Certain signs to indicate names of gods, countries, cities, vessels, birds, trees, etc., are known as determinatives and were the Sumerian signs of the terms in question, added as a guide for the reader. [32] The first tablets using syllabic elements date to the Early Dynastic I-II, circa 2,800 BC, and they are agreed to be clearly in Sumerian. There are differing conventions for transliterating Sumerian, Akkadian (Babylonian), and Hittite (and Luwian) cuneiform texts.

1, pp. Darius's father was Hystaspes and his son was Xerxes, while Cyrus' father was Cambyses I and his son was Cambyses II. This almost purely alphabetical form of the cuneiform script (36 phonetic characters and 8 logograms), was specially designed and used by the early Achaemenid rulers from the 6th century BC down to the 4th century BC.[56]. However, he did not attempt to decipher the scripts. Thus, e.g.

Over the course of its history, cuneiform was adapted to write a number of languages in addition to Sumerian. Zeichenliste der Archaischen Texte aus Uruk. [12] The script fell totally out of use soon after and was forgotten until its rediscovery and decipherment in the 19th century. [115]

An acute accent, , is equivalent to the second, u2, and a grave accent to the third, u3 glyph in the series (while the sequence of numbering is conventional but essentially arbitrary and subject to the history of decipherment). It was also used for recording maps, compiling medical manuals, and documenting religious stories and beliefs, among other uses. [90][note 2] The task of deciphering Old Persian cuneiform texts was virtually accomplished. The earliest known Sumerian king, whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets, is Enmebaragesi of Kish (fl. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, and writing became increasingly phonological. when inscriptions of a Semitic ruler of Kish, whose name was written Uru-mu-ush, were first deciphered, that name was first taken to be logographic because uru mu-ush could be read as "he founded a city" in Sumerian, and scholars accordingly retranslated it back to the original Semitic as Alu-usharshid. [23] It has been suggested that the token shapes were the original basis for some of the Sumerian pictographs. [75], By 1802 Georg Friedrich Grotefend conjectured that, based on the known inscriptions of much later rulers (the Pahlavi inscriptions of the Sassanid kings), a king's name is often followed by "great king, king of kings" and the name of the king's father. Hittite cuneiform is an adaptation of the Old Assyrian cuneiform of c. 1800 BC to the Hittite language. The signs exemplary of these basic wedges are: Except for the Winkelhaken, which has no tail, the length of the wedges' tails could vary as required for sign composition. In transliteration, a different rendition of the same glyph is chosen depending on its role in the present context. [19] Ultimately, it was completely replaced by alphabetic writing (in the general sense) in the course of the Roman era, and there are no cuneiform systems in current use. ". 1, no. Written Akkadian included phonetic symbols from the Sumerian syllabary, together with logograms that were read as whole words. The Behistun inscription was to the decipherment of cuneiform what the Rosetta Stone (discovered in 1799) was to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs in 1822.

[72], In 1798, Oluf Gerhard Tychsen made the first study of the inscriptions of Persepolis copied by Niebuhr. This page was last edited on 13 July 2022, at 01:13. English translation: Grotefend, G.F., "Appendix II: On the cuneiform character, and particularly the inscriptions at Persepolis" in: Heeren, Arnold Hermann Ludwig, with David Alphonso Talboys, trans., Charvt, Petr. Left: Simplified cuneiform syllabary, in use during the, An example: King Shulgi foundation tablet, Old Persian cuneiform: deduction of the word for "King" (circa 1800), Old Persian cuneiform: deduction of the names of Achaemenid rulers and translation (1802), External confirmation through Egyptian hieroglyphs (1823), Consolidation of the Old Persian cuneiform alphabet, List of major cuneiform tablet discoveries. Wilcke, Claus. The deciding factors between these two choices were the names of their fathers and sons. Mann 1996 ISBN 978-3786118756, Robert K. Englund and Rainer M.Boehmer, "Archaic Administrative Texts from Uruk The Early Campaigns", (ATU Bd.

He succeeded in fixing the true values of nearly all the letters in the Persian alphabet, in translating the texts, and in proving that the language of them was not Zend, but stood to both Zend and Sanskrit in the relation of a sister. Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, either in inscriptions or on clay tablets, continued to be in use, mainly as a phonetical syllabary, throughout the 2nd millennium BC. 2000.

