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What is the significance of cuneiform? Cuneiform is the brainchild of the Sumerians who came from a region of the world known as the Cradle of Civilization. Sumerian culture originated in Mesopotamia, the site of modern day Iraq. These people are responsible in large part for the information technology revolution that would eventually lead to the globalization of the entire planet. We owe much to the Sumerians for their intuitive nature and industrious culture. Without the invention of a simple system of writing, all of the modern technology that we enjoy today would not have been possible.
According to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology web article About Cuneiform Writing..., cuneiform is the world’s first writing system. It was created by the Sumerians around 3200 BC. This system was used until around 75 AD.[1] The video Start Writing: The Ancient Sumerians at NationalGeographic.com explains the importance of the first written language.[2]
What is cuneiform and how does it work? S. I. Wooley, et.al. in Communicating cuneiform: The evolution of a multimedia cuneiform database states that a stylus (usually made out of reeds) is cut into a triangle on the end and pressed into moist clay to form the characters of this pictographic language. The result was a “three-dimensional wedge shape. All of the characters are composed of combinations of these wedge shapes.”[3]. See the example below.
 Learning all of the characters that make up the cuneiform language took many years, and was normally undertaken by Scribes who were specifically trained to keep a written record in the Mesopotamian societies that utilized cuneiform. Dan Vergano in the USA Today article Ancient writing system gets Internet update, states that some “training records of the scribes, often taught from childhood in homes, ... turn up in the tablet record, and these word lists are the reason scholars know enough cuneifom to attempt their current projects.”[4] The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology offers a wonderful interactive tool for educating people about cuneiform. Visitors to their website have the opportunity to “Write Like a Babylonian” by typing their full name and initials in English and getting their name back in cuneiform as the result.[5] Why is cuneiform so important to modern technology? According to Scott McLemee in the article Silicon Babylon: Project Aims to Make Cuneiform Collections Available to Researchers Worldwide, “more than 5,000 years ago, the very first information revolution occurred when some unknown research team in Mesopotamia found a way to download and store language through a killer application called “writing.” Business transactions or royal decrees could be recorded by pressing the end of a reed into moist pieces of clay, which the desert climate then baked hard.”[6] The invention of written language brought about the need for organization and recordkeeping. Wooley, et.al. points out that this need was the catalyst for the birth of libraries. Evidence of these first libraries remains today “since clay is much less fragile than papyrus, vellum, or paper, much of this priceless record is still extant. If you burn a cuneiform library you help to preserve the content.”[7]
References 1. About Cuneiform Writing… http://www.upenn.edu/museum/Games/cuneiform.html. 11/03/05. 2. Start Writing: The Ancient Sumerians. NationalGeographic.com. http://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/video/ancient_sumerians.html. 11/02/05. 3. Wooley, S. I., et.al. Communicating cuneiform: The evolution of a multimedia cuneiform database. http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/woolleysi/publications/vlcuneiform.pdf. 11/03/05. 4. Vergano, Dan. Ancient writing system get Internet update. USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/tech/2002/05/21/cuneiform.htm. 11/02/05. 5. Write Like a Babylonian. Cuneiform Writing @ University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. http://www.upennmuseum.com/cuneiform.cgi. 11/03/05. 6. McLemee, Scott. Silicon Babylon: Project Aims to Make Cuneiform Collections Available to Researchers Worldwide, Chronicle of Higher Education. http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i11/11a01401.htm. 11/02/05. 7. Wooley, S. I., et.al. Communicating cuneiform: The evolution of a multimedia cuneiform database. http://www.eee.bham.ac.uk/woolleysi/publications/vlcuneiform.pdf. 11/03/05. |
