Sumerian writings. Forgotten reality. Sumerians, their spoken and written language
Sumerian cuneiform
Sumerian writing, which is known to scientists from the surviving cuneiform texts of the 29th-1st centuries BC. e., despite active study, is still largely a mystery. The fact is that the language of the Sumerians is not similar to any of the known languages, therefore it was not possible to establish its relationship with any language group.
Initially, the Sumerians kept records using hieroglyphs - drawings denoting specific phenomena and concepts. Later, the sign system of the Sumerian alphabet was improved, which led to the formation of cuneiform writing in the 3rd millennium BC. e. This is due to the fact that the records were made on clay tablets: for the convenience of writing, hieroglyphic symbols were gradually transformed into a system of wedge-shaped strokes, applied in different directions and in various combinations. One cuneiform symbol denoted a word or syllable. The writing system developed by the Sumerians was adopted by the Akkadians, Elamites, Hittites and some other peoples. That is why the Sumerian writing persisted much longer than the Sumerian civilization itself existed.
According to research, a single writing system in the states of Lower Mesopotamia was already used in the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. Archaeologists managed to find a lot of cuneiform texts. These are myths, legends, ritual songs and laudatory hymns, fables, sayings, disputes, dialogues and edifications. Initially, the Sumerians created writing for household needs, but fiction soon began to appear. The earliest cult and artistic texts date back to the 26th century BC. e. Thanks to the works of Sumerian authors, the genre of legend-dispute developed and spread, which became popular in the literature of many peoples of the Ancient East.
There is an opinion that the Sumerian writing spread from one place, which at that time was an authoritative cultural center. Many data obtained in the course of scientific work suggest that this center could be the city of Nippur, in which there was a school for scribes.
Archaeological excavations of the ruins of Nippur first began in 1889. Many valuable finds were made during the excavations that took place shortly after the Second World War. As a result, the ruins of three temples and a large cuneiform library with texts on a variety of issues were discovered. Among them was the so-called "school canon of Nippur" - a work intended for study by scribes. It included tales of the exploits of the great demigod heroes Enmesharr, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh, as well as other literary works.
Sumerian cuneiform: top - a stone tablet from the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal; at the bottom - a fragment of a diorite stele on which the code of laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi is written
Extensive cuneiform libraries were found by archaeologists on the ruins of many other Mesopotamian cities - Akkad, Lagash, Nineveh, etc.
One of the important monuments of Sumerian writing is the "Royal List", found during the excavations of Nippur. Thanks to this document, the names of the Sumerian rulers have come down to us, the first of which were the demigod heroes Enmesharr, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh, and legends about their deeds.
Traditions tell of a dispute between Enmesharr and the ruler of the city of Aratta, located far in the East. The legend connects the invention of writing with this dispute. The fact is that the kings took turns asking each other riddles. No one was able to memorize one of Enmesharr's ingenious riddles, which is why there was a need for a different way of transmitting information than oral speech.
The key to deciphering cuneiform texts was found completely independently of each other by two amateur researchers G. Grotenfend and D. Smith. In 1802, Grotenfend, while analyzing copies of cuneiform texts found in the ruins of Persepolis, noticed that all cuneiform signs have two main directions: from top to bottom and from left to right. He came to the conclusion that texts should not be read vertically, but horizontally from left to right.
Since the texts he studied were tomb inscriptions, the researcher suggested that they could begin in much the same way as later inscriptions in Persian: “So-and-so, the great king, the king of kings, the king of such and such places, the son of the great king ... » As a result of the analysis of the available texts, the scientist came to the conclusion that the inscriptions differ in those groups of signs that, according to his theory, should convey the names of kings.
In addition, there were only two variants of the first two groups of symbols that could mean names, and in some texts Grotenfend found both variants.
Further, the researcher noticed that in some places the initial formula of the text does not fit into its hypothetical scheme, namely, in one place there is no word denoting the concept of "king". The study of the location of signs in the texts made it possible to assume that the inscriptions belong to two kings, father and son, and the grandfather was not a king. Since Grotenfend knew that the inscriptions referred to Persian kings (according to the archaeological research in which these texts were discovered), he came to the conclusion that, most likely, we are talking about Darius and Xerxes. Correlating the Persian spelling of names with cuneiform, Grotenfend was able to decipher the inscriptions.