[77], These connections allowed Grotefend to figure out the cuneiform characters that are part of Darius, Darius's father Hystaspes, and Darius's son Xerxes. [72], Friedrich Mnter Bishop of Copenhagen improved over the work of Tychsen, and proved that the inscriptions must belong to the age of Cyrus and his successors, which led to the suggestion that the inscriptions were in the Old Persian language and probably mentioned Achaemenid kings.

Then came other causes of delay. Proto-cuneiform tablet, Jemdet Nasr period, c. 31002900 BC. Ellermeier, Friedrich., and Margret. British Museum. The second, Babylonian cuneiform, was deciphered shortly after the Old Persian text. "Cherchez la femme: The SAL Sign in Proto-Cuneiform Writing". Studt. [73][74][58]:10, Niebuhr inscription 1, with the suggested words for "King" () highlighted. [53][54], The complexity of cuneiforms prompted the development of a number of simplified versions of the script. U+12000U+123FF (922 assigned characters), U+12400U+1247F (116 assigned characters), U+12480U+1254F (196 assigned characters). Kent, R. G.: "Old Persian: Grammar Texts Lexicon", page 9. The decipherment of Babylonian ultimately led to the decipherment of Akkadian, which was a close predecessor of Babylonian. [69][70], Carsten Niebuhr brought very complete and accurate copies of the inscriptions at Persepolis to Europe, published in 1767 in Reisebeschreibungen nach Arabien ("Account of travels to Arabia and other surrounding lands"). in, Cammarosano,Michele, Katja Weirauch, Feline Maruhn, Gert Jendritzki, and Patrick L. Kohl, "They Wrote on Wax. 54, pp. "La perception des consonnes hittites dans les langues trangres au XIIIe sicle.". After the Semites conquered Southern Mesopotamia, some signs gradually changed from being pictograms to syllabograms, most likely to make things clearer in writing. Words that sounded alike would have different signs; for instance, the syllable [u] had fourteen different symbols. The Blau Monuments combine proto-cuneiform characters and illustrations, 31002700 BC. The word 'raven' [UGA] had the same logogram as the word 'soap' [NAGA], the name of a city [ERE], and the patron goddess of Eresh [NISABA]. [51] The last known cuneiform inscription, an astronomical text, was written in 75 AD. [57], For centuries, travelers to Persepolis, located in Iran, had noticed carved cuneiform inscriptions and were intrigued. The pronunciation of the characters was replaced by that of the Assyrian dialect of the Akkadian language: The Rassam cylinder with translation of a segment about the Assyrian conquest of Egypt by Ashurbanipal against "Black Pharaoh" Taharqa, 643 BC, From the 6th century, the Akkadian language was marginalized by Aramaic, written in the Aramaean alphabet, but Neo-Assyrian cuneiform remained in use in the literary tradition well into the times of the Parthian Empire (250 BC226 AD). [33] Many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. This is still easier to read than the original cuneiform, but now the reader is able to trace the sounds back to the original signs and determine if the correct decision was made on how to read them. The meaning and usage of these tokens is still a matter of debate. Besides the well known clay tablets and stone inscriptions cuneiform was also written on wax boards, which one example from the 8th century BC was found at Nimrud. If a sign is modified with additional wedges, this is called gun or "gunification"; if signs are cross-hatched with additional Winkelhaken, they are called eig; if signs are modified by the removal of a wedge or wedges, they are called nutillu. Rosengarten (1967) lists 468 signs used in Sumerian (pre-Sargonian) Lagash, By 1851, Hincks and Rawlinson could read 200 Akkadian signs. Most proto-cuneiform records from this period were of an accounting nature. The jury declared itself satisfied, and the decipherment of Akkadian cuneiform was adjudged a fait accompli. Inscription now known to mean "Xerxes the Great King, King of Kings, son of Darius the King, an Achaemenian". It had to be deciphered as a completely unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. In the early days of cuneiform decipherment, the reading of proper names presented the greatest difficulties. [16] The tokens were then progressively replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus.

