidence in the quality of the translations since they are prepared and...

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Science Museum of Minnesota - Cuneiform Collection

Over five thousand years ago, the people dwelling in southern Iraq invented one of the world's earliest systems of writing. They did not do so in order to write stories or letters, nor yet to publicize the deeds of gods and kings, though soon enough writing came to be used for those purposes. They invented writing because they needed a means of acc...

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The Cuneiform Writing System

(Babylonian and Assyrian Cuneiform Texts) Writing is one of the essentials and characteristics of civilization... Urbanization, capital formation and writing are closely related. Writing developed at the end of the 4th millennium in the Middle East. The prime motivation was of an economic nature: the desire to administer economical and trade trans...

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Assyrian Babylonian Cuneiform Grammar

Ancient Mesopotamia of the Near East - Dictionary, Flashcards and Translator. The Assyrian/Babylonian Cuneiform: Pictographs (symbols that visually look like physical objects, also known as hieroglyphs) evolved over time from around 3500 B.C. into Babylonian-Assyrian Cuneiform (wedge shaped writing) around 1800 B.C. Note: The evolution of the picto...

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Cuneiform Writing

Univ. Of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Sumerians created cuneiform script over 5000 years ago. It was the world's first written language. The last known cuneiform inscription was written in 75 AD. Pictograms, or drawings representing actual things, were the basis for cuneiform writing. As shown in the chart, early pictograms ...

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Cuneiform Tablets

African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress. Cuneiform Tablets: From the Reign of Gudea of Lagash to Shalmanassar III presents clay tablets, cones, and brick fragments inscribed using the ancient writing system known as cuneiform from the Library of Congress' collections. The Sumerians invented this writing system, which involves the u...

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Akkadian

Ancient Scripts: Akkadian While the cuneiform writing system was created and used at first only by the Sumerians, it did not take long before neighboring groups adopted it for their own use. By about 2500 BCE, the Akkadian, a Semitic-speaking people that dwelled north of the Sumerians, starting using cuneiform to write their own language. Howeve...

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