Cuneiform :: Egyptian Writing Essays

Cuneiform The earlier theme in Mesopotamia was a picture indite invented by the Sumerians who wrote on clay tablets using long reeds. The script the Sumerians invented and handed down to the Semitic peoples who conquered Mesopotamia in later centuries, is called wedge-shaped, which is derived from two Latin words cuneus , which convey wedge, and forma , which means shape. This picture voice communication, similar to but more abstract than Egyptian hieroglyphics, finally developed into a syllabic alphabet under the Semites (Assyrians and Babylonians) who eventually came to dominate the ara. In Sumer, the original create verbally was pictographic (picture writing) somebody words were represented by crude natural symbols that resembled in some way the object being represented, as in the Sumerian word for king. The first symbol pictures gal, or great, and the second pictures lu, or man. Eventually, this pictorial writing developed into a more abstr act series of wedges and meat hooks. These wedges and hooks are the original cuneiform and represented in Sumerian faultless words (this is called ideographic and the word symbols are called ideograms, which means concept writing) the Semites who adopted this writing, however, spoke an entirely different language, in fact, a language as different from Sumerian as English is different from Japanese. In order to adapt this foreign writing to a Semitic language, the Akkadians reborn it in part to a syllabic writing system individual signs represent entire syllables. However, in addition to syllable symbols, some cuneiform symbols are ideograms (picture words) representing an entire word these ideograms might also, in other(a) contexts, be simply syllables. For instance, in Assyrian, the cuneiform for the syllable ki is written. However, as an ideogram, this cuneiform also stands for the Assyrian word irsitu , or earth. So reading cuneiform involve s get the hang a large syllabic alphabet as well as a large number of ideograms, many of them identical to syllable symbols. This complicated writing system dominated Mesopotamia until the century before the birth of Christ the Persians greatly simplified cuneiform until it represented something closer to an alphabet.