No less interesting is the history of the study of the Epic of Gilgamesh. In 1872, an employee of the British Museum, D. Smith, was deciphering cuneiform tablets found during excavations in Nineveh. Among the legends about the exploits of the hero Gilgamesh, who was two-thirds a deity and only one-third a mortal man, the scientist was especially interested in a fragment of the legend of the Great Flood:
so says the hero Utnapishti, who survived the flood and received immortality from the gods. However, later in the story, omissions began to occur, a piece of text was clearly missing.
In 1873, D. Smith went to Kuyunjik, where the ruins of Nineveh had previously been discovered. There he was lucky to find the missing cuneiform tablets.
After studying them, the researcher came to the conclusion that Utnapishti is none other than the biblical Noah.
The story of the ark, or ship, ordered by Utnapishti on the advice of the god Ea, the description of a terrible natural disaster that hit the earth and destroyed all life, except for those who boarded the ship, surprisingly coincides with the biblical story of the Great Flood. Even the dove and the raven, which Utnapishti releases after the end of the rain to find out whether the waters have receded or not, are also in the biblical legend. According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, the god Enlil made Utnapishti and his wife like gods, that is, immortal. They live across the river that separates the world of people from the other world:
Hitherto Utnapishtim was a man
From now on, Utnapishti and his wife are like us gods;
Let Utnapishti live at the mouth of the rivers, in the distance!
Gilgamesh, or Bilga-mes, whose name is often translated as "ancestor-hero", the hero of the Sumerian epic, was considered the son of the hero Lugalbanda, the high priest of Kulaba, the ruler of the city of Uruk, and the goddess Ninsun.
According to the "Royal List" from Nippur, Gilgamesh ruled Uruk for 126 years in the 27th-26th centuries BC. e.
Gilgamesh with a lion. 8th century BC e.
Gilgamesh was the fifth king of the first dynasty, to which his father Lugalbanda and Dumuzi, the husband of the goddess of love and war, Inanna, belonged. Gilgamesh for the Sumerians is not just a king, but a demigod with superhuman qualities, so his deeds and his life expectancy far exceed the corresponding characteristics of the subsequent rulers of Uruk.
The name of Gilgamesh and the name of his son Ur-Nungal were found in the list of rulers who took part in the construction of the common Sumerian Tummal temple in Nippur. The construction of a fortress wall around Uruk is also associated with the activities of this legendary ruler.
There are several ancient tales about the exploits of Gilgamesh. The legend "Gilgamesh and Agga" tells about real events at the end of the 27th century BC. e., when the warriors of Uruk defeated the troops of the city of Kish.
The legend "Gilgamesh and the Mountain of the Immortal" tells about a campaign in the mountains, where soldiers led by Gilgamesh defeat the monster Humbaba. The texts of two legends - "Gilgamesh and the heavenly bull" and "Death of Gilgamesh" - are poorly preserved.
Also, the legend “Gilgamesh, Enkidu and underworld”, which reflected the ideas of the ancient Sumerians about the structure of the world.
According to this legend, a magic tree grew in the garden of the goddess Inanna, from the wood of which the goddess intended to make a throne for herself. But the Anzud bird, a monster that caused a thunderstorm, and the demon Lilith settled on the tree, and a snake under the roots. At the request of the goddess Inanna, Gilgamesh defeated them, and from wood he made a throne for the goddess, a bed and magical musical instruments, to the sounds of which the young men of Uruk danced. But the women of Uruk resented the noise, and the musical instruments fell into the realm of the dead. The servant of the ruler of Uruk, Enkidu, went to fetch musical instruments, but failed to return. However, at the request of Gilgamesh, the gods allowed the king to speak with Enkidu, who told him about the laws of the realm of the dead.
Legends about the deeds of Gilgamesh became the basis of the Akkadian epic, the cuneiform records of which were discovered during the excavations of Nineveh in the library of the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, dated to the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. e. There are also several different versions, the records of which were found during the excavations of Babylon and on the ruins of the Hittite kingdom.
The text that was discovered in Nineveh, according to legend, was written down from the words of the Uruk spellcaster Sinlike-uninni. The legend is written on 12 clay tablets. Separate fragments of this epic were found in Ashur, Uruk and Sultan-Tepe.
The audacity and strength of the king of Uruk forced the inhabitants of the city to turn to the gods for protection from his arbitrariness. Then the gods created from the clay the strong man Enkidu, who entered into single combat with Gilgamesh. However, the heroes became not enemies, but friends. They decided to take a trip to the mountains for cedars. The monster Humbaba lived in the mountains, whom they defeated.
