Cuneiform is an writing that is ancient that was first found in around 3400 BC.

Distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, cuneiform script is the oldest form of writing on earth, first appearing even earlier than Egyptian hieroglyphics. Listed below are six information about the script that originated in ancient Mesopotamia…

Curators associated with the world’s collection that is largest of cuneiform tablets – housed at the British Museum – revealed in a 2015 book why the writing system is as relevant today as ever. Here, Irving Finkel and Jonathan Taylor share six lesser-known factual statements about the annals of this ancient script…

Cuneiform is not a language

The cuneiform system that is writing also not an alphabet, and it does not have letters. Instead it used between 600 and 1,000 characters to publish words (or elements of them) or syllables (or parts of them).

The two main languages written in Cuneiform are Sumerian and Akkadian (from ancient Iraq), although a lot more than a dozen others are recorded. What this means is we could put it to use equally well right now to spell Chinese, Hungarian or English.

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Cuneiform was first used in around 3400 BC

The stage that is first elementary pictures which were soon also used to record sounds. Cuneiform probably preceded egyptian writing that is hieroglyphic because we understand of early Mesopotamian experiments and ‘dead-ends’ due to the fact established script developed – like the beginning of signs and numbers – whereas the hieroglyphic system appears to have been born just about perfectly formed and ready to go. Almost certainly Egyptian writing evolved from cuneiform – it can’t have been an on-the-spot invention.

Amazingly, cuneiform continued buy an essay to be used until the first century AD, and therefore the exact distance in time that separates us from the latest surviving cuneiform tablet is only just over 1 / 2 of that which separates that tablet through the cuneiform that is first.

Anything you necessary to write cuneiform was a reed plus some clay

Both of which were freely available in the rivers alongside the Mesopotamian cities where cuneiform was used (now Iraq and Syria that is eastern). Your message cuneiform comes from Latin ‘cuneus’, meaning ‘wedge’, and simply means ‘wedge shaped’. It refers to the shape made every time a scribe pressed his stylus (made from a reed that is specially cut in to the clay.

Most tablets would fit comfortably in the palm of a hand – like mobile phones today – and were used just for a short time: maybe a couple of hours or days in school, or a few years for a letter, loan or account. A number of the tablets have survived purely by accident.

Those who read cuneiform for an income – and there are many – choose to think about it as the world’s most writing that is difficultor the most inconvenient). However, when you yourself have six years to spare and work at any hour (not pausing for meals) it’s a doddle to master! All you have to do is learn the languages that are extinct by the tablets, then tens and thousands of signs – many of which have more than one meaning or sound.

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Children who visit the British Museum appear to take to cuneiform with a type of overlooked instinct that is homing in addition they often consider clay homework in spikey wedges much more exciting than exercises in biro in some recoverable format.

In fact, lots of the surviving tablets into the museum collection belonged to schoolchildren, and show the spelling and handwriting exercises which they completed: they repeated the exact same characters, then words, then proverbs, again and again until they might proceed to difficult literature.

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Cuneiform is as relevant today as ever

Ancient writings offer proof that our ‘modern’ ideas and problems have already been experienced by human beings for many thousands of years – this might be always an astounding realisation. Through cuneiform the voices are heard by us not merely of kings and their scribes, but children, bankers, merchants, priests and healers – women as well as men. It really is utterly fascinating to learn other people’s letters, especially when these are generally 4,000 years of age and written in such elegant and delicate script.