How to write in Cuneiform
openculture.com
How to write in Cuneiform
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Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#2"Cuneiform" is a medium, sort of like "paper" if that included the tool you use to make the marks.
Writing systems using cuneiform include Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite, Hurrian, Ugaritic, Old Persian...
The article states that "Properly written out, these syllables join up into a flowing calligraphy that your average, educated Babylonian would be able to read at a glance", so presumably they're thinking of Akkadian. Why not say so?
(Does it make a difference? Consider that our first attempt to read the name of Gilgamesh came out as "Izdubar".)
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#3Back in the days when a wide variety of removable digital media flourished (floppy disks, various flavors of tapes, ZIP and JAZ drives, Syquest and Bernoulli cartridges, mag-op WORM, etc) a friend and I joked about how we needed a "Cuneiform drive" to write to and bake sheets of clay because, compared to all the storage formats we were using, Cuneiform actually held up over time.
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#4> Like Japan’s kanji alphabet, the oldest writing system in the world is syllabic.
I think they have that mixed up with hiragana and katakana. Kanji are Chinese characters.
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#5> Like Japan’s kanji alphabet, the oldest writing system in the world is syllabic. I think they have that mixed up with hiragana and katakana. Kanji are Chinese characters.
Additionally, syllabaries (like the kana) are not alphabets.
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#6Good stuff, but this has triggered my pet peeve! The title should be:
How to Write in Cuneiform, the Oldest Known Writing System in the World
You can argue that, "well, obviously!" but correctness and exactness are what makes science, history, journalism, etc good, and allowing incorrectness like this is a step backwards.
I read a history book when I was a teenager (can't remember which one, unfortunately), and the author wrote a preface that said something along the lines of "Everything in this book is based on the published information I could discover during my research period of April to September 1999. I have chosen to write in absolutes--stating many things as certain and clear--but in reality there is still much we do not know about this time period. No history author should say their writing is fact and any good historian will make it clear that their work is composed of assumptions layered on assumptions. Please read these works with this in mind."
If you don't have a preface like that, you should add "known" to your title/sentence! I will argue with someone all day over this! I will die on this hill!
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#7Good stuff, but this has triggered my pet peeve! The title should be: How to Write in Cuneiform, the Oldest Known Writing System in the World The added word being: KNOWN You can argue that, "well, obviously!" but correctness and exactness are what makes science, history, journalism, etc good, and allowing incorrectness like this is a step backwards. I read a history book when I was a teenager (can't remember which on…
Exactly, knowing what we know about anthropology, it's extremely unlikely cuneiform was the oldest writing. What's more likely is that other human groups must have invented ways for storing information, but they didn't survive.
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#8Good stuff, but this has triggered my pet peeve! The title should be: How to Write in Cuneiform, the Oldest Known Writing System in the World The added word being: KNOWN You can argue that, "well, obviously!" but correctness and exactness are what makes science, history, journalism, etc good, and allowing incorrectness like this is a step backwards. I read a history book when I was a teenager (can't remember which on…
Exactly, knowing what we know about anthropology, it's extremely unlikely cuneiform was the oldest writing. What's more likely is that other human groups must have invented ways for storing information, but they didn't survive.
And it would seem safe to assume that cuneiform developed from something else
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#9Errrr.... actually that looks like ancient electronics schematics language.
Has anyone considered that possibility?
Re: How to write in Cuneiform
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly, knowing what we know about anthropology, it's extremely unlikely cuneiform was the oldest writing. What's more likely is that other human groups must have invented ways for storing information, but they didn't survive.
And it would seem safe to assume that cuneiform developed from something else
We have examples of cuneiform as it developed from pre-writing symbols, so that’s not necessarily the case.