The story goes on about how the goddess Inanna offered her love to Gilgamesh, but he rejected her, reproaching her for being unfaithful to her former lover. Then, at the request of the goddess, the gods send a gigantic bull, which seeks to destroy Uruk. Gilgamesh and Enkidu also defeat this monster, but Inanna's anger causes the death of Enkidu, who suddenly loses his strength and dies.
Gilgamesh mourns the death of a friend. He cannot come to terms with the fact that death awaits him, so he goes in search of the herb that gives immortality. Gilgamesh's travels are like those of many others. legendary heroes to another world. Gilgamesh passes the desert, crosses the "waters of death" and meets with the wise Utnapishti, who survived the flood. He tells the hero where to find the herb of immortality - it grows at the bottom of the sea. The hero manages to get it, but on the way home he stops at the source and falls asleep, and at this time the grass is swallowed by a snake - therefore the snakes change their skin, thereby renewing their life. Gilgamesh has to part with the dream of physical immortality, but he believes that the glory of his deeds will live in the memory of people.
It is interesting to note that the ancient Sumerian storytellers managed to show how the character of the hero and his worldview change. If at first Gilgamesh demonstrates his strength, believing that no one can resist him, then as the plot develops, the hero realizes that a person’s life is short and fleeting. He thinks about life and death, experiences grief and despair. Gilgamesh is not accustomed to humble himself even before the will of the gods, so the thought of the inevitability of his own end causes him protest.
The hero does everything possible and impossible to break out of the narrow framework destined by fate. The tests passed make him understand that for a person this is possible only thanks to his deeds, the glory of which lives in legends and traditions.
Another written monument, made in cuneiform, is the code of laws of the Babylonian king Hammurabi, dated approximately 1760 BC. e. A stone slab with the text of laws carved on it was found by archaeologists at the beginning of the 20th century during excavations in the city of Susa. Many copies of the Hammurabi code were also found during excavations in other cities of Mesopotamia, such as Nineveh. Hammurabi's code is different a high degree legal elaboration of concepts and the severity of punishments for various crimes. The laws of Hammurabi had a huge impact on the development of law in general and on the codes of laws different peoples in later eras.
However, Hammurabi's code was not the first collection of Sumerian laws. In 1947, the archaeologist F. Stil during the excavations of Nippur discovered fragments of the legislative code of King Lipit-Ishtar, dated to the 20th century BC. e. Law codes existed in Ur, Isin and Eshnunna: they were probably taken as a basis by the developers of the Hammurabi code.
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Cuneiform - writing, the signs of which consist of combinations of wedge-shaped dashes. Such signs were squeezed out on wet clay. Cuneiform was used by the ancient peoples of Asia Minor, it arose at the beginning of the third millennium BC. in Sumer (Southern Mesopotamia), was later adapted for the Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Urartian languages. By origin, cuneiform was an ideographic-rebus script, later it was transformed into a verbal-syllabic script.
Assyro-Babylonian cuneiform
Cuneiform
Development of cuneiform
Development of cuneiform signs
Cuneiform originated from pictorial writing, the signs of which were drawings of animals, objects and people and conveyed concepts. As the need to write down more complex texts arose, signs began to be used in their sound meaning, and grammatical indicators of gender, case, person, and number began to be noted in writing. With the complication of the writing system, the form of signs was simplified, and the drawings turned into combinations of straight and oblique lines. It was the use of cuneiform signs in their sound meaning that made it possible to adapt cuneiform to convey other languages.
Initially, the Sumerians conveyed the names of individual specific objects and general concepts. So, the drawing of the foot began to convey the concepts of “walk” (Sumerian du-, ra-), “stand” (gub-), “bring” (tum-). In total, there were about a thousand ideographic signs. They were notes that consolidated the main points of the transmitted thought, and not coherent speech. Since the signs were associated with certain words, this allowed them to be used to indicate sound combinations, regardless of the meaning. The foot sign could no longer be used only to convey verbs of motion, but also for syllables. Verbal-syllabic writing developed into a system by the middle of the third millennium BC. The basis of a noun or verb was expressed by an ideogram (a sign for a concept), and grammatical indicators and auxiliary words were expressed by signs in a syllabic meaning. Equally sounding stems of different meanings were expressed different signs(homophony). Each sign could have several meanings, both syllabic and related to concepts (polyphony). To isolate words that expressed the concepts of a number of specific categories (for example, birds, fish, professions), a small number of determinants were used - unpronounceable indicators. The number of characters was reduced to 600, not counting the combined ones.