1948, (Jan. 1979), Green, M. and H. J. Nissen (1987). The Akkadian language being Semitic, its structure was completely different from Sumerian. In 1847, the first part of the Rawlinson's Memoir was published; the second part did not appear until 1849. [58]:14[86][87], A month earlier, a friend and pupil of Burnouf's, Professor Christian Lassen of Bonn, had also published his own work on The Old Persian Cuneiform Inscriptions of Persepolis. Written Sumerian was used as a scribal language until the first century AD. Pre-cuneiform tags, with drawing of goat or sheep and number (probably "10"). Someone transcribing the signs would make the decision how the signs should be read and assemble the signs as "ana", "ila", "Ila" ("god"+accusative case), etc. qe=KIN, qu=KUM, qi=KIN, a=ZA, e=Z, ur=DUR etc. Thus, capital letters can be used to indicate a so-called Diri compound a sign sequence that has, in combination, a reading different from the sum of the individual constituent signs (for example, the compound IGI.A "eye" + "water" has the reading imhur, meaning "foam"). 187349. Everson, Michael; Feuerherm, Karljrgen; Tinney, Steve (June 8, 2004). As shown above, signs as such are represented in capital letters, while the specific reading selected in the transliteration is represented in small letters. Fribourg, Switzerland / Gttingen, 15217. [37][38] There are many instances of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations at the time of the invention of writing, and standard reconstructions of the development of writing generally place the development of the Sumerian proto-cuneiform script before the development of Egyptian hieroglyphs, with the suggestion the former influenced the latter. Proto-cuneiform tablet, Jemdet Nasr period, c. 31002900 BC. Left: Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform syllabary, used by early Akkadian rulers. American Oriental Society, 1950. Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Philosophisch-historische Klasse. Comptes rendus de l'Acadmie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres: 481501. [46] However, some believe it might have been in use since 2500 BC. [5] It is named for the characteristic wedge-shaped impressions (Latin: cuneus) which form its signs. Wax Boards in the Ancient Near East", Mesopotamia, vol. The central element of the GigaMesh Software Framework logo is the sign (kaskal) meaning "street" or "road junction", which symbolizes the intersection of the humanities and computer science. c. 2600 BC). [24], Mesopotamia's "proto-literate" period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries BC. XI. [40] For numbers, a round-tipped stylus was initially used, until the wedge-tipped stylus was generalized. Frste Afhandling. [75] Finally, he matched the sequence of the father who was not a king with Hystaspes, but again with the supposed Persian reading of g-o-sh-t-a-s-p,[80] rather than the actual Old Persian vi-i-sha-ta-a-sa-pa.[75], By this method, Grotefend had correctly identified each king in the inscriptions, but his identification of the value of individual letters was still quite defective, for want of a better understanding of the Old Persian language itself. In 1857, the four men met in London and took part in a famous experiment to test the accuracy of their decipherments. Old Persian cuneiform was developed with an independent and unrelated set of simple cuneiform characters, by Darius the Great in the 5th century BC. Two phonetic complements were used to define the word [u] in front of the symbol and [gu] behind. Within the text, the father and son of the king had different groups of symbols for names so Grotefend assumed that the king must have been Darius. Several symbols had too many meanings to permit clarity. A. Falkenstein (1936) lists 939 signs used in the earliest period (late Uruk, 34th to 31st centuries). This "mixed" method of writing continued through the end of the Babylonian and Assyrian empires, although there were periods when "purism" was in fashion and there was a more marked tendency to spell out the words laboriously, in preference to using signs with a phonetic complement. The name GigaMesh is an intentional reference to the legendary Gilgamesh from Mesopotamian folklore. [26] Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a sharpened reed stylus or incised in stone. For example, the sign dingir in a Hittite text may represent either the Hittite syllable an or may be part of an Akkadian phrase, representing the syllable il, it may be a Sumerogram, representing the original Sumerian meaning, 'god' or the determinative for a deity. Signs used in Hittite cuneiform are listed by Forrer (1922), Friedrich (1960) and Rster and Neu (1989, Hethitisches Zeichenlexikon or "HZL"). [66] In the 1677 edition he reproduced some and thought they were 'legible and intelligible' and therefore decipherable. In the 15th century, the Venetian Giosafat Barbaro explored ancient ruins in the Middle East and came back with news of a very odd writing he had found carved on the stones in the temples of Shiraz and on many clay tablets. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time (Early Bronze Age II). The largest collections belong to the British Museum (approx. Elamite cuneiform at times competed with other local scripts, Proto-Elamite and Linear Elamite. Many signs in the script were polyvalent, having both a syllabic and logographic meaning. 40,000), and Penn Museum.

The base character inventory is derived from the list of Ur III signs compiled by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative of UCLA based on the inventories of Miguel Civil, Rykle Borger (2003) and Robert Englund.

Regarding Akkadian forms, the standard handbook for many years was Borger (1981, Assyrisch-Babylonische Zeichenliste or "ABZ") with 598 signs used in Assyrian/Babylonian writing, recently superseded by Borger (2004, Mesopotamisches Zeichenlexikon or "MesZL") with an expansion to 907 signs, an extension of their Sumerian readings and a new numbering scheme.