With the speed of writing, the drawings were simplified. The dashes of signs were pressed with a rectangular reed stick, which entered the clay at an angle and therefore created a wedge-shaped depression. Direction of writing: first in vertical columns from right to left, later - line by line, from left to right. The forms of cuneiform monuments are diverse: prisms, cylinders, cones, stone slabs; the most common tiles are made of dried clay. Archaeologists openly a large number of cuneiform texts: business documents, historical inscriptions, epics, dictionaries, mathematical works, scientific writings, religious magical records.
The Akkadians (Babylonians and Assyrians) adapted the cuneiform script for their Semitic inflectional language in the middle of the third millennium BC, reducing the number of characters to three hundred and creating new syllabic values corresponding to the Akkadian phonetic system. At the same time, purely phonetic (syllabic) records of words began to be used, however, Sumerian ideograms and spelling individual words and expressions (in the Akkadian reading) also continued to be used. The Akkadian system of cuneiform writing spread beyond Mesopotamia, also adapting to the Elamite, Hurrian, Hitto-Luvian, and Urartian languages. Starting from the second half of the first millennium BC. cuneiform was used for religious and legal purposes only in certain cities of the Southern Mesopotamia for the already dead Sumerian and Akkadian languages. The last cuneiform document in Akkadian dates from 75 BC.
Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform from the city of Ugarit (Ras Shamra) of the second millennium BC. became an adaptation of the ancient Semitic alphabet to writing on clay, it is similar to the Akkadian cuneiform only in the way of applying signs. In the 6th-4th centuries BC. the ancient Persian syllabic cuneiform became widespread. Its deciphering was started by the German school teacher Georg Grotefend, who in 1802 managed to read the Behistun inscription of the Persian king Darius I. The presence of trilingual Persian-Elamite-Akkadian inscriptions allowed in 1851 the British diplomat Henry Rawlinson to start deciphering the Akkadian texts. In the future, this work was continued by the British scientist E. Hinks and the French scientist J. Oppertou. In 1869, Jules Oppert speculated that the Sumerians were the inventors of cuneiform writing. Actually Sumerian cuneiform was deciphered in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, Ugaritic - in 1930-1932 by the French scientist C. Virollo, the German scientist H. Bauer.
When talking about the culture of Mesopotamia, it should be noted that its basis is the writing of this civilization - the so-called Sumerian cuneiform. It is this type of writing that is the characteristic element by which most of us know about Mesopotamia.
For example: if we hear the word "Egypt", majestic pyramids, temples and sphinxes appear before our eyes. While all the structures of Mesopotamia of that time blurred and do not allow us to judge their grandiosity. The only reminder of the past are only written monuments in the form of all kinds of clay tablets, inscriptions on walls, bas-reliefs and slabs.
In museums around the world in this moment more than one and a half thousand tablets with cuneiform texts are stored. The birth of Mesopotamian writing falls on the 4th-3rd millennium BC. e. Most likely, it was a consequence of the development of the system of "recording chips".
"Accounting chips" - three-dimensional symbols (balls, cones, squares, etc.) used to account for products and goods in Middle Eastern settlements in the 9th-4th millennium BC.
"Accounting chips" and their imprints on stone
Over time, for convenience, “recording chips” began to simply be imprinted on the walls of boxes with goods (to make prints while the clay had not yet hardened). Later, the prints began to be replaced by various drawings that carry more complex designations. This is one of the theories of the origin of Mesopotamian cuneiform writing, which explains why clay was chosen for writing, as well as the unusual pillow-shaped form of ancient tablets.
Development of writing
At an early period in the development of writing in Mesopotamia, there were more than 1,500 different icons, each of which stood for one or more words. Following the system of unification of badges, their number gradually decreased and in the Neo-Babylonian period amounted to just over 300 pieces.
Simultaneously with the unification, the phonetization of writing took place - icons began to be used not only for their intended purpose to define a word, but also as syllabic parts of other words. This made it possible to move cuneiform to a new level, which was supported by lively speech.
The very first reminders of Sumerian writing are original puzzles that were understandable only to those who were present at their creation. These were physical evidence of certain transactions for the sale or exchange of goods. Around the same time, the first educational texts appear.
By the middle of the III millennium BC. e. Cuneiform is developing so much that it is beginning to be used to form religious and scientific texts, collections of proverbs, geographical manuals and dictionaries.
The Significance of Cuneiform for World Culture
The cuneiform script of the Sumerians was also widely used outside of Mesopotamia - for their own needs, this script is used by the Akkadians, Eblaites and Hittites.
Around 1500 BC. e. the inhabitants of Ugarit use cuneiform to create their syllabary, which most likely became the basis of the Phoenician script, from which the Greek alphabet is known to originate.
In I millennium BC. e. Mesopotamian writing is borrowed by the Persians to create their front letter, despite the fact that during this period there are already more convenient systems letters are Aramaic and Greek.
Despite the fact that in the second half of the II millennium BC. e., Assyria and Babylonia are in decline, the Mesopotamian script remains alive and is used as the language of international communication throughout the Middle East. Thus, the agreement between the Hittite king Hattusili III and the Egyptian pharaohs Ramses II was drawn up in Akkadian.
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Type: syllabo-ideographic
Language family: not established
Localization: Northern Mesopotamia
Distribution time: 3300 BC e. - 100 AD e.
Sumer, one of the oldest civilizations of the Middle East, existed at the end of the 4th - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. in the Southern Mesopotamia, the region of the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates, in the south of modern Iraq.
The first settlements on this territory began to appear already in the VI millennium BC. e.
Where the Sumerians came to these lands, among which the local agricultural communities disappeared, has not yet been clarified.
Their own traditions speak of an eastern or southeastern origin. They considered Eredu, the southernmost of the cities of Mesopotamia, now the settlement of Abu Shakhrain, to be their oldest settlement.
The homeland of all mankind, the Sumerians called the island of Dilmui, identified with modern Bahrain in the Persian Gulf.
The earliest Sumerian writing is represented by texts found in the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet-Nasra, dated 3300 BC.
The Sumerian language still continues to be a mystery to us, since even now it has not been possible to establish its relationship with any of the known language families. Archaeological materials suggest that the Sumerians created the Ubaid culture in the south of Mesopotamia at the end of the 5th - beginning of the 4th millennium BC. e. Thanks to the emergence of hieroglyphic writing, the Sumerians left many monuments of their culture, imprinting them on clay tablets.
The cuneiform script itself was a syllabic script, consisting of several hundred characters, of which about 300 were the most common; they included more than 50 ideograms, about 100 signs for simple syllables and 130 for complex ones; there were signs for numbers in the sixdecimal and decimal systems.
Sumerian writing evolved over 2200 years
Most of the signs have two or more readings (polyphonism), since they often acquired a Semitic meaning next to the Sumerian. Sometimes they depicted related concepts (for example, "sun" - bar and "shine" - lah).
The very invention of Sumerian writing was undoubtedly one of the largest and most significant achievements of the Sumerian civilization. Sumerian writing, which has gone from hieroglyphic, figurative signs-symbols to signs that began to write the simplest syllables, turned out to be an extremely progressive system. It was borrowed and used by many peoples who spoke other languages.
At the turn of IV-III millennia BC. e. we have indisputable evidence that the population of Lower Mesopotamia was Sumerian. Wide famous story about the Great Flood is first found in the Sumerian historical and mythological texts.
Although Sumerian writing was invented exclusively for economic needs, the first written literary monuments appeared among the Sumerians very early: among the records dating back to the 26th century. BC e., there are already examples of genres of folk wisdom, cult texts and hymns.
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Due to this circumstance, the cultural influence of the Sumerians in the Ancient Near East was enormous and outlived their own civilization for many centuries.
Subsequently, writing loses its pictorial character and transforms into cuneiform.
Cuneiform writing was used in Mesopotamia for almost three thousand years. However, she was later forgotten. For decades, cuneiform kept its secret, until in 1835 an unusually energetic Englishman, Henry Rawlinson, an English officer and lover of antiquities, deciphered it. Once he was informed that an inscription was preserved on a sheer cliff in Behistun (near the city of Hamadan in Iran). It turned out to be one and the same inscription made in three ancient languages, including Old Persian. Rawlinson first read the inscription in this language he knew, and then managed to understand another inscription, identifying and deciphering more than 200 cuneiform characters.
In mathematics, the Sumerians knew how to count in tens. But the numbers 12 (a dozen) and 60 (five dozen) were especially revered. We still use the legacy of the Sumerians when we divide an hour into 60 minutes, a minute into 60 seconds, a year into 12 months, and a circle into 360 degrees.
In the figure you can see how, over 500 years, the hieroglyphic images of numerals turned into cuneiform ones.
~3300 BC e. - 75 AD e.
Initially from right to left, in columns, then from left to right in lines (starting from 2400-2350 BC for handwritten texts; from the 2nd millennium BC for monumental inscriptions)
300 - 900 characters for syllabic and ideographic systems; About 30 letters for phonetic adaptation on the east coast mediterranean sea; 36 letters for the Old Persian syllabary.
The oldest known documents are tablets with administrative documents of the Sumerian kingdom.
original writing
| Ancient Mesopotamia |
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| Assiriology |
| Regions and states |
| City-states of Sumer Upper Mesopotamian states Akkad Sumero-Akkadian kingdom Isin Amorite kingdoms Babylonia Assyria Subartu Primorye |
| Population |
| Aborigines of Mesopotamia · Sumerians · Akkadians · Babylonians · Assyrians · Amorites · Arameans · Kassites · Gutians · Lullubians · Subareas · Chaldeans · Hurrians |
| Writing and languages |
| Cuneiform |
| Sumerian Akkadian Proto-Euphratic languages Proto-Tigrid (banana) languages Hurrian |
| Sumero-Akkadian mythology |
| periodization |
| Prehistoric Mesopotamia |
| Uruk era - Jemdet-Nasr |
| Early dynastic period |
| Early despotisms |
| Old Babylonian/ Old Assyrian periods |
| Middle Babylonian/ Middle Assyrian periods |
| Neo-Assyrian period |
| Neo-Babylonian kingdom |
Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system. The form of writing was largely determined by writing material - a clay tablet, on which, while the clay was still soft, signs were squeezed out with a wooden stick for writing or a pointed reed; hence the "wedge-shaped" strokes.
Story
Mesopotamia
The oldest monument of Sumerian writing is a tablet from Kish (about 3500 BC). It is followed in time by documents found during excavations. ancient city Uruk, dating back to 3300 BC. e. The appearance of writing coincides in time with the development of cities and the accompanying complete restructuring of society. At the same time, the wheel and the knowledge of copper smelting appear in Mesopotamia.
Starting from the II millennium BC. e. Cuneiform is spreading throughout the Middle East, as evidenced by the Amarna Archive and the Bogazköy Archive.
Gradually, this notation system is being replaced by other language notation systems that have appeared by that time.
Deciphering cuneiform
The tables in the relevant articles list the sets of syllabograms used in the corresponding form of cuneiform. Row headings indicate the proposed consonant phoneme (or allophone), while column headings indicate subsequent or preceding vowels. In the cells corresponding to the intersection of a consonant and a vowel, the standard transliteration of this syllable is indicated - in this case, the value closest to the expected phonetic sound is selected. For example, the sign
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Synonyms:See what "Cuneiform" is in other dictionaries:
Cuneiform... Spelling Dictionary
Cuneiform- Cuneiform. The development of cuneiform characters. Cuneiform, writing, the signs of which consist of groups of wedge-shaped dashes (the signs were squeezed out on wet clay). It originated in the 4th millennium BC in Sumer and was later adapted for ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary
The writing system that originated in Mesopotamia and became widespread in the 31st millennium BC. throughout the Middle East. The cuneiform looks like elongated triangular icons, squeezed out on clay tablets with a split reed. ... ... Financial vocabulary
Cuneiform, writing, the signs of which consist of groups of wedge-shaped dashes (the signs were squeezed out on wet clay). It originated in the 4th millennium BC in Sumer and was later adapted for Akkadian, Elamite, Hurrian, Hitto ... ... Modern Encyclopedia
Writing, the signs of which consist of groups of wedge-shaped dashes (the signs were squeezed out on wet clay). Appeared ok. 3000 BC e. in Sumer and was later adapted for Akkadian, Elamite, Hittite, Urartian and other languages. By… … Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
Letters, writing Dictionary of Russian synonyms. cuneiform n., number of synonyms: 2 letters (3) ... Synonym dictionary
Cuneiform- (cuneiform), writing (more precisely, a group of writings) created in Bl. East. Split reed sticks and raw clay tablets were used for writing. The signs squeezed out with a stick (stylus) were groups of wedge-shaped ... ... The World History
Cuneiform, cuneiform, female. (philol.). 1. only units An alphabet whose letters are combinations of wedge-shaped dashes carved on stone or extruded on clay tablets (used by the ancient Persians, Assyrians, etc. ... ... Dictionary Ushakov
Cuneiform, and, wives. (specialist.). Wedge-shaped lines used by the Assyro-Babylonians, the ancient Persians, and some other ancient peoples. | adj. cuneiform, oh, oh. Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu.… … Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
